A group of landlords sued Wednesday to block New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s rent freeze, as they face the self-declared socialist’s barrage of drastic changes to the city’s rental sector, including formal recognition of tenant unions and a ban on credit checks for prospective renters.
The city launched its tenant-friendly rental overhaul last month, including a rent freeze on its approximately 1 million stabilized apartments.
The move fulfilled one of Mr. Mamdani’s top campaign promises, but a group of landlords is already asking the New York State Supreme Court to throw it out. The lawsuit was filed in Richmond County.
They argue in court documents reviewed by The Washington Times that Mr. Mamdani moved to “stack the deck” by handpicking most of the Rent Guidelines Board members, ensuring it would vote to block rent increases from Oct. 1, 2026, through Sept. 30, 2027.
“To do the mayor’s bidding, this board then made a mockery of its statutory mandate, resorting to multiple manipulations of its own data to try to justify this irrational result,” the landlords argue. “All this comes amid unchecked inflation and rising costs that struggling landlords will have to bear to survive.”
Mr. Mamdani’s office denied the claim made in the lawsuit.
Landlords, meanwhile, are bracing for an onslaught of additional changes Mr. Mamdani plans to impose on the city’s rental sector.
On July 16, he announced 23 policy actions, proposed in response to Rental Ripoff Hearings held in the city from February through April that examined “illegal, unfair, abusive, deceptive or unconscionable landlord practices.”
The rules, outlined in a “Rental Ripoff Hearing Report,” include the city’s formal recognition of tenant unions and plans to draft new rules defining the unions and their role in “stewarding rental housing” for tenants.
Mr. Mamdani said he will propose changes to the rental application process and draft legislation that could ban credit checks.
The mayor said potential changes could limit landlords to requiring either a credit check or proof of annual income 40 times the monthly rent, but not both. Landlords would have to pay for credit checks, currently limited by state law to a $20 charge against tenants.
“Giving tenants and owners multiple ways to establish prospective ability to pay rent will reduce barriers that renters identified to seeking new housing,” the report said.
The report also outlined plans to crack down on “repeat offender” landlords by subjecting them to additional inspections, enforcement programs and litigation. Tenants would be authorized to use an expanded list of violations that allow rent withholding and other charges, making it easier for tenants to defend nonpayment of rent in New York City Housing Court.
Eric Kober, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, called the proposals part of Mr. Mamdani’s “relentless war on landlords” and said formalizing tenants’ unions could lead to buildingwide “rent strikes” that would cripple property owners.
A ban on credit checks, he wrote in City Journal, will limit information landlords need to find tenants who can reliably pay the rent, “increasing business risk while shifting more costs to the property owners.”
Critics said landlords banned from checking a prospective tenant’s credit may demand a co-signer or a rental guarantor service, which generally costs a tenant one month’s rent.
Mr. Mamdani’s rent freeze threatens to further tighten the supply of apartments amid historically high rents. Median monthly rent in Manhattan soared in June to $5,295, an 8% increase over last year, said a report by The Corcoran Group. Market analysts largely attributed the rise to a lack of housing supply.
Arpit Gupta, an NYU finance professor who sits on the nine-member Rent Guidelines Board and was the only person to vote against freezing the rent on stabilized apartments, said in a City Journal column that banning landlords from imposing the previously authorized rent increases — 3% to 4.5% depending on lease type — will make it impossible for some to afford maintenance and repairs.
“It would hold rents flat while expenses keep growing, and a large share of the stabilized stock has no other way to raise revenue,” Mr. Gupta said.
The five landlords suing to overturn the rent freeze accused the nine-member Rent Guidelines Board, most of whom were appointed by Mr. Mamdani, of manipulating data to conceal the financial hardship many landlords face if rent increases are prohibited.
The board also ignored its own formula, which landlords argued showed increases of at least 3.4% for one-year leases and 4.8% for two-year leases were needed to keep net operating income steady next year. Instead, the board voted for no increase.
“The consequences for landlords in all five boroughs are immediate and severe,” the group argued in the court filing.
Mr. Mamdani, they said, “perverted what is supposed to be an independent regulatory process to deliver on his campaign promise.”
Mr. Mamdani spokesman Matt Rauschenbach said the Rent Guidelines Board acted as an independent body.
“We are confident that the Board evaluated all of the relevant data and considered the factors facing both tenants and landlords across New York City,” Mr. Rauschenbach said. “The Law Department is prepared to defend the RGB’s decisions. The Mamdani administration remains committed to the success of the rent stabilization system, which has prevented displacement and provided stability to generations of New Yorkers.”
