By Patrick Hedlund
DNAinfo News Editor
EAST VILLAGE — The city's Rent Guidelines Board voted to raise rents on the city's 1 million rent-stabilized apartments Thursday in an emotionally charged proceeding that included both tears and jeers.
The board approved increases of 2.25 percent for one-year leases and 4.5 percent for two-year leases after failing to pass four previous motions submitted by members.
The increases mark the lowest rent hikes adopted by the board in years after it approved raises of 3 and 6 percent last year in the throes of the recession.
A motion on Thursday by tenant member Adriene Holder to freeze rents — an unprecedented action that tenant advocates have been pushing for since the onset of of the economic crisis — failed by a vote of 7-2.
Holder, the board's most vocal supporter of low to no increases, openly wept when she reluctantly voted for the approved hikes.
"I know this is going to have an impact on tenants," Holder said with her voice cracking, "and I'm so sorry."
A motion to raise rents by 4.25 for one year leases and 8.5 for two-year leases failed, as did another to increase rents by 1.75 percent and 3.75 percent for the same units types.
During the proceeding, a smaller-than-usual audience made up of tenants howling for a freeze peppered the board members with yells of "bloodsucker," "oust the board" and "tax the rich" whenever members spoke in favor of a hike.
In response to the constant haranguing, the nine-member board openly rued the pressure placed on it to determine rent changes for hundreds of thousands of tenants.
Public member Risa Levine cited the frustration she's felt by being unable to please either tenants or landlords in the process.
"This isn't the three little bears, and we aren't goldilocks," she said of trying to appease both parties.
"None of us will be satisfied, none of us will feel that we've served the public," Levine added.
She also crticized some elected officials for voting in favor of increased property taxes while simultaneously calling for a rent freeze.
Wasim Lone, a tenant organizer for the advocacy group Good Old Lower East Side, said he wasn't surprised by the board's waffling after a fourth motion to raise rents by 2 and 4 percent failed by a one-vote margin.
"It's business as usual," said Lone, who gathered with tenants outside the Cooper Union's Great Hall before the vote to make one last push for a freeze. "Don't let the RGB fool you."
Some landlords in attendance also weren't pleased with the outcome.
"It doesn't come close to covering the increases in expenses for my apartments," said Aaron Sirulnick, who owns thousands of apartments in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens, of the set hikes.
