Mamdani sides with tenants as New York landlords get crushed by rigged housing laws

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New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is under fire, including from the White House, for his choice of a property-rights skeptic and “housing justice” advocate to head the city’s Office to Protect Tenants.Cara Weaver is on recordcalling homeownership a formof “White supremacy” and advocating that government “seize private property.”

We can hope that such policies will not be implemented, even in New York, and theTrump Department of Justicehas signaled an interest in ensuring they won’t be.But that doesn’t mean the city lacks myriad housing policy problems — largely based on laws that already overprotect tenant rights at the expense of law-abiding landlords, those not targeted by Mamdani on his new “rental ripoff” tour of allegedly negligent owners.

The city’s existing landlord-tenant laws are, in fact, so stacked against those foolish enough to own rental property — or stuck with it — that what Gotham really needs is an Office of Landlord Protection.

“New York has the most tenant protections of any state,” says Ann Korchak of the Small Property Owners of New York.One could reasonably say its laws are the most extreme in the country.

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Consider the rules governing the most basic tenant responsibility: the obligation to pay rent.

The process of eviction is far from a guarantee that tenants will be forced to leave their Gotham apartment to be replaced by someone who will actually provide the revenue an owner needs.Eviction cases often drag on for more than a year, thanks to the fact that tenants are guaranteed a city-paid attorney.

NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani delivers his inauguration address, Thursday, Jan. 1, 2026, outside City Hall.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani delivers his inaugural address Thursday, Jan.1, 2026, outside City Hall.

Even after a court order to leave, tenants can “ask the court for up to one year to move if you can show you can’t find a similar apartment in the same neighborhood.” In other words, tenants can live rent-free for another year.

What’s more, tenants facing eviction can receive so-called “one-shot deals” from the city that pay their back rent — and allow them to stay while they seek other housing, during which time they can continue not to pay rent.After that, they can move on to another apartment — and rinse and repeat.

Nor is it easy to raise the rent when expenses — such as property taxes and utilities — increase.

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Some 960,000 Gotham apartments are rent-stabilized, meaning rents can increase only as much as a city agency, the Rent Guidelines Board, permits.During former MayorBill de Blasio’stime in office, the permitted increase for three years was zero.A similar rent freeze was the cornerstone of Democratic Socialist Mamdani’s campaign.Thanks to vacancies on the board, Mamdani is now poised to appoint a majority of members capable of implementing his freeze pledge.

The state’s rent regulations even sharply limit increases for capital repairs — improvements made to bring dilapidated units up to housing codes.The state’s 2019 Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act limits any rent increases based on “major capital improvements” to a paltry 2%.Anyone facing the costs of bath, kitchen or heating system repairs understands that this is a tourniquet on income.The goal was to prevent luxury upgrades.

The result has been disinvestment.Not surprisingly, at least 26,000 apartments have been left vacant, harming both property owners and potential tenants.Even owners of ostensibly less regulated housing are limited in how much they can adjust rents.

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Those concerned about New York rental property owners losing their rights under Mamdani are already too late.Tenants in rent-stabilized units arguably have more rights than owners, including the ability to pass on rent-limited apartments to family members as if they were the true owners.

In theory, property-rights laws should provide the protections landlords need to ensure a well-functioning housing market.In practice, in New York, those rights have already been dramatically eroded.No one should be surprised that the city has a perennial housing shortage.New York needs not more tenant protections but a restoration of the rights and discretion of rental property owners.

Howard Husock is the author of “The Projects: A New History of Public Housing” (NYU Press, 2025) and of “The Poor Side of Town: And Why We Need It” (Encounter Books). He is a senior fellow in domestic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.He served on the Board of Directors of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting from 2013-17.