Frustrated tenants and hesitant landlords squared off at Brooklyn’s Rent Guidelines Board (RGB) hearing on June 11 as the atmosphere inside the CUNY City Tech auditorium in Downtown Brooklyn quickly devolved into an ideological battle over how housing fits into the city’s economic structure. The two sides posed the question of what housing is — a building for owners to generate revenue, or a place where people have a right to live and find shelter.
The RGB conducted public hearings throughout June in Queens, the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Manhattan to take public testimony about possible rent adjustments for rent-stabilized units. The final in-person hearing was held June 16 in Manhattan. The RGB is scheduled to hold its final vote on June 25.
The hearing at City Tech brought together coalitions of tenant advocates and an opposing number of landlords –– primarily organized by the Gotham Housing Alliance –– to speak up for their rights.
New York State Senator Stephen T. Chan testified that he once lived as a tenant in a substandard unit, but later became a small property owner. He said he understands the anger from both sides.
“During the COVID pandemic, I still had to pay my mortgage while nobody paid me rent, and that was tough,” he said. “While we talk about rent freezes, I also want to talk about property tax freezes, utility cost freezes, and insurance cost freezes.
“… who’s the worst landlord in New York City? It’s the city,” Chan continued. “We have thousands of empty units in the NYCHA system that are vacant. How about we bring those units back out for our veterans who need it, for our seniors, our low-income folks. How about that?”
City Councilmember Shahana K. Hanif said that residents in her 39th District –– in particular, tenants in locations like 63 Tiffany Place, 270 15th Street, and 110 Baltic Street –– deserve a rent freeze. “For nearly one million New Yorkers, rent-stabilized housing is the last line of defense against displacement; it allows seniors to age in place, immigrant families to build a future, and working-class New Yorkers to remain in the communities they have sustained for generations. Yet tenants are being squeezed from every direction: the cost of groceries, childcare, transportation, healthcare, and utilities continues to rise.”
One landlord testified that the city should be doing more to protect small landlords from what he termed “professional tenants” who get into units and don’t pay their rent, and whom it takes years to remove. He said that “over the past 20 years, actually, 25 years, it’s been very, very difficult to manage property in New York. A lot of our constituents don’t even want to buy or don’t even want to manage the property … they’d rather leave it vacant.”
A tenant affiliated with the Crown Heights Tenant Union spoke about how “the money I make disappears somewhere else: to pay bills from years of chronic illness, to repairs that I pursue on my own because my building is owned by a slumlord who’s charging me $2,575 for a dilapidated one-bedroom in Crown Heights … “I stand here on my own, yes, but also to speak to my neighbors and community who have similar stories. To give any increase to us is, frankly, asking us to die. That is not an exaggeration, that is not hyperbole; it is a simple truth.”
The testimony from property owners, tenants, and local representatives was often drowned out by chants of “Freeze the Rent!!” and constant shouting back and forth throughout the event.
As some small property owners tried to testify and complained of difficulty in making ends meet, there were shouts of “Then, sell your property!” or “Get a real job!”
One Black small property owner responded to those calls by noting that her parents — her mother from South Carolina and her father from Jamaica — had worked and saved to purchase a Brooklyn brownstone at a time when Black people were rarely granted mortgages by banks. “I tell you, when I look over and I see people like this crew right here and when you tell us to sell our homes — as a Black family, you don’t know how many times we’ve been fighting for people’s homes, fighting against [bad] landlords, because in my house we were taught to make sure that you take care of the tenants.”
Charlene Davis testified that the RGB has to take into account some of the issues tenants face before they place their votes.
“I came here, because I felt it was very important for my voice to be heard,” she said. “Too many people that are disabled, that are in wheelchairs, cannot afford their rent. You have to decide to buy your cancer medication or to pay your rent. These landlords — some of them are great landlords, and some of them are not. I think that the board needs to look at it and say to themselves, ‘Look, we need to make some changes.’ You have landlords out here who are slumlords, and these slumlords are what’s making it bad for everyone else; not only the tenants but for the other landlords who do the right thing.”
The RGB approved a tentative rent increase of 0–2% for one-year leases and 0–4% for two-year leases, starting between October 1, 2026, and September 30, 2027. Mayor Zohran Mamdani ran for office with a widely popular promise to freeze rents. This is the first time the RGB has seriously considered a 0% renewal increase for two-year leases.
