Even as Mayor Zohran Mamdani has fixated on the injustices borne by New York City renters, he has acknowledged that some landlords are being crushed by rising costs.
Now, the mayor is revealing one way he wants to help: by curbing the skyrocketing cost of property insurance.
The mayor announced on Thursday that the city will invest in a new program to provide cheaper property and liability insurance to landlords of affordable housing and rent-stabilized buildings.
Many of the specifics are still unknown, including which landlords would be eligible, how much the premiums would cost and how much the city might have to spend. In the coming weeks, the city plans to hire a consultant to help iron out the details.
The move is a kind of olive branch from the mayor, who was a tenant until this year and has positioned himself largely as an antagonist to the real estate industry. His administration has pledged to crack down on neglectful big landlords, and has held “rental rip-off” hearings where tenants can voice complaints. Many developers and landlords feel that the mayor’s pro-tenant policies do not address the complicated realities of building and running housing in New York City.
Leila Bozorg, the deputy mayor for housing and planning, said in an interview that any insurance savings could ultimately improve the lives of tenants, because landlords would be able to spend more on repairs and improvements.
“We’re responding to what is an actual market failure right now,” she said. “The market is failing the affordable housing industry.”
A March 2024 report by the New York Housing Conference, a nonprofit group that advocates affordable housing, found that the average cost to insure an affordable apartment had increased more than 100 percent over four years. Another analysis released in February by New York University’s Furman Center found a 150 percent increase in insurance costs for many older rent-stabilized buildings between 2019 and 2025.
Landlords in New York City have increasingly complained that they have to cut back on expenses like maintenance in response to these rising costs. Some owners of affordable housing across the United States have even suggested that the cost of insurance could put them out of business.
New York landlords have complained in particular that Mr. Mamdani’s campaign pledge to freeze rents on the city’s nearly one million rent-stabilized apartments — about 40 percent of the rental housing stock — would make things worse by further reducing their income.
This new program is in part designed to respond to those complaints, Ms. Bozorg said.
“This is a problem that we know has been mounting for years, and the city has been sitting on the sidelines,” she said.
She said the program would be run by a private entity, though the city would have oversight and a stake, and that it would compete with other insurers in the marketplace.
The city expects the program to pay for itself over time as it draws revenue from the premiums paid by a growing number of property owners.
It would also be designed to save the city money, Ms. Bozorg said.
Developers of affordable housing often need to take out loans to finance the construction of their buildings. The size of each loan depends on the building’s anticipated net operating income. When insurance costs are high, the net operating income is lower and the loan is smaller, requiring city subsidies to fill the gap.
The city estimates that every $100 increase in insurance premiums results in a $1,200 increase in city capital needed for a new development. Reducing premiums would mean bigger loans and less city capital.
“We are really seeing this as a cost-saving endeavor,” Ms. Bozorg said.
The program is expected to be up and running by next year, according to the city, with policies initially insuring about 20,000 homes. That number would grow to 100,000 by 2030, according to the city’s plans.
Mihir Zaveri covers housing in the New York City region for The Times.
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