Brian Laird on WNYC.

Now we'll look at a proposed rent hike that could affect roughly a million New Yorkers later this year.

Last week, New York City's rent guidelines board held their annual meeting to

begin deciding how much landlords can increase rent prices on the city's rent-stabilized units.

Here's the range they came up with. Anywhere from 1 in 3 quarters to 4.1% on new 1-year leases,

and 4-3-quarters to 7 and a quarter percent on new one-year leases, and four-and-three-quarters to seven-and-three-quarters percent on two-year leases.

Now, while this initial vote is non-binding, the actions of the Rent Guidelines Board

have become a major issue in this year's mayoral race as several Democratic candidates are promising rent freezes for rent-stabilized

units on the campaign trail, and others are not. Hundreds of tenants and advocates filled the LaGuardia

Community College Auditorium where the vote was held to call for a rent freeze. And then there's

the news coming out of Washington which could throw a wrench in all of this.

President Donald Trump released his budget plan containing a 40% cut to rental assistance programs.

Those don't affect rent stabilization increases necessarily. There are a different category of

apartment, but another one now facing the city. Joining me now to get into the weeds of these developments, and to take some of your calls,

if you might be affected as a tenant or a landlord or anyone else, is David Brand,

housing reporter for WNYC and Gothamist.

Hey, David.

Hey, Brian.

So rent stabilization first, and by way of background, remind us, how big is the system in the city at this point after decades of partial deregulation?

Yeah, so I think this segment actually fits the theme of the show so far, I guess, because we're talking about another way prices will be rising, at least for tenants in New York City.

So the rent-stabilized system is huge. It affects tenants in about one million apartments across

the city. That's about 2.2 or 2.3 million people and all of the owners of their buildings,

...