New York City freezes rents for one million apartments in a victory for Mayor Mamdani

[NEW YORK] A New York City housing board voted on Thursday (Jun 26) to freeze the rents for about one million regulated apartments for up to two years, fulfilling a central campaign promise of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, only months into his term.

The seven-to-one vote by the city’s Rent Guidelines Board set increases at zero on both one-year and two-year leases from October.

Hundreds of tenants, who crowded into a Manhattan museum auditorium, cheered and blew whistles at the result.

“This is a historic victory for New York City tenants,” Mamdani said. “This is the relief that working people across our city deserve.”

The vote was the culmination of a weeks-long, noisy annual ritual that determines how much landlords can increase the amount they charge for rent-stabilised apartments, home to about a quarter of New Yorkers.

The board weighs factors including wages, inflation, maintenance costs, taxes and landlords’ incomes.

The average monthly rent for a regulated apartment was US$1,599, the board’s 2025 study showed, in a city where the median rent for a newly leased apartment is US$3,950, said listings agency StreetEasy.

Mamdani, a democratic socialist who has promised to make the city more affordable, has appointed six of the board’s nine members since he took office in January, choosing people he believes are sympathetic to tenants.

Board member quits

But hours before the vote on Thursday, a member representing landlords said this amounted to stacking the board and resigned, accusing the body of not following its obligations under the law to be unbiased.

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In resigning, Christina Smyth, an appointee of Mamdani’s predecessor and one of two landlord representatives on the board, said the outcome had been predetermined by the mayor.

“The rebuilt board was required to deliver a rent freeze,” she said. “Everything since has been theatre.”

Board chair Chantella Mitchell, a Mamdani appointee, said the board’s members and staff served with independence and integrity.

The other landlord representative on the board, Mamdani appointee Maksim Wynn, was booed by tenants as he read a lengthy statement before the vote.

But the crowd’s anger turned to delight when he wrapped up several minutes later and voted in favour of the freeze.

At public hearings in the run-up to the vote, tenants demanded a rent freeze – something that happened three times under Mayor Bill de Blasio between 2015 and 2021 for one-year leases only – or even a rent decrease, saying incomes were not keeping up with inflation and soaring bills.

Landlord groups contended a rent freeze would only make it harder for property owners to maintain their buildings and said some were not able to cover their mortgages.

Some landlords, from “mom-and-pop” owners of a single building to wealthy private equity investors, say they are forced to hike rents on unregulated, market-rate apartments to recoup losses on their rent-stabilised units.

After his election, Mamdani moved from a roughly US$2,300-a-month one-bedroom rent-regulated Queens apartment to the mayor’s five-bedroom official residence in Manhattan.

Thursday’s vote extended his successful week.

He also celebrated the victory of all three left-wing candidates in hotly contested races to become Democratic Party nominees for New York seats in the US Congress. REUTERS