Landlords’ rent freeze suit gets a lift as court seeks mayor’s messages to rent board

Landlords trying to undo New York City’s rent freeze won a modest victory Wednesday. A Manhattan judge said he needed to see written communications between City Hall and the Rent Guidelines Board, and ordered the city to turn them over.

In June, the board froze rents on one- and two-year leases for about 1 million stabilized apartments. The landlords who sued allege that Mayor Zohran Mamdani “put his thumb on the scale” and pushed board members to ignore data showing owners were under financial strain. City Hall rejects that claim and offered no response on the ruling. In court, city lawyers have argued that no one improperly swayed the board and that its members weighed all the required data.

What the judge ordered in the rent freeze case

A lawsuit challenging a government decision is known as an Article 78 proceeding. In those cases, judges seldom let one side demand the other’s records, a step called discovery. Judge Brendan Lantry of Manhattan Supreme Court made an exception here. The landlords’ allegations, he wrote, had raised “significant concern” about whether the board followed a lawful process.

Lantry pointed to a campaign ad Mamdani posted last year, in which the future mayor said he “guaranteed” a rent freeze “every year” he held office. The judge called it unprecedented for a candidate to promise what an independent board would do. He also cited Christina Smyth, who quit the board in protest ahead of the June vote. She said she believed the board now “starts with an answer” and then works backward to justify it.

Covered by the order is any written exchange sent between Jan. 1 and June 25, the date of the vote, involving board staff on one side and someone in the mayor’s office on the other. That includes Mamdani himself as well as the mayoral offices for Mass Engagement, for Management and Budget, and to Protect Tenants.

Arpit Gupta, an Adams appointee and the lone board member to oppose the freeze, said in a statement after the vote that he did not believe Mamdani had swayed the decision. He said past mayors had interfered.

A high bar for the landlords

Several attorneys consider the lawsuit weak, among them lawyers at landlord-aligned firms, at the Legal Aid Society and at New York Law School. They and city attorneys say it is not enough to show that Mamdani had influence. The landlords must convince the judge that nothing in the board’s record gives a rational basis for a freeze.

At an early September hearing, Corporation Counsel Steven Banks and Assistant Corporation Counsel Rachel Moston cited thousands of pages of studies and data that board members testified they had weighed. “There is no basis in the record to show there is anything other than proper and lawful proceedings,” Moston said.

According to the city, the board did weigh rising costs for landlords, but only as one factor among many. Data before the board showed that half of rent-stabilized tenants were rent-burdened, 30% severely so, and that wages had dropped for 40% of the lowest-income tenants.