The Rent Guidelines Board approved a 0% rent increase on one- and two-year leases Thursday night, delivering New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani perhaps his largest political win to date and angering some of the city’s landlords.
The freeze passed in a 7-1 vote, with only Arpit Gupta, an economist who was appointed to the board in 2022 by then-mayor Eric Adams, voting no.
But it was Maksim Wynn‘s statement that stoked controversy at the meeting.
“As the owner’s representative, my primary concern is ensuring that rent stabilized buildings,” he began, before being largely drowned out by a raucous crowd who chanted, blew whistles, and booed for the near-entirety of his statement.
Wynn cited concerns about the financial health of the city’s buildings and the risk of more of the city’s housing stock falling into distress—something that could, he argued, hurt tenants—before ultimately voting to freeze the rent.
His concerns were largely echoed by landlords, economists, and other experts ahead of the vote, who warn that a rent freeze could deepen the very housing crisis that Mamdani has promised to end.
That didn’t stop the mayor from celebrating. “This is a historic victory for New York City tenants,” he said via statement following the vote. “This is the relief that working people across our city deserve.”
Landlords react in anger
“This vote was an absolute farce,” Ann Korchak, president of the Small Property Owners of New York (SPONY), a majority of whose members own 100% rent-stabilized buildings, shared via statement immediately following the decision.
Korchak suggested that landlords’ interests were not adequately represented after Christina Smyth, an RGB member appointed by Adams to represent the interests of building owners, resigned earlier in the day out of protest.
“The vote should’ve been postponed until a new owner representative could be appointed,” Korchack added. “The resignation of the only principled RGB member and the board’s only meaningful advocate for small owners validated our greatest fear, that the majority Mamdani-appointed RGB would cave to the political demands of City Hall.”
It was those demands that Smyth cited herself in her resignation letter, suggesting that the vote would “not be administered the way the law requires.”
“Instead of balancing the needs of renters and owners to maintain the health and stability of the city’s rent-stabilized housing stock, Mamdani’s RGB unleashed what will be irreparable destruction on affordable housing, small owners, and the millions of New Yorkers we house,” said Korchak.
Both sides cite higher costs
At the heart of the issue is the rising costs that supporters of the freeze say is pushing tenants to a breaking point, even as building owners sound the alarm that those same rising costs are threatening the city’s housing stock. Both sides have plenty of data to back up their claims.
Just over half of all New York City tenants are rent burdened, meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on rent—but that number climbs to as high as 75% when looking at the the lowest income households, according to research from NYU Furman Center. For these renters, if they live in a regulated apartment, the freeze represents a potential savings of hundreds of dollars a year and a potential lifeline.
In 2024, the most recent year for which data is available, the average legal stabilized rent was $2,121, while the average rent actually collected was $1,681. Just a 2% increase, which the board also considered, would have cost a tenant an extra $400 to $500 per year.
But building owners are also under pressure from rising costs. The RGB’s Price Index of Operating Costs study found that operating costs for rent-stabilized buildings rose 5.3%. Insurance costs rose 10.5%, following an 18.7% increase the year before.
“What may seem good for the tenants right now is likely to result in worse living conditions, as landlords delay or defer maintenance, and a shrinking rental supply, as landlords hold ‘underwater’ units off market rather than renting them out at a loss,” explains Jake Krimmel, senior economist at Realtor.com®.
“Rent freezes on existing units make preservation more costly and would likely require more subsidy from the city,” he adds. “The proposed policy won’t just freeze rent—it will likely freeze renters in place too. In a city where mobility and vacancy rates are already so low, that’s also a step in the wrong direction. My worry is therefore that freezing rent on stabilized units will only push up market rents even further.”
