NYC imposed a rent freeze on 1M stabilized units after Mamdani was accused of jumping the board.
New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board approved a key campaign promise by Mayor Zohran Mamdani to “freeze rents” on Thursday — a move landlord advocates slammed as “a sham.”
The board passed a two-year moratorium on both one-year and two-year leases for the Big Apple’s roughly $1 million by a 7-1 vote. Arpit Gupta, who was appointed to replace Mamdani Eric Adams, is the one to be voted out.
It comes hours after the public resignation of one of the nine members of the RGB, Christina Smyth, who accused the panel of ignoring its input during the lengthy process of deciding whether to fix the rent – saying the decision was made “last year in the campaign.”
The board “ceased to be a fact-finding body” and was reconstituted “to bring about rent restrictions” no matter what, Smyth, one of two landlord advocates on the board, wrote in his bitter resignation letter.
“Everything else was theater,” he wrote. “The hearings, the reports, the public comment, the information. None of it would have changed the outcome.”
Smyth was one of three members appointed by former Mayor Eric Adams. Mamdani appointed six other members after taking office this year.
Hizzoner also claimed the board was independent, noting that it had been conducting “both fact-finding and evidence-finding” for months before the highly anticipated vote.
“I am looking forward to the result and the decision they will make,” he said on Thursday.
The vote, at a meeting at El Museo del Barrio in Upper Manhattan, drew boos from a crowd of many tenant groups.
For months, landlords have been raising the alarm about the dangers of rent cuts while costs continue to rise.
A report released by the Rent Guidelines Board in April revealed that rental insurance increased by 10.5% year-on-year by 2026, while fuel and maintenance increased by 11% and 6% respectively.
“The resignation of the RGB’s only legal member and reasonable board representative of small owners confirmed our greatest fear, that the majority of the RGB appointed by Mamdani will submit to the political demands of City Hall,” said Ann Korchak, president of the board of Small Property Owners New York.
RGB has only frozen rent three times in its history – all under Mayor Bill de Blasio, in 2015, 2016 and 2020, and all for one-year terms.
Mamdani’s political house, the Democratic Socialists of America, had already tipped him to win on Thursday before the vote.
“A few days after the candidates sweep their ballots, we will bring rent restrictions to millions of New Yorkers!”
Mamdani launched a plan in April for a new, privately owned, city-backed insurance plan aimed at reducing the cost of rental properties. But City Hall has yet to release important details about the plan to be launched in 2027.
