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\u2013 New York City<\/a> approved a rent freeze<\/a> for about 1 million rent-stabilized apartments<\/a> through two-year leases.\n<\/p>\n \u2013 The decision fulfills a major campaign promise by Mayor Zohran Mamdani<\/a> to address housing<\/a> affordability.<\/p>\n \u2013 Landlord groups opposed the freeze, arguing it could make building maintenance more difficult.\n<\/p>\n NEW YORK \u2014 A New York City housing board voted on Thursday to freeze the rents for about one million regulated apartments for up to two years, fulfilling a central campaign promise of Mayor Zohran Mamdani only months into his term.\n<\/p>\n The 7-1 vote by the city\u2019s Rent Guidelines Board<\/a> set increases at zero on both one-year and two-year leases from October. Hundreds of tenants<\/a> who crowded into a Manhattan museum auditorium cheered and blew whistles at the result.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a historic victory for New York City tenants,\u201d Mamdani said in a statement. \u201cThis is the relief that working people across our city deserve.\u201d\n<\/p>\n The vote was the culmination of a weeks-long, noisy annual ritual that determines how much landlords<\/a> can increase what they charge for rent-stabilized apartments, home to about a quarter of New Yorkers. The board weighs factors including wages, inflation, maintenance costs, taxes and landlords\u2019 incomes.\n<\/p>\n The average monthly rent for a regulated apartment was $1,599, according to the board\u2019s 2025 study, in a city where the median rent for a newly leased apartment is $3,950, according to listings agency StreetEasy.\n<\/p>\n Mamdani, a democratic socialist who has promised to make the city more affordable, has appointed six of the board\u2019s nine members since he took office in January, choosing people he believes are sympathetic to tenants.\n<\/p>\n Board member quits <\/p>\n But hours before the vote on Thursday, a member representing landlords said this amounted to stacking the board and resigned, accusing the body of not following its obligations under the law to be unbiased. In resigning, Christina Smyth, an appointee of Mamdani\u2019s predecessor and one of two landlord representatives on the board, said the outcome had been predetermined by the mayor.\n<\/p>\n \u201cThe rebuilt board was required to deliver a rent freeze,\u201d she said. \u201cEverything since has been theater.\u201d\n<\/p>\n Board Chair Chantella Mitchell, a Mamdani appointee, said the board\u2019s members and staff served with independence and integrity.\n<\/p>\n The other landlord representative on the board, Mamdani appointee Maksim Wynn, was booed by tenants as he read a lengthy statement before the vote. But the crowd\u2019s anger turned to delight when he wrapped up several minutes later and voted in favor of the freeze.\n<\/p>\n At public hearings in the run-up to the vote, tenants demanded a rent freeze, something that happened three times under Mayor Bill de Blasio between 2015 and 2021 for one-year leases only, or even a rent decrease, saying incomes were not keeping up with inflation and soaring bills.\n<\/p>\n Landlord groups contended a rent freeze would only make it harder for property owners to maintain their buildings and said some were not able to cover their mortgages.\n<\/p>\n Some landlords, from \u201cmom and pop\u201d owners of a single building to wealthy private equity investors, say they are forced to hike rents on unregulated, market-rate apartments to recoup losses on their rent-stabilized units.\n<\/p>\n After his election, Mamdani moved from a roughly $2,300-per-month one-bedroom rent-regulated Queens apartment to the mayor\u2019s five-bedroom official residence in Manhattan.\n<\/p>\n Thursday\u2019s vote extended Mamdani\u2019s successful week. He also celebrated the victory of all three left-wing candidates in hotly contested races to become Democratic Party<\/a> nominees for New York seats in the U.S. Congress<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Summary: \u2013 New York City approved a rent freeze for about 1 million rent-stabilized…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279594,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[433,107393,6722,858,651,2907,2954,9,24,55,54,56,761,1491,6205,15021,566,7978,34433,82],"class_list":["post-279593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-affordable-housing","tag-aig","tag-apartments","tag-congress","tag-democratic-party","tag-housing","tag-landlords","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-pr","tag-real-estate","tag-rent-freeze","tag-rent-guidelines-board","tag-rent-stabilization","tag-tenants","tag-ups","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279593","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=279593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}