The NYC Rent Guidelines Board approved a rent freeze for the city’s one million rent stabilized units on Thursday — in a major win for Mayor Mamdani.

The freeze marks the first complete fulfillment of one of Mamdani’s core campaign promises, and it comes just days after candidates he backed swept their primary elections. A legal challenge to the vote is expected..

The phrase “freeze the rent” became a popular rallying cry at Mamdani’s campaign events on the trail last year, along with free citywide buses and universal childcare. While Mamdani has made strides towards expanding citywide 2K, the rent freeze marks the first promise he can fully check off his list.

Since becoming mayor, though, Mamdani has piped down publicly on his calls for the freeze in order to avoid the appearance of compromising the board’s independence. He appointed six members to the board in February.

Just hours before Thursday’s vote, one of two landlord representatives, Christina Smyth, resigned, ripping the rent freeze as a predetermined conclusion the board had worked to justify.

“This rebuilt board was required to deliver a rent freeze,” she wrote in her three-page resignation letter. “Everything since has been theater. The hearings, the reports, the public comment, the data. None of it was ever going to change the result.”

Smyth, who was reappointed by ex-Mayor Adams at the end of his term, told The News she planned to do “everything I can to assist” legal challenges to the vote.

Ann Korchak, board president of Small Property Owners of New York, called the vote an “absolute farce” said it should have been postponed until a new representative could be appointed to replace Smyth.

“The resignation of the only principled RGB member and the board’s only meaningful advocate for small owners validated our greatest fear, that the majority Mamdani-appointed RGB would cave to the political demands of City Hall,” Korchak said. “On top of being an owner voice short, this is an egregious violation of the RGB’s legal mandate to set rent adjustments based on the math of its own research, not on political influence.”

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