I raised two children as a single mom in a rent stabilized apartment in the Bronx. The security of knowing that I could renew my lease every year, without massive rent hikes, allowed us to make it our home — the place where we did schoolwork, celebrated birthdays, and invited our family for holidays. With my kids grown and off with exciting careers in medicine and film, this is still the home they come back to.
Now with rents so high, it’s hard to imagine them settling down to raise families here. The cost of everything has gone up — health care, child care, groceries — and most people in rent stabilized apartments like mine are struggling to get by. My neighbors and I need a rent freeze to keep our homes.
More than two-thirds of New Yorkers are tenants. We are teachers, nurses, sanitation workers, street vendors, artists, people who work in office buildings and people who clean office buildings. We are the ones who keep this city running, and we’re demanding that our government prioritize us over corporate real estate interests. The response? Landlords and their lobbyists are crying foul, calling a rent freeze that would benefit 2.4 million tenants “illegal.”
The Rent Guidelines Board’s data has been biased in favor of landlords for years. Under Mayor Adams the RGB raised the rent every year, ignoring tenants who have been and continue to struggle to make ends meet.
One of the key reports the RGB considers each year is the Price Index of Operating Costs (PIOC), which measures the changes in cost of goods and services needed to operate and maintain rent-stabilized units.
Landlords regularly point to PIOC as the reason they cannot afford to maintain buildings without raising rents, but according to a 2023 analysis from the Community Service Society, most tenants saw no improvement to their building or apartment, despite rent increases. Tenants know this because we live it: our rent money is going in their pockets, not to fixing our buildings. Meanwhile, the board does not receive an official report on the changes in the cost of living for tenants.
One in four New Yorkers is struggling to afford basics like groceries, medicine, and rent. A 2025 CSS survey showed that half of rent stabilized tenants are struggling, and two-thirds lacked emergency savings. In the Bronx, 1 in 11 households have an eviction filing. More than three times as many low income tenants live in rent stabilized apartments than in public or subsidized housing combined — and we simply cannot afford another rent hike.
The RGB’s reports look at inflation to adjust landlord profits and measure rising costs. But housing costs are a core driver of that inflation metric, accounting for over one-third of the Consumer Price Index (CPI). By including rising rents into the calculation for how much landlord expenses are increasing, the data overvalues landlord expenses to justify further rent increases.
Despite this baked-in bias, the board’s own data still found that landlord profits are up. The board’s 2026 Income and Expense report says landlord profits rose 6%. In fact, over the past three years, Net Operating Incomes have risen by nearly 30%.
Freezing the rent would save New Yorkers almost $600 a month over four years, totaling nearly $7 billion in savings citywide. A rent freeze would provide tenants with economic security and allow us to channel those savings back into the local economy.
The landlord lobby will continue to fear-monger about the legality of freezing the rent, but the data is clear: Tenants need a rent freeze.
Grell is a tenant organizer with CASA who has lived in a rent-stabilized apartment in the Bronx for more than two decades.