The New York City Rent Guidelines Board (RGB) will soon be voting on whether to increase rents for rent stabilized and rent controlled tenants when they renew leases. The determination is supposed to be based on data: ensuring landlords get a reasonable return on their investment and that tenants can afford to pay the rents.
But one bit of landlord data is skewed since some landlords are getting a lower return on their investment voluntarily. They are refusing to rent out at least 70,000 rent stabilized apartments and possibly more than 100,000. That's 10% of all rent-regulated units!
There are a few reasons for warehousing, including
- to increase the scarcity of housing and drive up prices
- to pressure the State to roll back some tenant protections in the 2019 Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act.
Landlords who warehouse apartments can't then claim they're losing money. (That's like the old example of the Yiddish word "chutzpah" : a man kills his parents and then asks the court for leniency because he's an orphan.)
The RGB's next on-line meeting is Tuesday, April 26, 2022 (9:45 AM for landlords, and 1 PM for tenants) and the Preliminary Vote will be on Thursday, May 5th starting at 7 PM.
EMAIL THE RGB: NO RENT INCREASES FOR LANDLORDS WHO WAREHOUSE APARTMENTS. board@nycrgb.org .
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We welcome all civil comments on the best way to end warehousing of affordable apartments.