Photo: Shawn Inglima/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service/Getty Images

Zohran Mamdani’s campaign promise of a rent freeze inches closer to the finish line. On Thursday evening the Rent Guidelines Board, the independent body that decides on annual rental adjustments for the city’s one million rent stabilized apartments, issued its preliminary vote. Crowds of tenants showed up inside LaGuardia Community College in Queens as the board voted. It set a range between 0 and 2 percent for one-year leases and between 0 and 4 percent for two-year leases. These numbers aren’t binding, but the final vote, which will happen at the end of June, traditionally falls within the ranges (which means the rent freeze is still a possibility).

The annual meetings are always something of a circus and this year is only more amped up with Mamdani’s promise of a freeze. (There were all the usual boos when the owner representatives proposed a larger increase and chants in support of the tenant member’s proposed rent rollback.) There are nine members on the board, and six of them were appointed by Mamdani, giving him the majority he needs. The board, though, is supposed to act independently and consider the data. Its research shows that between 2023 and 2024, the net operating income for buildings containing rent-stabilized units was up in every borough except the Bronx — city-wide, it increased by 6 percent. (Landlords of this type of housing, however, have always claimed that without being able to raise the rents, they will not have the income to maintain and improve their buildings or pay off their loans.)

So what does this preliminary vote mean? There are some clues from the past — the board has enacted a rent freeze for one-year leases three times under Bill de Blasio, in 2015, 2016, and 2020. Each time the preliminary vote has included a range that set zero percent as the bottom end for one-year leases. But it was only in 2020 that a preliminary vote for a two-year lease proposed a partial freeze — zero percent for the first year, and 1 percent for the second year. (Ultimately that was what the board adopted.)

Organizations like Tenants Bloc are pushing for a freeze not only on one-year leases, but two-year leases as well. If this happens, it would be the first full freeze of two-year leases in the board’s 57-year history. The preliminary vote puts a freeze on the table, but the final vote, in June, is still yet to come.

Sign Up for the Curbed Newsletter

A daily mix of stories about cities, city life, and our always evolving neighborhoods and skylines.

Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice

Related