In New York City, a rent freeze doesn’t stop the housing crisis — it just shifts costs onto someone else.
Roughly half of the city’s rental apartments are rent-stabilized, giving the Rent Guidelines Board enormous influence over the housing market. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has made that power a political priority, pouring $54 million into his newly created Office of Mass Engagement to rally protesters at Rent Guidelines Board meetings.
He got what he wanted: The board voted to freeze rents for roughly 1 million rent-stabilized apartments.
But every subsidy has its cost. And here the people stuck with the bill are New Yorkers who don’t live in rent-stabilized housing, who will face higher rents, fewer available apartments, and declining housing quality.
The problem is that New York’s rent-stabilization system isn’t targeted to those who need it most. It isn’t means-tested — that means it allows affluent tenants to remain indefinitely in below-market rate apartments simply because they secured a lease years ago. In a city where housing is already scarce, that means younger New Yorkers and lower-income families trying to get their foot in the door see a dwindling availability of affordable units.
And the end result is a housing market divided by somewhat arbitrary, non-financial metrics. Those lucky enough to hold a rent-stabilized lease receive an inflation-protected benefit regardless of income, while many lower and middle-income residents are pushed into the unregulated market where they face ever-rising rents.
The costs don’t stop there. Freezing rents also makes it harder for landlords to maintain and improve their buildings. When rental income is artificially constrained while labor, insurance, taxes, and construction costs continue to rise, maintenance gets postponed, renovations are shelved, and some apartments are left vacant altogether because owners cannot afford to bring them back online.
MAMDANI’S SOCIALIST HOUSING EXPERIMENT BEGINS
If New York wants to make housing affordable, it should focus on expanding supply, encouraging new construction, and directing assistance to residents based on financial need, not preserving a system that distributes benefits according to timing and luck.
Price controls, such as those on rental rates, never work. A rent freeze may be politically popular. It creates a clear group of winners who see immediate savings. But for the millions of New Yorkers who rent at market rates, or hope to rent in the future, it is another reminder that City Hall is protecting a select few while making tomorrow’s housing market even harder to enter.
Sam Raus is the David Boaz Resident Writing Fellow at Young Voices. Follow him on X: @SamRaus1.