Landlord Groups Plead with Rent Guidelines Board for Help in Older Buildings

When faced with a mayor dead-set on a rent freeze, do landlords fight? Or try to compromise?

The New York Apartment Association, which represents rent-stabilized building owners, appears to be leaning toward the latter, taking a softer public line on rent increases than it has in the past.

Landlord groups assembled downtown on Thursday to plead their case before New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board, which is responsible for setting allowable rent increases in the city’s rent-stabilized apartments.

Kenny Burgos, NYAA’s CEO, laid out the financial situations of two buildings: one built before 1973 and entered into rent-stabilization without the owner’s agreement, and the other a new development where the owner agreed to take part in rent-stabilization in return for a tax abatement.

“One of those buildings needs a meaningful rent adjustment,” Burgos told the board. “The other doesn’t.”

The new tone is a departure from a hard line push for a certain percentage increase, and underscores that as mayoral administrations shift, so too do advocates’ strategies.

Burgos, a former state assemblyman who met with Mamdani personally last week, began his testimony with an acknowledgement of the city’s “affordability crisis” facing renters.

He continued to outline the 5,000 properties the association believes to be in financial distress, comparing them to thousands of buildings ablaze with only 100 firefighters on the job. The Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act, passed in 2019, made it nearly impossible for landlords to raise the rents in stabilized units.

Burgos also referred to the promises from the Mamdani administration to help landlords on the expense side. Last week the administration announced the intention to start an externally-managed insurance program backed by city funds.

“That work matters and we support it. But those programs will take years to materialize,” Burgos said. “Owners can not fund repairs today based on promises of future relief.”

In the end, Burgos asked the board to think creatively about their mandate and consider setting different allowable rent increases for different building types, which has not been done before. The board is typically tasked with setting one number for a diverse housing stock, although ideas to differentiate between buildings by things like violation count, have been floated by current members.

It’s likely that any level of rent increase would hurt Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s support from the tenant advocates who campaigned for him. But civil society groups and lenders have requested the board try to aim for a “soft landing” for landlords after the 2019 legislation.

Burgos was followed by the Small Property Owners of New York, which brought two rent-stabilized property owners to detail the financial conditions in their buildings. Landlord Sophia Hepheastou outlined the finances of a 100-year old building in Tremont in the Bronx, one of the few areas where board data found net operating income in decline for landlords.

“Any freeze in this kind of category, because this is the epicenter of what’s going on, is going to negatively impact this housing stock,” Hepheastou said, “and ultimately the tenants that rely on this housing.”