Rent Hike for New Yorkers; Affordable Housing for Artists

This week brought sobering news for rent-stabilized tenants, a dash of hope for broke artists in the form of affordable housing, and more places to rent, in the future, in Brooklyn's Red Hook.

The Rent Guidelines Board -- a nine-person panel that dictates what goes down (or up) in New York's rent-stabilized housing -- decided on May 5th that things are indeed going up. Things being rent. The New York Timescovered the public hearing at Cooper Station in the East Village where tenants filed in with anti-increase signs and demanded a rent freeze on account of escalating unemployment.

Of course the Board killed that dream in a vote of 7-2 and ultimately approved a rent hike of 2 percent to 4 percent for tenants with one-year leases, and 4 percent to 6 percent for tenants with two-year leases. This change will be applied to leases renewed between October 1, 2010 and September 30, 2011.

But don't worry, there was some good news, too.