New York renters squeezed by the lowest vacancy rates in three years are unlikely to get any relief next week when rent-stabilized guidelines come up for a vote.

The Rent Guidelines Board recommended increases between 2 and 4.5 percent for one-year leases and between 4 and 7.5 percent for two-year leases at a preliminary vote last month. That’s a pinch many New Yorkers say will be hard to take.

“Minorities can’t afford that,” said Lakisha Brown, 29, a single parent who pays fully half her income for a two-bedroom apartment in Harlem. “In five years New York will be only for the rich.”

Cutting deep into the wallet to pay the rent is not uncommon in the city, said Jenny Laurie, director of Metropolitan Council on Housing, a tenants advocacy group.

Half of the city’s one million stabilized renters pay 32 percent or more of their income toward housing, Laurie said.

“It makes it almost impossible,” said Laurie, who noted that the city’s affordable-housing stock has diminished in recent years. “A health emergency or a job loss means that they will very quickly fall behind on the rent.”

The city’s homeless population is also on the rise, said Laurie. The Coalition for the Homeless estimated 35,000 people sleep in shelters every night, including more than 9,000 families.

“If the board adopts the newly proposed rates, the housing crisis will be exacerbated,” said City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. “Any increase is going to have serious and in some cases disastrous consequences.”

Landlords argue the increases are necessary to cover rising costs for water taxes, fuel and labor. They are also wary of strict new regulations on repairs that will go into effect in 2008.

“Expenses have gone up enormously,” said Marolyn Davenport, senior vice president of the Real Estate Board of New York. She called rent increases “absolutely necessary” to cover the increased operating costs.

Tenant advocates have lobbied to change the way rent guidelines are controlled. Currently, a board made up of nine members chosen by Mayor Michael Bloomberg has total control over setting rent guidelines. The board has voted for rent increases every year since its inception in 1965, a board spokesman said. Tenant advocates argue City Council oversight would make the board more accountable to the public.

The board’s final vote will take place next Tuesday at Cooper Union. The new guidelines go into effect Oct. 1, 2007.

Linda Brown, who lives in the Bronx, said if rents increase, she may have to start thinking about other places to live.

Said Brown, Lakisha’s aunt, “Soon most of us are going to have to move upstate because it’s cheaper.”

Copyright 2007 Newsday Inc.