Mamdani's Rent Freeze Threatens Everyone Who Owns Anything
Tenants' groups and leftwing activists are cheering New York City's newly announced multiyear rent freeze. But Mayor Zohran Mamdani's rent scheme is headed for a judicial smackdown at the U.S. Supreme Court.
In 2023 and twice in 2024, a hesitant Supreme Court declined to hear challenges by building owners to New York state's rent regulations. Lower courts had ruled that the regulations diminished the value of rental properties, but the state had good reasons to balance the rights of owners with the need to protect tenants.
At that time, Justice Clarence Thomas said the constitutionality of New York's rent regulations is "an important and pressing question," and he looked forward to a case that clearly demonstrated the government was going too far to take an owner's property.
Mamdani is giving Thomas what he's been waiting for -- on a silver platter.
Moscow Mamdani's scheme to deny landlords any rent hikes at all reeks of the kind of expropriation of private property that occurs in Cuba, Venezuela and other socialist nations. Not in America. It is prohibited by the U.S. Constitution.
The Fifth Amendment bars government from imposing regulations that make a person's property worthless.
Everyone who owns anything -- a home or a business of any sort -- should feel threatened by Mamdani's Bolshevik scheme to deny building owners fair compensation, doom rental properties to rapid decay, and then literally seize their buildings. After landlords, who's next?
Under the framework established by the New York state legislature, the Rent Guidelines Board must determine allowable rent hikes based on the specific costs landlords incur. But Mamdani's handpicked RGB members threw the letter of the law out the window.
Fuel costs went up 11% in the last year, and insurance went up 10.5%, but Mamdani's RGB announced Thursday that landlords will get no increases this year or the next. And, according to Mamdani's campaign promises, not even in the years after, as long as he is mayor.
Zero rent hikes will cause buildings to rapidly fall into disrepair -- just what the new mayor intends. On May 29, he announced that when landlords fail to keep buildings up to code, "we will take aggressive legal action" to "transfer ownership to responsible stewards -- stewards that include community land trusts, nonprofits and even the tenants themselves."
New York law already allows that, but only under extreme circumstances. It applied to fewer than 30 properties in 2024 and generally doesn't result in permanent confiscation. But Mamdani's rent freeze will turn many landlords into targets because they'll lack the revenue to keep apartments up to code. The rent freeze deliberately creates the conditions for widespread confiscation. Building owners get zip.
Think Bolshevik Moscow in 1917, when the communists annulled private property rights, seized buildings and decreed them communal living spaces. Lefties now become the new land barons.
Last Thursday, RGB member Christina Smyth, appointed by former Mayor Eric Adams, resigned in protest just hours before the vote. She said the freeze "was decided last year on the campaign trail," and she offered to help anyone willing to wage a legal battle. "If so, I will do everything I can to assist them in being successful," she pledged.
Bring on the fight.
It's worth noting that a lawsuit already filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against New York City and the RGB also has a significant shot at success.
This suit focuses on the narrow case of what the real estate industry calls "zombie" apartments that cannot be rented because a 2019 state law allows owners to recover only $50,000 for repairs, far less than what it would cost to get apartments up to code. There are currently an estimated 57,000 zombie units, according to the state's Division of Housing and Community Renewal, that are sitting vacant and worthless to the owners.
It's likely to take two or three years for this case or any new challenge to Mamdani's rent freeze to reach the high court.
If the justices slap down Mamdani's rent freeze, the confiscations or any portion of the city's rent regulatory scheme as an unconstitutional "taking," as they're likely to do, Mamdani will have to comply, no matter what the throngs of leftwing tenant advocates shout in the streets.
Everyone in New York who owns anything -- a home, a rental property, a diner, a bodega or another business -- has a stake in this legal fight. Mamdani's scheme to seize rental properties is a red flag that all property rights are in peril. He's going after landlords first, but you could be next.
Betsy McCaughey is a former Lt. Governor of New York State and Chairman & Founder of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths at www.hospitalinfection.org. Follow her on Twitter @Betsy_McCaughey. To find out more about Betsy McCaughey and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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