Mayor Zohran Mamdani is on the verge of a key victory when his hand-picked Rent Guidelines Board convenes Thursday night to decide the future of 1 million rent-stabilized apartments.
The nine-member board is considering its first-ever two-year rent freeze, a decision that could fulfill Mamdani’s campaign pledge to keep rents flat for tenants in regulated units. His viral “freeze the rent” pledge formed one of the key pillars of his successful run for mayor, during which he vowed to make New York City more affordable — at least for the 2 million or so tenants living in regulated apartments.
The vote comes two nights after Mamdani’s slate of endorsed candidates swept congressional primaries across the five boroughs, and a week after he presided over the Knicks’ first championship celebration in over 50 years.
But the freeze is not guaranteed. The board agreed last month to consider a range of potential increases as high as 2% on new one-year leases and 4% on new two-year leases.
The annual decision, scheduled to take place this year at El Museo del Barrio in East Harlem, attracts a typically raucous crowd of tenants who noisily demand a rent freeze, denounce their landlords and shout down any proposal to increase prices from board members.
Public hearings leading up to this year’s vote have also featured stunts from landlord groups that oppose a freeze and a Mamdani-led “mass engagement” effort to spur more testimony from tenants than usual.
Mamdani has himself backed off publicly calling for a rent freeze since he took office in the face of potential legal challenges over undue influence in board decision-making. Though its members are appointed by the mayor, the Rent Guidelines Board remains an independent panel tasked with considering financial data and tenant and landlord testimony before arriving at its decision.
What that data reveals differs depending on where one stands on the tenant versus landlord divide. The impact of a freeze also varies based on tenant income.
For many renters, an increase of a few percentage points would be easy to absorb, amounting to $100 or less a month in many instances. But for others barely getting by in the Big Apple, it could strain an already dire financial situation.
Astoria tenant Farhana Rahman, 45, said she and her husband pay $2,200 a month for their one-bedroom apartment, which they share with their teenaged son. She said the rent already amounts to around 60% of their monthly earnings — double the 30% threshold considered “rent-burdened” by the federal government.
Rahman said her husband is a ride-share driver and that their income depends on his ability to work long hours for modest pay.
“When he has to take days off, it just adds so much more pressure,” she said. “When my husband is sick, he can’t drive.”
The Rent Guidelines Board at a hearing on June 16, 2026
A rent increase, even a modest one, would add to the strain, she said.
Rent Guidelines Board data shows more than half of tenants in rent-stabilized apartments are considered rent-burdened, while nearly a third spend at least 50% of their earnings on rent.
Private landlords counter that they are not part of the city’s social safety net and need more money to run their buildings, as well as steadily rising revenue to demonstrate to lenders that they could repay loans.
Kenny Burgos, head of the landlord lobbying group New York Apartment Association, said a modest monthly increase wouldn’t make that much of a difference for landlords on a single-apartment basis. But he said the numbers add up across dozens of units.
He gave the example of a $45-a-month increase — 3% of a $1,500 monthly rent — which would add up to $21,600 for a 40-unit building.
“That is a decent chunk of change to help a building function,” he said. “Sure, it doesn’t absorb an infrastructure upgrade but it can be helpful for a policy change on insurance that went up $1,000.”
Owners have pointed to spiking insurance rates in their calls for a rent increase. On Wednesday, Mamdani released a request for proposals for a new city-backed insurance program that could cover some apartment buildings at lower rates than the private market.
But some housing policy experts say most owners are already doing well enough financially to withstand a rent freeze that would go a long way in helping many tenants.
“It's just not that costly to the landlords if you do a short-term rent freeze, and it can provide significant relief for the consumer,” said Emily Eisner, the chief economist at the left-leaning Fiscal Policy Institute.
Landlords’ net operating income — the amount left over after expenses, but before mortgage payments — increased by more than 6% in buildings with at least one rent-stabilized unit, according to 2024 data examined by the Rent Guidelines Board. Property owner advocates say the increase is driven by surging revenue in much of Manhattan below West 110th and East 96th streets and obscures financial distress in other parts of the city, like some buildings in the Bronx.
Eisner called for targeted programs to restructure debt for some landlords, offset property taxes and cover renovations in buildings where expenses outpace rent revenue.
She said tenants should not have to shoulder the cost of rising expenses outside their control, such as insurance premiums.
”These are all areas where we could address the rising cost side rather than just trying to have tenants bear those costs,” Eisner said.
Some affordable housing groups have also tried to split the difference between calling for a rent increase and tackling more systemic problems.
Patrick Boyle, senior policy director at the nonprofit affordable housing finance organization Enterprise, said the board’s decision is a small piece of a larger puzzle facing policymakers and owners of rent-stabilized apartments.
No realistic increase in rent would address problems like an imbalanced property tax system that imposes disproportionately high tax rates on apartment buildings and other rising costs that threaten government-subsidized housing.
“We’re talking about very small percentage points either way,” Boyle said. “You’re never going to get housing owners saying zero percent is helpful, but there are so many more issues.”
