What Mamdani Doesn't Know About Tenants

It’s so weird that people have framed his approach as “going after bad landlords”.

Yes, he is going after bad landlords because the city should go after bad landlords who aren’t following the laws or have their tenants living in mold infested hell holes.

But that’s not how he has said he will lower housing costs. His stated approach has always been twofold.

Pausing the rent increase on rent stabilized apartments for at least 1 year (something that was done multiple times in the 2010s and those apartments are rent stabilized because the builders got tax breaks in return for rent stabilization) as a temporary quick relief. But ultimately his goal is to build a lot more housing. And he wants to do that both by having the government build housing but also by making it easier for private builders to build housing through zoning changes, reducing regulations, and allowing for fast track approvals if certain conditions are met.

His stated approach is basically all of the above. Picking only 1 of those and saying it won’t fix the problem is true but silly because no one is saying any one action will fix the problem.