Who gets the rent freeze
On 25 June 2026 the Rent Guidelines Board set no increase for one- or two-year rent-stabilized leases starting from 1 October 2026 to 30 September 2027: the fourth one-year freeze in the board's 58 orders and the first to freeze a two-year lease for its whole term. In the latest Housing and Vacancy Survey, from 2023, about 960,000 households lived in stabilized apartments; 30% had 2022 incomes of $100,000 or more and 66% of those with any income were below 80% of HUD's income limit for their household size, the line HUD generally calls low income: largely different households. Over thirty years of the survey, counting incomes in 2022 dollars, between 19% and 23% of stabilized households earned six figures in every survey from 1993 to 2014 (among market renters the share rose from 22% to 35%), and every survey since, each counting somewhat differently, has put it higher; in every survey since 1993, six-figure households have paid more than their share of the stabilized rent, from 26% of it in 1993 to 39% in 2023. Carrying the lease dates households reported in 2023 forward, about four in five renew while the freeze is in force. Against the previous year's increases repeated (3% for a one-year lease, 4.5% for a two-year lease), a benchmark above the 0% to 2% and 0% to 4% ranges the board itself proposed in May, a household renewing under the freeze typically saves about $600 a year at 2023 rents (about $430 against the top of those ranges). Because the saving is mostly a slice of the rent, households earning $100,000 or more account for 39% of the modeled rent reduction while making up 31% of the households renewing under it, and 61% still goes to households under six figures; relative to income, the saving is about 4% for households under $25,000 and 0.3% for those at $200,000 or more.
