In a latest editorial, amNY stated landlords want one more lease hike – even after landlord income have surged for 2 years in a row. This 12 months alone, landlord incomes are up 12%, the most important leap for the reason that Nineties. Landlords are doing higher than ever, whereas excessive rents are forcing tenants out of town we love.
One in 4 New Yorkers can’t afford the fundamentals. Rents are rising sooner than wages. We’re taking over additional jobs and skipping meals. We’re selecting between lease and meals, drugs, or childcare. From 2020 to 2023, over half 1,000,000 individuals left New York Metropolis, pushed out by hovering rents seeking someplace extra inexpensive.
Tenants don’t have revenue margins. We’ve got lease burdens.
There’s a clear, speedy answer: freeze the lease. The mayor controls the lease for over 2.4 million lease stabilized tenants – and Eric Adams’s Lease Tips Board is about to lift our lease for the fifth 12 months in a row.
However tenants are the bulk in New York Metropolis. If Adams received’t freeze the lease, now we have the ability to elect a mayor who will. That’s why tenants throughout town are supporting Zohran Mamdani for mayor, who has pledged to freeze the lease for all 4 years in workplace.
Freezing the lease would save New Yorkers nearly $600 a month over 4 years, totaling practically $7 billion in financial savings citywide. It’s the single strongest motion the mayor can take to make New York extra inexpensive. That’s cash households might use to purchase groceries, pay for youngster care, or keep of their neighborhoods.
With out a lease freeze, that cash will go straight to lining landlords’ pockets. Landlords aren’t utilizing our lease cash to repair damaged elevators or leaky ceilings: they’re utilizing it to purchase sports activities automobiles and trip properties.
Landlords have already got loads of methods to get assist making repairs. They will apply for hardship exemptions or increase rents between leases after renovating residences. There’s even a program that offers landlords $25,000 to make enhancements known as Unlocking Doorways. However final 12 months just one landlord utilized.
That’s not want – that’s greed. And a transparent refusal to entry assist that’s already out there to them.
If a landlord actually can’t care for a constructing, the reply isn’t to lift our lease – it’s to offer the constructing to somebody who will. Public cash ought to go towards serving to tenants and nonprofits take over buildings so that they keep inexpensive, and in good palms.
Within the face of the information, a lease freeze is simply plain frequent sense. And New Yorkers throughout the 5 boroughs agree: a latest ballot discovered that 78% assist a lease freeze.
Tenants are the bulk in New York. We’ve got the ability to elect a mayor who will freeze the lease. And we’re able to apply it to main day.
Cea Weaver is the director of the New York State Tenant Bloc.
