I am Assemblymember Linda B. Rosenthal, and I represent the 67th Assembly district, which includes the Upper West Side of Manhattan and parts of Clinton/ Hell’s Kitchen. As the Chair of the New York State Assembly’s Mitchell-Lama Housing Subcommittee, and as a longtime tenant advocate, I urge the Rent Guidelines Board (RGB) to forgo imposing any rent increases this year. My district is home to thousands of rent-stabilized tenants, and this board’s decision is the primary factor in determining whether or not my constituents and tenants throughout the city can afford to remain in their homes. Many residents dedicate much more than 30% of their income to rent payments, if they indeed have income at all because of the failing economy. As times have gotten tougher it has become near impossible for countless New Yorkers to make ends meet. I ask that the RGB enact a rent freeze this year in consideration of our city economy’s poor fiscal standing, just as the Westchester Rent Guidelines Board bravely and thoughtfully voted to do just two days ago.

With each successive year, the Rent Guidelines Board has worked to incrementally undermine and dismantle our city’s commitment to providing affordable housing for our citizenry and appears intent on transforming our city’s stock of rental housing into units that are no longer within economic reach for the middle- and low-income households most affected by New York City’s housing shortage. In the 67th Assembly district, these actions have had the additional consequence of reducing the diversity, vibrancy and character of our neighborhood as tenants with deep community roots are priced out of the area and must leave their homes behind.

While today’s proceedings have been perhaps accurately depicted as a choreographed annual rite of passage in which the RGB solicits public comment, witnesses compelling accounts and overwhelming evidence of the hardships these increases inflict, and promptly levies the proposed raises originally sought, this does not need to be the case. This board can overcome its reputation as a virtual appendage of the real estate industry and elect to forgo exacting any increases this year. What a compelling statement it would make and what relief it would give to the hundreds of thousands of affected tenants if the Rent Guidelines Board were to acknowledge New York’s deep economic turmoil, one that is mirrored throughout the nation. Surely, this once-in-a-generation economic phenomenon should force all of us to reevaluate our social priorities and allegiances and focus our attention on those struggling to simply keep up in one of the most costly cities to live in worldwide.

New York City’s recession can be measured in numerous ways: its unemployment rate, which exceeds 10%, which is greater than both the State’s 8.3% and the national average; the approximately 9% decline in both real and nominal wages experienced during the fourth quarter of 2009; the rise in poverty levels, with New York City reaching a 22% poverty rate in 2008, compared to 13.7% on the state level; and increased reliance on assistance programs such as food stamps, whose enrollment increased 38% between March 2008 and February 2010, from 1.21 million enrollees to 1.66 million. With every conceivable societal metric indicating that the middle class has lost ground, that more families have slipped into poverty and that fewer options remain in the social service net, we must gauge the potential impact of the RGB’s proposed increases not in isolation, but in the context of the unprecedented decline our city has suffered. Real estate profits may also have declined, but not in a way that approaches the suffering of the tenants represented here by those assembled today. These profits are already on the upswing in some areas, and will surely continue to rise. For those who say that small landlords are a different species from the big ones, I believe that the industry should develop programs to aid them, rather than just parade them out at these hearings as aggrieved indicators of the situation of most landlords.

Ignoring this plainly visible recession is myopic at best, and given the impeccable credentials and demonstrated business acumen of a majority of board members, must certainly be willful ignorance. The consequences of allowing a conventional rent increase to occur at this extraordinary moment can be measured in the number of tenants displaced and the direct results of this process. It is well known that rising Manhattan rents have caused inflated prices in Brooklyn, and this domino affect continues until those New Yorkers at the lowest socio-economic rung experience the cost of this sequence. With our homeless shelters at full capacity and the New York City Housing Authority unable to process thousands of Section 8 voucher requests, how does this end for these New Yorkers? The RGB’s landlord-friendly members may have made up their minds way before today’s hearing, but any conclusion that is reached without considering the full weight of this decision is an insult to those testifying here today and those struggling to maintain a life in this city.

In addition to the yearly increases landlords have obtained from this board, they also have additional methods at their disposal to collect revenue. Primary among these is vacancy decontrol, a practice which has caused the loss of more than 300,000 rent- regulated apartments in New York and operates by deregulating units when rents on vacant apartments reach $2,000 a month. Once deregulated, landlords can generate exponentially more profit. In buildings in New York City with more than six units, unregulated rents are 70% higher than regulated rents. While my legislation, bill A.2005 has passed the Assembly for two consecutive years, a closely divided State Senate that is still held hostage by real estate lobbyists and campaign contributions has been unable to take action on this or other crucial tenant legislation.

To get to this $2,000 mark, landlords rely on a number of tricks and tactics. Chief among them is the highly abused system of Major Capital Improvements (MCIs), which permanently increase a tenant’s rent, pushing them ever closer to $2,000 a month. The Division of Housing and Community Renewal, which administers MCIs, allows landlords to flagrantly charge MCIs to tenants with essentially no substantive review process. Numerous constituents have come to my office telling of rents that have increased exorbitantly through multiple MCIs in a single year, often for work that they believe is overcharged or completed shoddily. In order to challenge MCIs, tenants are required to go through the convoluted and expensive process of hiring engineers and experts to submit a request for DHCR inspections. This year, I introduced legislation to require DHCR to establish a publicly accessible online database of building-wide MCIs as an anti-fraud deterrent. By empowering tenants with the ability to examine whether the information filed by their landlord correctly matches the improvements they are able to witness, this anti-rent-regulation tactic could be dramatically curtailed.

Although the Assembly voted yesterday to extend the rent laws set to expire next year, we owe our tenants more than just the mere preservation of an inadequate system. In a time of great struggle for many New Yorkers, the decision to withhold rent increases this year would mark a significant moment in our collective struggle to weather this downturn. Today’s hearing is no different than any of the countless others that have preceded it, except that the constituents I represent and those around the city are more desperate and the consequences are more dire. New York City will most certainly rebound, but we must make sure that middle- and low-income families share in this recovery. Until then, I ask you to take a courageous step: hold the line for households on the precipice of displacement and give ordinary New Yorkers a chance to get back on their feet.