The New York City Rent Guidelines Board approved Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s key campaign promise to “freeze the rent” on Thursday — in a move landlord advocates slammed as “an absolute farce.”
The board unanimously passed a two-year freeze on both one-year and two-year leases for the Big Apple’s roughly 1 million rent-stabilized units.
It came hours after the public resignation of one of the RGB’s nine members, Christina Smyth, who accused the panel of ignoring its own data during the lengthy process to decide whether to adjust rents — claiming the decision was made “last year on the campaign trail.”
The board “stopped being a fact-finding body” and was rebuilt “to deliver a rent freeze” no matter what, Smyth, one of two landlord advocates on the board, wrote in her scathing resignation letter.
“Everything else has been theater,” she wrote. “The hearings, the reports, the public comment, the data. None of it was ever going to change the result.”
Smyth was one of three members appointed by former Mayor Eric Adams. Mamdani appointed the other six members after taking office this year.
Hizzoner has repeatedly claimed that the board is independent, noting it had been conducting “both fact finding as well as testimonies” for months before the highly anticipated vote.
“I look forward to the outcome and the decision they will make,” he said earlier Thursday.
The vote, during a meeting at El Museo del Barrio in Upper Manhattan, sparked an eruption of cheers from the crowd of mostly tenant groups.
Landlords have been sounding the alarm for months on the dangers of a rent freeze while costs continue to skyrocket.
A report released by the Rent Guidelines Board in April showed rent-stabilized housing insurance soared 10.5% in 2026 year-over-year, while fuel and maintenance rose 11% and 6% respectively.
“The resignation of the only principled RGB member and the board’s only meaningful advocate for small owners validated our greatest fear, that the majority Mamdani-appointed RGB would cave to the political demands of City Hall,” said Ann Korchak, board president of the Small Property Owners of New York.
The RGB has only frozen the rent three times in its history — all under Mayor Bill de Blasio, in 2015, 2016 and again in 2020, and all for one-year timeframes.
Mamdani’s political home, the Democratic Socialists of America, was already touting the win on Thursday ahead of the vote.
“Just days after our candidates sweep their elections, we’re going to deliver a rent freeze for millions of New Yorkers!”
Mamdani unveiled a plan in April for a new, privately run city-backed insurance program aimed at reducing costs in rent-stabilized buildings. But City Hall has yet to release key details on the initiative set to launch in 2027.
