Once again, the NYC Rent Board hurts landlords — and tenants in the long term

New York City’s housing stock is set to grow even more distressed after the Rent Guidelines Board just voted yet again to limit increases for a million rent-stabilized apartments to less than the inflation rate.

Lefties will still attack Mayor Adams because his RGB has now OK’d nominal rent hikes for a third year in a row — this time, 2.75% for one year leases and 5.25% for two-year leases.

But that’s not remotely as much as landlords’ costs have risen, and many of them (especially “mom and pop” ones whose buildings’ units are mostly rent-controlled) have no fat left to cut.

Over the past decade, inflation has run 23% (by the board’s own figures), while the RGB has only allowed rents to rise 14%.

Set aside those first nine years: Just to keep pace with rising costs these last 12 months, the landlords needed at least a 4% hike, per the RGB’s own data.

In the short run, this seems great for tenants who already have one of these units, but even in the medium term it means at least reduced maintenance and building services.

Longer term, it forces honorable landlords (which is still most of them) to sell to less-savory characters — or to let the whole building deteriorate, putting their non-regulated units at risk, too.

Presumably, City Hall is afraid of the short-term political heat as the mayor eyes his re-election bid next year.

Last year, the RGB was on the right track when members voted to raise rents by as much as 7% at a preliminary hearing — whereupon a mob of protesters led by three radical City Council members (Chi Osse, Sandy Nurse and Tiffany Caban) stormed the stage and commandeered the mics in an act of political theater.

At the time, Mayor Adams conceded that “property owners face growing challenges maintaining their buildings and accessing financing to make repairs.”

Yet he then backed down, saying: “We simply cannot put tenants in a position where they can’t afford to make rent.”

The city isn’t as foolish when it comes to its own rising costs: It just OK’d a 9% hike in water rates — another hit on these landlords, along with fast-rising property taxes, insurance costs and expensive climate mandates under Local Law 97.

The City Council, meanwhile, is looking to provide relief from that law only to condo and co-op owners, plainly because in those cases the tenants directly see the bill.

Adding to these landlords’ woes is the 2019 state law that’s making older units too costly to renovate, forcing them off the market — which further reduces building income and depletes the total housing stock, forcing up market-rate rents.

The rent laws have been squeezing Gotham’s housing market for a long, long time, but this last decade amounts to an all-out war on private-sector affordable housing — when the city’s public-housing agency is under water by the tens of billions.

And, as with every progressive crusade that other Democrats surrender to, the victims in the end are the very people the progs claim to be helping.