Tag Archives: Rent Guidelines Board

Understanding NYC’s Rent-Stabilized Housing Stock

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I will be moderating an NYU Furman Center Policy Breakfast on NYC’s Rent-Stabilized Housing: Understanding Different Segments of the Stock and Why It Matters on November 19th. The link to register is here.

Nearly one million apartments in New York City are rent-stabilized. In 2023, the median rent among rent-stabilized tenants was about $1,500, compared with $2,000 for market-rate renters. These units play a central role in maintaining housing affordability across the city, yet they are often discussed as a single, uniform category.

Our policy breakfast will explore the diversity among buildings with rent-stabilized units, spanning older pre-1974 buildings and newer developments regulated because they received public financing or property tax reductions. Panelists will discuss how these differences shape the challenges and policy considerations facing the rent-stabilized housing stock today. The session aims to deepen understanding of the current landscape and to ground debate on what tailored interventions may be needed to preserve the affordability and quality of this essential part of New York City’s housing supply.

Panel
Kenny Burgos, Chief Executive Officer, New York Apartment Association
Emily Kurtz, Chief Housing Officer, RiseBoro Community Partnership, Inc.
Jane Silverman, Executive Director, Community Development Banking, JPMorgan Chase Bank
Samuel Stein, Senior Policy Analyst, Community Service Society

Moderator
David Reiss, Visiting Professor of Clinical Law, NYU School of Law,
and former Chair, Rent Guidelines Board

Date: Wednesday, November 19, 2025
Time: 8:45 – 10:00 AM ET

NYU School of Law – Vanderbilt Hall
40 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012

A livestream link will be provided for online attendees.

What’s Andrew Cuomo’s Plan to Help New York City Renters?

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The New York Times interviewed me in a video, What’s Andrew Cuomo’s Plan to Help New York City Renters? The transcript reads,

“Can you describe rent prices in New York?” “High.” “Expensive.” ”Out of control.” ”The rent here is absolutely crazy.” “Very, very unaffordable. Two verys — yeah very, very expensive.” Median asking rent in New York City is up more than 7 percent in just the last year. It’s now about $4,000 per month. That’s made the cost of housing a key issue in the mayor’s race, with the top candidates each proposing changes to a core New York City housing policy: rent stabilization. Nearly half of the apartments in New York are currently rent stabilized, which means that their rent increases are determined by a government agency controlled by the mayor. That makes rent stabilization a hot button issue for hundreds of thousands of voters. After front-runner Zohran Mamdani revealed what he pays in rent — “$2,300 for my one bedroom in Astoria.” — rival Andrew Cuomo argued he was unfairly occupying an affordable apartment and shouldn’t qualify for rent stabilization because he makes $142,000 a year. “Rent-stabilized units, when they’re vacant, should only be rented to people who need affordable housing.”

Many rent-stabilized tenants are low income, but about 16 percent of rent-stabilized households do earn at least $150,000 a year. If elected mayor, Cuomo says you could only qualify for a rent-stabilized apartment if your rent is 30 percent or more of your income. Let’s say this couple is looking for an apartment. Their salaries are $35,000 and $45,000 a year. They find a rent-stabilized apartment for $2,000 a month. That’s 30 percent of their income. So under Cuomo’s plan, this couple will face less competition for this lease because anyone who makes more than them could not apply for the the apartment. Means-testing is popular with voters. About 65 percent supported it in a recent Times-Siena poll.

But critics argue that Cuomo’s plan reflects a misconception that rent stabilization is an affordable housing program. In fact, it’s a form of market regulation with roots in the postwar era. “After World War II, you had returning G.I.s starting families.” The rent gets too damn high and the government takes a look to say, ‘Is there something we could do about it?’” Some apartments in this period were rent-controlled. The system that eventually effectively froze 1970s rents in place like the famously low-rent apartments from “Friends” and “Sex in the City.” “You have a rent-controlled apartment? I suggest you stay there.” In reality, only about 1 percent of apartments are rent controlled today. Most are now covered by rent stabilization, which first became law in 1969. “It really was this broad-based sense that tenants needed the government to come in and kind of limit that increase in their rent. Rent stabilization was not designed to take into account the income of the tenant at all. Rent regulation was really put into place to say when the vacancy rate is so low, landlords can’t use that as an opportunity to gouge tenants for increases in rents.” Today, rent stabilization applies to most apartments in buildings with at least six units that were built before 1974. That covers about one million units and two million New Yorkers. Rent increases are set by the mayor-appointed Rent Guidelines Board. “So you’re not at the mercy of your landlord solely. They can only go according to the increased percentage rate that the Rent Guidelines Board decides.”

