Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is proposing a rent freeze as part of his plan to make housing more affordable in New York City. This proposed freeze has come under criticism as failing to address the larger issues facing affordable housing today. While a full freeze on rent increases for the city’s one million rent-stabilized apartments may appeal to struggling tenants, its impact on the overall housing affordability crisis is far more complex — and the policy is potentially counterproductive. In the long run, a freeze would decrease affordability, fuel gentrification, lead to worsening living conditions as well as create negative spillovers in the surrounding neighborhoods.
What the Rent Freeze Really Means
The proposed freeze focuses exclusively on rent-stabilized apartments, which house nearly half of NYC’s renters. According to the latest 2023 Rent Guidelines Board data, the average monthly rent for stabilized apartments is approximately $1,550, significantly below the citywide median asking rent, which in 2025 exceeds $4,000 for market rate apartments and nearly $5,600 for two-bedrooms in some boroughs.
The freeze would halt further increases on stabilized leases — already subject to regulated annual adjustments of about 3% or less. Crucially, the idea is not proposing to regulateor freeze rents on market rate apartments where affordability pressures are far more severe. In fact, a freeze threatens to drive market rents even higher due to a decrease in stabilized apartment turnover which increases demand for the market rate apartments and drives up the rents. As such, a policy of freezing rents affects a limited segment of the market and does little to address the city’s broader affordability crisis.
Today, many buildings with a large number of rent-stabilized apartments are becoming distressed because the income from rent is insufficient for landlords to cover costs.1 For example, according to the New York Post, a report from the Furman Center at New York University, as first reported by Bloomberg, states that among other increasing operating expenses, “Insurance costs for rent-stabilized apartments grew a startling 150% between 2019 and 2025. Operating costs, including maintenance and utilities, outpaced inflation.”
When expenses outpace rental income, landlords cut back on repairs, leading to declining housing conditions. Many deficit-ridden buildings are also deeply in debt, and as loans slip into default, foreclosure looms. Yet foreclosure does nothing to fix the underlying imbalance; it simply shifts the shortfall to lenders and delays the inevitable. With little to gain from foreclosing, banks hold off — and the crisis only deepens.
Frozen in Place: Why Stagnation Isn’t Relief
While freezing rents may sound like immediate relief, it fails to acknowledge that for many stabilized tenants, rent levels are already unaffordable. Over the past five years, while regulated increases hovered around 1.5 4%, inflation surged at double that pace. In real terms, economic rents have declined — meaning tenants are paying relatively more from stagnant incomes, and landlords are collecting less in purchasing power-adjusted dollars –- meaning the income from rent does not pay for as much, after accounting for differences in cost of living or inflation.
Without reducing actual rent levels or boosting household income, a rent freeze simply preserves the current squeeze. Tenants remain rent-burdened, landlords face deteriorating economics, and
the underlying issues are untouched.
The Real Affordability Fix: Wages, Not Slogans
Affordability isn’t just about rent ceilings — it’s about what people can earn. New Yorkers need wage growth that outpaces cost-of-living increases. The City needs to be careful not to advance polices that alienate employers or discourage investment. When businesses flee, job creation slows and so do wages. That traps rent-stabilized tenants in a cycle of stagnant income and frozen — but still burdensome –– housing costs.
The Mirage
By focusing on symbolic action over structural change, the proposed rent freeze risks becoming a mirage. It does not roll back current rents, does not affect the majority of renters, and does not create new housing supply. Instead, it deepens a bifurcated system where free-market tenants would face no protection from increases, and stabilized tenants remain stuck.
New York needs bold ideas. But they must be rooted in economic reality. Freezing rents on one segment of the housing stock while doing nothing to improve wages and not significantly increasing housing supply guarantees only one thing: a worsening housing crisis.
