In 2023, a bank collapsed after New York’s legislature tightened rent control, making it impossible for some cash-strapped landlords to repay their mortgages. Americans ended up footing the bill when the FDIC had to bail out the bank.
Now, New York City is making things even worse for landlords, making it impossible for some of them to maintain their buildings or make ends meet.
“The New York City Rent Guidelines Board approved Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s key campaign promise to “freeze the rent” on Thursday — in a move that landlord advocates slammed as “an absolute farce,” reports the New York Post:
The board passed a rent freeze on both one-year and two-year leases for the Big Apple’s roughly 1 million rent-stabilized units in a 7-1 vote. Arpit Gupta, an appointee of Mamdani’s immediate predecessor, Mayor Eric Adams, was the one no vote.
It came hours after the public resignation of one of the RGB’s nine members, Christina Smyth, who accused the panel of ignoring its own data during the lengthy process to decide whether to adjust rents — claiming the decision was made “last year on the campaign trail.”
The board “stopped being a fact-finding body” and was rebuilt “to deliver a rent freeze” no matter what, Smyth…wrote in her scathing resignation letter….Smyth was one of three members appointed by Adams. Mamdani appointed the other six members after taking office this year.
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