Press Release
Statement by CSS President and CEO David R. Jones on RGB Approval of Rent Increases
Last night, the New York City Rent Guidelines Board approved rent hikes that rent stabilized tenants simply cannot afford. This will only exacerbate a housing affordability crisis that is plaguing our city and driving working-class New Yorkers into debt and precarity, and often out of the city altogether. Last month, the Legal Aid Society’s Adrienne Holder and I laid out the case for a rent freeze, using the same data available to the Board to show that tenants cannot afford the rents they already pay, and landlords are doing much better than in recent years. The Rent Guidelines Board must not simply be a Rent Increase Board and must instead act as a bulwark against rising housing costs, the single greatest factor driving contemporary inflation.
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