With the Brooklyn Borough Hall Courtroom filled to maximum capacity, Brooklynite tenants were chanting their throats raw, “What do we want? ‘Rollback,’ When do we want it? ‘Now,’” while they anxiously waited their turn to explain their housing situations and experiences to the Rent Guidelines Board (RGB).
The event was the RGB annual Brooklyn public hearing as they ready to set the rent guidelines for one- and two-year leases for some 600,000 Brooklynites living in rent controlled apartments, which is all residential buildings with over six units.
The board’s proposal on the table is a 0-2 percent rent increase on a one-year renewal lease commencing on or after October 1, 2015 and on or before September 30, 2016 and a 0.5 – 3.5 percent increase for all two-year renewal leases commencing on or after October 1, 2015 and on or before September 30, 2016.
However, Albany’s current deadlock on renewing the rent control laws ramped up the always emotional hearing a few notches – with this one lasting over four hours.
“For decades, rent regulated tenants have faced rent increases every single year, but not seen similar increases in their income. Too many tenants are struggling just to make ends meet, and the City must do its part to keep New Yorkers in their homes,” said Public Advocate Letitia James to a supportive overflowing crowd.
Tenant-after-tenant described how landlords harass them with intentions of getting them to move out, in turn creating apartment availability for new, higher-paying tenants. Due to the treatment they receive, tenants shined a light on not just the toll rent increases would have on their families, but the struggle they have with their current rent and living condition and the opportunities rent rollback could bring them.
“The RGB bears a lot of responsibility for this. [for their rent increase handouts to landlords which created extreme gentrification in neighborhoods.],” said Esteban Giron, a member of the Crown Heights Tenant Union. “If they refuse to roll back the rent, Crown Heights will be unrecognizable in a matter of a year of two. This will be their legacy – a legacy that will be every bit as horrifying to future generations as Jim Crow seems to us now.”
Esther Estime explained that she moved with her two sons to a women’s shelter for domestic violence a couple of years back. Finally able to afford rent, they moved in to an apartment. But when her son Khalil Estime, 10, got up to the microphone after her, all he said was able to get out was “there are holes in my ceiling and my landlord is doing nothing about it.” The entire room gasped.
Some residents complained they had barely enough food to eat and others that rats roamed through their apartments, making the event take on the character of a fight for a better quality of life as much as for a rollback in rents.
Greta Weston lived at 650 Ocean Ave, in Brooklyn for 40 years until she was evicted. She alleged her landlord put all of her belongings in storage in Yonkers, as she was forced out of her home with a disabled daughter. Now living in Fort Greene, she is not allowed to retrieve her life-long belongings from storage and is looking to file a class action suit. “He wanted me out and he got his wishes,” Weston cried.
But these cries for help didn’t stop one landlord from holding back her comments. She rolled her eyes and shouted her opinions as a variety of tenants accused landlords of harassment. When it was this landlord’s turn, she spoke about the tenants that harass her. She explained that tenants destroy her apartments on purpose, leaving her with thousands of dollars worth of damage that must be repaired when they can’t pay their own rent.
The RGB will meet at 6 p.m., Wednesday, June 24, 2015 at The Great Hall at Cooper Union, 7 East 7th Street at corner of 3rd Avenue (basement), in Manhattan to adopt final rent guidelines.
