Mayor letting rent-hike myth become reality

When the City Council overrode Mayor Eric Adams’ veto of its rental voucher bills, Council member Tiffany Cabán took the opportunity to vent — and to spin.

“The mayor’s veto is no surprise, given the rest of his disastrous approach to housing,” she began, then listed a series of supposed examples, beginning with: “imposing annual rent hikes via his handpicked board.”

She added that Adams’ “so-called ‘City of Yes’ appears to be a Yes to big real estate and a big, fat No to working-class and low-income New Yorkers.”

Cabán’s rent reference was to the 3 percent increase for one-year leases in rent-stabilized apartments. A similar reference had been made by the finger-pointing octogenarian activist who received 15 minutes of fame when the mayor said she treated him like a plantation owner would.

Adams, for whatever reason, has made little effort to rebut the assertion that he sided with landlords in imposing a crippling rent increase on tenants.

It would not be difficult.

He could start by noting that the 3 percent increase was approved by the tenant representatives on the Rent Guidelines Board and opposed by the landlord representatives, who considered it wholly inadequate.

He could say that the increase was substantially less than the rise in landlords’ operating costs, which was 8.1 percent from 2021 to 2022. And substantially less than inflation, which was 6.5 percent last year.

It was also substantially less than the 8.7 percent increase in Social Security being enjoyed this year by most Americans 65 and older, including the 84-year-old activist who chastised him for the 3 percent increase in rent.

As for Cabán’s reference to the mayor’s “handpicked board,” Adams could note that he is legally obligated to nominate the board members, and that his “handpicked board” voted 7 to 2 to reject a 5 percent rent increase.

Cabán’s statement qualifies as spin because she knows that a 3 percent increase is, in real terms, a discount when outpaced by rises in inflation, wages, and Social Security. A year ago, wages were increasing at their fastest pace in decades, and they are up 4.4 percent over the past 12 months.

Should Adams set the record straight? Probably, because most reporters don’t bother to. And the longer that political leaders decline to discredit a false or misleading argument, the more it becomes part of the narrative and accepted as fact. Ultimately, it becomes impossible to unwind.

It would be damaging to owners of rent-stabilized buildings if below-inflation increases were consistently portrayed as impossible burdens for tenants and generous gifts to landlords, rather than the decreases that they are (when adjusted for inflation).

That would permanently shift the city’s annual rent-increase debate in tenants’ favor, to the point where the two possible outcomes for landlords are bad and worse. Indeed, that might already have happened.

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