NEW YORK (AP)  -- Gov. David Paterson, who with his wife, Michelle, makes about $270,000 a year, has a rent-stabilized apartment in Manhattan, paying less than half the market rate for housing in his Harlem apartment complex.

Paterson's two-bedroom apartment in Harlem is part of Lenox Terrace, a set of residential buildings spread across six blocks in central Harlem. The market rate for a similar apartment there is $2,600 a month or more, according to the landlord's Web site.

Paterson spokesman Errol Cockfield said Friday that the Democrat who owns a home in suburban Albany and now lives in the governor's mansion considers his primary residence to be in Harlem. That's where Paterson's son attends high school and the area that Paterson represented as a state senator.

``The governor's family's annual income and the rent charged on their Harlem apartment do not meet any thresholds that would preclude them from living there under New York City<s rent regulations,'' Cockfield said. ``The family has lived in the apartment since 1994 after completing a six-year wait.''

According to their tax returns, Paterson and his wife made about $270,000 last year. They also own a home upstate and have access to the governor's mansion in Albany.

Paterson told the New York Sun that the rent was appropriate, given the city's rent regulations. ``It is within the spirit of the law,'' he said. Critics disagreed, saying high-income New Yorkers shouldn't be eligible for rent stabilization.

The state's rent stabilization laws limit the size of allowable rent increases in about a million apartments in New York City. State law allows owners to remove units from rent stabilization only under certain conditions.

The Rent Guidelines Board recently gave preliminary approval to rent increases. Tenants say the increases are too steep; a landlord group says they are not high enough.

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