New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is officially reshaping the city's Rent Guidelines Board by appointing five new members and reappointing one, positioning the panel to decide whether his signature campaign pledge to "freeze the rent" becomes reality for tenants in about 1 million rent-stabilized apartments. Mamdani will name Chantella Mitchell, a program director at the nonprofit New York Community Trust and a former city housing official, as board chair, City Hall spokesperson Matt Rauschenbach told Gothamist.
Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported that Mayor Eric Adams was planning to stack the Rent Guidelines Board with a bevy of his own appointees on his way out of office in an effort to block Zohran Mamdani's agenda to freeze rent for rent-stabilized tenants. Then, on Friday afternoon, the New York Post reported that one board appointee Adams was considering was Eleonora Srugo, the Douglas Elliman luxury real estate agent, Adams confidante, and star of the first (and only) season of the Netflix reality show "Selling the City."
