\n<\/p>\n
\u201cCan you describe rent prices in New York?\u201d \u201cHigh.\u201d \u201cExpensive.\u201d \u201dOut of control.\u201d \u201dThe rent here is absolutely crazy.\u201d \u201cVery, very unaffordable. Two verys \u2014 yeah very, very expensive.\u201d Median asking rent in New York City is up more than 7 percent in just the last year. It\u2019s now about $4,000 per month. That\u2019s made the cost of housing a key issue in the mayor\u2019s race, with the top candidates each proposing changes to a core New York City housing policy: rent stabilization. Nearly half of the apartments in New York are currently rent stabilized, which means that their rent increases are determined by a government agency controlled by the mayor. That makes rent stabilization a hot button issue for hundreds of thousands of voters. After front-runner Zohran Mamdani revealed what he pays in rent \u2014 \u201c$2,300 for my one bedroom in Astoria.\u201d \u2014 rival Andrew Cuomo argued he was unfairly occupying an affordable apartment and shouldn\u2019t qualify for rent stabilization because he makes $142,000 a year. \u201cRent-stabilized units, when they\u2019re vacant, should only be rented to people who need affordable housing.\u201d Many rent-stabilized tenants are low income, but about 16 percent of rent-stabilized households do earn at least $150,000 a year. If elected mayor, Cuomo says you could only qualify for a rent-stabilized apartment if your rent is 30 percent or more of your income. Let\u2019s say this couple is looking for an apartment. Their salaries are $35,000 and $45,000 a year. They find a rent-stabilized apartment for $2,000 a month. That\u2019s 30 percent of their income. So under Cuomo\u2019s plan, this couple will face less competition for this lease because anyone who makes more than them could not apply for the the apartment. Means-testing is popular with voters. About 65 percent supported it in a recent Times-Siena poll. But critics argue that Cuomo\u2019s plan reflects a misconception that rent stabilization is an affordable housing program. In fact, it\u2019s a form of market regulation with roots in the postwar era. \u201cAfter World War II, you had returning G.I.s starting families.\u201d The rent gets too damn high and the government takes a look to say, \u2018Is there something we could do about it?\u2019\u201d Some apartments in this period were rent-controlled. The system that eventually effectively froze 1970s rents in place like the famously low-rent apartments from \u201cFriends\u201d and \u201cSex in the City.\u201d \u201cYou have a rent-controlled apartment? I suggest you stay there.\u201d In reality, only about 1 percent of apartments are rent controlled today. Most are now covered by rent stabilization, which first became law in 1969. \u201cIt really was this broad-based sense that tenants needed the government to come in and kind of limit that increase in their rent. Rent stabilization was not designed to take into account the income of the tenant at all. Rent regulation was really put into place to say when the vacancy rate is so low, landlords can\u2019t use that as an opportunity to gouge tenants for increases in rents.\u201d Today, rent stabilization applies to most apartments in buildings with at least six units that were built before 1974. That covers about one million units and two million New Yorkers. Rent increases are set by the mayor-appointed Rent Guidelines Board. \u201cSo you\u2019re not at the mercy of your landlord solely. They can only go according to the increased percentage rate that the Rent Guidelines Board decides.\u201d Joanne Grell is a tenant advocate in the Bronx. She moved into a rent-stabilized apartment nearly 25 years ago and still lives in it today. \u201cI moved here back in 2002 with a 2-year-old and a 5-year-old, not knowing exactly how I was going to be able to be a single mom and afford to live in the city. Fast forward 23 years later, I raised my children here.\u201d When she moved in, her rent was about $950 a month. She earned a moderate income, but if means-testing had been in place, she wouldn\u2019t have qualified for her unit. \u201cWhen I moved in here 23 years ago, it might have been 20 percent of my salary. So if Cuomo\u2019s means-testing proposal was in place when I applied for this apartment, I would have never been able to get it.\u201d Now, she does spend more than 30 percent of her income on rent, which has gone up to $1,750 a month. Grell plans to vote for Mamdani this election because she believes his proposal to freeze the rent would help struggling tenants like her and 69 percent of voters in the Times-Siena poll agreed. \u201cMy upstairs neighbor said to me, \u2018If I get another increase, I will not be able to keep my apartment.\u2019 That\u2019s how serious it is.\u201d David Reiss said that Mamdani\u2019s rent freeze would help tenants in the short term, while Cuomo\u2019s means-testing would be an administrative nightmare that could make life difficult for many. Ultimately though, he said neither of these policies address the root cause of high prices: that there aren\u2019t enough apartments to go around. Both mayoral candidates have said they support building hundreds of thousands of units to help address the housing shortage. \u201cWe need more housing, a lot more.\u201d \u201cGet the supply up. The rents will come down.\u201d But Reiss says neither candidate\u2019s plans would meet the demand and don\u2019t account for factors like population growth or apartments being demolished. \u201cPoliticians from President Trump to Andrew Cuomo to Zohran Mamdani, have all proposed policies to address housing affordability. But it can\u2019t just be doing what we\u2019re doing now, but a little bit better. Fundamentally, if you want to increase affordability, you have to build more housing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cCan you describe rent prices in New York?\u201d \u201cHigh.\u201d \u201cExpensive.\u201d \u201dOut of control.\u201d \u201dThe rent here is absolutely crazy.\u201d \u201cVery, very unaffordable. Two verys \u2014 yeah very, very expensive.\u201d Median asking rent in New York City is up more than 7 percent in just the last year. It\u2019s now about $4,000 per month. That\u2019s made<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31611,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[10984,1485,18384,1436,3440,264,476],"class_list":{"0":"post-31610","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-andrew","9":"tag-city","10":"tag-cuomos","11":"tag-plan","12":"tag-renters","13":"tag-whats","14":"tag-york"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}