Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani has pledged to “freeze the rent” for tenants in New York City's 1 million regulated apartments — a three-word vow that's helped catapult him to front-runner status in the mayoral race.
But getting it done may require him to fire members of the city's Rent Guidelines Board if he wins the general election on Nov. 4 and takes office in January.
That’s where things get complicated, rent law experts say.
The nine-member board votes each year to raise or — as it's done on only three occasions in its nearly six-decade history — freeze rents on stabilized apartments. Six of the current members are continuing to serve on a temporary basis after their original terms expired, meaning the current or next mayor could simply reappoint or replace them.
Mayor Eric Adams is now considering picking appointees for terms that would last well into his successor’s tenure, the New York Post first reported Friday. The effort could stymie Mamdani's key campaign promise to appoint board members who would vote to hold rents steady over the next four years — unless Mamdani, if elected mayor, seeks to remove any potential Adams appointees.
Removing members before their terms expire is possible, but it’s never been done and would likely set up a legal battle with no clear outcome, according to rent law experts.
The state's rent stabilization laws don't provide much clarity. They empower a mayor to get rid of board members, but only "for cause” and after they have “an opportunity to be heard.” Yet the provision doesn’t define “cause” or indicate who would preside at a hearing, and has never been tested, said former Rent Guidelines Board Executive Director Timothy Collins, who wrote the body’s official history.
Still, a mayor has never tried to pack the panel with appointees on his way out of City Hall, according to a review of past mayoral appointments.
“This would be unprecedented,” Collins said. “Last-minute appointments intended to bind a future mayor have never been done in the 56-year history of the Rent Guidelines Board.”
Collins said a Mayor Mamdani could ask current members to resign and, if they refuse, fire them. But he said the members could then sue to challenge their removals.
Veteran landlord attorney Sherwin Belkin said the mayor would probably lose in court, unless they could prove the members committed “wrongdoing or some failure to comport with the actual requirements of the Rent Guidelines Board.”
“It would be a heavy lift,” Belkin said. “It doesn’t seem to me a simple, open-ended ‘you're out because I want you out.’”
A spokesperson for the city’s Law Department declined to comment on what “for cause” might mean in the rent-stabilization laws.
My approach to the use of power will be to actually utilize it.
There is some precedent for attempts to remove members, but not by the mayor. In the early 1990s, the Rent Stabilization Association, a lobbying group for landlords, twice contested the appointment of members they deemed too sympathetic to tenants. But both challenges failed, according to a history on the Rent Guidelines Board website.
Mamdani has said he would consider flexing his authority over the board's composition to remove members. During an appearance on the Hell Gate podcast Friday, he said he would still expect to preside over a rent freeze in his first year in office as mayor, even if Adams appointed new members on his way out of Gracie Mansion.
“My approach to the use of power will be to actually utilize it,” Mamdani said. “What I mean by that is you look at Republicans, they seem to have no limits in their imagination or how they want to use power. And as Democrats, it's like we're constructing an ever-lowering ceiling.”
The Rent Guidelines Board annually holds a series of public hearings and a vote to determine how much landlords can legally increase rents on stabilized apartments. Under Adams, the board has raised rent by an average of 3% a year, while under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, it voted to freeze rents in 2015, 2016 and 2020.
Mamdani currently lives in a rent-stabilized apartment in Astoria, and his pledge to freeze rents has underscored his focus on affordability as a defining issue in the election. Households in rent-stabilized units earn a median income of $60,000 a year, according to board data.
Mamdani's plan has earned consistent criticism from landlords and many housing experts, as well as rebukes from other candidates in the race. They say it could lead to higher rents on tenants in market-rate apartments and could plunge buildings into financial distress in some cases where landlords aren’t earning enough to cover their costs.
Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is running as an independent, called Mamdani’s pledge “political blather” at a debate sponsored by WNYC last week and has said the mayor can’t instruct the Rent Guidelines Board on what to do without members first weighing the economic outlook for tenants and landlords. Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa hasn’t ruled out a rent freeze, but has said such a move would depend on the board’s annual analysis of renter and owner finances.
Adams has repeatedly argued a rent freeze would harm smaller property owners and discourage new housing construction.
City Hall spokesperson Kayla Mamelak did not deny that Adams, who endorsed Cuomo last week, is considering making more appointments to the board on his way out the door.
“Just as he inherited appointees from the Rent Guidelines Board when he took office, Mayor Adams has the authority to appoint members to the board,” she said. “As with any potential appointments, we would announce them if and when they are final.”
Mamelak did not answer questions about how many people the mayor or city officials have talked with about serving on the Rent Guidelines Board.
Eleonora Srugo, a real estate agent and reality TV star who is a close friend of Adams, told Gothamist an official from the mayor's community affairs unit reached out to her last week to see if she was interested in becoming a board member. She declined to name the official in an interview Friday, saying she would consider the opportunity if “called to serve," but noting she is focused on her TV and real estate career.
“I submitted some credentials, and then it’s obviously a very long and extensive background check process,” said Srugo, who appears in the Netflix series “Selling the City.” “I haven't pursued it yet because it's time-consuming.”
