The Rent Guidelines board approved rent hikes during a raucous meeting at Cooper Union in Manhattan on Monday — a 3.75 percent increase for one-year leases and 7.25 percent for two-year leases.

Claire Dockery, 78, has lived in the same Upper West Side apartment for 20 years and said she doesn't know how she'll afford to pay her increased rent.

"I can rarely go out for dinner," she said. "I don't go on vacation. I don't buy clothes, and I'm a little better off than most old people."

Brooklyn landlord Steve Ficano, a vocal participant in the meeting Monday, said expenses like water and real estate taxes continue to increase so he can't afford to care about the possible financial hardships of his tenants.

"It's not my problem that unemployment is high," he said. "It's not my problem that people have to double up. I feel sorry for them, but it's not for me to correct social ills."

The increase effects roughly 1 million rent stabilized apartments in the city.

• Increases last year were 2.25 percent for one-year leases and 4.5 percent on two year leases.
  
  
• Tenants either call for a rent freeze or a rent roll back each year but, the Rent Guidelines Board have never done either.
  
  
• The median rent on rent stabilized apartments in New York city is $925, according to the Census Bureau's 2008 Housing and Vacancy Survey