Mamdani FREEZES NYC RENTS… Then 300,000 LOSE THEIR HOMES

Millions of New York apartments now have frozen rents.Look at this.

From the top of a balcony to down by the stage, rent -stabilized New Yorkers erupted in celebration.For the first time ever, the Rent Guidelines Board voted to freeze rents on both one - and two -year leases.A historic decision that means more than a million New Yorkers living in rent -stabilized apartments won't pay a dollar more in rent for the next two years.All but one board member voted in favor of the measure, Mayor Zohra Mamdani calling it a historic victory for New Yorkers.

It means everything.It means that our voices were heard, finally.

Bronx tenant Ann Maiden says she can finally breathe again.

whole process a sham.

together and forming coalitions.

But they don't understand this just doomed New York City's supply of apartments.There will now be less apartments for multiple reasons and here's the biggest one.

I feel like I'm standing in a time capsule from the 70s.This is a one bedroom apartment in the Bronx that rents for $811 a month.That's if the landlord were to actually put it up for rent.This is a rent -stabilized apartment, but look around.The landlord says there is so much work that has to be done here to bring it up to code that it doesn't make financial sense to rent it out.The owner is deciding to lose less money by just keeping it vacant.

Chipped and peeling lead paint, an outdated bathroom, and that red carpet?Far from luxurious.

Not exactly the red carpet people want to walk into.

Kenny Burgos is the CEO of the New York Apartment Association and advocates on behalf of landlords who own rent stabilized apartments like this one in Mount Eden.It's been vacant since the last tenant moved out around 2021.

And now its rent is frozen forever.So the laws in New York were already so bad.This place, which is pretty big, was being lived in by no one.And now that's definitely going to remain the case.But wait till you hear why.

Why is this apartment still vacant so many years later?Because the law today says that when the tenant moves out, you still, of course, before long after you would have to upgrade and renovate this unit and bring it up to the current housing standard of 2026.The difference is now the law says we don't really care what you spend.you cannot change the rent from the previous tenants.

So it just sits there.

We found that with the 20 % vacancy bonus, it was an incentive for landlords to harass tenants out.Finally, we righted the scales.Landlords didn't like that.And what they said immediately after we passed it was, we're going to keep apartments off the market.

But that's reality.Reality says if your $800 apartment costs $100 ,000 to fix up and you can only charge $800 a month for it, you're not going to dump $100 ,000 into a losing investment.It's a business.

landlords who have already gone bankrupt, who've already been in foreclosure.Something's definitely wrong here.

The tug of war between landlords and tenants advocates leaves lifelong New Yorkers like Troy Williams caught in limbo.

I live in a tier two shelter right now and that's why I have a voucher now, you know, and I'm, I'm really, I'm really trying to, you know, get back to where I was this time two years ago.

So just how many rent -stabilized apartments are sitting empty with low rents that need extensive repairs?Good question.Well, we actually just got an answer from the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development.A survey found just under 2 ,500 units that have been vacant for a year or more needing extensive repairs with rents below $1 ,000.Of course, these are units sitting empty when so many are desperate for an affordable place to live.

And that's just the units they know about.When this law passed, back in 2019 that capped all these rents and said no more rent increases on the stabilized apartments when somebody moves out even if you renovate you know what landlords started doing if they had a stabilized apartment right here and then next to it they had a free market apartment when both were empty guess what they did they combined them and made the free market apartment much larger and jacked up the rent on the whole thing so a lot of these apartments when this law was passed vanished and are never coming back.But it gets even worse because all the people celebrating, they don't understand where this is going to lead them.

he appoints 75 % of the board and now he's got his hand on the scale.

Just hours before Thursday's meeting, drama unfolded when Christina Smith, a member of the board who represented landlords, resigned from her post.

So here's the thing you gotta understand.In order for this to work, you can freeze the rents, sure.But what about freezing the taxes that the landlord pays?What about freezing the landlord's insurance, which goes up every single year?What about freezing the landlord's utility costs, which in New York are some of the highest in the entire country?Remember, these landlords, they have to pay for hot water, cold water, and heat, and all that stuff's going up.