Joanne Grell is a tenant advocate in the Bronx. She moved into a rent-stabilized apartment nearly 25 years ago and still lives in it today. “I moved here back in 2002 with a 2-year-old and a 5-year-old, not knowing exactly how I was going to be able to be a single mom and afford to live in the city. Fast forward 23 years later, I raised my children here.” When she moved in, her rent was about $950 a month. She earned a moderate income, but if means-testing had been in place, she wouldn’t have qualified for her unit. “When I moved in here 23 years ago, it might have been 20 percent of my salary. So if Cuomo’s means-testing proposal was in place when I applied for this apartment, I would have never been able to get it.” Now, she does spend more than 30 percent of her income on rent, which has gone up to $1,750 a month. Grell plans to vote for Mamdani this election because she believes his proposal to freeze the rent would help struggling tenants like her and 69 percent of voters in the Times-Siena poll agreed. “My upstairs neighbor said to me, ‘If I get another increase, I will not be able to keep my apartment.’ That’s how serious it is.”

David Reiss said that Mamdani’s rent freeze would help tenants in the short term, while Cuomo’s means-testing would be an administrative nightmare that could make life difficult for many. Ultimately though, he said neither of these policies address the root cause of high prices: that there aren’t enough apartments to go around. Both mayoral candidates have said they support building hundreds of thousands of units to help address the housing shortage. “We need more housing, a lot more.” “Get the supply up. The rents will come down.” But Reiss says neither candidate’s plans would meet the demand and don’t account for factors like population growth or apartments being demolished. “Politicians from President Trump to Andrew Cuomo to Zohran Mamdani, have all proposed policies to address housing affordability. But it can’t just be doing what we’re doing now, but a little bit better. Fundamentally, if you want to increase affordability, you have to build more housing.”

Mamdani and Affordable Housing Development

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CNN quoted me in Zohran Mamdani Has Big Housing Plans. Here’s What Stands in The Way. It reads, in part,

Mamdani’s rent freeze plan could undermine his goal of building 200,000 publicly subsidized, rent-stabilized, permanently affordable homes over the next decade for low-income households and seniors.

That’s because the private sector may be dissuaded from participating if these buildings don’t include market-rate housing. The private sector has a “very important role” to play in building housing, Mamdani has said.

“A rent freeze will change how a conversion might pay off for the developer,” said David Reiss, a law professor at Cornell University who served on the Rent Guidelines Board under Mayor Bill de Blasio.

And to be permanently affordable for extremely low-income renters, it will require deeper government subsidies than Mamdani has pledged, experts say. Previous New York City mayors have attempted to produce housing for a wide range of incomes to help offset higher subsidies for deeply-affordable units.

“It’s in the right direction to focus on people with the greatest affordability challenges,” said Alex Schwartz, an urban policy professor at The New School and a current member of the Rent Guidelines Board. “It’s important to recognize that the capital dollars won’t go as far in terms of total numbers of units if they only go toward people with extremely low incomes.”

Mamdani wants the city to borrow $70 billion to build affordable housing over the next decade, on top of the roughly $25 billion it already plans to invest.

That’s no easy task – he will need state approval since the plan would exceed the city’s debt limit by around $30 billion, as well as the New York City Council’s approval of zoning reforms that would make it easier to build.

“This would be a significant increase in city capital to produce deeply affordable housing,” said Rachel Fee, the executive director of the New York City Housing Conference, a non-profit affordable housing policy and advocacy organization. “It’s not something he can just implement on his own. It will take a political coalition to make this happen.”

 

Rent Freezes in NYC

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Zohran Mamdani, Democratic Nominee for Mayor of NYC

The New York Times quoted me in Free Buses and Billions in New Taxes. Can Mamdani Achieve His Plans? It reads, in part,

A major pillar of Mr. Mamdani’s economic plan is housing: He wants to build 200,000 units of affordable housing and freeze rent on the city’s nearly one million rent-stabilized apartments.

But to build, he has said the city will have to borrow $70 billion, exceeding its debt limit by some $30 billion. Going over the limit would require state approval.

Freezing rent, on the other hand, is relatively straightforward and has precedent. But there are consequences.

Mayors cannot freeze rent on their own, but they do appoint the nine members on the Rent Guidelines Board, which sets rents on the city’s rent-stabilized units.

David Reiss, who served on the board under Mr. de Blasio, said that before it voted, members generally considered the overall state of housing in the city, including affordability, landlord expenses and economic conditions.

He said that members could decide that affordability was the most important factor and vote to freeze rents, as they did in 2015, 2016 and 2020.

“A rent freeze would meet the needs of a lot of people who are having a hard time keeping up with their rent,” Mr. Reiss said, “but it’s an unsustainable operation.”

Landlords, including those whose buildings have a large majority of rent-stabilized units, are increasingly saying that they are not collecting enough rent to maintain units.

“Are we going to be pushing a distinct portion of the housing market into great distress because their expenses are outstripping their income?” Mr. Reiss said.

NYC Rent Guidelines Board Final Vote Interview

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I was interviewed on WCBS AM’s Drive Time about the vote of the New York City Rent Guidelines Board. Click here to hear it.

