Rent increases for 2023? The city’s Rent Guidelines Board starts its work

Thursday, 3/30, 9:30 a.m.: Watch on YouTube

The city’s Rent Guidelines Board sets rent adjustments every year for new rent-regulated leases and lease renewals. Tomorrow, Thursday, March 30, at 9:30 a.m., they will meet to discuss their report on owners’ income and expenses. You can watch the meeting live on YouTube.

The I&E report is the first of several that the RGB uses to make its decisions. Last year the RGB voted for the highest increases in almost a decade. Ouch!

The RGB will hold several similar meetings before taking testimony from the public—that’s you and other rent-regulated tenants. A preliminary vote, probably with a range of adjustments, will be taken in early May and the final vote toward the end of June.

Tenants and their advocates are already mobilizing. We can’t afford to get slammed again as we were last year.

What’s new this year: 

• The nine-member RGB has a new chair, Nestor Davidson. Will he be fair to tenants in the midst of our housing crisis? The mayor appoints all members of the board—how will he influence the board’s decisions?
• Longtime tenant member and tenant champion Sheila Garcia is leaving the board, and we expect her replacement to be announced soon. 

We’ll keep you informed about the RGB’s meetings this year and ways you can get involved. Members of the TA board testify in person to the RGB, but anyone can do so or submit written testimony.

Some facts:

• The RGB’s own research in past years has shown that owners earn 40¢ on the dollar—a healthy profit.
• The Rent Stabilization law, which created the RGB, was enacted not to protect landlord profits, but to protect the public in response to “a serious public emergency...in order to prevent exactions of unjust, unreasonable and oppressive rents...and to forestall profiteering, speculation and other disruptive practices tending to produce threats to public health, safety and general welfare.” (Rent Stabilization Law of 1969 as amended, “Findings and Declaration of Emergency.”)
• The RGB does not have to raise rents. It can freeze them or even roll them back.

More to come as the RGB season progresses.

Posted 3/29/23