COUNCIL MEMBER RODRIGUEZ SPEAKS OUT ON RENT GUIDELINES BOARD DECISION

New York, NY--With the Rent Guideline Board's decision to raise rents this evening, Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez had this to say:

"Clearly, the Rent Guidelines Board is out of touch with the realities that New Yorkers face in their household budgets. This decision to drastically increase rents for stabilized apartments simply continues the trend of pricing out our residents, something that has devastating impacts on communities around the city. Housing is one of the most crucial resources in this city and we cannot continue to place it out of the reach of our hard working New Yorkers, many of whom already struggle with rents paying over 50% of their paychecks in the Washington Heights community. A better course of action would have been to implement a rent freeze as we continue to recover from the Great Recession, so that our communities could continue to improve economically. As affordable housing continues to become more and scarcer, our city's drastic income inequality will only keep expanding with this decision."