Mamdani has managed to block the rent increase for almost half of New York’s homes for at least a year.

"A historic victory for the tenants of New York," the mayor commented on the decision, formalized by the vote of the Rent Guidelines Board.

The Rent Guidelines Board, the New York commission that meets every year to set rent prices, voted to freeze rents for about one million rent stabilized apartments (rent stabilized home, in English, meaning housing that falls under one of the two forms of rent control adopted by the City) across all five boroughs of the city. This accounts for about half of the rental homes in New York, around 30 percent of all existing housing units in the city.

The vote result was 7 to 1. Before the vote, one of the commission members, Christina Smyth, representing landlords, publicly resigned, accusing the commission of “deliberately ignoring the evidence it itself has gathered on the costs that homeowners face” and calling the outcome “predetermined by the mayor.” Technically, she is right. Zohran Mamdani has repeatedly stated during the election campaign that he would appoint “only those who understand that homeowners are doing just fine,” and he did. Six of the seven favorable votes came from people he appointed.

As reported by the BBC, Smyth said that “from then on it was all a charade.” Mamdani stated that it is “a historic victory for tenants in New York City.” Both can be true at the same time, and they probably are. A commission whose members are appointed by the mayor with the explicit mandate to freeze rents and that freezes rents is not exactly an example of independent governance, but it must be said that neither were previous commissions. The Real Estate Board of New York (an association that gathers the city’s real estate businesses) warned that the freeze will reduce maintenance investments and accelerate the deterioration of the real estate stock. An argument that has been used every time someone has tried to regulate rents in New York, with results that do not unequivocally support either the landlords’ or the tenants’ position.

The rent freeze is not the only good news of the week for Mamdani. On Wednesday, three candidates supported by the mayor won the primaries for Congress: urban planner Brad Lander and activist Darializa Avila Chevalier defeated incumbent (and moderate) Democratic representatives, while New York State Assembly member Claire Valdez beat an opponent backed by the city’s Democratic establishment. In six months, Mamdani has thus frozen rents for one million apartments, made Amazon pay $9 million in back fines, and helped elect three leftist candidates to Congress against the establishment candidates of his own party.