Rent board fulfills Mamdani’s vow to freeze the rent on 1 million NYC apartments
NEW YORK (AP) — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani burst into City Hall promising to combat the city’s notoriously high cost of living, in part fulfilling a campaign promise he repeated with almost monomaniacal fervor in social media adsspeeches and rallies: “As your next mayor, I will freeze your rent.”
On Thursday evening, the board he controls followed through on that signature commitment.
The city’s Rent Guidelines Board, an independent board appointed by the mayor, approved a rent freeze covering both one-year and two-year leases for people living in nearly 1 million rent-stabilized apartments.
The anticipated vote was a big win for Mamdani, allowing him to allay doubts about his ability to deliver on his affordability agenda. And it came just two days after he made a splash as an emerging progressive kingmaker. three congressional candidates he supports They won their races in stunning fashion, unseating two Democratic incumbents and damaging the party establishment.
Mamdani, a Democrat, called the decision “a historic victory for New York City tenants” in a statement.
“This is the relief that working people in our city deserve,” he said.
Property groups say a rent freeze will put landlords in a bind, struggling to afford routine maintenance or other repairs while facing rising costs and inflation. Critics of rent regulation say the policy leads to higher rental costs for unstable units.
“This will only result in more dilapidated housing and potentially more foreclosures and bankruptcies, which the city is completely unprepared for,” said Kenny Burgos, CEO of the New York Apartment Association, a landlord lobby group.
A legal challenge is expected over the board’s vote. One of the members appointed to represent the homeowners resigned in protest, claiming that the board’s independence had been compromised.
“The Rent Guidelines Board has ceased to be a fact-finding agency,” former board member Christina Smyth wrote in her resignation letter to The Associated Press. “It has become a body that starts with an answer and codes the vibration backwards to justify it.”
Mamdani, who lived with his wife in a rent-stabilized apartment in Queens before moving into the city’s palatial mayoral residence, Gracie Mansion, this year, appointed a majority of board members with just over a month left in his term, signaling a focus on the freeze.
He said most New Yorkers desperately need relief from high housing costs.
Approximately 2 million people live in the highly sought-after rent-stabilized units, which make up approximately 40% of the city’s housing stock. Although the apartments are privately owned, the city board votes each year on the maximum allowable rent increase.
The board had frozen rents in the past, most recently under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, but later approved modest increases under Mamdani’s predecessor, former Mayor Eric Adams. Last year, the board approved increases of up to 3 percent for one-year leases and 4.5 percent for two-year leases.
But this time, the board, now filled with Mamdani appointees, quickly green-lighted the freeze, drawing loud cheers from advocates who filled an auditorium at a museum in Central Park for the vote.
There are no income limits determining who can live in rent-stabilized units, and it is not uncommon for high-income people to live in such apartments, which has drawn criticism.
During last year’s mayoral race, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo called on Mamdani, then a state Assembly member earning just under $150,000, to vacate her rent-stabilized unit and called the arrangement “disgusting,” arguing that the apartment should have been given to someone making less money.
