Any chance you're comfortable sharing how much you were originally paying? Context is pretty important here. If you were already paying around $1500 and he/she wants to hit you with the increase then that's a little much. If you were paying $1,000 or less, you really have absolutely nothing to complain about.

You should feel pretty lucky that your rent hasn't increased in the past 5 years. You may very well be due for an increase. With all due respect, people really need to try owning and maintaining a home and/or rental property before they complain.

Maybe I'm just biased? I rented a room in my house to someone over 30 whose parents still pay their cellphone bill. They tried saying I had no right to ever complain about money, claiming that they paid half my mortgage. It took them awhile to fully comprehend that $500 is not half of over $1500 lmao. I didn't charge extra for any utilities, except one year when I asked if they could pitch in a couple hundred bucks for oil in the winter (left it as optional, plus a couple hundred is a drop in the bucket relative to a full winter of oil deliveries). Originally they were paying only $400 which lasted a couple of years. They also never had to purchase toilet paper or paper towels, and did minimal to no cleaning aside from rinsing off dishes. Never had to worry about snow removal. Seemed like a pretty sweet deal to me for a room in a decent house.

Now they are paying over $1000/month plus utilities for a crappy apartment. Life comes at you fast.