New Policy Brief: Attack on Affordability
Landlord lobby’s vacancy reset bill would gut rent stabilization and threaten affordability for more than half of rent-stabilized apartments.
Today Pratt Center released “Attack on Affordability,” a policy brief examining a proposed law backed by the landlord lobby that threatens to authorize significant rent increases and imperil more than half a million rent-stabilized apartments currently home to 1.3 million long-term tenants. The bill, S6352/A6772, would allow landlords to raise rents to market rates upon vacancy of households who lived in an apartment for 10 years or more. Rent increases in these homes would be determined not by the Rent Guidelines Board (RGB), like all other rent-stabilized apartments, but by federal guidelines for local Fair Market Rents. Rents could easily double.
Despite its stated purpose to “preserve and restore” rent-stabilized housing, the bill contains little to ensure that apartments subject to these dramatic rent hikes are in need of or will receive substantial rehabilitation. Allowing such significant rent increases would impose massive displacement pressures on already vulnerable rent-stabilized tenants and diminish New York City’s already paltry affordable housing stock.
Summary of Findings:
- The legislation would enable significant new rent increases on scarce affordable rent-stabilized apartments.
- This bill would threaten the long-term affordability of the majority of today’s rent-stabilized apartments, home to 1.3 million tenants, many of whom are in vulnerable populations.
- Proposed rent hikes will not preserve or restore but rather undermine rent-stabilized housing.