Rent guidelines board made the rents too damn higher

 

AMNY 

Confirming a preliminary vote in May, the New York City Rent Guideline Board voted Tuesday to approve a range of increases in rent-stabilized buildings affecting more than 2 million tenants across the city.

Renters with one-year leases can expect a 3.25% jump in their rents, while those with two-year leases will see rents the climb 5%.

The vote of the board — composed of nine mayor-appointed members which include two landlords, two tenants and five are considered public members — disappointed plenty of tenants and rental advocates.

“I waited to see how this allegedly neutral process would unfold and frankly, I’ve seen enough,” said board Tenant Member Adán Soltren, as he expressed his disappointment in the increase vote on June 21. “Despite all our good faith efforts, the public members [of this board] decided that rather than listen, digest and make informed decisions, they’d rather keep moving the goalpost. People on this board today are choosing to continue to uphold a racist, classist system that pushes Black and Brown people and low and moderate income working families into cyclic poverty and out of their homes.”

Board Public Member Christian Gonzalez-Rivera also condemned the vote, and addressed the statements made by fellow board members indicating that the only way for property owners to cover their operating expenses is to increase rent – even if the increase means tenants cannot afford to live in the units.

“Landlord representatives that told us [the Rent Guideline Board] at these hearings that, since the HSTPA (Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019) closed their alternative avenues of raising rents beyond the levels that are voted on by this board, that they now depend on high enough increases from this board in order to keep up with increases in operating expenses,” said Gonzalez-Rivera. “This is simply not true. The only way that this could be true is if you think of the rent-stabilized housing market as a closed system, where the only input is rent.” 

Baited, switched, fisted

 

Bloomberg

 The pandemic-era rental market in Manhattan gave people the chance of a lifetime to move into the apartment of their dreams. Ten months is all they got.

Landlords are jacking up rents — often by 50, 60 or 70% — on tenants who locked in deals last year when prices were in freefall. Some renters are being forced to move at a time when the market is roaring back to nearly pre-pandemic levels. And concessions are slipping away.

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Andy Kalmowitz didn’t think twice in November before signing a 10-month lease on a two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment in the desirable East Village neighborhood for $2,100 a month. When it was time to renew, his landlord asked for $3,500, a 67% increase.

“When I asked why, they said, ‘It’s a different world,’” said Kalmowitz, 24, who works in TV and had moved from New Jersey.

Across New York, landlords last year were forced to cut rents and offer freebies when the Covid-19 pandemic all but shut down the city, scattering residents who were looking for additional space or more-affordable housing.

Now the market has rebounded, and people appear to be flooding back: Large employers are demanding people return to the office, universities are ramping up in-person teaching and New York City’s public-school system — the largest in the country — has reopened without a remote-learning option.

“More are moving back from out of town, after being away quarantining for the past 18 months,” said Bill Kowalczuk, a broker at Warburg Realty. “There are more inquiries, more apartments renting within a week or less of the list date, and more prices going over the asking price than I have ever seen.”

The median asking rent in Manhattan rose to $3,000 in July, the highest it’s been since July 2020 and up from the pandemic low of $2,750 in January 2021, according to StreetEasy.