Despite Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s “rent freeze,” the costs for New York apartments continues to soar — except it’s not really “despite” at all: His policies either don’t touch the problems, or make them worse.
The average rent of an open Manhattan unit just hit an eye-watering $6,655 a month, report industry pros, a 10% jump from last year.
An average studio is now going for more than four grand; you’ll have to plunk down more than $12,000 every first of the month if you want three bedrooms.
One major reason: Rent regulation insulates 1 million apartments — more than one quarter of the entire city’s housing stock — from market pricing.
Those tenants rarely leave, making open units more scarce, and so forcing up prices for the 1 million market-rate apartments.
And the rent freeze (which actually benefits higher-income folks more that lower earners) only makes things worse.
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Plus, when a longtime rent-stabilized tenant finally moves out, 2019 state “reforms” make it unaffordable for landlords to bring the unit up to code, so even vacated apartments can’t get offered to new tenants.
All of this makes the city’s “rent inequities” even worse, with would-be newcomers facing the most ridiculous rents while the “haves” already here get an ever-better break.
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Yes, barriers to new construction made the supply crisis worse, and Mamdani’s talking about addressing those — but that means facing down other stale ideas and vested interests, so the going is beyond slow.
Indeed, the mayor’s fellow progressives keep doubling down on stale ideas, such as the state’s “Good Cause” eviction limits (which penalize good landlords and reward bad tenants) and the city FARE Act that tries to make landlords pay all brokers’ fees, as if those were the root problem rather than a response to the market’s insanity.
Mamdani’s rent freeze only benefits people who already live here; he’s done nothing to help those who want to come — which increasingly means only the very well off (highly paid, or with ample wealth) can move to New York.
He’s done nothing to change the recipe for atrophy that’s destroying the city’s middle class.
