New York Mayor Mamdani’s ‘freeze the rent’ promise survives a noisy vote

By Jonathan Allen

NEW YORK, May 8 (Reuters) – New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s best-known campaign promise was tentatively pushed in a cacophonous university auditorium as the city’s housing board considered freezing rents on nearly a million regulated apartments in a tentative vote.

In a weeks-long annual ritual that culminates in a final vote in June, the city’s Rent Guidelines Board determines how much landlords can raise rent for tenants of rent-stabilized apartments, which are home to nearly a quarter of all New Yorkers. The board considers tenants’ wages and landlords’ income from their buildings, inflation, taxes, changes in housing supply and countless other factors in closely scrutinized public calculations.

In a provisional vote late Thursday, barely audible amid the chants and cheers of hundreds of tenants filling the audience, the board set a range before next month’s final vote: rent adjustments of zero percent to 2 percent for 1-year lease renewals and zero percent to 4 percent for 2-year renewals. In short, the possibility of freezing rents continues, but the possibility of an increase has not been ruled out.

“Freeze the rent!” tenants shouted, applauded every time the nine board members sitting behind a table on stage said the word ‘zero’ and booed any number they heard greater than that. “Struggle! Struggle! Struggle! Housing is a human right!” They shouted slogans.

Board members, six of whom were appointed by Mamdani, carried on as if they couldn’t see or hear the shouting of hundreds of New Yorkers lined up in front of them, and the 0% to 2% proposal passed on a 7-1 vote, with one member abstaining.

Mamdani ran for mayor of America’s financial capital last year as a democratic socialist, promising to freeze rents and tackle rising costs of food, child care and other necessities in a city where the average rent for a newly rented apartment is $3,950, according to listing agency StreetEasy.

His success among voters has been admired and scrutinized by fellow Democrats trying to regain power at the state and national level. It even impressed Republican US President Donald Trump, a billionaire developer.

Cockroaches, Mice and Mold

Since Mamdani took office in January, when she moved from her roughly $2,300-a-month 1-bedroom Queens apartment to Manhattan’s 5-bedroom Gracie Mansion, New Yorkers have watched to see whether simple declarative promises on the campaign trail would bear fruit.

“We have a new mayor, and he was living in a stable apartment, working with people who had housing issues in the past,” Moreom Perven said before showing off his rent-stabilized studio apartment in Jamaica, Queens, to Reuters ahead of Thursday’s vote. “I understand the situation in New York City, how much we are suffering, and I hope that this time we will get good news.”

Perven, 49, has lived in her home since 2000 and currently pays just under $1,300 a month in rent to a property management company that owns more than 2,000 apartments in the city. There are 270 active complaints and 66 open housing code violations across the building’s 187 apartments, according to city zoning records. Perven and her neighbors find themselves constantly fighting with their landlords over basic maintenance.

“Cockroaches, mice, broken tiles, then water leaks, mold, bedbugs,” Perven explained, sitting next to the second refrigerator he bought and placed next to the refrigerator provided by the landlord, which had not cooled for a long time. “They don’t want to put money into solving the problem.”

Perven, a part-time tenant counselor for a housing advocacy group, went to Thursday’s meeting with some of her neighbors.

Hundreds of tenants filled the sidewalk outside, waving banners in English, Spanish, Chinese and Bengali, beating drums and blowing whistles before security allowed them inside.

Tenants were generally divided into two camps. The Tenants’ Bloc is calling for a rent freeze, which has only happened three times in more than 50 years of rent stabilization laws. And the Rent Justice Coalition, including Pervem and others, has called for an unheard-of negative adjustment, “rent rollback,” to offset the 12% cumulative rent increase over the four-year term of Mamdani’s predecessor, Eric Adams.

PROPERTY OWNERS MENTION FINANCIAL STRUGGLES

Property owners have also filed statements through the Real Estate Board of New York and similar advocacy groups arguing that operating costs have increased, especially in older buildings.

Although Mamdani appoints the majority of board members, he has no power to influence the decision beyond saying what he wants to see. Instead, he used city resources to ensure New Yorkers knew their rights and increase attendance at the four remaining public hearings before the vote on June 25.

In a statement Thursday night, Mamdani encouraged both renters and homeowners to “speak out and directly address how this housing crisis is showing up in their lives.”

REBNY executive Basha Gerhards, speaking on behalf of property owners, argued that the board’s preliminary ranges “ignore the clear financial distress shown in the data” and that “a freeze or near-freeze cannot be justified.”

Perven viewed the vote negatively, as the recovery of rents would not be possible at least this year. He and other tenants were happy that the range was zero, but were concerned that recent past votes tended to fall somewhere in the middle.

“We need to organize. We need to fight back,” he said. “I hope we see the same energy leading up to the final vote in June.”

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Additional reporting by Aleksandra Michalska; Editing by Bill Berkrot)