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Rent Board Approves Annual Rate Hikes

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Jun 27, 2007 6:49 am US/Eastern

Rent Board Approves Annual Rate Hikes

Renters Are Unhappy, And So Are The Landlords

by Magee Hickey
NEW YORK (CBS) ― If you're one of the more than 1 million New Yorkers who live in a rent-stabilized apartment, you'll soon be paying more to keep a roof over your head.

Samantha Fonseca is now hoarse. She tried so hard to shout down a proposed rent hike at the annual Rent Guidelines Board vote Tuesday night.

"I was honest with them. I can't afford it," Fonseca said.

Fonseca is an unemployed single mother raising a 6-year-old daughter. Fonseca pays $514 a month in rent.

But now she'll pay more, after the Rent Guidelines Board voted 5-4 to raise the rent in more than 1 million rent stabilized apartments across the city.

Rents go up 3 percent for apartments on a one-year lease and 5.75 percent for apartments where the lease is two years.

"When I go to bed at night I can't sleep thinking what am I going to do next. I can't afford it," Fonseca said.

Tuesday's vote wasn't as wild and raucous as in past years, but the outcome was the same: Rents were set too high for renters and too low for landlords.

Landlord Steven Schleider said, "To have a rent increase that is half what we went for -- it's woefully inadequate and will probably just exacerbate the situation."

Last year rents went up 7.75 percent for two-year leases and 4.75 percent for one-year leases.

In 2006, a spokeswoman for the Met Council on Housing says 270,000 people who live in rent stabilized apartments live below the federal poverty line.

(© MMVII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

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