Poll: 3 in 4 New Yorkers want a rent freeze

More than 3 in 4 New York City voters are in support of the city enacting a rent freeze on the roughly 1 million rent-stabilized apartments scattered throughout the five boroughs, according to a new poll from the left-leaning think tank Data for Progress shared exclusively with City & State ahead of its Tuesday release.

Of the 854 likely New York City voters surveyed, 78% said they supported a rent freeze – a term essentially meaning landlords would be barred from increasing rents for rent-stabilized apartments over a set period of time. While support was most highly concentrated among Democrats at 83%, 63% of Republicans also expressed they were in favor of the idea. Other findings of the poll recently released by Data for Progress have centered on similar quality-of-life issues like support for free buses and the biggest cost-related issues driving New Yorkers from the city. (At 54%, the cost of housing was the most common reason people said they considered leaving the city.)

“This is a major issue for the next mayor to address,” said Danielle Deiseroth, executive director of Data for Progress. “New Yorkers really can’t afford to waste four years in addressing the housing affordability crisis.”

The poll comes in the midst of the New York City Rent Guidelines Board’s annual review of the economy, housing supply and vacancy rates, the cost of building, and other data points relevant to the state of the city’s housing market. Upon the culmination of that process, usually in June, the nine-member board votes on how much to raise the rent for rent-stabilized apartments – or has been the case in some years prior to New York City Mayor Eric Adams taking office, to not increase rents at all. Hence a rent freeze. Mayors are tasked with appointing people to the board and have historically had a great deal of influence over how members vote. Under the de Blasio administration for instance, the board voted for a rent freeze three times. Every year without fail, the highly watched decision ignites impassioned debate on both sides of the issue, but with a competitive mayoral election underway, the fight has taken on greater significance. 

“Renters are the majority of New York City,” said Cea Weaver, Housing Justice for All coalition director. “You really can’t become mayor of the city without renters voting for you.”

Many landlord groups and other critics of freezing the rent have argued that capping rents can disincentivize landlords from putting their units on the market, and can create stagnancy in the market by incentivizing tenants to stay put even if their housing doesn’t fit their situation. For example, empty nesters with a rent-stabilized apartment might be hesitant to downsize. They’ve also pointed to rising costs of building maintenance, saying that rent increases are necessary as a result.

"Given the polling is being conducted divorced from economic reality, we expect the next poll will test how New Yorkers view the idea of paying no rent at all," James Whelan, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, said in a statement about the Data for Progress results.

Tenant advocates hope that the swell of public support illustrated in the poll combined with several recently released board reports on the housing market will spur the field of candidates vying to be the next mayor to champion the issue. Some have already whole-heartedly committed to freezing the rent like Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani – the first to do so – along with state Sen. Jessica Ramos and former Assembly Member Michael Blake, who voiced their support at a housing-centered forum in December. New York City Comptroller Brad Lander and former Comptroller Scott Stringer have both said they would support a rent freeze – with the caveat that the data would need to support it first.  According to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s recently released housing plan, he would not commit to freezing the rent, but he would make appointments to the board that “will make decisions based on the evidence in the criteria set forth in the law.” City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, another late entrant to the mayoral race, told City & State that she would support a rent freeze if “the economics means it does not undermine tenants’ living conditions remaining healthy and safe.”

Weaver and other tenant advocates argue that the data does support the need for a rent freeze – particularly in wake of the board’s recent reports. One of the board reports released last month, found that the net operating income for landlords increased roughly 12% between 2022 and 2023 in the city. Another report released last week found that the number of New Yorkers receiving cash assistance rose roughly 16%, unemployment grew 5%, homelessness grew nearly 9% and residential evictions increased nearly 23%. This comes on top of the fact that the rental vacancy rate is at an all time low of 1.4%. 

“People are hungry for something that feels concrete,” Weaver said. “This is something the mayor can do. It doesn’t feel like a fake promise – it feels like something that is grounded in people’s number one fear, which is the fear of displacement, the fear of housing costs that are too expensive.”