'Act Of Violence': BK Pols, Tenants Protest Potential Rent Increase

BROOKLYN, NY — In 2006, state Assembly Member Marcela Mitaynes was displaced from rent stabilized home she shared with her family for over 30 years.

At the time, the building got a new landlord, who managed to evict displace of the building's 35 units in just six months, said Mitaynes, who represents Brooklyn's 51st district covering Red Hook and Sunset Park.

"When you are evicted from your home, there is a trauma that you carry with you," Mitaynes told NYC's Rent Guidelines Board on Thursday. "I had to tell my 8-year-old daughter we were being evicted, and she learned two vocabulary words that year: eviction and gentrification."

"I have been coming before this board since 2008 asking for a rent freeze," Mitaynes said.

Mitaynes joined tenants and politicians at a nearly five hour public hearing in Brooklyn Thursday at St. Francis College.

Dozens of speakers testified against the Board's potential move to allow up to seven percent increases on rent stabilized units. The board will make its final vote Wednesday.

If approved, one-year leases on rent stabilized units would see between 2 to 5 percent increases and two-year leases between 4 to 7 percent. The increases would apply to leases signed between Oct. 1 and Sept. 30, 2024.

A preliminary vote in May saw similar protests from Brooklyn electeds and tenants, who say the increase will drive families into homelessness, pols argued — what City Council Member Chi Ossé called an "act of violence."

"We New Yorkers are suffocating under skyrocketing living costs. the proposed increases could be a breaking point," Ossé said. "Increasing rents will break homes... It will drive New Yorkers out of the neighborhoods they have called home for generations."

Landlords say the increase is necessary to cover rapidly increasing operating costs due to inflation and rising property taxes, according to the New York Daily News.

But electeds say they don't buy that argument.

"This isn't about inflation it's about greed," Ossé said at Thursday's hearing. "Increased homelessness is too high a price to just pay to make corporate landlords a little bit richer."