Meanwhile, rents are frozen.It does not make sense to rent these apartments out anymore.It makes sense to instead keep them off the market forever because you're losing money.renting them to people.

What about the landlord's inflation?

every single person on the board.But check this out, the $800 apartment we saw, if the rent were to go up 2 % instead of zero, it would have been a $16 a month increase, which means the people cheering are happy about saving 20 bucks.Like, this is not even enough money to get yourself a Big Mac meal at a McDonald's in New York City.You can't even do that.So what are people saving?There is no savings here.

On a $2 ,000 apartment, you're saving 40 bucks a month.Like, is that money?Yeah, it is.But that kind of money doesn't go very far in New York.Things are already so expensive, already so overpriced here.This doesn't actually help.

but what it does is hurt.And maybe that's why the mayor is so excited about this.

valid discussion that's happening in New York City, which is, can landlords absorb this rent freeze for two years or even longer?And there's going to have to be some compromises that are made behind the scenes on how landlords are going to maintain those costs.

OK.

Yeah, compromises.

That means firing people.

This is no longer just a city that is a playground for the rich.This is a city for the working people of New York.

But the red's still too high for most people.And it's now, it's frozen, it's gonna stay that way.

for years landlords have run this city and this is like a new era of tenant power we have a rent freeze mayor um dozens of hundreds of people came out online like landlord's days are over tenants are in power now landlord's days are over it feels amazing landlords who say they are struggling with rising costs like fuel and insurance though lambasting the decision listen to this People don't get it.

This is a business, not a choice that you think this is for free.

So rents just got frozen.So people who already have an $800 apartment can always have an $800 apartment instead of an $810 apartment.next year and what that means is the person who cleans the building just got fired because you know what there's not enough money around to pay him anymore now the building stinks now it's gonna start falling apart what a disaster Oh.

So he appointed everyone on the board.It was rigged.Yeah.working people across our city deserve.

Except for the working people who used to work on the buildings and now can't because they just lost their jobs.And look, as somebody that used to live in a rent -stabilized apartment in New York City, in the exact same neighborhood where the mayor of New York himself used to live, Astoria, Queens, I can tell you that having one of these apartments, it might sound good at first, but it's actually a trap.totally messes up your ability to stay upwardly mobile in New York.Because if you get into one of these places, my rent at the time was 1 ,800 bucks a month.We got in, the increases were minimal.But when it came time for us to move into something else, all of the other rents had gone up astronomically outside of this stabilized place.

So in order to jump to a bigger apartment, to an actual two bedroom, because our family was growing, we had to pay double the rent.the rent.We were not prepared for that.It was a massive shock.In fact, the rent was more than double.It was $4 ,500 a month for the two -bedroom we found, after paying $1 ,800 a month.

So people get trapped in these things and they can't move.And now, yes, the rents are frozen on these apartments, but here's what that's going to do.That's going to mean that the people who have them have even less of a reason to move.And if people aren't moving out of the placeswhere they live, new people who do not have an apartment yet cannot move in.to New York City.

And when you have zero turnover, the rent on the tiny number of apartments that still exist is just going to go through the roof.It's going to go higher and higher.New York City is already breaking records for how high the rents are here on these market rate apartments.And if people can't find a place to live because nobody's willing to move out and no one has the ability to be upwardly mobile, that is essentially a tax.on people that live in New York City.A hidden tax.

Because if you want to leave, you're going to have to pay double the amount of rent.People cannot afford that.When it's time to move out, or when it's time to get a bigger place, people either have to vanish, or forego opportunities in life just to stay in a place that was built hundreds of years ago and is falling apart.What a nightmare.And what this basically means is the only way to stay in New York City now is to get a rent stabilized apartment and to literally do nothing other than live there.Don't move in with other people.

Don't get married.Don't have a family.Don't have a bunch of kids because you're not going to be able to fit.

president in 28.Well, you know, Mandela was here, as you know, twice.And he's a very nice guy.He's a charming guy.Yeah, looking guy.We talk.

