Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s “rental ripoff” hearingswill ban testimony from public housing tenants — even though the government agency running the units is routinely called the “worst” in the five boroughs.
The democratic socialist’s administration will host its first complaint session on Feb. 26, but the much-touted program will only focus on renters and landlords in privately owned buildings and not the half a million tenants of the New York City Housing Authority.
Property owners fumed about the city dodging questions about the public units while also encouraging tenants in private property to attend the sessions to testify about landlord abuses such as “rental junk fees” for amenities including keeping pets.
“The city’s own tenants—those living in public housing—are demanding a real plan to improve their living conditions,” said Humberto Lopes, CEO of Gotham Housing Alliance. “It appears the Mamdani administration woke up to their own hypocrisy.
“If these hearings were truly about holding bad landlords accountable, the over 500,000 residents in NYCHA would be able to meaningfully participate,” Lopes added. “This is clearly the city trying to distract from its own failures while putting on a show, instead of having a real conversation with property owners, renters, NYCHA residents, and everyone else about how to improve housing for all.”
Mamdani’s team was forced to address the slight, quietly updating a message on the city’s website to include a Q&A answering “Are these hearings for NYCHA residents too?”
“While these hearings focus on price gouging and living conditions for private-market renters, senior leadership and staff from NYCHA will be on-site to ensure that residents can submit in-apartment repair requests, file heat/hot water complaints, or discuss development-wide issues,” the updated note said.
“In the coming months, our administration will release a housing plan focused on improving housing quality for all New Yorkers, including those in public housing.”
NYCHA is infamously featured as the city’s worst landlordin reports put out by the city public advocate’s office.
The agency has been placed under a federal monitorsince 2019 over hazardous conditions and other scandals such as falsely certifying inspections.
Mamdani defended focusing the hearings solely on privately-owned apartments.
“So we are going to be approaching the housing crisis in a wide variety of ways. One of those are these rental rip off hearings,” Mamdani told reporters Sunday at an unrelated event on Coney Island.
Hizzoner also blamed the federal government for disinvesting in NYCHA, which requires a staggering $80 billion in capital improvements.
“We will also continue to work with NYCHA residents to ensure that they are being delivered the quality of service they’ve long been denied,” Mamdani said. “And while we know that so much of the reason that NYCHA residents are living through a system that requires around $80 billion of capital improvements. By last count, is a lack of commitment from the federal government.”
But Lopez and other critics said the hearings that focus only on privately-owned apartment buildings is just one example of Mamdani’s misguided housing policy and ideology, which includes wanting the city Rent Guidelines Board to freeze the rent on the city’s nearly 1 million rent-regulated apartments.
Cea Weaver, his director of the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants, has come under fire for past statements that disparaged home ownership as a “weapon of white supremacy” and calling on the government to “seize private property.”
“Impoverish the white middle class. Homeownership is racist/failed public policy,” she once said.
“Elect more communists,” Weaver also said.
Mamdani’s hearings will include the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, the Department of Buildings, and the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, according to the mayor’s website.
Other agencies such as NYCHA will also be available but only “to provide resources.”
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