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In June, New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board voted 7-1 to pause rent increases for 960,000 rent-stabilized apartments, delivering on Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s central campaign promise to “freeze the rent.” Only Arpit Gupta, a New York University associate finance professor, cast a “no” vote, arguing that with landlords’ operating costs continuing to rise, the move would only lead to the deterioration of rent-stabilized units and drive up rents for non-controlled apartments.
“In the absence of seeing our data that [operating] costs have gone down, or policy decisions that would go in that same direction, it’s hard for me to vote for a freeze,” Gupta told The Dispatch last week.
Rent-stabilized apartments make up more than 40 percent of the city’s rental units and are subject to upper limits on rent increases voted on annually by the Rent Guidelines Board. The freeze applies to both one-year and two-year leases renewed between October 1, 2026, and September 30, 2027.
