Rent Increases Are Approved For Stabilized Apartments

Tenants in rent-stabilized apartments will face rent increases of up to 4.5% for one-year leases and up to 8.5% for two-year leases in 2009, the Rent Guidelines Board determined by a 5-4 vote at a meeting last night.

Additionally, tenants who have occupied their apartments for more than six years will face a minimum increase of either the fixed-percentage increase or $45 or $85 for one- or two-year leases, whichever is larger.

The rate increases will be effective starting October 1.

Meetings of the Rent Guidelines Board are known to be raucous and cantankerous affairs pitting tenant groups against landlords, and last night's meeting did not disappoint.

About 200 people piled into Cooper Union, and the meeting reached near-deafening noise levels due to the dispersal of whistles among the crowd.

"You guys are leeches," a landlord shouted as he left the meeting, prompting a tenant to shout in response: "No. You are."

The increases will affect the nearly 1 million rent-stabilized apartments in New York City; they fall in the middle of the range that the board set for itself in a meeting last month.

The board voted 5-4 to set increases anywhere between 3.5% and 7% for one-year leases, and between 5.5% and 9.5% for two-year leases.

That was not enough to appease either the landlords or the tenants.

"I think it is horrible — it is a sham and it is hideous. And it is going to hurt a lot of people, especially the unemployed. It's just another excuse to gentrify communities," tenant Dhalia du Perroir said.

Landlord Madelene Phillips wanted increases of 7% and 16%.

"I am not satisfied with what we have at all," a landlord in the Bronx, Martin Richardson, said.

The Rent Guidelines Board is composed of nine members appointed by the mayor, with two members representing tenants, two representing landlords, and five representing the general public.

Before the meeting commenced, the City Council speaker, Christine Quinn, held a rally urging more support for a bill that is before the state Legislature that would restructure the board, deny rent increases for one year on any unit with serious violations, and require the use of a landlord's income and expense information in determining whether a rent increase is warranted.