In the latest test of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s political power, the Rent Guidelines Board will vote on Thursday on how much landlords can raise rents on the city’s more than 1 million rent-stabilized apartments.
In May, the nine-member board put a 0% increase on the table, setting up Thursday’s vote as a major test of Mamdani’s campaign promise to freeze rents for stabilized tenants.
A vote to freeze rents would give the mayor another victory in a week already marked by wins. Candidates backed by Mamdani swept their respective elections on Tuesday, a result that shocked the Democratic establishment and further cemented his growing influence.
But housing experts warn that a freeze could create an unintended crisis of its own.
“Freezing rent sounds like a sure-fire way to solve housing affordability, but what I’m worried about is the unintended consequences on the rent-stabilized stock and market rate prices,” says Jake Krimmel, senior economist at Realtor.com®.
The concern is that holding rents flat while building costs continue to rise could leave landlords with less money to maintain apartments, repair aging buildings, and keep vacant units on the market. Over time, critics say, that could reduce the city’s already limited rental supply and make the broader affordability problem harder to solve.
The risk for rent-stabilized buildings
For his part, Mamdani has been clear about his motivations for freezing rent from the start.
More than half of renters in the city are rent-burdened—meaning they spend at least 30% of their income on rent, according to research from the NYU Furman Center—and Mamdani has fought to put these families’ needs first.
And yet, “Freezing rent on stabilized units, which make up about 41% of the city’s rental stock, means the companies and individuals that own those buildings will see their operating incomes frozen, too,” Krimmel explains.
Ann Korchak, board president of Small Property Owners of New York, echoed Krimmel’s concerns.
“If the RGB applied the data from its own research and reports to last month’s preliminary vote, it would’ve acknowledged that a minimum rent increase of 5.3% is needed to cover the steep increases in operating costs and expenses of rent-stabilized apartments,” she said in a statement to Realtor.com.
Korchak is referring to the Rent Guidelines Board’s April Price Index of Operating Costs study, which found that operating costs for rent-stabilized buildings rose 5.3%. Insurance costs rose 10.5%, following an 18.7% increase the year before.
Mamdani has announced a city-backed insurance program intended to moderate some of those expenses. But the program is not yet operational, and major questions remain about which owners and buildings it would cover.
“This sets us up for failure, depriving small owners of the resources needed to maintain, repair and operate our buildings,” Korchack added.
That’s why Krimmel says a freeze intended to relieve the city’s most housing-cost-burdened renters could ultimately weaken the housing they depend on.
“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.”
The city is already grappling with an estimated 50,000 “ghost apartments,” or rent-stabilized units that sit vacant rather than being returned to the rental market.
A rent freeze, critics argue, could make that problem harder to solve by further reducing the incentive to renovate vacant apartments and bring them back online.
“Rent freezes on existing units make preservation more costly and would likely require more subsidy from the city,” says Krimmel. It has the potential to also freeze renters in place.
That concern comes as New Yorkers are already staying in their apartments longer. In 2024, 89.3% of New York City renters remained in the same unit they occupied one year earlier, up from 85.9% in 2010, according to research from Realtor.com. Nationally, the renter stay-in-place rate rose from 69.3% in 2010 to 78.4% in 2024.
“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,” he says.
Could a rent freeze push rents higher?
At first glance, the idea might seem counterintuitive: How could holding rents flat today contribute to higher rents tomorrow?
Krimmel points to a 2019 study of San Francisco rent control, which found that the policy reduced rental housing supply by 15% as some owners sold buildings to owner-occupants or redeveloped them into higher-end condominiums.
“Again, this highlights the unintended consequences of rent control on urban housing markets,” he adds.
The lesson, Krimmel says, is that landlords don’t simply absorb policy changes without changing how they operate.
“They’re not passive and they respond to incentives, so when their bottom line gets further squeezed—especially against the backdrop of rising insurance, energy, and property tax expenses—expect there to be an equal and opposite reaction.”
In San Francisco, that reaction included a smaller rental supply and more higher-end owner-occupied housing.
New York’s market is different, and converting rent-stabilized buildings into condominiums can be expensive and difficult. But Krimmel warns that owners who can’t make the economics work may instead leave apartments vacant, delay repairs, or pull back on longer-term building investment—as some already have.
That would present a difficult early challenge for the Mamdani administration. The mayor’s rent-freeze push is meant to protect tenants facing some of the country’s highest housing costs, and it comes alongside broader promises to lower housing costs for all. But the success of his housing agenda may ultimately depend on whether the city can pair tenant relief with enough financial support and enforcement to keep rent-stabilized buildings safe, occupied, and viable.
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