Newsman: New York City has passed a rent freeze for both one-year and two-year leases for the city’s one million rent-regulated apartments. For the first time in its history, Board voted to freeze rents for both one-year and two-year leases. The board has frozen one-year leases only three times before Thursday’s vote, but had never voted to freeze two-year leases.
The board voted 7-1 in favor of the rent freeze on Thursday night, as tenants, packed inside El Museo del Barrio in East Harlem, unleashed unbridled joy and relief through delivering on a signature campaign promise for Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The decision will freeze rent increases on one- and two-year leases on rent-stabilized apartments.
The vote considered issues including taxes, wages and inflation when making the decision.
Rent-stabilized apartments are in buildings built between 1947 and 1974 with more than six units, or through a tax incentive program which protects tenants from unpredictable annual rent hikes. It, however, only applies to roughly 41 percent of the city’s rental housing stock.
Mamdani had campaigned on freezing the rent when he ran for mayor last year, one of the key issues that catapulted his candidacy into City Hall to lead the most populous city in the United States.
“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. This is the relief that working people across our city deserve,” Mayor Mamdani said in a statement.
Mayor has insisted that landlords can weather a rent freeze, but landlords lambasted the decision, who say they are struggling with rising costs, like fuel, oil and insurance. They say a rent freeze would hurt their ability to maintain buildings.
Mamdani also has insisted that the board is independent and that its members would make up their own minds.
“I look forward to the outcome, the decision that they will make,” Mamdani said. “It’s an independent Board, and we trust them to make the decision they come to.”
In a statement following the vote, James Whelan, president of the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY), said, “Tonight’s vote may be politically popular, but it will make New York’s housing crisis worse.”
Kenny Burgos, CEO of the New York Apartment Association (NYAA) said the freeze will “destroy the living conditions for hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers.”
While the outcome seemed like a foregone conclusion, it did not come without drama.
On Thursday morning, hours before the vote, Christina Smyth, a board member appointed by the landlords, abruptly resigned, claiming the outcome was never in doubt.
“The Rent Guidelines Board has stopped being a fact-finding body,” she said in her letter. “This rebuilt board was required to deliver a rent freeze. Everything since has been theater.
The hearings, the reports, the public comment, the data. None of it was ever going to change the result.”
Under the Adams administration, landlords received 12% rent increases, while their net operating incomes rose by 30%.
Renters who struggle with affordability said they can’t afford an increase.
In March, the Mamdani administration launched a new programme to expedite that process and speed up the construction of affordable housing on city-owned properties by cutting red tape. The city created a pool of pre-approved developers that shortened the process by eight months, as well as faster land-use approvals that could speed up construction projects by as much as two years.
