NEW YORK (BLOOMBERG) — Outgoing Mayor Eric Adams is racing to fill key positions before Zohran Mamdani takes office, including on the powerful Rent Guidelines Board, which could undermine the incoming mayor’s pledge to freeze rents on more than 1 million stabilized apartments.
First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro said Adams plans to appoint and reappoint several members to the rental board before he steps down at year-end and is considering candidates who have put their names forward to fill vacant spots. The mayor could secure a majority of appointees whose terms would extend beyond Adams’s final days in office, Mastro said in an interview.
“It’s a nine-person board,” Mastro said. “At least five of the people on that board would be people who were either appointed by Mayor Adams before or could be appointed by Mayor Adams to continue” into 2026.
The board’s composition will be critical for Mamdani, whose rent-freeze platform was central to his election victory. A stacked board could blunt his efforts, at least in his first year.
The Mamdani transition team didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Even as rents have increased on price-stabilized units, landlords and business groups say rental income is failing to keep up with faster inflation and higher costs. They say Mamdani’s plans would be disastrous for property finances, warning that it would shrink housing supply. Tenant and housing advocates view a rent freeze as essential relief after years of rising rents.
The current mayor and members of his administration share the concerns of the potential damage to quality, costs and supply from a rent freeze, Bloomberg reported earlier, citing a person with knowledge of the matter.
The Mamdani transition team didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Photo credit Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Only the chair can be removed from the board by the mayor without proving cause. Two members of the panel are supposed to represent tenants and often vote in favor of rent freezes. One of the seats Adams can fill represents tenants. Earlier this year the board approved a 3% price increase for one-year leases by a narrow margin.
In the interview, Mastro also criticized leaders in the City Council for trying to stymie appointments and reappointments requested in September, including five nominees for the Board of Health and two for the City Planning Commission. Two nominees were rejected earlier on Tuesday by a City Council committee. The full council was scheduled to vote later in the day.
He accused City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams (no relation to the mayor) of an “abrogation of public duty” by trying to thwart candidates he described as “impeccably well qualified” and most of whom either currently serve or have served on their respective boards for multiple terms.
“The mayor’s office complaints are disingenuous and lack credibility,” Adrienne Adams said in an emailed response to questions. “Mayor Adams’ administration failed to fill months-long vacancies until the final two months of his term, after he has tried meddling with Rent Guidelines Board appointments in a bad faith effort to undermine the incoming mayoral administration.”
The council wrote in a letter to the nominees that end-of-term appointments by Adams wouldn’t be approved “out of deference” to the results of the election and the incoming administration.
The Adams administration’s scramble comes amid a broader transition struggle between the outgoing mayor and the incoming democratic socialist, who is expected to shift City Hall’s stance not only on housing affordability but by scaling back mayoral control over city schools.
Mastro said the Adams administration is also reviewing vacancies on the Panel for Educational Policy, the oversight board for New York’s public schools.
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