Bronx, NY – On Thursday evening, the NYC Rent Guidelines Board voted to adopt proposed rent increases for rent stabilized apartments of between 2% - 4% for a one-year lease and 4% - 6% for a two-year lease. The proposed rent increases would apply to any rent stabilized lease that commences between October 1, 2022 and September 30, 2023. The Board is expected to hold a final vote to decide the approved rent increases for rent stabilized tenants in June.

Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz has issued the following statement in response:

"Tens of thousands of New Yorkers are still struggling to make end meets as our city continues to experience the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. Even before the pandemic, hundreds of thousands of rent stabilized tenants were already severely rent burdened, paying more than half their income on rent alone. We cannot ignore the reality that landlords have rammed through rent increases for decades, particularly in the form of abuses of major capital improvement and individual apartment improvement increases prior to our 2019 reform of state housing law. Now is not the time to capitulate to the landlord lobby by approving an onerous rent increase that will only add to difficulty that New York’s rent stabilized tenants are experiencing.

"My top priority during the pandemic and before has been to help keep New Yorkers in their homes. That is why we passed my two laws, the Tenant Safe Harbor Act and the COVID-19 Emergency Eviction and Foreclosure Prevention Act. That is why we added funds to the ERAP and LRAP programs in our state budget this year. I strongly urge the Rent Guidelines Board to reconsider their proposed increases and to instead approve a rent freeze so that people are not forced out onto the streets, in direct contradiction of the goals of rent stabilization."