The rent guidelines season began yesterday with the appointment of three new members to the nine member Rent Guidelines Board by Mayor de Blasio. The two new ‘public’ members include a liberal law professor and the policy director for Local 1199 which supports a rent freeze.
Meanwhile, the Rent Guidelines Board issued its annual income and expense report based on owners’ 2013 I&E filings. The headline was that net operating income increased slightly. The average collected rent, interestingly, was almost 25 percent below the legal regulated rent, a gap that has been widening. The average monthly operating cost of a stabilized apartment in 2013 was $884, of which $235 was property taxes and $99 was for utilities, mostly City water.
No borough is pushing for housing development more than the Bronx, where the City and Borough President have singled out existing sites that are underutilized and ready for construction in addition to large swaths ripe for rezoning. City Limits magazine has just mapped many of the available locations and BP Ruben Diaz Jr. will discuss the opportunities and obstacles at the BuildingsNY keynote April 28th.
It would be hard to overestimate the importance of apartment operations and development to the New York Metro area, and a new national study of the industry reports some pretty significant numbers for the region: almost $9 billion in operating expenses, more than 46,500 direct on site employees, and over 113,000 jobs overall.
You cannot force the New York City Housing Authority to approve Section 8 rent increases equal to rent stabilized guidelines, but you can force them to issue a decision on requests for increased rents or a reinstatement of benefits, according to an Appellate Division decision in Flosar Realty et al. vs. New York City Housing Authority.