New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is warning the city "as we have known it" could be headed for ruins if Albany lawmakers fail to renew rent laws governing at least 1 million rent regulated units across the area.

Scheduled to expire on Monday, de Blasio heralded the laws on Friday in a conference call with 14,000 AARP members as "the only things keeping landlords from jacking up rents to market rates."

According to the New York Daily News, without the laws on the books rents could almost double what many tenants currently pay.

"If Albany does literally nothing, then there's a real nightmare coming," said de Blasio. He later added, "That means literally tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, would literally be displaced from their apartments."

Late Friday, Assembly Democrats introduced a bill to extend the existing law for two days. They now hope to pass that bill on Monday, thereby giving state leaders more time to negotiate a more extended agreement before Wednesday's scheduled end of the legislative session.

For his part, de Blasio is not only calling on Albany to renew existing laws but also do away with such practices as "vacancy decontrol," a law which allows landlords to raise rents by up to 20 percent once a tenant has moved out. If an apartment's rent exceeds $2,500, it is no longer considered under rent control.

A recent study found rents in some neighborhoods have spiked by 50 to 90 percent over the last 12 years, according to the Community Service Society, a nonpartisan antipoverty group.

Since 2002, rents have risen by 32 percent overall citywide. But in six Manhattan and Brooklyn neighborhoods, median rent presented to recent movers spiked by an even more alarming 50 percent.

"The sharpest increases occurred in neighborhoods surrounding the traditionally high-rent area of Manhattan below Harlem," the report states, noting that median rent in central Harlem has jumped a "shocking" 90 percent since 2002.

Over that time, in areas like central Harlem and Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant rents for recent movers have climbed from a one-time average of $871 to a current average of $1,530, the study found.