In a recent editorial, amNY said landlords need yet another rent hike – even after landlord profits have surged for two years in a row. This year alone, landlord incomes are up 12%, the biggest jump since the 1990s. Landlords are doing better than ever, while high rents are forcing tenants out of the city we love.
One in four New Yorkers can’t afford the basics. Rents are rising faster than wages. We’re taking on extra jobs and skipping meals. We’re choosing between rent and food, medicine, or childcare. From 2020 to 2023, over half a million people left New York City, pushed out by soaring rents in search of somewhere more affordable.
Tenants don’t have profit margins. We have rent burdens.
There is a clear, immediate solution: freeze the rent. The mayor controls the rent for over 2.4 million rent stabilized tenants – and Eric Adams’s Rent Guidelines Board is about to raise our rent for the fifth year in a row.
But tenants are the majority in New York City. If Adams won’t freeze the rent, we have the power to elect a mayor who will. That’s why tenants across the city are supporting Zohran Mamdani for mayor, who has pledged to freeze the rent for all four years in office.
Freezing the rent would save New Yorkers almost $600 a month over four years, totaling nearly $7 billion in savings citywide. It is the single most powerful action the mayor can take to make New York more affordable. That’s money families could use to buy groceries, pay for child care, or stay in their neighborhoods.
Without a rent freeze, that money will go straight to lining landlords’ pockets. Landlords aren’t using our rent money to fix broken elevators or leaky ceilings: they’re using it to buy sports cars and vacation homes.
Landlords already have plenty of ways to get help making repairs. They can apply for hardship exemptions or raise rents between leases after renovating apartments. There’s even a program that gives landlords $25,000 to make improvements called Unlocking Doors. But last year only one landlord applied.
That’s not need – that’s greed. And a clear refusal to access help that’s already available to them.
If a landlord truly can’t take care of a building, the answer isn’t to raise our rent – it’s to give the building to someone who will. Public money should go toward helping tenants and nonprofits take over buildings so they stay affordable, and in good hands.
In the face of the facts, a rent freeze is just plain common sense. And New Yorkers across the five boroughs agree: a recent poll found that 78% support a rent freeze.
Tenants are the majority in New York. We have the power to elect a mayor who will freeze the rent. And we are ready to use it on primary day.
Cea Weaver is the director of the New York State Tenant Bloc.
