On June 25, 2026, the Rent Guidelines Board (RGB) voted 7-1 to set the annual rent adjustment for rent-stabilized apartments at 0% for both one-year and two-year lease renewals commencing October 1, 2026, through September 30, 2027, fulfilling Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s campaign pledge to “freeze the rent.” It is the first time in the board’s history, dating to 1969, that a two-year lease has been frozen at 0%; one-year freezes had occurred three times previously under Mayor de Blasio.
The board also set the hotel and single-room-occupancy (SRO) order at 0% for the same 2026-27 period, extending the freeze to every category the RGB regulates that year, including rooming and lodging houses.
Six of the nine board members were appointed by Mamdani before the vote. Owner representative Christina Smyth resigned hours before the final vote, calling the process predetermined. The lone dissent came from Arpit Gupta, a holdover appointee from former Mayor Eric Adams.
New York City has roughly 2.2 million rental units. Of those, about 1 million are rent-stabilized, close to 40-45% of the total rental stock, depending on the year’s survey, and are subject to annual RGB decisions. Nearly half of those stabilized units are occupied by people born outside the US.
Rent controls of any kind are a classic example of misguided socialist economic policies intended to solve a problem while, in reality, making it worse. Ultimately, suppressing rent increases reduces the number of units available for rent by encouraging landlord exit and tenant lock-in. A rent freeze does not simply cap future increases. It widens the gap between what a rent-stabilized unit can legally charge and what it could command on the open market.
As that gap grows, a landlord’s financial incentive shifts away from continuing to rent the unit and toward selling it to an owner-occupant, converting it to a condominium, combining units, or leaving it vacant rather than re-renting it at below-market rates. Each of these outcomes effectively removes the apartment from the rental market, even though the building itself remains.
Hellbound and Down 