Nassau County Rent Board Approves Hike for Regulated Units

New York City isn’t the only place where rent-regulated tenants may soon face a rent increase.

The Nassau County Rent Guidelines Board on Long Island voted to allow rent increases beginning in October, Newsday reported. Landlords of rent-regulated units will be able to raise rents up to 1 percent on one-year leases and 2 percent on two-year leases.

Neither side of the rental market was likely thrilled with that result. Tenants have said owners already found ways to raise expenses through parking fees and other costs. Landlords say the increase doesn’t necessarily go far enough to help pay for repairs and maintenance of their aging properties.

The county counted roughly 6,500 occupied rent-regulated units in tand 220 vacant ones last year, according to Homes and Community Renewal, a state agency. Landlords were able to rent these units for an average of $1,685.

Notably, the Village of Hempstead was exempted from the votes, where concerns about negligent landlords led the board to give renters there a reprieve.

While the Nassau County vote was going down, so was a more boisterous affair at Hunter College in New York City. The city’s Rent Guidelines Board narrowly approved a 3 percent increase for one-year leases on rent-stabilized units and a hike of two-year leases starting at 2.75 percent for the first year and 3.2 percent for the second, all while the crowd cheered or booed throughout the meeting.

The increases were stronger for landlords than they were out in Nassau County, but still fell drastically short of what they wanted. Landlords in the city were pushing for a rent hike as high as 8 percent to keep up with rising operating costs. A report in April found operating expenses in rent-stabilized buildings rose 8.1 percent from 2021 to 2022.

Such a large hike was never on the table, though. Most proposals were between 3 and 3.5 percent for an increase on one-year leases, though the board’s owner representatives did float a 5 percent hike, to no avail.

— Holden Walter-Warner