Advocates hailed Zohran Mamdani’s victory as a win for rent-burdened tenants, while building owner groups decried his proposed rent freeze as a threat to the city’s stabilized housing stock.
A year ago, then newly-announced mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani ran the New York City marathon with a promise on his t-shirt: “Eric Adams raised my rent,” it read. “Zohran will freeze it.”
On Election Day Tuesday, his message proved a compelling one to voters. More than 2 million people showed up at the polls—a level of turnout not seen since 1969—and more than 1 million cast their ballots for Mamdani, a 34-year-old assemblymember who’ll take office at City Hall come January.
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His win caps a contentious election season where much of the debate focused on the city’s cost of living crisis—and in particular, its impact on renters, who make up 69 percent of households in the five boroughs. Roughly 2 million live in rent-stabilized apartments and would be affected by Mamdani’s rent freeze, if he’s successful in pulling it off.
“Tenants are the majority in New York. In June, we sent a clear message to the real estate industry: you can’t buy this city. Tonight, tenants beat back millions to prove it again,” Cea Weaver, director of the New York State Tenant Bloc, said in a statement Tuesday night following Mamdani’s win. “We are ready to freeze the rent with the mayor-elect.”
Stabilized tenants, whose rent changes are set each year by the mayoral-appointed Rent Guidelines Board, saw four hikes in a row under outgoing Mayor Eric Adams.
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These households have a median income of 60,000 a year, and despite the regulated status of their homes, 46 percent are rent-burdened, meaning they spend at least a third of their earnings on housing. More than half of the city’s renters more widely meet that definition.
“We are at a pivotal moment. New York City faces a severe affordability crisis that no Mayor can solve alone,” the Association for Neighborhood Housing and Development (ANHD), a community development and advocacy group, said in a statement Tuesday. “Families throughout the city are unable to afford rent and other necessities.”
But property owner groups, and some affordable housing experts, argue a flat rent freeze is the wrong way to address that problem. They say owners of buildings with stabilized units, particularly those with few or no market-rate apartments that can charge higher rents, need annual increases to offset other rising costs, like insurance and taxes.
Freezing rents will give those building owners less to draw from to make repairs and maintain aging properties, critics argue. A recent report from Enterprise Community Partners and the National Equity Fund, two groups that work in affordable housing, found that more than half (57 percent) of the more than 400 affordable projects it analyzed took in less revenue than what they spent in 2024.
A rent freeze would “destroy rent-stabilized housing,” Kenny Burgos, CEO of the New York Apartment Association, which represents rent regulated building owners, said in a statement Tuesday. “Thousands of buildings are in deep fiscal distress and bankruptcies are growing. If nothing is done, the city will lose this vital housing forever,” Burgos said.
Mamdani has countered such criticism by saying his administration would look to help struggling landlords by tackling rising insurance and property tax rates.
Beyond a rent freeze, Mamdani’s housing plan calls for building 200,000 “truly affordable” apartments, and expanding city programs that finance homes for seniors and very low-income tenants. He’s pledged to double the city’s capital funding for NYCHA repairs, and says he’ll push Albany to invest more in public housing.
“We will hold bad landlords to account because the Donald Trumps of our city have grown far too comfortable taking advantage of their tenants,” he said in his victory speech Tuesday night. “We will work tirelessly to make lights shine again in the hallways of NYCHA developments where they have long flickered.”
On Wednesday, Mamdani announced the first members of his transition team, led by Maria Torres-Springer—a veteran of city government who most recently served as deputy mayor for housing under Mayor Adams (she resigned from that post in February).
“I love that there is ambition in his and many other plans. It’s clear that the number one issue is affordability,” Torres-Springer told City Limits in a July interview about Mamdani, and housing more generally this election cycle.
The mayor elect nodded to the ambitiousness of his plans during his election night speech. While some have deemed his ideas unrealistic—including his rent freeze proposal, which could be hard to achieve, at least at first, if Mayor Adams appoints new Rent Guidelines Board members on his way out the door.
But Mamdani maintains he can get it done.
“Democrats can dare to be great,” he told his future constituents Tuesday. “Our greatness will be anything but abstract. It will be felt by every rent-stabilized tenant who wakes up on the first of every month knowing the amount they’re going to pay hasn’t soared since the month before.”
To reach the editor, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org
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The post ‘Ready to Freeze the Rent’: Housing Groups React to Mamdani’s Mayoral Win appeared first on City Limits.
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