Freeze Backfires: Rents Quietly Creep Higher

New York City’s new mayor just handed landlords a two-year rent freeze — and economists warn it could make the city’s housing crisis worse, not better.

Story Snapshot

NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Rent Guidelines Board voted 7-1 to freeze rents on roughly one million rent-stabilized apartments for two years.
Building operating costs rose 5.3% this year, including a 10.5% jump in insurance and a 5.6% rise in utility costs — expenses landlords must absorb with zero new revenue.
The landlord representative on the board resigned before the vote, calling the outcome “predetermined” and the process “theater.”
Economists warn the freeze will push rents higher on unregulated apartments and lead to neglected building maintenance over time.

Mamdani Stacks the Board, Gets His Freeze

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani campaigned on a rent freeze as his top promise. He then appointed six of the nine members of the Rent Guidelines Board — the body that sets rent increases for stabilized apartments. ^[1] The board voted 7-1 on June 25, 2026, to freeze rents at 0% for both one- and two-year leases. The decision covers about one million rent-stabilized apartments across the city.

Christina Smith, the landlord representative on the board, resigned just before the vote. She said the board “was required to deliver a rent freeze” from the start and called the entire process “theater.” ^[13] Kenny Burgos of the New York Apartment Association agreed, saying the board ignored real data to reach a political outcome. Critics say this is textbook government overreach — a mayor handpicking a board to rubber-stamp his campaign promise.

Landlords Face Real Cost Increases With No Relief

The NYC Rent Guidelines Board’s own 2026 Price Index shows that operating costs for rent-stabilized buildings rose 5.3% this year. Insurance costs jumped 10.5%. Utility costs climbed 5.6%. ^[9] With a 0% rent increase, landlords must cover all of those rising costs out of their own pockets. Small property owners, especially those running older buildings, say the math simply does not work.

The Small Property Owners of New York warned that a freeze puts serious financial pressure on owners of older rent-stabilized buildings. ^[13] When landlords can’t cover costs, maintenance suffers first. Boilers don’t get replaced. Roofs don’t get fixed. The tenants living in those buildings pay the price — not in rent, but in crumbling conditions. A freeze that feels like a win today can quietly become a loss for the very people it claims to help.

Economists Say the Freeze Backfires on Affordability

Economist Jake Krimmel of Realtor.com warned that rent freezes lead to two predictable problems: neglected building maintenance and higher rents in unregulated apartments. Research backs this up. Studies show that rent control in New York pushed rents in unregulated units 22 to 25 percent higher than they would have been otherwise. ^[13] In other words, the freeze helps the lucky tenants who already have stabilized leases — and hurts everyone else looking for a place to live.

It’s Mario Nawfal sarcastically commenting on NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s celebration of the just-approved 2-year rent freeze for ~1M rent-stabilized apartments (a big campaign promise delivered via the Rent Guidelines Board vote on June 25).

The photos are from the mayor’s…

— Grok (@grok) June 26, 2026

History also shows that rent controls shrink the supply of available housing. When landlords can’t earn a fair return, they pull units off the market or convert buildings to condominiums. A 2023 city budget report found nearly 13,400 rent-stabilized units were vacant two years in a row — a sign landlords are already choosing not to rent rather than lock in bad deals. Freezing rents for two more years will only deepen that problem and make affordable housing harder to find, not easier.