Despite a last-minute shakeup, Eric Adams managed in his final hours as mayor to install a fourth new appointee on the city’s the Rent Guidelines Board as part of an effort to derail one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s core campaign promises, the Daily News has learned.
Earlier this month, Adams made four new appointments to the RGB with the apparent goal of getting those members to block Mayor Mamdani’s promise to freeze rents for the city’s 2 million stabilized tenants.
But Adams’ sabotage mission was hurled into doubt when one of his new RGB picks, Merril Lynch financial advisor Lliam Finn, declined the appointment on Tuesday, the day before Adams was set to leave office, sources confirmed. Finn’s refusal to take the board seat was first reported by the RealDeal.
Adams found a workaround to Finn’s withdrawal, though, according to sources familiar with the matter.
At some point in his final few hours as mayor Wednesday, Adams appointed Christie Peale, the CEO of Center for NYC Neighborhoods, to take Finn’s post on the RGB instead, the sources told The News on Friday, speaking on condition of anonymity.
That means five of the board’s nine members are Adams appointees. Mamdani will not be able to easily replace any of the Adams picks until 2027 due to rules barring RGB appointees from being removed without cause.
That breakdown on the board could mean Mamdani will have a hard time convincing the RGB to enact a rent freeze this year. The board convenes every summer to set the permissible rates landlords can increase rents by on stabilized apartments, with a simple majority vote solidifying the figures.
It’s unclear where Peale, who didn’t return a request for comment Friday, stands on the issue of a rent freeze. Her organization provides legal assistance and other services for low-income homeowners in the city with the goal of ensuring New Yorkers struggling to make ends meet, especially in Black and Latino communities, do not end up in foreclosure.
Sources close to Mamdani said they’re more optimistic about Peale than they were about Finn, citing her longstanding commitment to fight for affordability for both renters and homeowners.
In 2017, Peale provided a quote for a press release from then-Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office that praised his housing plan, which, among various other programs, touted he had secured rent freezes for the city’s stabilized tenants in two of his four years in office. In her quote, Peale said her group “strongly supports innovative models that ensure permanent affordability, such as community land trusts, that can protect homeowners and their renters from the volatility of the real estate market.”
A spokeswoman for Mamdani declined to comment on Peale’s appointment.
Mamdani — who promised on the campaign trail he would see to it that the RGB enacted 0% increases in each of the four years of his first mayoral term — said at an unrelated press conference Thursday he remains hopeful he’ll be able to make good on his pledge despite Adams’ last-minute appointments.
“I continue to be confident that the Rent Guidelines Board will assess the landscape for tenants of rent-stabilized units across the city and find that they are in dire need of relief,” he said. “What we have seen in the last year is that they found that while the profits of landlords of rent stabilized units went up by 12%, the median household income for those same tenants was $60,000 a year.”
