Rent Board Member Offers Baffling Solution to Crisis

Good news! A Rent Guidelines Board member has come up with a brilliant solution for the rent stabilization crisis.

Since 2019, more and more buildings have seen expenses surpass revenue, setting them on an inevitable path to physical deterioration followed by bankruptcy. No one has come up with a solution that doesn’t involve raising rents.

Until now.

Adán Soltren, a tenant representative on the rent board, unveiled his clever idea at the board’s April 9 meeting. Somehow it had gone overlooked — perhaps because it was so simple that it was hiding in plain sight.

According to Soltren, landlords should offset inflation by cutting their spending.

In fact, he’s sure they have been doing exactly that, which he said makes the rent board’s Price Index of Operating Costs a “flawed tool.”

“I don’t think this is appropriate for us to be giving a ton of weight to in our decision-making,” Soltren said, as quoted by The Real Deal’s Lilah Burke. “We should take a lot of this with a grain of salt.”

The premise of Soltren’s ingenious point is that the report measures inflation in the things landlords buy, not how much they actually spent on them. He suspects that landlords have already figured out how to counteract price increases.

Maybe they are keeping it to themselves — you know, part of the Giant Landlord Conspiracy that includes warehousing units to pressure lawmakers to allow rent hikes on renovated apartments.

Soltren is saying that building owners are buying less of the stuff that has become more expensive, so their costs didn’t really increase by the 5.3 percent that the board calculated from April 2025 through March 2026.

For example, insurance jumped by 10.5 percent after an 18.7 percent surge the previous year, but owners could just buy less coverage and hope they don’t have to file any claims. Surely their lenders wouldn’t mind that the property securing the mortgage was underinsured, right? They probably wouldn’t even notice!

Fuel costs climbed 11 percent, on top of a 10.3 percent gain the year before, but according to Soltren, owners could reduce their consumption. He didn’t say how, but turning down their thermostats below the legal minimum of 68 degrees is one obvious way.

Or owners could turn the heat off entirely and instead give their tenants those little hand-warmers that skiers tuck into their gloves.

Utilities went up by 5.6 percent on the heels of an 8.2 percent cost increase. Landlords could easily offset this by turning off the water on weekends, when showers are optional for most people. They could turn the water back on before city inspectors show up on Monday morning.

Candles could be used to light common areas, saving on electricity bills. Or tenants could just use the flashlights on their smartphones.

Maintenance costs rose by 6 percent — another misleading figure because owners can just defer maintenance. Repairs could be postponed until the Rent Guidelines Board raises rents enough to pay for them. The board hasn’t come close to a 6 percent bump this century, but good things come to those who wait, right?

The increases in administrative costs (4.8 percent) and labor (3 percent) are also hypothetical because landlords can do that work themselves in their spare time. Or cut their superintendents’ and clerical staff’s hours.

It’s unclear how landlords could avoid paying property taxes, which were up 2.6 percent, but isn’t that basically a rounding error? Although if the board were to raise rents by 2.6 percent, Soltren would call that a massive, unconscionable increase.

Soltren’s argument about operating expenses baffled at least one other member of the rent board.

“I don’t have any explanation for what Adán thought,” said attorney Christina Smyth, who represents landlords. “It’s hard to understand.”

But then it came to her.

“Adán wants us to remove any data from the pie because it’s inconvenient for the narrative,” she said. “The mayor has an agenda and that’s what we’re going to have to deal with, instead of the data.”