With Rent Guidelines Board Set to Vote on Preliminary Rent Adjustments Tomorrow Night, Small Property Owners of New York (SPONY) Joins Chorus for Separate Rent Increases for Older Buildings That Are Majority or Fully Rent-Stabilized

For Immediate Release Wednesday, May 6, 2026

Ahead of Thursday night’s preliminary vote on rent adjustments for 1- and 2-year leases of the city’s one million rent-stabilized apartments, Small Property Owners of New York (SPONY) today called on the Rent Guidelines Board (RGB) to issue a “split” rent order for buildings constructed pre-1973 and those built post-1974. Individual SPONY members, other industry groups, and independent housing economists have voiced evidence of severe economic distress that is placing rent-stabilized housing on the brink of abandonment and foreclosure.

“If RGB members concede to the politics of a rent freeze or insignificant rent increase, they will be following a path of defunding rent-stabilized housing. We all know how this story ends. The city’s defunding of its public housing sector has left NYCHA housing in an abysmal state,” said SPONY board president Ann Korchak.

She said the current RGB has the opportunity to stop the cycle of defunding rent-stabilized housing, a cycle that’s evident in a recent SPONY analysis. From 2016 to 2025, one-year rent increases set by the RGB compounded to approximately 14.84%, dramatically lower than the cumulative New York area Price Index of 32.44% during the same 10-year period – yielding a negative 13.29% in real-rent change for rent stabilized apartments.

“The economic health of pre-1973 buildings, which are majority or fully rent-stabilized, and post-1974 construction, which is majority free-market rent and many with as few as one or two rent-stabilized apartments, is vastly different. Pre-1973 construction doesn’t have access to incentive and abatement programs like 421a. Their low rent-regulated rents fail to keep pace with increased operating costs and expenses, let alone the crippling challenges of constant repairs and upgrades in these older buildings,” Korchak said.

“The future viability of older rent-stabilized housing is dependent on ‘split’ rent orders that will help mom-and-pop, mostly immigrant and generational owners operate and maintain their older buildings and house millions of New Yorkers,” she continued.

“This isn’t the time to further defund rent-stabilized housing. The disparate operational realities between aging and newer buildings call for separate rent adjustments for older, majority rent-stabilized properties,” added Korchak, noting that other industry organizations, independent economists and think tanks, and SPONY members have sounded the alarm that small owners of aging properties are falling deeper into economic distress because rents aren’t keeping pace with constantly escalating property tax, insurance, utility, and operating costs and expenses. #