Rent Regulation from NY to NZ

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Indira Stewart (left) and the rest of the TVNZ Breakfast Team

I was interviewed by Indira Stewart on the TVNZ Breakfast show, the biggest morning news show in New Zealand, about New York City’s system of rent regulation (I serve as the Chair of the NYC Rent Guidelines Board).  You can find the interview here.

Addressing NYC’s Affordable Housing Crisis

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photo by Hromoslav

The NYC Rent Guidelines Board (of which I am a member) held a public hearing as part of its final vote on rent adjustments for the approximately one million dwelling units subject to the Rent Stabilization Law in New York City. My fellow board member, Hilary Botein, and I submitted the following joint statement at the hearing (also available on SSRN and BePress):

The Rent Guidelines Board determines rent increases for New York City’s 1 million rent-stabilized apartments. We must weigh the economic conditions of the residential real estate industry; current and projected cost of living; and other data made available to us. To make our decision, we reviewed reams of data and multiple analyses of those data. We also held five public hearings at which we heard hundreds of tenants speak, sing, chant, cry, and demonstrate. These hearings are among the only opportunities that tenants have to speak publicly about their housing situations, and they made clear the extremity of the housing crisis in the City, and that it will get worse without significant intervention.

Tenants who came to the RGB hearings are not a representative sample of rent-stabilized tenants in New York City. But they told us a lot about the state of housing in the City.  We felt that it was incumbent on us to respond to what we heard, even where it did not relate directly to the jurisdiction of the Board.

New York City cannot expect any meaningful housing assistance from the federal government in the near term. Our observations therefore focus on state and municipal actions that could address some of the issues that regularly cropped up at our hearings.

There is a desperate need for affordable housing that is pegged to residents’ incomes. Housing is deemed “affordable” when housing costs are 30 percent of a household’s income. There is no guarantee that rent stabilized housing remain affordable to a particular household, and there is no income eligibility for rent stabilized housing.  This aspect of rent regulation explains its durable political appeal, but makes it an imperfect vehicle for meeting the needs of low-income tenants.

Mayor de Blasio is protecting and developing hundreds of thousands of units of affordable housing through the Housing New York plan announced at the beginning of his term. More recently, his Administration announced a program to create 10,000 deeply affordable apartments and a new Elder Rent Assistance program.  But more can be done to help low-income tenants.

The Senior Citizen Rent Increase Exemption (SCRIE) and Disability Rent Increase Exemption (DRIE) programs have proven their effectiveness in “freezing” the rents of more than 60,000 low and moderate income rent-stabilized households. The state should create and fund a similar program for low-income rent stabilized tenants who pay more than 30 percent of their incomes towards housing costs.

State laws governing rent stabilization must be amended. Three elements of the law particularly penalize low-income tenants in gentrifying neighborhoods, and were behind the most distressing tenant testimonies that we heard. They are not within the RGB’s purview, but change is critical if the law is to operate as it was intended to do. The state legislature has considered bills that would make the necessary changes. First, owners can charge tenants a “preferential” rent, which is lower than the legal registered rent for the apartment. Preferential rents are granted most often in neighborhoods where the rent that the market can bear is less than the legal rent. This sounds like a good option for both tenants and owners, and perhaps that was its original intention. But now, as neighborhoods gentrify and market rates increase, the prospect of increasing a preferential rent with little notice has become a threat to tenants’ abilities to stay in their apartments. Preferential rents should be restricted to the tenancy of a particular tenant, as was the law before a 2003 amendment. Owners would then be able to increase rents for those tenants no more than the percentages approved by the Board.

Second, owners can tack on a 20 percent “vacancy increase” every time an apartment turns over. This increase incentivizes harassment, and should be limited to situations of very long tenancies, to keep owners from actively seeking to keep tenancies short.

Third, owners making what is termed a Major Capital Improvement (MCI) – a new roof, windows, or a boiler, for example – can pass this expense on to tenants via a rent increase that continues in perpetuity, after the owner has recouped her or his expenses. We also heard allegations of sketchy capital improvement applications that were intended to increase rents without improving the conditions in the building. The state legislature should review how MCIs work in order to ensure that they are properly incentivizing landlords to invest in their buildings to the benefit of both owners and tenants.

New York City needs a repair program for broken gas lines. We heard from tenants who had not had gas in their apartments for more than a year. We understand that fixing gas lines is particularly complicated and expensive, and that gas leaks raise serious safety concerns, but it is unacceptable for families to go for more than a year without gas, and we are concerned about fire safety issues resulting from people using hot plates. The city needs to step in and make the repairs.

We have a housing crisis. Low income tenants, who live disproportionately in communities of color, experience this crisis most acutely. We will not find systemic solutions within the housing market. All solutions require a lot of money, and we cannot count on anything from the federal government. But it is imperative that our state and local governments act, or New York City’s already burgeoning shelter system will be forced to take in even more people. Since the 1970s, New York City has been a leader in committing public resources to housing its low income residents, and that legacy must continue.  The Rent Guidelines Board cannot solve the housing crisis, but other arms of the New York State and City government can work together to reduce its impacts on low-income households.