The Rent Guidelines Board’s final vote is fast approaching. Here’s what’s at stake

And today is the last day to cast your vote for New York City’s next mayor. Get out there if you haven’t already and make a plan to stay cool because it’s really hot out there.

This is your New York Apartment Association weekly update with CEO Kenny Burgos.

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On The Agenda

1:10: Rent Guidelines Board set to vote June 30

3:42: NYCHA is sitting on more than 8K vacant apartments 

→ NYAA’s City Council testimony 

4:07: Cool new Census tool: the Housing Unit Change Viewer

5:44: Kingston rent control survives legal challenge

7:30: New release: Housing New York Magazine – Q2 2025

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Transcript

This week on Housing New York, the Rent Guidelines Board is about to make its final vote. We break down the decision before them. Plus, vacant apartments at NYCHA have city leaders angry. And the Court of Appeals chimed in on Kingston’s rent control saga. We explain what happened. 

Let’s start Housing New York. 

[THEME]

“We need 800,000 units to meet the demand today. What we have right now in the United States and what we have right now in New York City is almost a crisis of absurdity.”

[INTRO]

Welcome to the Housing New York podcast. I’m your host, Kenny Burgos, CEO of the New York Apartment Association. 

We are taping this on Monday, June 23rd. There is still an election underway, but we are not going to talk about it in this podcast. In a few weeks we will have a full recap of what happened, and based on recent polling and from what I’m seeing from these campaigns over the weekend, regardless of what happens, we’ll probably have some big news to share.  

But for now, let’s get to this week’s news.

[01:10] [Rent Guidelines Board vote preview]

On Monday, June 30th, the Rent Guidelines Board is going to hold their final vote. We wanted to kick off with a recap of the decision before them. We are going to do this by recapping the main arguments they have seen in the data. 

First, we will start with the debate over net operating income or NOI. As The New York Times pointed out, the headline number that NOI went up 12% between 2022 and 2023 is misleading. This is because there are roughly 500,000 free-market apartments in rent-stabilized buildings that skew the data. Rents went up for those apartments and that helped those buildings. 

But the majority of rent-stabilized apartments are in 100% regulated buildings, or near 100%. Those buildings are not doing so well. Adjusting for inflation, rents went down or stayed flat in those buildings from 2022 to 2023. 

Quick note here. We are talking about 2023 data because that is the last year of good data the RGB has. We are confident that 2024 data will show that things got even worse for heavily regulated buildings, while NOI likely continued to increase in free-market apartments. 

So the RGB is looking at this tale of two cities. They have proposed a 1.75% to 4.75% increase on a one-year lease. Inflation is around 4% – based on how the RGB data is analyzed – so we hope they will at least keep pace with inflation; but that is unlikely. For the past ten years the rent adjustments have been below inflation. 

Obviously, the renters don’t want increases. Many are dealing with higher costs as well. Administrative data shows that roughly one-third of rent-stabilized renters continue to struggle and many of them do get help from government subsidies like vouchers, SCRIE or DRIE. But many more do not. 

The data also shows that violation counts continue to rise. Building quality is clearly deteriorating and the buildings that are most impacted are older buildings that are 100% or nearly 100% regulated. 

I understand that the RGB always has a difficult job setting rent adjustments. I also know that no matter what the RGB does, thousands of buildings are going to need additional help from the government to avoid physical distress and eventual complete deterioration. 

As Rafael Cestero from the Community Preservation Corporation said a few weeks ago, the next mayor is going to inherit a rent-stabilized housing crisis. No matter what the RGB does, that is true. But the size of the crisis is directly connected to what the RGB decides next Monday.  

[03:42] [8K+ NYCHA vacancies]

Turning our attention to the City Council now: Last week, they held hearings on the number of vacant units in buildings run by the New York City Housing Authority — also known as NYCHA.  

Surprise. There are more than 8,600 apartments that are currently empty. That’s about 4.8% for those keeping track. 

The reason is pretty basic. Money. It costs money to renovate and re-rent apartments. That is why NYCHA apartments take more than 420 days to turn over, on average — these are their numbers. 

