{"id":348952,"date":"2026-09-17T03:32:20","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T03:32:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/348952\/"},"modified":"2026-09-17T03:32:20","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T03:32:20","slug":"mamdani-accused-of-colluding-on-nyc-rent-freeze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/348952\/","title":{"rendered":"Mamdani accused of colluding on NYC rent freeze"},"content":{"rendered":"

Zo-and-tell!<\/p>\n

City Hall officials must cough up their emails and texts with the powerful Rent Guidelines Board that Mayor Zohran Mamdani allegedly bigfooted<\/a> into fulfilling his promised rent freeze, a judge ruled Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Judge Brendan Lantry \u2014 the former chair for the Staten Island GOP \u2014 granted a narrow order for the behind-the-scenes communications to see if supposedly independent rent board members illicitly colluded with Mamdani\u2019s team.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe question naturally arises: how would the Mayor comply with his \u2018guarantee\u2019 to the voters to \u2018freeze\u2019 the rent unless he, or his staff, communicated with the Board to ensure that the Board refrained from imposing any rental increase?\u201d Lantry wrote.<\/p>\n

\"NewCity Hall officials must cough up their emails and texts with the powerful Rent Guidelines Board that Mayor Zohran Mamdani allegedly bigfooted into fulfilling his promised rent freeze, a judge ruled Wednesday. Matt Roberts\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

Board members in June passed a rent freeze<\/a> on both one-year and two-year leases for the Big Apple\u2019s roughly 1 million rent-stabilized units.<\/p>\n

The decision allowed Mamdani to claim a major victory on his socialist agenda, but prompted accusations that the outcome was rigged.<\/p>\n

A coalition of city landlords quickly mounted a legal challenge <\/a>over the vote, as accusations flew that Mamdani stacked the independent board with loyalist tenant activists.<\/p>\n

While the landlords challenging the hike were seeking permission to demand an even broader swath of municipal messages, the limited order is still a notable victory for critics pushing to probe the Rent Guidelines Board vote.<\/p>\n

\"ZohranProtesters disrupt then-mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani\u2019s press conference on rent freeze on June 6, 2025. Michael Nigro for NY Post<\/p>\n

\u201cThe court acknowledges that discovery in a special proceeding is rare,\u201d Lantry wrote. \u201cIt is also rare (in fact, it is unprecedented) for a candidate for Mayor of New York City to guarantee that the Board, an entity that the parties concede is independent from the Mayor\u2019s Office, will freeze the rent upon his election to office.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lantry also noted other rarities, including the resignation of RGB board member Christina Smyth, who described the vote as a pre-decided \u201csham.\u201d<\/p>\n

The order for City Hall communications with the RGB also covers the Mayor\u2019s Office of Mass Engagement, the Mayor\u2019s Office to Protect Tenants and the Mayor\u2019s Office of Management and Budget.<\/p>\n

The order does exclude communications between Mamdani and his staff, as well as internal comms at the RGB.<\/p>\n

A discovery conference is set for Sept. 21.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zo-and-tell! City Hall officials must cough up their emails and texts with the powerful Rent Guidelines Board that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348953,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[433,2907,2954,57,9,56,63,65,64,564,58,82],"class_list":["post-348952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-affordable-housing","tag-housing","tag-landlords","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-rent","tag-us-news","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348952","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=348952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}