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Invited Testimony

Tom Waters and Victor Bach

Housing Policy Analysts, Community Service Society of New York
At Public Meeting
New York City Rent Guidelines Board

April 23, 2015

感谢您给我们这个机会表达我们对房租政策对低收入纽约人的潜在影响的关注. Last year, 该委员会在正确的方向上迈出了重要的一步，通过了相对较低的租金稳定续签租约指导方针. Unfortunately, 这一步骤不足以修复过去过高的指导方针所造成的伤害. This year, 委员会应进一步纠正方向，为尚未真正从金融危机和衰退中恢复过来的租户提供所需的救济.

租金管制公寓仍然是纽约100多万低收入家庭的最大住房来源. (“低收入”指的是收入低于联邦贫困线两倍或约38美元的家庭,100 for a family of three.) Table 1 shows the number of households in the city by income and housing type. 请注意，带有第8节凭证的受租金管制的租户在此表中与公众和受补贴的租户一起计算.

Since the 2008 economic crisis and recession, these tenants have been hard hit by excessive rent increases and stagnating incomes, resulting in damaging increases in rent burdens. Figure 1 shows how rents, incomes, and rent burdens have changed since 2007, using the most recent available data, which does not distinguish rent-stabilized from other renters. Table 2 shows the underlying figures for the percent changes shown in the graph.

These numbers make it clear that rents are far outstripping incomes, resulting in rapidly rising rent burdens, 他们还表明，租金准则委员会(Rent Guidelines Board)批准的涨价是这个问题的一个重要部分. This analysis is based on the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey for 2007 through 2013.

Another survey, the New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey, enables us to focus directly on rent-stabilized tenants, but it is only conducted once in three years, and the 2014 data has not yet been fully released. 纽约市房屋保护和发展部发布了2014年HVS的一些初步发现. 这些调查结果不包括低收入租金稳定租户的数据, 但这些数据确实清楚地表明，纽约市租金稳定的租户整体状况正在恶化.

From 2011 to 2014, the median rent for rent-stabilized apartments rose by 11.9 percent, or 6.3 percent above inflation. Incomes rose by 5.0 percent, or 0.3 percent below inflation. 这种紧缩在中位稳定租户的租金负担增加方面也很明显, who went from paying 31.9 percent of income as rent in 2011 to 33.1 percent in 2014. There was also in a sharp increase in overcrowding, 可能是由于一些家庭为了应付不断上涨的租金而合租或增加成员. The share of apartments with more than one person per room rose from 11.5 percent in 2011 to 12.2 percent in 2014.

We have presented analysis of the state of low-income renters in the previous HVS, from 2011, ，以及我们的社区服务社会政策简介, Making the Rent: Before and After the Recession, published in 2012. 尽管在经济衰退期间和之后，租金稳定的租户比不受监管的租户表现更好, the guidelines enacted by this board failed to adequately protect them, 尽管它们让房东每年都能享受到除2008年以外的净收入增长, as shown in the RGB staff’s research. 

Our analysis of the HVS showed that from 2005 to 2011, 如果考虑到租金变动，低收入层的生活水平下降了7%. In other words, 通货膨胀调整后的收入减去通货膨胀调整后的每个家庭成员的租金，从2005年的每月402美元下降到2011年的每月379美元(以2011年美元计算). 这比不受监管的租户所经历的15%的下降要好，但不能被认为是一个公平的结果, 考虑到房东的净营业收入在同期大幅增长. 同期，净营业收入从324美元上升到396美元(同样是2011年的美元), an increase of 22 percent. Landlords’ incomes continued to grow rapidly after that. By 2013, net operating income rose to $454 (in 2013 dollars), representing an additional increase of  11 percent above inflation. (这是根据2007年、2013年和2015年版的RGB收入和支出研究计算出来的.)

A similar pattern can be seen in the American Community Survey data, which includes tenants in all types of housing. 图2显示了2007年以来经通胀调整的人均剩余收入的下降.

受租金管制、收入超过贫困线两倍的租户，租金负担也在不断加重. Another 255,000名租金管制租户的收入是贫困线的2到4倍——这个群体包括租金管制租户的中位数. Figure 3 shows how rents, incomes, 对于这个中等收入群体(包括受监管和不受监管的租户)来说，租金负担已经发生了变化。, and Figure 4 shows the same information for renters of all incomes.

In light of these trends in rents and incomes, 看来私人租赁行业并没有因为经济危机而受到影响, 当然，这一降幅无法与继续困扰纽约租房者的收入损失相比, particularly low-income tenants.

租金准则委员会在去年之前的决定导致了自经济衰退以来不断增长的租金负担能力危机. After the financial crisis, 经营成本价格指数与房东的实际支出有好几年的差距, and this significantly exacerbated this problem, 但主要的问题是，在彭博社的几年里，RGB明显的政策授权增加，这将足以保持净营业收入不变, without regard for the state of tenant incomes, and without considering that landlords also receive numerous non-RGB rent increases. 这不是一项合适的政策，就像如果RGB制定了一项准则，让租户的剩余收入保持不变，而不考虑对房东底线的影响一样.

Last year, RGB打破了这一模式，投票通过了一项指导方针，该方针开始纠正之前向房东倾斜的做法. This was an encouraging development, 但这不足以恢复因之前房价上涨而受损的租户的财务状况. This year, 燃料价格大幅下跌，而以运营成本价格指数衡量的其他价格则小幅上升, justifying a rent freeze even without the need to correct for past errors. 因此，委员会应该继续通过批准适当降低租金的指导方针来纠正方向.