This statistical brief provides an overview of New York City's one million rent stabilized households and contrasts stabilized tenants with those living in the City's half million unregulated rentals. Only a small segment of stabilized renters have high annual earnings. This is partly because many stabilized apartments are occupied by single elderly people and single-parent households who tend to have much lower incomes. Given their low household incomes, it is not surprising that many stabilized renters are living in poverty.
Unregulated tenants have higher incomes than stabilized households.
Manhattan's unregulated renters, however, have significantly higher incomes. Income differences between tenants living in regulated and unregulated units are even more pronounced when viewing incomes by race and ethnicity and by household composition. The income divide for single-parent households is equally disparate. The majority of regulated tenants are non-white. Much like the racial makeup of New York City as a whole, the majority of rent stabilized tenants are non-white.