Tenants Could See City’s First-Ever Rent Freeze This June

For our many neighbors who live in rent-stabilized apartments, some financial relief could be headed their way come June.

The city’s Rent Guidelines Board released a report last week showing landlords of rent-stabilized buildings experienced their smallest increase in operating costs since 2002 — 0.5 percent — and that jump is so minute that it could translate to the city’s first-ever rent freeze for rent-regulated tenants.

“The data we have right now points to either a rent rollback or a rent freeze,” Harvey Epstein, a tenant representative on the RGB, told the New York Post.

The nine-member RGB is the body in charge of establishing rent adjustments, including rent freezes, for the approximate one million people living in the city’s rent-stabilized buildings. Each June, the nine members — all of whom are appointed by the mayor — set the rent adjustments.

Elected officials are advocating for a rent freeze — something which Mayor Bill de Blasio campaigned on and which he attempted to push through last year after landlords’ operating costs increased by 5.7 percent. Councilman Jumaane Williams, whose 45th Council District includes parts of Flatbush, issued a statement Friday evening calling on the RGB to implement a rent freeze.

“2015 is the Year of the Tenant,” Williams said. “Landlords have enjoyed rent increases every year since the creation of the Rent Guidelines Board at the expense of our neediest New Yorkers, but with the price index of operating costs lower than they’ve been in over 10 years, there is no reason the board should continue this trend.”

Last year, after the RGB reported that operating costs went up 5.7 percent the previous year and following de Blasio’s push for a rent freeze, the board increased rents by 1 percent for one-year lease renewals and 2.75 percent for two year leases. This year, tenant advocates are saying that, with the operating costs being far lower and the board being made up entirely of members appointed by de Blasio — last year there were still holdovers from the more landlord-friendly Bloomberg administration — the first rent freeze in the city’s could be likely.

[pullquote]Landlords should be able to earn a profit, just not at the expense of tenants struggling to keep a roof over their family’s head. –Councilman Jumaane Williams[/pullquote]

“New York City’s economic climate has ebbed and flowed throughout the past 50 years, but there has never been a climate that the RGB thought warranted a rent freeze, even when our economy would have supported it,” Williams said. “Still, I’m positive landlords will try to dismiss this year’s record low price index and will call for further hikes. Landlords should be able to earn a profit, just not at the expense of tenants struggling to keep a roof over their family’s head.”

Landlords, while not pleased with the prospect of a freeze, seem resigned that it could occur.

“We presume again that the mayor will be calling for zero [increase], and he now controls the entire board,” Jack Freund, vice president of the Rent Stabilization Association, which represents 25,000 landlords across the five boroughs, told the New York Post.

Such a freeze would impact many of our neighbors — Aga Trojniak, of the Flatbush Tenant Coalition, recently noted that 70 percent of Flatbush residents live in rent-stabilized apartments, with these being “the source of affordable housing for the neighborhood.”

While landlords are experiencing record low operating costs, Williams, the Flatbush Tenant Coalition and numerous others have pointed out that residents in rent-regulated units are facing an increasing number of problems with landlord harassment.

“Rent stabilization has been gutted over the last few years,” Trojniak said at a December fundraiser at Bar Chord for the FTC. “It’s now a set of loopholes where landlords can dramatically increase rents… What’ we’re seeing in the neighborhood is large corporations buying up apartments in bulk, and they’re waging war on longterm residents.”

This push by landlords to force rent-stabilized tenants from their buildings has resulted in the loss of about 3,500 rent regulated apartments in Flatbush between 2008 and 2011, Trojniak said – and, as she and other neighbors pointed out, this landlord harassment has included everything from withholding repairs to taking neighbors to housing court over being one month late in paying rent.

Now, with the city’s rent laws slated to sunset in June, state lawmakers are poised to renew the laws — which could translate to more, or fewer, rights for tenants, depending on what legislators negotiate.

“New York City’s rent laws are currently being considered in Albany, and if they are not strengthened, we run the risk of further rent hikes that will bring rent stabilized apartments one step closer to deregulation and their protection against arbitrary evictions lost,” Williams said. “With such uncertainty, it’s further imperative we see a decrease in rent from the RGB this year.”