NYC freezes rent for 1 million renters after Mamdani packs Rent Guidelines Board

( Post Millennial )

The Rent Guidelines Board, with 6 of 9 members appointed by socialist Mayor Zohran Mandani, met on June 25 and decided that there would be absolutely no rent increases for rent-stabilized apartments in New York City. Ahead of the vote, one landlord resigned from the Board. Only one member voted "no" and the rent freeze passed 7-1.

Mamdani hailed his Board for passing the measure, fulfilling one of his many campaign promises, saying, "This is a historic victory for New York City tenants. After reviewing the data and hearing from New Yorkers across the city, the independent RGB has delivered a freeze on one-year leases, and the first-ever freeze on two-year leases in our city’s history."

Another one of his campaign promises was to seize private property from landlords who do not make mandated repairs or pay assessed fines on their properties. Landlords argue that rising costs, met with an inability to increase income, will lead to fewer repairs and upkeep. This could lead to fines and assessments and eventually to private property seizure.

The Rent Guidelines Board meets yearly to set the rent increases for rent-stabilized apartments, which affects about 44 percent, or about 1 million out of 2.3 million apartments. This year, the Board recommended 0% increases for both one and two-year leases. In April, the Board released a report showing that "rent-stabilized housing insurance soared 10.5% in 2026 year over year, while fuel and maintenance rose 11% and 6%, respectively," the NY Post reports.

Landlord representative Christina Smyth, who served on the Board, resigned on Thursday ahead of the vote. She said in a letter to her colleagues that the board had "stopped being a fact-finding body." She said that "This rebuilt board was required to deliver a rent freeze. Everything since has been theater."

Smyth had been on the board since 2022 and said in the letter, posted to her LinkedIn page, "I resigned today because this process is broken. I have had no problem in the past with my vote being on the losing side. It has already happened during my five-year tenure. I cannot in good conscience validate a process I believe is completely unjust. Owners and tenants deserve better."

Board Chair Chantella Mitchell, appointed by Mamdani in February, disparaged those remarks from Smyth, saying, "I want to take this opportunity to affirm the independence with which this year’s board members have served, along with the rigor and integrity demonstrated by the RGB staff in preparing and presenting data," and the Board went ahead with the vote. The one member of the 9-person board appointed by former Mayor Eric Adams, Arpit Gupta, voted against the 0 percent increase. 

"The Rent Guidelines Board ignored its own data and made a terrible decision tonight. Older rent-stabilized buildings are already struggling under rising operating costs, yet the Board chose to disregard those realities," said James Whelan, president of the Real Estate Board of New York.

"This decision will mean less investment in maintenance and repairs, accelerating the deterioration of the housing stock that millions of New Yorkers call home. Tonight’s vote may be politically popular, but it will make New York’s housing crisis worse," he said.

Landlords of apartment buildings pay 12.5 percent in property taxes on a market value determined by the Department of Finance. There are three ways the department can assess value: based on past sales, based on the cost of replacement, and based on an income-to-expense ratio. For apartment buildings, the department uses the income and expense metric and assesses taxes on 45% of the estimated market value.

Insurance costs are typically $300-$600 per unit, meaning that for a 72-unit building, the insurance cost per year could be around $42,000. Mamdani has proposed to address this by creating a City-backed insurance program and has released a Request for Expression of Interest from "insurance brokers, captive managers, insurance carriers and reinsurers, third-party administrators, actuarial and risk advisory firms and other entities capable of operating at this scale who want to take this on."