New York City tenant advocates aren’t sitting out the legal battle over a rent freeze. They came off the sidelines and entered the courtroom fray to ensure the freeze stays in place.
In a Thursday court filing, Tenants and Neighbors and the Metropolitan Council on Housing pushed back against landlords who sued in a Staten Island court over a rent freeze for stabilized apartments.
The city’s Rent Guidelines Board decided in June to set a 0% increase on one- and two-year lease renewals starting October 1. The decision gave Mayor Zohran Mamdani a victory, as he won office on a promise to improve housing affordability.
Landlords argue the board’s decision was unlawful and ignored data showing a rent increase was warranted. They also say Mamdani stacked the board with people who “agreed with his vision of a freeze.”
The tenant groups agreed that the board must consider hardships facing both landlords and tenants. But they argue that landlords “wrongly assume that as long as any landlords face hardship, the RGB must increase rents, even if the increase worsens tenant hardships.”
Tenant groups interpret numbers their way
Line by line, the tenant group’s response parses the landlords’ 356-paragraph petition. It concedes narrow factual points while rejecting the broader legal spin the landlords put on the evidence.
The tenant advocates lean heavily on the numbers to make their case. More than 45% of rent-stabilized households are “rent-burdened,” spending more than 30% of income on rent, and more than 27% are severely burdened, paying over half, the filing notes.
Landlords aren’t hurting nearly as much as their lawsuit claims, the filing says, noting that fewer than 10% of stabilized buildings report negative operating income. The filing cites Fiscal Policy Institute testimony before the RGB showing operating income across the sector has climbed 56.6% after inflation over the past 25 years.
The board’s decision wasn’t made in a vacuum, the filing adds. It followed seven public meetings, four hearings and testimony from experts at the Fiscal Policy Institute, NYU’s Furman Center and Columbia’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy, among others.
RGB Chair Chantella Mitchell’s own statements on the rent freeze are quoted at length. She described two concurrent realities. Most tenants are struggling to keep up. A smaller group of landlords faces real financial strain, often in the same neighborhoods, such as the Bronx.
Raising rents that tenants can’t afford wouldn’t help those landlords, she argues. Instead, it would just speed up evictions. What’s needed, she says, is direct financial intervention from the city and state.
Mamdani appointees disputed
Mitchell is one of the six Mamdani appointees the landlord lawsuit mentions.
“I’m confident that, under the leadership of Chantella Mitchell as chair, the board will 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,” Mamdani said in a statement at the time.
All his appointees voted for the rent freeze.
Landlords seized on former board member Christina Smyth’s resignation before the vote, citing her letter as evidence that Mamdani’s appointees had rigged the process.
In their filing, the tenant group confirms the lawsuit accurately quoted Smyth’s letter. But they dispute that it proves what the landlords claim. Smyth’s letter “merely alleged certain things,” the filing states, and did not confirm that Mamdani’s appointees had predetermined the outcome.
They want the case dismissed outright, arguing the board acted within its authority and wasn’t arbitrary or capricious, as the landlords claim.