The New York City Rent Guidelines Board will hold the first public hearing today in its annual deliberation over whether to authorize an “adjustment” in rents for the city’s one million rent stabilized units. Mayor Mamdani’s six recent appointees to the nine-member board form a majority, ostensibly securing the mayor’s ability to fulfill his signature campaign promise to “freeze the rent.”
Yet, on the day the mayor named the new members, he made no mention of the promise that launched his political career. He simply urged the board to take a “clear-eyed look at the complex housing landscape and the realities facing our city’s two million rent-stabilized tenants, and help us move closer to a fairer, more affordable New York.”
When pressed on the question of a rent freeze, the mayor acknowledged the board’s independence and its duty to “consider all of the evidence” before reaching a decision on a rent adjustment.
The mayor’s new-found understanding of the board’s prerogatives is remarkable. Mamdani staked his campaign on an unequivocal commitment to a four-year-long rent freeze. From his campaign website: “As Mayor, Zohran will immediately freeze the rent for all stabilized tenants, and use every available resource to build the housing New Yorkers need and bring down the rent. The number one reason working families are leaving our city is the housing crisis. The Mayor has the power to change that.”
But the mayor does not “have the power to change that,” as Mamdani now admits. The RGB is not merely a commission that is nominally independent of the mayor. It is a tribunal that is required by law to render its determinations based upon the criteria set down in the city’s Administrative Code.
The mayor’s appointees to the board have no more right to carry out his political wishes than do the judges that the mayor appoints to the Criminal Court. Just as Criminal Court judges are required to apply the Penal and Criminal Procedure Laws, board members are required to weigh and apply evidence pertaining to real estate taxes, vacancy rates and other economic conditions affecting housing that are codified at section 26-510(b) of the Administrative Code.
Moreover, the board must engage in its evaluation annually. It cannot, as Mamdani falsely suggested, enact a four-year-long “freeze.”
Ironically, Mamdani’s explicit and repeated guarantee of a rent freeze may form the basis for a successful legal challenge to a zero-increase ruling by the RGB. The state’s highest court has held that “an impartial decision maker is a core guarantee of due process, fully applicable to adjudicatory proceedings before administrative agencies,” holding that “public statements that indicate prejudgment are especially problematic.”
The RGB is required to act in an impartial manner, free of the taint of political interference. Any decision that freezes rents will be inseparable from Mamdani’s political agenda and will give rise to the obvious appearance of bias and undue influence.
The mayor knew, or should have known, all along that his rent-freeze promise was misleading. He nonetheless allowed it to form the core of his campaign and his political persona.
Now, because of his imprudent and inaccurate sloganeering, even with a majority of his appointees sitting on the board, the mayor faces the prospect of a legal and political fiasco that implicates the honesty of his most prominent promise to his constituents.
Browne is a lawyer.