Mamdani confident Adams political maneuvers won’t stop his rent freeze

Democratic mayoral front-runner Zohran Mamdani voiced confidence Monday he would, if elected, be able to enact a rent freeze for New York City’s stabilized tenants next year — even if Mayor Adams pulls off a last-minute maneuver that could complicate the move.

Late last week, news broke that Adams is likely to make a string of new appointments to the city’s Rent Guidelines Board before he leaves office at the end of the year. The board sets the rates landlords can increase rent by on stabilized tenants.

Sources briefed on the decision confirmed to the Daily News that Adams would make the new appointments with the idea that his picks could vote against Mamdani’s push for the board to enact a freeze on rent hikes on the roughly 2 million New Yorkers living in stabilized housing.

Nonetheless, Mamdani — who has made a rent freeze on stabilized tenants one of the key promises of his mayoral campaign — told reporters Monday afternoon he’s still optimistic he would be able to make good on his pledge regardless of what Adams does, though he did not go into detail on how.

“I continue to be confident that we will be able to match whatever last-minute betrayal that Eric Adams tries to concoct,” Mamdani, who’s polling as the favorite to win the Nov. 4 mayoral election, told the Daily News while on the Upper East Side greeting voters.

Asked how exactly he’d be able to do so if Adams stacks the board with anti-rent freeze members, Mamdani only said: “We would use the full extent of powers that we would have as the mayor and with the Rent Guidelines Board, and through that I continue to be confident.”

Spokespeople for Adams, whose mayoral term ends at midnight on New Year’s Eve, didn’t immediately return requests for comment. In each of Adams’ four years at City Hall, his Rent Guidelines Board has approved increases on the city’s stabilized tenants, amounting to a cumulative 12.6% increase over his term.

The board’s made up of a nine members. Each year, a simple majority of the board’s members need to come to a consensus to decide how high or low the permissible stabilized rent increases should be.

Because of the way their terms work, Adams has an opportunity to appoint four new members to the board who’d be able to serve until Dec. 31, 2026. Additionally, a fifth member previously appointed by Adams, housing policy analyst Alexander Armlovich, is set to serve through that date as well, and Armlovich has in the past argued against the concept of a rent freeze.

Mamdani, if elected, would immediately upon becoming mayor be able to make four new appointments to the board, including its chair.

Throughout the campaign, Mamdani has vowed to appoint members to the board who’d support the enactment of freezes on stabilized tenants in each of the four years of his first potential mayoral term. He has argued that’s a key plank in his promise to make New York City more affordable for working class residents.

But if Adams moves forward with making the four new appointments available to him, Mamdani could, if elected, face serious difficulties in enacting a freeze in his first year in office, given there could be five Adams-picked members — a simple majority — who could stand in the way.

RGB members can only be removed from the board for cause. A mayor can also ask RGB members to resign, but there’s no legal requirement for them to heed such requests.

Adams — who abandoned his reelection bid last month amid continued fallout from his corruption indictment — hasn’t yet said which candidates he’s eyeing for potential RGB appointments.

But luxury real estate agent Eleonora Srugo, a close friend of Adams, told the Daily News on Friday that she was being considered for a role on the board. She said she was wary of taking on the role, though, voicing concern about how she’d be able to do it while working on her Netflix reality show “Selling the City.”

On Monday, Srugo said she she had made up her mind and plans to decline any offer from Adams to serve on the RGB, arguing it might pose a conflict for her to serve on the board.

“I consider the jobs that I have on television to be more of a conflict than the job I have selling real estate,” Srugo told The News.

In his Upper East Side appearance on Monday, Mamdani seized on the fact that Srugo was even under consideration.

“I think her show is ‘Selling New York,’ right?” he said. “I think it’s many indicative of Eric Adams’ policy, he wants to sell the city, he wants to sell it to the highest bidder, and he is looking to have his final goodbye to New Yorkers be another act of betrayal, where a more than 12% rent hike is viewed as insufficient, he wants more than that.”