A freeze on rents for more than one million NYC tenants is looking more likely than ever, with both landlord and tenant leaders saying that they expect rents to be held at their current rate.
Organizations on both sides of the issue told the Wall Street Journal that they believe the Rent Guidelines Board will approve the freeze beginning on or after October 1, along with a modest increase in rents for two-year leases.
“I still believe in a rollback of rents, but this will be a historic low in the history of the Rent Guidelines Board,” Harvey Epstein, a lawyer at the Urban Justice Center and a tenant representative of the board, told the Journal.
“We expect them to vote a zero,” said Jack Freund, executive vice president of the Rent Stabilization Association, a group representing 25,000 rent-regulated landlords.
The lowest increase since the board began setting rents in 1969 was passed last year at just one percent. [WSJ] – Christopher Cameron