{"id":33932,"date":"2025-07-03T00:26:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-03T00:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/33932\/"},"modified":"2025-07-03T00:26:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T00:26:10","slug":"mamdanis-rent-freeze-will-warp-nycs-housing-and-hurt-us-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/33932\/","title":{"rendered":"Mamdani’s rent freeze will warp NYC’s housing \u2014 and hurt us all"},"content":{"rendered":"

The city\u2019s Rent Guidelines Board boldly embraced common sense<\/a> Monday by voting to permit rent increases for the city\u2019s nearly one million rent-stabilized apartments \u2014 modest ones of 3% for one-year and 4.5% for two-year leases.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was a courageous move in today\u2019s political climate.<\/p>\n

Of course, struggling property owners should be able to collect enough rent to cover their rising expenses \u2014 insurance, property taxes, utility costs, not to mention sheer overall inflation.<\/p>\n

Yet Zohran Mamdani, city Democrats\u2019 mayoral nominee, is only doubling down on his promise<\/a> not to raise, but to freeze regulated rents.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve seen this rent-freeze movie before, though \u2014 and we should be grateful to the RGB for not green-lighting a sequel.<\/p>\n

Former two-term Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has endorsed Mamdani\u2019s rent-freeze pledge, did just that three times during his eight years in office, and throughout his tenure his RGB appointees never approved an increase of more than 1.5%.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As a result, the city reaped a whirlwind of deferred maintenance and health hazards.<\/p>\n

In 2021, the federal Census Bureau\u2019s New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey <\/a>told the de Blasio era\u2019s sorry housing story: It found \u2014 in its understated bureaucratic language \u2014 \u00a0\u201ca higher prevalence of most individual maintenance deficiencies relative to earlier cycles.\u201d<\/p>\n

Translation: Freezing rents resulted in crumbling apartments.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The report compared the condition of rent-stabilized units with those that are unregulated \u2014 and its results should be eye-opening for those wanting to follow in de Blasio\u2019s footsteps.<\/p>\n

As de Blasio left office, 33% of rent-stabilized units (316,000 apartments) had rodents, twice as many as unregulated ones.<\/p>\n

Roughly twice as many regulated apartments were found to have leaks, heating breakdowns, broken plaster or peeling paint, toilet malfunctions, elevator outages and mold.<\/p>\n

As much as progressives may want to blame greedy slumlords for all these woes, the reality is that squeezing rental income \u2014 for property owners who must pay banks that certainly won\u2019t freeze mortgage payments \u2014 means repairs and improvements are more likely to be put off<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Something had to give, and under de Blasio, it did.<\/p>\n

The 2021 report also pointed to what has since become an increasing trend: \u201cghost apartments\u201d \u2014 units simply held off the market because the cost of repairing and operating them makes them money-losers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2021 more than 28,000 units were off the market because they were \u201cawaiting renovation,\u201d as the Census Bureau report optimistically put it. Another 27,000 were off the market for \u201cother\u201d reasons.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even as overall housing supply increased, under de Blasio the city saw \u201ca continued net loss of the lowest-cost units and a net increase of higher-cost units relative to 2017.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In other words, high-end units not subject to rent stabilization were increasing. The mayor so intent on addressing inequality actually ushered in the opposite.<\/p>\n

This is what a rent freeze leads to:\u00a0Apartments that are pest-infested and shabby \u2014 or simply not on the market at all.<\/p>\n

Under Mayor Eric Adams, whose signature \u201cCity of Yes\u201d initiative seeks to increase housing construction rather than freeze rent, the city has seen an increase of 275,000 occupied housing units (153,000 rentals and 123,000 owner-occupied).<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not been nearly enough to loosen a super-tight housing market with a vacancy rate of just 1.4% percent \u2014 and it reflects developers\u2019 reluctance to build, for fear that even new units might become subject to rent regulation, as federally subsidized units are.<\/p>\n

Developers have been put off as well by the end of a state property-tax abatement law that meant to encourage more residential housing. The replacement law allows fewer of the higher-income units that help projects make economic sense.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And, as always, low turnover in rent-regulated units \u2014 where residents stay put because they\u2019ve got such a good deal \u2014 increases the demand for non-regulated apartments, pushing up their rents.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s little doubt a Mayor Mamdani would appoint a Rent Guidelines Board friendly to his rent freeze. After all, it\u2019s his signature issue.<\/p>\n

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He\u2019ll have to ignore what that board has been told by Mark Willis of the Furman Center on Real Estate at NYU: that owners of\u00a0rent-stabilized properties in The Bronx are, on average, losing a stunning $120 per month on every apartment, leaving 200,000 units, concentrated in that borough, under \u201csevere distress.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

If you think we can\u2019t return to the bad old days of \u201cThe Bronx is burning,\u201d think again.<\/p>\n

And don\u2019t buy city Comptroller Brad Lander\u2019s snake-oil claim that regulated landlords are making a killing.\u00a0Yes, they earned a 12% return this year \u2014 but only after four years of zero net operating income.<\/p>\n

New Yorkers can see for themselves the damage wrought by a combination of artificially low rents and deferred maintenance.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Just look at the city\u2019s 177,000 public housing units, where chronic elevator breakdowns trap residents in their homes and constant heating outages leave them shivering. <\/p>\n

A rent freeze will bring us housing equality, all right \u2014 if you define that as equally poor conditions in both public and private rent-regulated apartments.<\/p>\n

Howard Husock is an American Enterprise Institute senior fellow and author of \u201cThe Poor Side of Town \u2014 And Why We Need It.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The city\u2019s Rent Guidelines Board boldly embraced common sense Monday by voting to permit rent increases for the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":33933,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,11096,7065,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,1269,8167,24845,10560,24667,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,5301],"class_list":{"0":"post-33932","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-apartments","10":"tag-housing","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-newyork","14":"tag-newyorkcity","15":"tag-ny","16":"tag-nyc","17":"tag-opinion","18":"tag-rent","19":"tag-rent-stabilization","20":"tag-rentals","21":"tag-tenants","22":"tag-united-states","23":"tag-united-states-of-america","24":"tag-unitedstates","25":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","26":"tag-us","27":"tag-usa","28":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114786466898682639","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33932","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=33932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}