The Rent Guidelines Board last week took yet another step toward crushing the city’s housing market by capping rent hikes below landlord costs.
The board, largely appointed by Mayor Eric Adams, has initially approved rent hikes from 1.75% to 4.75% for one-year leases and between 4.75% and 7.75% for two-year leases.
In the upcoming month, the board will finalize these numbers. However, even if the maximum rates are implemented, landlords of rent-stabilized apartments will struggle to cope with rising expenses such as insurance, energy, and taxes.
And given the political pressure (especially with a mayoral election looming), it’s a fair bet they’ll cap the hikes below the high end.
When landlords can’t manage these costs, they may be forced to sell to less reputable buyers or reduce spending on property upkeep, negatively impacting tenants in either situation.
Or owners will simply go bust, losing their buildings to banks — or to the city, for failing to pay taxes, as during the 1970s and ’80.
That’s bad news for people seeking a place to live.
Note: From 2013 to 2023, costs for pre-1974 buildings outside the Manhattan core (i.e., where most rent-stabilized units are located) skyrocketed 37% — yet the board only let rents go up less than 25%.
Meanwhile, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s 2019 rent law slammed owners with even more financial hardships, preventing them, for instance, from passing along to tenants the costs of bringing vacated apartments up to code.
As a result, more than 10,000 units are sitting vacant instead of being renovated for new occupants. Brilliant.
Plus, the city’s Local Law 97 and Cuomo’s climate law are forcing owners to shell out even more of their stretched dollars to refit buildings in the name of fighting climate change.
Profit margins and building values are taking a dive; thousands of buildings are already in financial “distress,” a trend that’s been soaring since the de Blasio years of insane zero-percent rent hikes.
If board members — or, more important, the elected officials who chose them — truly care about New York tenants, they’d let landlords at least recoup their costs.
If the city keep slapping owners, its housing stock will keep sinking fast, adding to everyone’s misery.
