Freezing Rent Won’t Make NYC Housing Affordable: Justin Fox

Among the campaign promises that helped propel Zohran Mamdani to the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York City, his pledge to “freeze the rent” is at once the most radical sounding and the easiest to accomplish. In fact, it’s been accomplished multiple times over the past decade.

The mayor chooses the nine members of the city’s Rent Guidelines Board, which every year determines the allowable rent increase for the city’s nearly 1 million rent-stabilized apartments. The members’ terms are staggered, so a new mayor can’t replace them all immediately, but with the two tenant representatives certain to favor a freeze, it would take ...