{"id":31321,"date":"2025-07-02T01:30:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-02T01:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/31321\/"},"modified":"2025-07-02T01:30:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T01:30:10","slug":"why-mamdanis-rent-freeze-means-disaster-for-nyc-tenants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/31321\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Mamdani’s rent freeze means disaster for NYC tenants"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York City\u2019s rental housing market<\/a> is teetering on the edge of disaster \u2014 with a Mamdani mayoralty poised to push it off the cliff.<\/p>\n

His success running as a \u201cfreeze the rent\u201d candidate has already moved the Rent Guidelines Board<\/a> to OK dangerously low hikes for rent-stabilized units: 3% for one-year lease renewals, 4.5% for two-year ones \u2014 far less than what RGB staff report those landlords\u2019 costs are rising at.<\/p>\n

Zero and near-zero rent hikes in the de Blasio years \u2014 RGB rents are up just 20% these last 12 years, vs. overall inflation of 36% \u2014 followed by widespread rent nonpayment during COVID (plus state \u201creforms\u201d that make it unaffordable to renovate units vacated by longtime tenants), already has many rent-stabilized landlords, especially smaller ones, on the brink of having to abandon their buildings altogether.<\/p>\n

Others have no choice but to stint on maintenance, letting buildings and units deteriorate; everyone loses as these apartments grow shabbier and more scarce. <\/p>\n

If Mamdani wins and sticks to his vow to appoint RGB members who\u2019ll freeze rents, the bottom is all too likely to fall out.<\/p>\n

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And the new mayor\u2019s fans will have a far tougher time finding a decent apartment in New York.<\/p>\n

By the way, how many Zohran supporters<\/a> realize that he can\u2019t freeze most rents?<\/p>\n

The rent-stabilized units that the RGB governs are less than half the city\u2019s formal rental market, and at most a third of the full city housing supply, once you count coops and condos (even if sublet) and actual houses. <\/p>\n

And a shrinking of the rent-controlled market is sure to push up prices of market-rate units, big time, because even more people will be chasing a smaller total supply. <\/p>\n

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Incidentally, this effect explains the \u201crecord landlord profits\u201d that Mamdani ally Brad Lander has been thundering about: It\u2019s landlord income from rents the city doesn\u2019t control.<\/p>\n

Small, mom-and-pop landlords, who own about two-thirds of city\u2019s rent-stabilized units, are the ones who\u2019ll get reamed by the freeze (even though they\u2019re the little people that lefties claim to care about).<\/p>\n

Tens of thousands of units are in dire shape in The Bronx alone. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Economists almost universally acknowledge that rent control is ruinous to housing markets; ones on the left mostly just don\u2019t talk about it, lest it make it harder for \u201ctheir side\u201d to win elections. <\/p>\n

The rent-freeze advocates have no idea how they\u2019re destroying New York\u2019s housing market \u2014 for the very people most desperate for apartments. <\/p>\n

They\u2019re also likely ignorant about who benefits from below-market rents \u2014 i.e., folks who, like Mamdani, scored a rent-stabilized apartment, which is actually easier if you\u2019re wealthy (as he is).<\/p>\n

One more irony here: The Supreme Court last year nixed New York landlords\u2019 claim that the rent laws violate the Constitution\u2019s \u201ctakings\u201d clause.<\/p>\n

Thing is, that ruling relied on the assumption that the RGB has real independence \u2014 a fiction that will collapse if Mamdani wins on promises platform of 0% hikes and then delivers. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York City\u2019s rental housing market is teetering on the edge of disaster \u2014 with a Mamdani mayoralty…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":31322,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,5297,11096,21481,21976,4691,7065,24668,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,1269,24845,10560,10452,278,24667,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,5301],"class_list":{"0":"post-31321","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-andrew-cuomo","10":"tag-apartments","11":"tag-bill-de-blasio","12":"tag-buildings","13":"tag-editorial","14":"tag-housing","15":"tag-landlords","16":"tag-new-york","17":"tag-new-york-city","18":"tag-newyork","19":"tag-newyorkcity","20":"tag-ny","21":"tag-nyc","22":"tag-opinion","23":"tag-rent-stabilization","24":"tag-rentals","25":"tag-socialism","26":"tag-supreme-court","27":"tag-tenants","28":"tag-united-states","29":"tag-united-states-of-america","30":"tag-unitedstates","31":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","32":"tag-us","33":"tag-usa","34":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31321\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}