We talk.But you can't raise taxes on people when you force them to leave your state.or your city and they're leaving and they're going to Florida.Most of them are going down to Palm Beach in Miami.

And that's the other end of this that nobody's talking about.So, you've got these frozen rents.Yes, if you can get an apartment with frozen rent, you might be sitting pretty until the building you're sitting in ends up collapsing around you and you have to move out and you become homeless anyways.But the few people who end up earning enough money to move out of that apartment and pay much more for something else, if their life expands,well, they're going to get hit extra hard by all of the new taxes that are coming, which means they're going to have to move out or they're going to have to stay and pay exorbitant amounts of money to live in a city that essentially hates them and doesn't want to see people being upwardly mobile.And this is a massive problem because this Frozen rent could really hurt the job market in New York City in ways that nobody's talking about either because let's say That there are very few available apartments.

Well, how do you expand your business in New York City?How does a company like JP Morgan?Bring in a whole bunch of people and build a new office and bring in a ton of jobs you can't do that because there aren't places for people to live and Every single time buildings get built in New York right now because rents are so expensive most of the places that get built What are they they're one bedrooms?They're studio apartments.You might find a couple of two bedrooms.It was very very hard for us to find the three bedroom apartment that we just moved out of because there are so few of these.

And nobody wants to admit that what that means is if you have only studios and one bedroom apartments, and those are the entry level apartments that are on the market that people can move into for three, $4 ,000 a month, it's either that, or it's a bedroom somewhere where you have a roommate.What that means is the only people that can come into New York and even get established or start doing that are people who have no other entanglements.These are going to be single people, people who most likely just graduated college, people who are starting out in the workforce, potentially.That means that if you start your company in New York or you want to expand your business in New York, you can really only expand entry level positions.It's going to be a lot harder to bring in people who have talent and are already successful because perhaps those people have more entanglements in life.Perhaps they have a bunch of gigs.

Perhaps they have a big family.Perhaps they want to have more than just a shoebox somewhere and shoeboxes are all that's available.It's gonna be hard to attract top talent.Entry -level talent, yes, but top talent, no.And that's gonna mean that companies that really want to do something and really want to accomplish something and want to pay people lots of money to come here, well, they're not gonna be able to do that in New York because there's gonna be nowhere for those people to live.It's not like we're going to have a whole bunch of rent -stabilized apartments popping up.

Now, if anything, we're going to have even fewer of them.And nobody wants to admit that what this just did was basically give 2 million people a handout at the expense of everybody else who lives in this city.How is this any different than vote buying?If you're the mayor and you tell 2 million people that they're not going to get a rent increase if they elect you, why would they vote?for somebody who doesn't tell them that.The only way that somebody in the mayoral election that brought the city Mayor Mamdani could have won would be to out Mamdani Mamdani.

Mamdani wants to freeze your rent.It's already too high.If you elect me, I won't freeze it.I'll bring it down.I'll pay you to live in this city, which is the only fair way to do this because this city has been stealing from you.These landlords are stealing from you.

Freezing the rent just means they're going to keep doing it.I'm going to bring it down.Only problem is, That attitude would have got somebody elected who might be even worse.This is crazy.New York's housing situation is just gonna get worse.after this rent freeze.

And here's what's going to happen.You're going to have people that have frozen rent.And for a few years before the building they're living in collapses, they're going to say, you know what?This is great.Mayor Mamdani froze my rent, saved me all kinds of money.But then you're going to have people that don't live in a rent stabilized apartment.

These are going to be people that live in a free market apartment.And they're going to say, hey, what about us?Hey, Mr. Mayor Mamdani, what about us?We want a rent freeze too.And then the skids will be greased for the City Council to introduce city -wide rent control, freezing the rent for all apartments in New York City.You see, that's what's next on the table here.

City -wide frozen rent.Zero rent increases for anyone.And then, wait till you see what a disaster we got on our hands here.Thank you for watching.See you in the next video.