The Too Damn High Rent Is Going Even Higher

Last night, after months of tenant-led pushback to proposed rent hikes for New York's over one million rent-stabilized units, the Rent Guidelines Board voted to raise rents for the second year in a row. Eric Adams has now twice raised rents on people living in some of New York City's last remaining "affordable" homes, and during a time of unprecedented rent increases for market-rate apartments. 

By a 5-4 vote, landlords will now be able to raise rents three percent on one-year leases and a maximum increase on two-year leases that boils down to 2.75 percent in year one, and 3.2 percent in year two. (Have fun with the math, tenants!)

How did this all shake out? Well, Adams appointed enough landlord-friendly (and crypto-enthusiast) representatives to the nine-person board to essentially bake in rent increases. Tenant advocates on the board eventually gave their go-ahead to the increases after deciding that it was the best they could do, considering the rest of the board was gunning for even higher increases. 

This year's vote was deemed way too "contentious" for the powers that be, after tenants and their advocates stormed the stage at a hearing this spring to protest their homes becoming unaffordable. In advance of last night's vote, the RGB switched locations and banned noisemakers (lest people displacing others be inconvenienced by voices of dissent).

Still, tenants made their voices heard:

Of course, landlords weren't pleased with the rent hike either—they wanted it even higher (last year's was 3.25 percent on one-year, and five percent on two-year leases). Elsewhere in New York state, rents were frozen in the city of Kingston. 

In a statement, Mayor Eric Adams said he believes the board found "the right balance," by providing apartment owners with extra income (which we're sure they'll definitely put toward making any improvements to their apartments). Adams has also in the past proclaimed that "I am real estate." 

Once again, tenants are left with another hole in their budget as everything else in the city costs more and more. It's expensive being poor (or just trying to live in Eric Adams's New York). 

Some links (not subject to a rent increase this year): 

• Albany's business is now concluded for the year as the State Assembly reconvened, voted (or didn't) on a bunch of things, and then bounced. They approved parkland alienation on Long Island for wind farm power cables and overhauled how the state oversees such projects (both wins for the climate), made it easier for incarcerated people to challenge convictions, stopped landlords from taking stabilized apartments off the market by combining units, and also banned the dumping of radioactive waste into the Hudson (whew). 
• What they didn't do? Allow New York City to regulate its own speed limit—they refused to even debate Sammy's Law. Nor did they allow New York's undocumented population to access Medicaid (even though the feds said they could). 
• Speaking of wind power, the state is wiring up Long Island to be able handle all that clean energy. 
• Bookforum is back, thanks to the good people at the Nation. 
• Many sites now housing asylum seekers lack showers. 
• A firefighter stole a dead patient's credit cards. 
• The Department of Correction is giving the green light to a vendor that keeps scamming detainees. 
• New York state's prison population is down more than 25 percent since 2019, one of the fastest rates of decarceration in the nation.
• And finally, that's definitely one way to heat a bath to a lukewarm temperature: