Testimony for the Rent Guidelines Board
Thank you for the opportunity to submit testimony regarding proposed rent adjustments on behalf of the Open Hearts Initiative. We are a small non-profit organization that supports communities across New York City who welcome homeless neighbors and advocate for housing justice in their own backyards. Our 6 chapters, located in neighborhoods throughout the city, are made up of hundreds of open-hearted neighbors–some of whom live in rent-stabilized apartments, others in unregulated units, and some of whom own their apartments–who are actively engaged in building relationships with their neighbors experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity, including those who live in, have lived in, and seek to live in rent-stabilized apartments across the City.
In our work, one thing is abundantly clear: homelessness is the result of inadequate access to affordable housing. When rents are unaffordable and incomes do not keep pace, New Yorkers too often end up in the shelter system and on the streets, worsening the City's burgeoning homelessness crisis. When we testified before the Rent Guidelines Board last year, New York City was already in a homelessness crisis, with adults and children crowding city shelters and thousands of people sleeping on the streets. In June 2022, the municipal homeless shelters in our city housed 50,287 people on an average night. But since then, the situation has worsened. On Thursday, June 8, 2023, the Department of Homeless Services (DHS) system alone sheltered 80,661 New Yorkers, many of whom arrived recently in the United States and are seeking asylum. Homelessness is a traumatic experience that results in negative physical and mental health, employment, and economic outcomes for our neighbors. From the frustrations of dealing with bureaucracy to individual-level stigma, homelessness is destabilizing for everyone who experiences it–and, in turn, for the communities of which they are a part.
The preliminary ranges for rent adjustments for apartments of 2% - 5% on one-year lease renewals and 4% - 7% for two-year lease renewals would be devastating to the approximately one million tenants who are protected by rent stabilization laws, and would certainly increase the ranks of New York's homeless population. We urge the Rent Guidelines Board to issue a rent rollback for rent-stabilized tenants, helping them to stay in their homes amid the simultaneous and interconnected crises that the City is facing, including rapidly rising rents, insufficient affordable housing stock, and mass homelessness.
A rent rollback is especially crucial right now for several reasons:
A rent rollback will help limit further racial segregation, displacement, and deepening inequity in New York City housing. NYC is deeply segregated, and affordable and stable housing is a resource distributed extremely inequitably across the city’s neighborhoods. Communities of color–who have suffered centuries of housing discrimination and disinvestment–face the greatest risk of displacement, while neighborhoods with a higher percentage of wealthy and white residents have lower rent burdens, even as they remain out of reach for most New Yorkers. As low-income New Yorkers–particularly in Black and brown communities–are being priced out and evicted, many end up homeless. It’s no coincidence that Black and brown folks make up an estimated 88% of people in DHS shelters. A rent rollback is the least the city can do to reduce these inequities and prevent further displacement, segregation, and deepening inequality.
A rent rollback will protect tenants in rent-stabilized apartments even as the State has failed to take adequate action on housing. Just last week, New York State ended its 2023 legislative session without passing meaningful housing reforms. Without legislation advancing the production and preservation of deeply affordable housing, it seems likely that demand will continue to outpace supply into the years ahead. The legislature also failed to fund vouchers for homeless and at-risk New Yorkers, including those without legal status in the United States, through the proposed Housing Access Voucher Program (HAVP). And without Good Cause eviction protections, unregulated rents will surge even further off the charts, while working-class New Yorkers will continue to rely on the limited stock of rent-stabilized apartments to meet their basic human right to housing. In the absence of meaningful action on the state level, a rent rollback has become especially important; it is one of the only tools we have to keep tenants in their homes and stem the tide of runaway rents.
A rent rollback will maximize the effectiveness of housing voucher programs and make it easier for people to exit shelter. The homelessness crisis has been perpetuated by the fact that it is very difficult for people in the city's various shelter systems to access permanent housing with city-, state-, and federally-funded rental assistance vouchers. The higher that rents become, the more difficult it becomes for people exiting shelter–even those with a voucher–to access housing. Indeed, in 2022, of the 4,379 apartments initially entering rent stabilization (not nearly making up for the 6,969 removed from rent stabilization that year), the median rent was $2,388–already above the maximum rent that a CityFHEPS voucher will cover for a studio or 1-bedroom.
With homelessness at record levels and shelters bursting beyond their seams (requiring the city to open more than 160 emergency shelters, mostly in hotels that can be extremely costly), it is irresponsible governance to take unnecessary steps that are likely to increase the population of individuals in shelter. Allowing large increases in rent prices for rent-stabilized units would be one such action. What is called for at a moment like this is a rent rollback, which would provide a modicum of stability for tenants and serve as a crucial tool for homelessness prevention in a moment of crisis.
Submitted by Sara Newman, Director of Organizing
