Tenants Celebrate Historic Two-Year Rent Freeze

Written collectively by Arman Amin, Monica Furman, Liz June, Ash Marinaccio, Karina Ordóñez, and Nuriel Vera-DeGraff 

New York City tenants have won a historic victory as the Rent Guidelines Board (RGB) voted Thursday night  to freeze rents on one and two-year leases. 

The energy before the meeting was palpable despite the sweltering heat as hundreds of activists, organizers, and tenants waited to get into East Harlem’s  Museo del Barrio, with ice pops and bottled water being passed around for temporary relief. Multiple chants echoed down the line: “Fight, fight, fight! Housing is a human right!” and “Up with tenant rights! Down with real estate!”  The Rude Mechanical Orchestra energized the crowd with songs as they edged closer to the museum’s auditorium entrance. Attendees wore colorful shirts representing tenant organizing groups like CAAAV, NYS Tenant Bloc, and Met Council on Housing while waving multilingual posters declaring the need for a rent freeze.

This is the first time since the RGB’s inception in 1969 that it has enacted a freeze on multiple-year leases, demonstrating the growing power of the city’s tenant movement. Organizations like CAAAV, CASA and NYS Tenants Bloc have been working tirelessly to win a rent freeze that will protect nearly one million rent-stabilized apartments that are home to 2.4 million New Yorkers. Activists knocked on doors, collected signatures, and packed each hearing over the last month. Many of them also worked to elect Zohran Mamdani who made freezing the rent his top campaign promise.

“Working class and immigrant tenants fought for the first-ever rent freeze on all leases for 2.4 million rent-stabilized tenants,” said CAAAV Chinatown tenant leader, Linda Lin. “We made history today, carrying the legacy of generations of tenant leaders across the city. The Rent Guidelines Board has answered to the tenant majority and the voices of working class New Yorkers. Rent freeze is the start. Tenants are united and ready to win even more.”

Who Rent Stabilization Protects

Rent stabilization exists to protect the working people of New York; 37% of low-income NYC households live in rent-stabilized housing, according to the Community Service Society (CSS). While the state’s biggest landlord lobbies, such as the Real Estate Board of New York, the New York Apartment Association, and the Small Property Owners of New York, have been fighting to overturn and strip back rent-stabilization, tenants have organized to ensure the policy serves its true purpose: to protect New Yorkers and keep them in New York.

Under Mayor Eric Adams’ administration, the Rent Guidelines Board hiked up rents four years in a row by a total of 12% while the net operating income for rent-stabilized landlords grew by 30%. Studies by CSS have affirmed that tenants have seen no improvements to their apartments despite rent increases. Rather than investing rents into repairs and maintenance, rent-stabilized landlords used tenants’ rent to finance their debts or buy new properties, betting on their ability to destabilize apartments and displace existing tenants in favor of those who can pay more.

Darios Gordon, Executive Director of The Met Council, one of the oldest tenant activist groups in New York City noted, “A lot of people were traumatized from the Adams administration 12% increase.” When prompted about future movement to make the city more affordable, Gordon stated, “For two years, their rent will not go up starting October 1st, so that’s actually, really amazing… [It’s] the next step the city should take to make the city even more affordable. So now, the next thing is a [rent] rollback.”

Over the course of the meetings across the five boroughs, the Rent Guidelines Board heard over 300 in-person testimonies and received over 700 audio-visual submissions from the public.

The freeze also helps immigrant communities stay in New York City, as Farhan Rahman, an immigrant from Bangladesh, expressed.”We love New York City, we’ve already been thinking about having to move away, and we really don’t want to. We know immigrants and the working class are the people who have built the city, and we want to continue to stay here.” 

“This historic two-year rent freeze is more than a victory on paper. The biggest thing tenants won, besides the freeze, was confidence in our collective power,” said Joanne Grell, CASA Leader in the Bronx and Co-Chair of the NYS Tenant Bloc’s Freeze the Rent Campaign. “Once people discover their power, they begin to imagine what else is possible. For years, tenants were told we could not truly influence the decisions that shape our lives. But we organized, spoke out, and proved that when we stand together, we can win together. Tonight we celebrate. Tomorrow we keep organizing. Together, we keep moving forward. This is just the beginning.”

Rent Rollback

Following the historic announcement, tenants and organizers poured out into the courtyard in front of El Museo, sharing tearful hugs and defiant cheers of victory. For organizers for housing justice, the message is clear: the battle is won, but this is only the beginning. To counteract past rent increases that were unjustified, they say the next step will be to fight for a rent rollback which the RGB is also empowered by law to do. 

Although the rent freeze is a city issue, its impact is intertwined with the historic results from Tuesday’s Democratic primary where nine out of the 10 candidates endorsed by the New York City Democratic Socialists of America won their respective races.

Two winning DSA  candidates who came out of the tenant movement — Samantha Kattan (District 37-Western Queens) and Illapa Sairitupac (District 65-Lower Manhattan) celebrated alongside tenants and organizers after the RGB’s vote. “It’s very much a city board appointed by the mayor,” Kattan noted, “but there are so many things that you can do at the state level to support rent stabilization and tenants … [the rent freeze] is history-making.”

Sairitupac — who is also part of the Cooper Square Committee, a tenants’ rights organization in the East Village — looked towards the future: “Let’s keep building tenant power,” he said. “Let’s keep building tenant associations … I want to be an organizer in office, I want to be someone who’s always hearing my constituents on the ground.”

This article was coauthored by members of DocBloc’s Artist as Citizen Journalist Initiative which brings together theatre artists and journalists to share in civic reporting and the growing need for community-based storytelling.The ACJ initiative tests a hybrid model of reporting and performance, positioning theatre artists as civic witnesses and collaborators in local journalism. To learn more visit docbloc.org or connect on Instagram @docblocprojects.