A member of the NYC Rent Guidelines Board resigned hours before the board was scheduled to vote on Mayor Mamdani’s promise of a rent freeze for stabilized tenants, saying the panel’s work had become corrupted as it pursued a preordained political outcome.
Christina Smyth, a landlord representative on the board reappointed by ex-Mayor Adams at the end of his term, said she stepped down from the board because it had “stopped being a fact-finding body” as it looked to enact Mamdani’s signature freeze.
“This rebuilt board was required to deliver a rent freeze,” she wrote in her three-page resignation letter. “Everything since has been theater. The hearings, the reports, the public comment, the data. None of it was ever going to change the result.”
Mamdani made his promise of a four-year pause on rent hikes for the city’s 1 million rent-stabilized apartments a rallying cry on the campaign trail last year. Since taking office, though, the mayor has been less explicit in public statements, in the face of concerns about improperly influencing the board’s decision-making. In February, Mamdani named six members to the nine-person panel.
Although the members of the board are appointed by the mayor, it functions as an independent body. In the event they vote for a freeze Thursday evening, legal challenges from landlord groups almost certainly will follow.
“There may be some legal challenges taken up by owners aggrieved by the way this process has played out,” Smyth told the Daily News. “If so I will do everything I can to assist them in being successful.”
Smyth in her letter also asked Gov. Hochul to restore the vacancy bonus — a done-away-with provision in state rent laws that allowed landlords to hike the rent for stabilized units when a unit became vacant.
A spokesperson for Mamdani did not immediately comment on the resignation.
Smyth’s resignation will not impact the logistics of the board’s vote set for Thursday evening, attorney and strategist Louis Cholden Brown told the Daily News.
“This would not impact the legality of the vote, as the board will still have a quorum, and we’re all presuming the board will adopt the freeze with substantial support,” Cholden Brown said, noting that the vote would skew even more heavily toward a freeze with now just one remaining landlord representative on the board.