Will Mamdani's Rent Freeze Make Everyone Else's Go Up?

"Their argument was simple - costs are rising for landlords, and if they can't raise the rents on their stabilized units, then they'll have to raise them on the market-rate ones. The idea was to divide renters on the proposal: Your neighbor might have their rent frozen, but as a market-rate tenant, you're the one who will pay for it."

"The first part of the landlords' argument is clear - it's getting more and more expensive to operate a rent-stabilized building. Over the past five years, overall operating costs increased by 28 percent, with the costs of insurance and fuel going up 19 percent and 10 percent, respectively, between 2024 and 2025. Housing analyst Jonathan Miller, who is skeptical of the proposal, says that landlords will likely try to raise market-rate rents to help cover at least some of that rise in costs."

""I'm not saying that open-market rents skyrocket, but it does place upward pressure on them," he explains. And while freezes under Bill de Blasio in 2015 and 2016 didn't result in market-price spikes, per Miller's own data, he cautions against extrapolating too much from that period. (The final rent freeze under the de Blasio administration, in 2020, was mid-pandemic and so not a"

A proposal to freeze rents on roughly one million rent-stabilized apartments could lock many households into flat rents for four years. Landlords argue rising operating costs make freezes untenable and will create pressure to raise market-rate rents instead. Operating costs rose about 28 percent over five years, with insurance up 19 percent and fuel up 10 percent between 2024 and 2025. Housing analyst Jonathan Miller says landlords will likely seek higher market rents to offset cost increases, though prior freezes under Bill de Blasio did not produce sharp market-price spikes. The Rent Guidelines Board majority could determine the next course of action.

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