NYC kept rent stabilization alive for nearly 1 million households

If you live in a rent-stabilized apartment in New York City, this law kept your protections in place. Your rent can rise each year only by the amount the Rent Guidelines Board sets. You also have the right to renew your lease for one or two years. Almost half of the city’s rental apartments are rent stabilized, mostly in buildings with six or more units built before 1974. You don’t have to apply: if your apartment is stabilized, you’re covered.

Under state law, the city’s rent stabilization rules expire unless the City Council finds every three years that there’s still a housing emergency. That means a rental vacancy rate below 5%. The city’s 2023 Housing and Vacancy Survey put the rate at 1.41%, the lowest since 1968, down from 4.54% in 2021. Without the vote, the law would have lapsed on April 1, 2024.

Council Member Pierina Sanchez, who chairs the Housing and Buildings Committee, sponsored the extension and a companion resolution declaring the emergency. Council Members Justin Brannan, Farah Louis, Gale Brewer, and Eric Dinowitz co-sponsored it. The Council passed the bill 48–2 on March 19, 2024. Mayor Eric Adams signed it on March 25. It keeps rent stabilization in force until April 1, 2027, so the Council has to decide again before then.