Westchester owners get no increase.

Zero, zilch, naught, nothing. That's what the Westchester Rent Guidelines Board is expected to certify as a one-year renewal guideline for local apartment dwellers on September 16th. But if the tenant chooses to renew for two years, they will have to pay a 1.5 percent renewal.

So who in their right mind would sign a two-year lease to lock in a definite increase?

The Westchester Rent Guidelines Board also voted against a long-standing tradition of allowing county-regulated apartment owners to raise the rent in a newly vacated apartment to that of the highest comparable rent for that type of unit. Beginning with leases for October, the rent on a vacant apartment can only be raised to 40 percent of that of the comparable unit, or the owner could choose one of the vacancy formulas as outlined in the new stabilization law that went into effect last year.

Since 40 percent of the approximate current market rent of $1,000 is only $400, explained Saul Gluckman, chairman of the Apartment Owners Advisory Council of Westchester and the Mid-Hudson Region, "You have to have a unit that is renting for one-third of the $1,000 to do better with that formula than under the up to 20 percent increase possible under the new rent law."

Gluckman is concerned that if the owners of rental apartment buildings in the 17 Westchester communities that fall under the state Emergency Tenant Protection Act (ETPA) don't get any increases, it will ultimately cause an increase in property taxes across the county.

How is that possible? Gluckman says if you undervalue a building by virtually freezing current rents with the zero percent increase on renewals, the building owners won't have the money to maintain the property.

Then the owner will file a tax certiorari application requesting a decrease in assessed value in order to reduce the taxes. And when the municipality ultimately reduces the assessment and therefore the taxes, the money needed for the budget has to be raised from homeowners, other residential apartment buildings, including cooperatives and condominiums, and the commercial properties.

"There are a large number of communities that think they are protected from this, like Bedford," said Gluckman, referring to a community that has many expensive single-family homes and estates as its tax base. But if the assessed value goes down in other parts of the county, the county still has to raise that portion of the county tax money elsewhere.

"If the amount of tax possible to be raised in Yonkers goes down, the people in Bedford will pay an increase," Gluckman concluded.

Why did the nine-member Rent Guidelines Board vote for virtually no increases? Gluckman says it's politics. Last year the chairman and a public member both resigned. The county solicited for new members for its nine-member board, including public members who cannot own or live in rental housing, and Gluckman said they had many well-qualified candidates who understood finance, real estate and business. But instead, the new members were apparently appointed based on political connections to tenant-supported legislators. and in their votes, completely disregarded the statistics provided by the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal on ownership costs. There is still one vacancy on the board.

'Our original proposal was for a 1.5 percent increase for a one-year renewal and 3 percent for two years," said Gluckman. "The numbers really justified that."

Meanwhile, the plot thickens. One new public member lived in a rent regulated community and allegedly, and quite honestly, warned the interviewers he was going to move from a small, multi-family home not regulated under the ETPA but in an ETPA community, to a single-family home. But no one asked where. When the new member signed a form at one of the meetings that would entitle him to obtain the $100 fee paid to the members for coming to the meetings, and asked that the check be sent to his new address, the administrators realized he was no longer a resident of the county. Apparently, he had not bought a home in Westchester, but moved to Duchess County in the middle of the RGB meeting season.

"If the Board of Legislators knew he wasn't going to be a Westchester resident, they probably wouldn't have appointed him," explained an owner familiar with the system.

Asked Gluckman of the same situation, "Is it fair for a non-resident of Westchester to determine the economic consequences for Westchester citizens?"

Sources report the New York State Attorney General's office is currently investigating that very question.