About 1.1 million New Yorkers living in downtown housing will be stuck with the city’s rent freeze bill, according to the only member of the New York City Rent Guidelines Board who is an economist and voted “no” on the freeze.
Arpit Gupta, who was appointed by former Mayor Eric Adams to the board, said landlords may pay market rents, as rental markets with tenants are encouraged to stay together and owners are forced to take vacant homes off the market.
“I see this as trying to breathe with one lung,” said Gupta, an economist and Associate Professor of Finance at New York University’s Stern School of Business.
“You’ve got one part of the housing market now that’s going to be frozen, so all the demand has to be accommodated in market-rate units, so I expect higher rent pressure for those.”
The RGB accepted Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s key campaign promise of a two-year “rent freeze” on Thursday by a 7-1 vote — in a move that saw Christina Smyth, one of two landlord representatives on the board, resign in hours of protest before the vote, denouncing the whole thing as “theatrics.”
“Hearings, reports, public comment, information. None of it will change the outcome,” Smyth said.
About 1.3 million of the city’s 2.3 million rental units are outside the stable system, including 1.1 million market rate, the most common type of rental, which represents 48% of units, according to RGB’s 2026 Housing Supply report.
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There are 960,700 stable units across the five housing units according to the same report, but 57,000 of them remain vacant. That’s a record 9,000 more than last year, according to a county Department of Housing and Community Renewal letter sent to RGB earlier this month.
What’s worse is that about 30% of stable renters earn six figures, according to income data from the NYC Housing and Vacancy Survey.
Until recently that included Mamdani himself, who lived in a $2,300 Astoria apartment despite making $142,000 in county and family income, before moving into Gracie Mansion in January.
“The important thing is that the stable rent is not limited or targeted in any way,” says Gupta. “A lot of people in market-rate housing are very poor … and they’re going to face higher rent pressures and a lot of poor people are going to suffer as a result.”
The Guptas also predicted that this freeze will leave stable rental housing gathering dust instead of building for New Yorkers. Already, 10% of those properties are losing money instead of making it – with thousands of units facing foreclosure.
“The cost of renovating a vacant unit can be very high, and now the owners may not see any legal way to recoup the cost of renovating a new unit,” he said.
Gupta said some board members voted yes — despite the sad details — because they thought taxpayers would end up footing the bill under a Socialist mayor.
“They believe that many city services can and will work to support these buildings.“
