This time every year, rent-stabilized-apartment owners prepare for a rent-guidelines process they call everything from “politically motivated” to “a charade.” We hope this time will be different.

As the New York City Rent Guidelines Board begins Thursday its annual exercise of establishing guidelines for rent increases on the leases of 1 million rent-stabilized apartments, its members have the opportunity to hit the reset button under Mayor Eric Adams. Let’s rid the process of the political interference of ex-Mayor Bill de Blasio that impeded the board’s mandate to ensure a healthy, sustainable affordable-housing stock.

Building owners have suffered unprecedented loss in rental income while getting hit with huge across-the-board operating-expense increases — property-tax assessments, heating costs and insurance premiums, to name a few. The board’s own data, which it will release in the weeks ahead, should show this.

Pre-de Blasio, this data actually meant something to the process. Members would analyze the numbers, deliberate free of political interference and conclude with fair and adequate rent increases to help building owners offset operating-cost hikes and maintain affordable housing.

But de Blasio blatantly politicized the process for eight years on the false premise that owners were overcompensated during Michael Bloomberg’s 12 years as mayor. His board ignored legitimate data, and the proof is in the numbers: The RGB delivered eight years of historically low rent-guideline increases averaging 0.75% a year while operating costs for rent-stabilized units rose at an annual average of 3.6% — nearly five times as much. For the record, during Bloomberg’s tenure, rent hikes averaged 3.3% while operating-cost increases averaged 6%.

The good news: De Blasio’s miserable housing-policy failures are a thing of the past. The bad news: The chorus of lawmakers calling for a rent freeze, or rent rollback, is not. The board must wipe the slate clean and reestablish an independent process free of political rhetoric.

The RGB has the opportunity to live up to its statutory mandate — to enact rent guidelines that not only compensate building owners for higher operating costs but ensure they can provide quality, affordable living conditions for their tenants.

Even before the pandemic, city and state lawmakers — through their politically driven housing agenda — added to the accelerated deterioration of rent-stabilized housing, which at 1 million apartments (most in pre-war buildings) is the city’s largest (and oldest) segment of affordable housing.

A nearly two-year eviction moratorium has left thousands of small-property owners billions of dollars in debt — on top of the one-two punch of Albany’s drastic 2019 changes to the state’s rent laws and the RGB’s eight years of inadequate rent increases. Albany’s changes alone effectively choked off owners’ financial ability to reinvest in apartment and building improvements and upgrades.

These policies have done nothing to address the heart of the problem: income insecurity.

The pandemic has highlighted this decades-long problem that lawmakers have only exacerbated. Politicians irresponsibly encouraged tenants not to pay their rent for two years while pushing the deliberate under-compensation of rent-stabilized-apartment owners. The issue can no longer be ignored.

Supposedly pro-tenant lawmakers have missed the mark on providing real help to income-insecure renters. They’re content with scoring re-election points by punishing the city’s largest providers of affordable housing when instead they should be supporting sustainable solutions — like expanding the income threshold for rent-relief eligibility to allow more families to benefit from proven and established programs that pay a certain portion of rent or rent increases for income-insecure tenants. How about also enacting meaningful property-tax reform to alleviate the leading cost burden of building owners?

In the meantime, the RGB under Mayor Adams must return to its origins after eight years of de Blasio’s heavy-handed politicization. It should once again consider its own research data and fulfill its statutory mandate of administering fair rent increases that enable rent-stabilized-apartment owners to meet their obligations of providing safe, quality affordable housing to millions of New Yorkers. This is how we preserve affordable housing and our vibrant neighborhoods.   

Vito Signorile is vice president of communications of the Rent Stabilization Association, representing 25,000 diverse building owners of 1 million rent-stabilized apartments.