{"id":187834,"date":"2026-04-07T00:27:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T00:27:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/187834\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T00:27:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T00:27:10","slug":"how-mamdanis-rent-guidelines-board-is-cooking-the-numbers-to-set-up-his-rent-freeze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/187834\/","title":{"rendered":"How Mamdani’s Rent Guidelines Board is cooking the numbers to set up his rent freeze"},"content":{"rendered":"

The city\u2019s Rent Guidelines Board won\u2019t decide this year\u2019s rent hikes for regulated apartments until June, but its staff is already cooking the stats to \u201cjustify\u201d Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s promised rent freeze.<\/a><\/p>\n

The board\u2019s recently released 2026 Income and Expense study claims<\/a> landlords\u2019 Net Operating Income for buildings with rent-stabilized units rose 6.2%. Tenants\u2019 advocates say that justifies a rent freeze.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t buy it: That 6.2% figure tells you a lot less than you think about landlords\u2019 ability to pay their bills<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For starters, adjusted for inflation<\/a>, the number drops to just 2.2%.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s merely a year-over-year comparison of building owners\u2019 income after subtracting expenses like taxes, utilities, maintenance, insurance, etc. <\/p>\n

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So if an owner loses money one year, but sees his income rise a bit, enabling him to lose less the next year, that could show up as \u201cincrease\u201d \u2014 even though he\u2019s still losing money.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, it\u2019s an aggregate figure for all buildings with at least one rent-stabilized unit, even though some have market-rate units whose rent hikes pump up the average, distorting the picture.<\/p>\n

For buildings with more than 50% of their units rent-stabilized<\/a>, the \u201cincrease\u201d in Net Operating Income was just 4%; for those with 100% stabilized units, it was just 2.4%.<\/p>\n

Nor does the figure distinguish between new buildings and old ones that need major repairs.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s key, since the NOI doesn\u2019t account for the cost of capital improvements or debt service.<\/p>\n

The citywide NOI also conflates buildings in \u201ccore Manhattan,\u201d<\/a> where inflation-adjusted growth was 10%, with the entire rest of the city, where it was just 0.9%.<\/p>\n

In The Bronx, net income actually fell \u2014 by 0.1%.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the real story: Numerous residential buildings in the city have been losing money, thanks largely to rent freezes or too-small increases, averaging less than 1%, under Mayor Bill de Blasio and insufficient hikes to make up for it under Mayor Eric Adams.<\/p>\n

In particular, rent-stabilized buildings built before 1974 are in shabby shape and need major, costly repairs and upgrades. <\/p>\n

On top of that, the city\u2019s climate law, Local Law 97, requires pricey changes to meet emissions standards.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, genius progressives in Albany<\/a> made it impossible for landlords to pass on the costs of those upgrades to tenants.<\/p>\n

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Tens of thousands of \u201czombie\u201d apartments are now being warehoused because landlords can\u2019t afford to bring them up to code and recoup their outlays via rent.<\/p>\n

No matter: The Rent Guidelines Board \u2014 six of whose nine members were appointed by Mamdani<\/a> \u2014 doesn\u2019t actually care about the facts.<\/p>\n

Expect it to do socialist Mamdani\u2019s bidding and ram through a rent freeze.<\/p>\n

Also when it does, expect more apartments to degrade, buildings to go belly-up and tenants to suffer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The city\u2019s Rent Guidelines Board won\u2019t decide this year\u2019s rent hikes for regulated apartments until June, but its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":187835,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[6722,9894,98,100,99,304,81,2907,2954,9,24,63,299,564,565,566,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-187834","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brooklyn","8":"tag-apartments","9":"tag-bill-de-blasio","10":"tag-brooklyn","11":"tag-brooklyn-headlines","12":"tag-brooklyn-news","13":"tag-editorial","14":"tag-eric-adams","15":"tag-housing","16":"tag-landlords","17":"tag-new-york","18":"tag-new-york-city","19":"tag-nyc","20":"tag-opinion","21":"tag-rent","22":"tag-rent-control","23":"tag-rent-stabilization","24":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}