When Mayor Zohran Mamdani unveiled his Block by Block housing plan last month — a plan that’s more anti-landlord politics than actual policy — the target on the backs of small rent-stabilized property owners grew even bigger.
Small owners were already bracing for a punch to the gut this month, when the nine-member Rent Guidelines Board, now dominated by Mamdani appointees, will consider a rent freeze for one- and two-year leases on the city’s nearly 1 million rent-stabilized apartments.
With the mayor’s majority control over the RGB, we fear the worst: A rent freeze is one of the few campaign promises Mamdani can deliver without needing state legislation or Gov. Kathy Hochul’s approval.
A freeze would be a knockout blow for financially and physically distressed rent-stabilized buildings — and for thousands of vulnerable mom-and-pop, generational and immigrant owners operating under obstructive laws and constantly escalating costs.
It seems Mamdani is setting small owners up for failure, clearing the way for a sinister plan to seize private property and convert it into socialist housing operated by his nonprofit and land-trust cronies.
It’s no coincidence that a week before Mamdani unveiled his housing plan, the City Council reintroduced the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act, a predatory law that would force financially distressed property owners to sell their buildings below market price to a pool of Mamdani-approved nonprofit housing providers.
The RGB, now engaged in a series of public hearings before its final rent adjustment vote on June 25, can choose a different path.
Board members must take a clear-eyed look at the RGB’s own research and data, listen to the independent economists warning of record numbers of financially distressed rent-stabilized properties, and reject City Hall’s politics.
They — and Mamdani, too — have a unique opportunity to change this broken, one-sided system that works against small owners, the backbone of the city’s affordable housing ecosystem, and the families we house.
We challenge the mayor and his board to support a bifurcated, or “split,” rent adjustment that provides higher allowable rent increases for small rent-stabilized property owners.
That would provide real help to pre-1974 rental properties, which are mostly 100% or majority rent-stabilized.
Split-rent adjustments would address the fundamentally different economic challenges between older housing stock and newer construction.
The RGB one-size-fits-all rent policy no longer works.
Older, distressed rent-stabilized buildings are saddled with constant and expensive repairs and upgrades to major systems like roofs, plumbing, heating, electrical and brickwork.
The RGB must separate this aging housing stock from other types of rent-stabilized units — such as those owned by profitable large institutional landlords, or those found in Manhattan high-rises and in newer construction benefitting from special tax subsidies.
The RGB will be voting on a preliminary across-the-board increase range of 0% to 2% for a one-year lease — a laughable range that completely ignores its own data.
Its new report on the Price Index of Operating Costs found that operating costs and expenses of rent-stabilized housing rose 5.3% from April 2025 to March 2026.
Large institutional landlords can handle such a near-freeze on rents.
Small ones don’t have the resources to do so.
Given the RGB’s own numbers, to keep their heads above water and their properties out of foreclosure, small-property owners need a rent increase of at least 5.3%.
And what with the costs of keeping older buildings in good order, operating costs have risen even higher than that for small owners, who are buckling under the burden of a decade’s worth of underfunded rent adjustments.
From 2016 to 2025, the RGB provided 14% in rent increases — while the Consumer Price Index rose 28.63%.
Add it up, and that’s a negative 13.98% in real rent growth rate for rent-stabilized apartments over the last 10 years.
Yet the RGB is free to set rent orders outside an across-the-board percentage adjustment.
In fact, there is precedent: In the past, the RGB has set a separate flat-rate increase, which it called a “low rent adjustment,” for apartments whose rents fell below a specific level.
This provided an assist for small owners who needed help to maintain and operate low-rent units.
A Mamdani-backed split-rent adjustment would be a signal that the mayor values small owners as partners in tackling the city’s affordable housing crisis.
It would be a lifeline for small owners and the families we house.
But policies like Block by Block, COPA and a rent freeze ignore the disproportionate economic pressures and unique financial realities of small rent-stabilized owners.
They would undermine neighborhoods, block by block, of the housing stability and affordability that Mamdani claims to champion.
Ann Korchak is president of Small Property Owners of New York.
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