Town additionally elevated rents final 12 months. The median lease for a two-bedroom condo in Manhattan as of Could was $5,400, up about 8 p.c from a 12 months in the past, based on Douglas Elliman, an actual property brokerage. The overwhelming majority of rent-stabilized tenants pay considerably lower than median lease.
Mayor Eric Adams (D), who appoints the board and whose profitable 2021 election marketing campaign was financially supported by many landlords, mentioned in a press release that the board had achieved “critically vital and very troublesome work defending tenants from unsustainable lease will increase, whereas additionally making certain small property house owners have the required sources to take care of their buildings and protect high-quality, inexpensive houses.”
New York is predominantly a renter metropolis, and nearly 2.3 million housing items there are renter-occupied, based on the board’s 2021 housing survey.
Tenants and housing activists gathered forward of the vote in opposition, holding up posters with slogans such because the “Lease is just too rattling excessive” and “0 p.c.” About half of town’s households had been burdened by housing prices, which means they spend greater than 30 p.c of their revenue on shelter, a latest report discovered.
“This metropolis is a 70 percent-plus tenant metropolis,” New York Metropolis Council member Chi Ossé (D), who represents a district in Brooklyn, mentioned at an indication. The lease improve is a “life-or-death sentence” for each New Yorker in a rent-stabilized condo, he mentioned.
Many landlords argued {that a} small or nonexistent improve in rents would create an insolvency disaster for rent-stabilized buildings. “The mathematics requires ample lease changes to maintain town’s affordable-housing inventory from plunging into an insolvency disaster,” wrote two members of the Lease Stabilization Affiliation, a gaggle representing landlords, in a New York Put up opinion piece on Tuesday.
New York has for many years struggled to create inexpensive housing items for its residents. The newest improve comes after costs within the larger New York space rose by 6.1 p.c final 12 months, the best charge in about 40 years. A decline within the common inflation-adjusted wage has upped the price of residing considerably.