All seven mayoral candidates current at an Higher West Facet discussion board on Dec. 7, 2024, prompt they’re no less than open to pushing for a hire freeze on the town’s 2.4 million rent-stabilized tenants — a number of in additional concrete phrases than others.
Photograph by Max Parrott
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The boisterous viewers of an Higher West Facet housing policy-focused discussion board for seven mayoral candidates on Saturday didn’t waste any time to make their precedence recognized.
“Freeze the rent!” the group chanted earlier than the discussion board even had an opportunity to kick off.
In response, all of the candidates current prompt they’re no less than open to pushing for a hire freeze on the town’s 2.4 million rent-stabilized tenants — a number of in additional concrete phrases than others.
Three candidates — Queens Meeting Member Zohran Mamdani, state Sen. Jessica Ramos and former Bronx Meeting Member Michael Blake — all unconditionally acknowledged that they might push for a freeze.
The opposite 4 — Brooklyn state Sen. Zellnor Myrie, former Metropolis Comptroller Scott Stringer, present Metropolis Comptroller Brad Lander and legal professional Jim Walden — all answered that they might be sympathetic to rent-stabilized tenants with out immediately affirming that they might selectively appoint hire pointers board members to make sure that consequence.
The discussion board at Fordham Legislation Faculty on Saturday afternoon, sponsored by a coalition of housing and neighborhood advocates, discovered the group of mayoral hopefuls largely coalescing over a set of housing insurance policies.
The candidates typically agreed on the necessity to construct extra center—and low-income housing to cease market-rate rents from going up, ramp up code enforcement for unhealthy landlords, retool the town’s right-to-counsel program to supply housing legal professionals and broaden the town’s housing voucher system for the housing insecure.
Variations between the candidates manifested alongside the margins or in emphasis. One level of rivalry centered on how the candidates would enhance the New York Metropolis Housing Authority (NYCHA).
Ramos, for example, took a tough line towards the conversion of public housing developments to non-public administration packages.
“No private management of our buildings. No developers, any of that. We have to keep public housing, public housing,” she mentioned.
Blake and Walden alternatively, wish to depart some of these conversions, which may include additional funding and renovations, as an possibility for NYCHA tenants to pursue if they need.
“It is very difficult to give a blanket yes or no because there have been tenants who have said they’re open to it,” Blake mentioned.
One other level of disagreement came visiting a brand new Council invoice that will chill out a number of the restrictions Airbnb property homeowners.
Whereas many of the candidates expressed opposition to the invoice and two (Walden and Myrie) mentioned they weren’t acquainted, Blake mentioned that he’s not towards “people that are utilizing Airbnb to get extra money for their own household” and prompt that he could be in favor, relying on the legislation’s positive print.
Whereas all of the candidates outlined plans to beef up enforcement actions towards unhealthy landlords, went as far as to advocate for repossessing buildings in extreme instances. Mamdani proposed the concept of “taking away buildings from landlords who clearly have no interest in running them” to transform them to community-owned housing.
Walden, a former Japanese District of New York prosecutor, described an analogous plan to cease repeat unhealthy actors from renting however mentioned he wasn’t certain whether or not the housing ought to be put again in the marketplace or right into a tenant possession mannequin.
“I don’t know the answer to that question yet,” he mentioned.
