Not only is a disastrous 2019 state law pushing rent-regulated units off the market by the tens of thousands, the city’s efforts to get those “zombie” apartments on the market have stalled — and Zohran Mamdani’s rent freeze promises to make the crisis even worse.
Six years ago, then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the “Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act” into law, making it impossible for landlords ever to recoup the cost of bringing units up to code (as other laws require) when a tenant moves out after decades.
Such repairs and upgrades can easily cost $100,000 or more; pre-2019, the building owner could hike the rent to finance the work — but no more, so now thousands of apartments fall off the market every year.
The city Housing Preservation & Development department’s “Unlocking Doors” program offers to reimburse owners of “distressed” rent-stabilized units up to $50,000 for certain improvements, such as mandatory lead and asbestos abatement, electrical and plumbing upgrades and removing asthma triggers.
HPD initially offered $25,000-a-unit deals, and when that got zero takers, it doubled the grant — and got one owner to sign up.
Turns out that HPD’s “help” is so meager, with so many strings attached, that owners find themselves literally better off keeping their apartments empty.
Consider: The New York City Housing Authority estimates that it needs about $500,000 to get one of its older units up to code.
Landlords who sign up for the HPD program must also decline Section 8 applicants or tenants who want to pay the old-fashioned way, in cash; they can only accept new renters who are homeless or on the verge of eviction.
But the main issue here isn’t the failure of some ill-designed city program: The “warehousing” problem — with as many as 50,000 rent-regulated apartments sitting empty — is entirely Albany’s fault.
And this is just one part of a broader crisis, as state and city policies increasing combine to starve landlords of enough revenue to cover their “break even” costs for building maintenance plus fuel and water bills, taxes and the building’s mortgage.
In the name of “affordability,” Mamdani promises to freeze rents for rent-stabilized units — which will push many smaller landlords over the brink to bankruptcy, and force others to let whole buildings decay.
Mamdani’s supporters imagine that this mess will allow the city to assume ownership of hundreds of thousands of apartments, which it can “decommodify” and make available to the homeless and the needy: At last, “affordable” housing for all!
Oops: The city already owns 180,000 units of “decommodified” housing in NYCHA, which faces tens of billions in overdue maintenance. How will adding another few hundred thousand apartments to that fast-decaying inventory do anything but dig a deeper hole?
The only way to turn this around is to let landlords cover their costs: That means no rent freeze and undoing the 2019 law’s deadly restrictions.
Instead, the city has Mamdani poised to triple-down on the madness — and guarantee a crisis that will make housing even less affordable for ever-more New Yorkers.