Subscribe<\/a>\n<\/p>\nJudge Brendan Lantry said he expects to decide by the end of the year whether the Rent Guidelines Board legally approved the freeze and whether the rent-setting process must begin again.<\/p>\n
“We are working as expeditiously as we can to resolve this case,” Lantry said. “I’m not going to operate with a shotgun to my head.”<\/p>\n
Lantry rejected the landlords’ request to temporarily restore the increases approved by the previous board in 2025. That board approved 3 percent increases for one-year leases and 4.5 percent increases for two-year leases.<\/p>\n
Lantry said he did not believe the court had authority to impose those increases while the lawsuit remains pending.<\/p>\n
The Rent Guidelines Board voted in June to set rent increases at zero for new and renewal rent-stabilized leases.<\/p>\n
A group of landlords sued the following month, arguing the board ignored data showing rising costs for property owners and had predetermined the outcome.<\/p>\n
The landlords are represented by Randy Mastro, a former first deputy mayor under Eric Adams. Their lawsuit alleges the board ignored its own research and acted to fulfill Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s campaign promise to “freeze the rent.”<\/p>\n
The board and City Hall have defended the freeze and maintained the board’s independence from Mamdani.<\/p>\n
Why Does City Hall Have To Turn Over Messages? <\/p>\n
Lantry also ordered the Mamdani administration to produce communications between senior City Hall officials and the Rent Guidelines Board as part of the landlords’ effort to determine whether officials influenced the board.<\/p>\n
Mamdani appointed six of the board’s nine members after taking office. Adams appointed the other three, including landlord representative Christina Smyth, who resigned hours before the June vote.<\/p>\n
Lantry previously ordered City Hall to produce emails, text messages and other communications from the year before the rent-freeze decision. The administration missed his Sept. 23 deadline.<\/p>\n
Corporation Counsel Steven Banks told the judge Thursday the City could not produce the records on time.<\/p>\n
Lantry ordered City Hall to send screenshots of the communications by Sept. 29, without the underlying metadata. He gave the administration 30 days to produce the complete records.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A judge has left the rent freeze in place for now after the Mamdani administration missed a deadline…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":356935,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-356934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356934","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=356934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356934\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}