At a morning press conference last month, Mayor de Blasio announced his 10-year plan to protect and expand housing affordability. He said his plan would “curb neglect and disrepair to affordable buildings.”
But that evening, less than 10 hours later, the Rent Guidelines Board, including the six new de Blasio appointees, began a process that puts the mayor’s housing plan in jeopardy before it even gets off the ground — by strangling the city’s largest single source of affordable housing: smaller buildings with rent-stabilized apartments.
The board took a preliminary vote to allow for a rent freeze on one-year leases for tenants of 1 million rent-stabilized apartments in the five boroughs.
Such a freeze is unprecedented in the board’s 45-year history, and for good reason: Landlords’ costs rise every year, and if they can’t pass some of those costs on to tenants, some — especially “mom and pop” owners — will have no choice but to defer maintenance, putting a key part of the city’s building stock at risk.
This Thursday, the rent board convenes at Hostos Community College in The Bronx for the first of four hearings across the boroughs to hear public testimony on the merits and pitfalls of a rent freeze. These meetings will culminate in the board’s final vote on June 23.
A rent freeze would be debilitating to small-building owners with rent-stabilized apartments, undermining their ability to provide affordable housing, undoing the rest of de Blasio’s affordable housing plan.
Again, these are the largest providers of affordable housing in the five boroughs. Most work two jobs to maintain their buildings.
If the city wants to provide rent relief, it should find a way to fund the subsidies directly, not do it on the backs of small-building owners.
Small owners are never subsidized to help pay for constantly rising costs associated with maintaining quality affordable housing, from heating oil to repairs and general maintenance — let alone government-mandated costs such as property taxes and (currently soaring) water and sewer rates.
In fact, the Rent Guidelines Board’s own study shows that in 2013 owners’ operating costs rose 5.7 percent.
Without a fair and reasonable rent increase, small-building owners simply would lack the wherewithal to repair and maintain their affordable housing.
A freeze would create massive disinvestment in affordable housing. (As would anything in the unrealistic and inadequately low range of a 0 percent to 3 percent rent hike on a one-year lease and 0.5 percent to 4.5 percent increase on a two-year lease.)
This would lead to disrepair and eventual loss of quality housing stock, especially in the outer boroughs and upper Manhattan — that is, the housing stock that’s most affordable. How would that benefit low- and middle-income tenants?
Instead of promulgating this unprecedented rent freeze, the mayor has the opportunity to make history by working with the industry that not only provides the bulk of affordable housing, but is also an economic engine in good times and bad.
Small-building owners put the rent back into their buildings, making repairs and maintaining apartments so families can live in quality, affordable housing.
They keep other small businesses thriving by hiring local contractors, painters, plumbers and laborers — who in turn provide jobs to neighborhood residents, who shop at local grocery stores, bodegas, hair salons, restaurants, movie theaters and retail shops.
An enormous chunk of the rent goes straight to the city’s coffers for property taxes and water and sewer bills, which helps pay for police, fire, education, sanitation, parks and other city services.
A lot is riding on a fair and reasonable rent increase. Imposing a rent freeze will leave small-building owners unable to meet their must-pay bills, like taxes, while maintaining quality conditions for their tenants and fueling neighborhood economies.
If the mayor wants his housing plan to become a reality, he needs to find a way to work with the folks who do the most to provide affordable housing in this city.
Chris Athineos and Jimmy Silber are small-building owners of rent-stabilized apartments in Bay Ridge and the West Village, respectively. They are members of the Small Property Owners of New York.