NYC’s Rent Guidelines Board vote: Everything you need to know

The city's Rent Guidelines Board is expected to pass a rent increase for the first time in two years tonight

The Rent Guidelines Board will vote tonight on rent adjustments for the city's 1 million rent-stabilized apartments for the coming year. Here's everything you need to know about the vote, what to expect, and what it means for the city's landlords and rent-stabilized tenants.

What is the Rent Guidelines Board?

The Rent Guidelines Board is a nine-member entity that is in charge of determining yearly rent adjustments to the roughly 1 million rent-stabilized apartments in New York City. (They don't determine adjustments to rent-controlled apartments—that's its own thing.) All members of the RGB are appointed by the mayor: Two members are appointed to represent the interests of tenants, two members represent landlord/owner interests, and the remaining five members represent the general public.

The RGB bases its decision on a yearly review of the economic condition of the residential real estate industry in NYC. The review takes into consideration real estate costs like taxes and sewer and water rates; gross operating maintenance costs, including insurance rates, the costs of fuel and labor, and fees from the government; the rate and availability of financing; and the availability of housing accomodations and vacancy rates throughout the city. The RGB also bases its decision on data on the current and projected cost of living in the city.

What is today's vote about?

Today's vote will determine the percentage by which landlords can raise rents on stabilized apartments for the coming year, if at all. The vote will happen at 7 p.m. at Mason Hall at Baruch College.

What's expected to happen?

It's expected that the RGB will vote to increase rents this year after two years of an unprecedented rent freeze. However exactly how much of an increase will likely be voted in remains unclear.

For the past two years, the RGB has voted to freeze rents on one-year leases and bring nominal increases to two-year leases on rent stabilized properties. Prior to that, for the 2014-2015 year, the RGB approved historically low increases.

It should come as no surprise that the landlord/owner contingent is clamoring for a rent increase this year. Early projections based on the findings of the Rent Guidelines Board suggested that the 2017-2018 year would bring another rent freeze owing to an 11 percent increase in net operating income, or a landlord's earnings after operating and maintenance costs but before taxes and debt payments, for the year 2014-2015. (Data was unavailable for the most recent year.) That increase in net operating income was the largest seen since 1998 and could be used to justify yet another rent freeze.

The most telling sign of potential rent increase came in late April when the RGB preliminarily voted in favor of increasing rents in a proposal put forth by its public members. By that proposal, one-year leases could see an increase of anywhere from one to three percent, while two-year leases could be subject to an increase of two to four percent. Proposals put forth by the tenant and landlord members of the board—which called for a rent rollback, and higher increases, respectively—were both rejected.

Earlier in April, the Rent Stabilization Association, a group representing some 25,000 landlord/owners, announced its intention to call for a four percent rent increase on one-year leases and an eight percent increase on two-year leases.

When will the outcome of the vote go into effect?

Whatever decision the RBG makes tonight will officially go into effect on October 1, 2017.