Mamdani urged to help loosen NY rent law — in bid to put vacant affordable units on market

Landlords of rent-stabilized apartments are urging Mayor Zohran Mamdani to lobby to fix a state law they claim is keeping thousands of vacant rent-stabilized units off the market — even as the city grapples with homelessness and an affordable housing problem.

The landlords’ pitch to loosen restrictions for the Big Apple’s one million rent-stabilized apartments comes after the Mamdani administration inked a new $1.86 billion contract with the city’s hotel industry to provide emergency shelter to homeless families over the next three years.

But Ann Korchak, president of the Small Property Owners of New York, claimed a far less costly solution to the homelessness and affordable housing crises was staring the mayor “right in the face.”

Mayor Zohran Mamdani is being called on by landlords to lobby Albany to make changes to the Housing Stability & Tenant Protection Act of 2019. Robert Miller for NY Post

She said that caps set by the Housing Stability & Tenant Protection Act of 2019 — which limit rent increases — prevent owners of rent-regulated apartments from making necessary repairs and renovations when a tenant moves out.

That’s resulted in thousands of apartments being left both unoccupied — and off the market, Korchak claimed.

“This law has stripped owners of any financial ability to renovate and bring these apartments to code when a long-time tenant moves out,” said Korchak, who owns two apartment buildings in Manhattan.

“The caps are impacting the housing supply,” she said. “The state has passed a law that makes it impossible for me to invest in my apartments.”

According to the New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey, 26,310 vacant rent-stabilized units were unavailable in 2023.

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Critics refer to them as “zombie” or warehoused units.

Small property owners filed a lawsuit last fall also claiming the state law makes it economically unfeasible to lease vacant apartments because of caps imposed on rents for unoccupied units.

But landlords face an uphill battle proposing any rent increase, even for upkeep, particularly in an election year, in the Democratic-run pro-tenant legislature. Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul also is up for re-election this fall.

Mamdani himself supports a rent freeze on the one million rent-stabilized units amid an affordability crunch in the city.

The mayor, a former Queens state assemblyman, appoints the members of the Rent Guidelines Board, which sets the rent for these units.

Korchak said she was “frustrated” after seeing scathing audits about the city’s emergency wasteful spending on hotel shelters during the migrant crisis, particularly for $432 million no-bid contract involving the firm DocGo.

“The mayor should be lobbying the governor and his former colleagues in the Albany state legislature to amend the Housing Stability & Tenant Protection Act of 2019. He should be pushing to relax the severe economic restrictions that have forced building owners to leave 50,000 plus rent-stabilized apartments empty,” she said.

“A little more than three months into his tenure, the mayor hasn’t presented a single substantive housing proposal that addresses the affordable housing crisis long-term,” Korchak railed. “Instead, it has been a collection of catchy slogans, headlines, landlord-bashing, and schemes that would unlawfully take property from struggling small generational, immigrant owners and hand it over to predatory investors and nonprofits with questionable track records.”

The mayor’s office had no immediate comment.