Mamdani delivers promised rent freeze on 1 million rent-stabilized apartments

Source: Politico

06/25/2026 08:02 PM EDT


NEW YORK — Mayor Zohran Mamdani got another major win Thursday night when the Rent Guidelines Board voted to freeze rents on the city’s roughly 1 million rent-stabilized apartments. The mayor-appointed panel voted 7-1 to freeze rents on both one- and two-year leases, an unprecedented move that came despite protests from landlords that it would push them into deeper financial straits.

The freeze, which will cover some 2 million tenants, will take effect for leases signed starting in October. “This is a historic victory for New York City tenants,” Mamdani said in a statement after the vote. “After reviewing the data and hearing from New Yorkers across the city, the independent RGB has delivered a freeze on one-year leases, and the first-ever freeze on two- year leases in our city’s history. This is the relief that working people across our city deserve.”

It caps a triumphant week for the Democratic socialist, who scored a clean sweep in Tuesday’s primary elections. The mayor’s endorsed candidates won three congressional contests and a handful of state legislative contests, cementing his status as a political powerbroker and pushing the Democratic party further left.

Landlord groups aren’t ruling out a lawsuit against the rent freeze, which they argue flouts the data on the condition of rent-stabilized properties. And the vote comes with the typically nine-person board down one member, after landlord representative Christina Smyth resigned in protest earlier Thursday. Mamdani ran on a pledge to lower the cost of living for working-class people, and the rent freeze was a central plank of that agenda.

Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/25/mamdani-delivers-promised-rent-freeze-00977449