Mayor Eric Adams is doubling down on his support for small landlords and calling for further policy reforms he says are needed to fix a worsening affordability crisis in New York City.
In a sit-down with The Real Deal’s Amir Korangy for the Coffee Talk series, Adams said state lawmakers’ 2019 rent reforms — which eliminated tools like major capital improvement and individual apartment improvement rent increases — have made it harder for landlords to maintain properties.
“If the rent rolls do not equal the amount that goes in [to] repairing and upkeeping a building…it’s going to create an environment where you are going to see builders have dilapidated conditions,” Adams said. “It was supposed to help low-income New Yorkers, but in the long term, [it] is going to hurt.”
The mayor warned that political rhetoric often ignores the city’s 700,000 small landlords.
“Whenever they think of landlords, they think of the huge landlords that own three-, four-thousand apartments,” he said. “We ignore small property owners…where all of their wealth is tied up in their building.”
Adams also said the industry needs to better communicate its role in funding city services, “why the real estate industry is important to our city and how it impacts their daily lives,” he said, citing how commercial property taxes fund police officer salaries.
On new development, Adams called for changes to the 485x tax program, which imposes wage requirements on projects with more than 99 units — a threshold arguably suppressing housing production.
Adams pointed to projects like the Flushing Airport redevelopment as models for scaling up workforce housing; he also said his administration is directing agencies to identify city-owned sites that could support more units.
“Let’s look at precinct parking lots. Let’s look at building on top of libraries. Let’s look at abandoned school buildings,” he said.
He also backed faster permitting and land use approvals, including changes to ULURP and deploying artificial intelligence to process drawings and approvals.
On NYCHA, Adams defended public-private partnerships, including the Related-led Elliott-Chelsea rebuild.
“You can’t keep putting a Band-Aid on a cancerous sort of repairs,” he said.
Adams also made his election pitch to the industry as he tries to fend off Democratic primary winner Zohran Mamdani for the city’s top office.
“My record has been clear,” Adams said. “The industry has benefited from my administration, and I am looking for them to acknowledge that benefit and give me the support I need so we can stop someone that’s coming into the city that’s going to be harmful, not only to the industry, but… his policy is going to be harmful to our city.”
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