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New York City Board Set to Vote on Rent Freeze After State Legislators Reach Deal

Just days after state legislators agreed to extend rent regulations for another four years, New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board is scheduled to vote on Monday evening on whether to increase rents for more than one million rent-stabilized apartments.

The board, which voted for its lowest-ever rent increases last year, has a chance to make history again. It is considering freezing rents for the next year. The board has never voted for no increases.

The vote, to be held at Cooper Union’s Great Hall in Manhattan, will be the first test of a rent board appointed entirely by Mayor Bill de Blasio. The mayor asked for a rent freeze last year, when a majority of the board were de Blasio appointees, along with some holdovers from the Bloomberg administration. But the board, which consists of two tenant representatives, two landlord representatives and five members of the public with experience in housing, finance or economics, resisted the mayor’s call.

Instead, the board passed the lowest increases since it was established in 1969 — up to 1 percent for one-year leases and 2.75 percent for two-year leases.

Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat, seems to have taken a hands-off approach this year. “What we’ve made very clear is, under this administration, the Rent Guidelines Board will assess the specific expenses that landlords have, and will make a decision based on that,” he told reporters this month. “I don’t think it has happened consistently enough in the past.”

Rachel D. Godsil, the board’s chairwoman, said, “The mayor trusts that we can analyze the data and make a decision.”

The board’s decision is supposed to be based on changes in tenants’ and landlords’ economic conditions. This year, the board is looking at research by its staff showing that landlords’ operating income, after expenses, has grown for nine consecutive years, most recently by 3.4 percent. Their operating costs grew by only 0.5 percent because of significantly lower fuel costs, a report by the board staff said.

At the same time, the staff reported that tenants’ incomes have not kept pace with housing costs. For rent-stabilized tenants, the median gross rent-to-income ratio, meaning the percentage of a household’s income that goes to pay for rent and utilities, rose slightly to 36.4 percent last year. Under federal standards, an apartment is considered affordable if that ratio is 30 percent or less.

At public hearings leading up to the vote, tenants and their advocates have argued that the numbers do not support rent increases, and may even justify a reduction, saying that earlier rent increases had not been justified by landlords’ expenses. (In 2013, the board voted for 4 percent increases for one-year leases and 7.75 percent for two-year leases on rent-stabilized apartments.)

“The numbers are much clearer this year than last year,” said City Councilman Brad Lander, a Brooklyn Democrat and former housing advocate. “It’s become more profitable to operate rental housing. The numbers justify a rollback, certainly a freeze.”

One renter, Kimberly Morales, 20, a college student, said she may have to quit school to help her mother pay the $1,154 monthly rent on a two-bedroom apartment in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, which also houses three younger brothers.

Ms. Morales said the landlord has been looking for ways to raise the rent. “I’ve been fighting for this apartment with my mother since I was 14 years old,” she said at the same hearing.

But landlords argue that the data does not include expenses like the cost of financing and that they need increases to maintain aging buildings. If the city wanted to help tenants, some argued, it could compensate landlords by lowering expenses it controls such as real estate taxes and water and sewer charges.

“I take care of them and they take care of me,” Andrew Latsko, a Brooklyn lawyer, told the board in arguing for “adequate increases.”

Board members have submitted eight proposals, five of which include a rent freeze or a reduction. The board votes on one proposal at a time and stops once a proposal gets a majority.

The board is expected to stay within a range of 0 to 2 percent increases for one-year leases, and 0.5 to 3.5 percent for two-year leases.

The board was originally supposed to vote on Wednesday, but postponed its meeting while Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, and state legislators in Albany negotiated the renewal of the state rent law. The outcome, announced last week, disappointed Mr. Blasio and tenant advocates who had wanted to eliminate a provision that lets landlords charge market rates once an apartment becomes vacant and its rent is above a certain threshold.

But the new law did raise that threshold by $200, to $2,700 a month, and for the first time, the Rent Guidelines Board will have a role in raising that amount. Whatever increase the board approves on Monday for one-year leases will also apply to the threshold starting next year.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 17 of the New York edition with the headline: City Board Set to Vote on Rent Freeze After State Legislators Reach Deal . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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