New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board voted to set a 0% to 2% range for rent increases for roughly one million stabilized apartments, putting Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s pledged freeze within reach.
The nine-member panel approved the preliminary range for one-year leases Thursday and set a range of 0% to 4% for two-year leases. The initial vote doesn’t set rents. A final decision will be made in June by the board, which will choose one percentage within the range as the limit for rent hikes.
Mamdani’s focus on rents helped launch the 34-year-old Democratic socialist to City Hall in November amid escalating living costs that tenant advocates say are forcing residents out of the city. Mamdani then reshaped the rent panel, making six new appointments to the board in February, and his government mobilized New Yorkers to testify at hearings ahead of the final vote.
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While the mayor can choose members of the board as their terms come due, it’s an independent body charged with setting rent increases based on extensive analysis and not political considerations. The rent hike threshold set in June will apply to leases signed from October 2026 through September 2027.
Ahead of Thursday’s vote, hundreds of residents gathered outside of the board meeting with shouts of “freeze the rent.” Some held signs, in multiple languages, with slogans such as “no increases on all leases.” Inside the room, the crowd stood up and jeered as board members voted, with some tenants calling for a rollback, or negative rental adjustments, while others sought assurances that a rent freeze would take place.
“We need to maintain the zero percent,” said Linda Lin, a restaurant worker who lives in Chinatown, speaking through a translator after the vote. “Nearly all of my income goes to rent. It has been going up steadily in the past few years.”
Mamdani said after the vote that he’s “encouraged” to see the board taking seriously the “pressures facing both tenants and small property owners.”
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A potential freeze remains highly contentious. Though many tenants are grappling with high rents, landlords and business groups argue that rental income hasn’t kept up with soaring expenses.
Tens of thousands of government-subsidized affordable units are already under distress, with expenses rising faster than the rents the properties charge, according to the New York Housing Conference, a nonprofit housing advocate. The group has warned that while a rent freeze would provide relief to tenants, it could cause landlords to fall behind on their debts.
The Small Property Owners of New York, which represents owners of buildings with fewer rental units, called the rent board “reckless and irresponsible.” The Real Estate Board of New York said the board’s preliminary range ignores the “clear financial distress shown in the data” and called a freeze or near-freeze “unjustifiable.”
Under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, the board held one-year leases steady in 2015 and 2016, and again during the pandemic in 2020. Landlords say conditions have since changed: Insurance, taxes and repair costs have surged, and the broader rental market is tighter.
The Rent Guidelines Board sets rents for regulated units only, while market rate apartment leases have surged. Manhattan leases were signed at a median of $4,695 in January, the third highest on record, according to a report from appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage Douglas Elliman.
Residents turned out to heckle the board when it passed a 3% increase for one-year leases last year. Mamdani’s predecessor, Eric Adams, named four people to the rental body at the end of his term in an effort to stymie Mamdani, but some of those appointees quit, allowing the new mayor to appoint a majority of members to the board.
“People are getting priced out of their homes and a lot of Bengalis are moving from Astoria to different parts of the city or other states because the rents are too high,” said Farhana Rahman, a member of the Astoria Tenants Union, speaking through a translator outside Thursday’s board meeting. “They’re moving to Binghamton, Buffalo, Texas and Florida.”
Photo: New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani
Copyright 2026 Bloomberg.
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