NYAA also testified in support of legislation put forth by the City Council. We did this for a few reasons, but mostly because we think more transparency about the cost of providing housing and the cost of turning over vacant units is important information for all elected officials to know. 

We have our own issues with vacant rent-stabilized apartments. We are now confident to say that we think that roughly 50,000 to 100,000 apartments would be turned over and put back on the market with reforms to the current laws. 

In that estimate we are including units we also think would be turned over more quickly with changes to the law. Right now, some apartments take years to turn over because of lack of funding in the building and a complete lack of access to capital for loans — but eventually they do get rented again. 

Just like NYCHA, the lack of funding delays the availability of housing. 

We hope elected officials start to realize this and make reforms – both to help NYCHA and to help privately-owned rent-stabilized housing. 

[05:08] [New Census tool: the Housing Unit Change Viewer]

Okay, We’re gonna dork out for a second here. This month the U.S. Census released this cool new tool called the “Housing Unit Change Viewer.” 

This is what it does: It looks at the change in housing units from 2020 to 2024. You can zoom into any neighborhood in the country and see what the change is. Red dots are losses in housing; yellow dots are increases. 

The map is troubling because there is a lot of red in New York City. 

I love data. There are unfortunately a lot of gaps in housing data in the city and I think that is part of the reason we have some bad housing policies. So more data is always a good thing.  

[05:44] [Court of Appeals says Kingston conducted survey in good faith]

But let’s talk about the courts now. The New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, issued a ruling in the challenge of Kingston’s rent stabilization law. 

The basic outcome was this: They determined that the city of Kingston conducted a housing and vacancy survey in good faith, and if there were errors or flaws in the methodology, they were not intentionally designed to skew the results. 

Property owners who claimed the survey was flawed are obviously upset. And, to be clear, there was no judgment by the court on the merits of the survey that was conducted back in 2022. 

The case dealt with two other issues. The first one was how the rents were initially set. This is called a fair market rent appeal process. The court upheld the Kingston Rent Guidelines Board’s power to say those initial rents could be challenged and rolled back under the law. 

The other issue was the 15% rent rollback the KRGB approved in late 2022. A mid-level appellate court said this was okay. The Court of Appeals basically punted on the issue based on a technicality. This is important for New York City… 

If the Court of Appeals had affirmed the lower court ruling on rent rollbacks, it would have created precedent for New York City to do the same things. By not addressing the issue, the precedent set by the lower court only applies to the Hudson Valley area. 

To be clear. The state’s highest court has not said it is okay to roll back rents. They are still silent on this issue. 

Nothing has ever stopped the New York City Rent Guidelines Board from rolling back rents. One former tenant member of the RGB even said the RGB has the power to completely cancel rents if they wanted to do so. That was back in 2020. 

We think everyone can agree that at some point altering the rents would be unconstitutional. But it is important to realize the courts have been very careful to never say what that line is. And it seems like they don’t want to do so. 

[07:30] [Housing New York Magazine – Q2 2025]

We end the podcast today talking about the release of our quarterly magazine, which features a look at the impact tariffs are having on operating housing. The uncertainty around pricing has made it very difficult to run aging buildings because much of the stuff used is made in China. There are not usually alternatives in the U.S. and the tariffs change regularly, which makes it very difficult to plan for the future. 

As I have said many times, many of the older rent-stabilized buildings are losing money or operating on very thin margins and they cannot absorb a 30% increase or 50% increase on items without cutting back somewhere else.

The magazine also details the defunding of buildings by the Rent Guidelines Board and features insight on the housing market from industry experts. We hope you like it.

[OUTRO]

That’s the podcast for this week. And I’m sitting here with a sweater on, but I’m reminded it’s going to be over 100 degrees this week in the city, so please stay hydrated, stay cool, find your local cooling center. If you want to open a fire hydrant, which is a New York City pastime, be sure to talk to your local fire house and don’t do it on your own. You’re actually allowed to now.

We hope you will keep following us on X, Instagram, and TikTok. You can find us @housingny. 

We love hearing comments from you. You can post in the comments section of where you are listening or engage on social media platforms.  

You've been listening to Housing New York with Kenny Burgos and I'll see you all next week.

And remember, good housing policy starts with good conversation.