Andrew Cuomo thinks rent-stabilized apartments should be reserved for tenants who spend at least a third of their income on rent.
On Monday, Cuomo released details on “Zohran’s Law,” a proposal inspired by the fact that Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani lives in a rent-stabilized apartment.
Here’s the gist: Once a rent stabilized apartment becomes vacant, a landlord could only rent to someone who would spend at least 30 percent of their income on rent.
Mamdani pays $2,300 a month, and makes $142,000 as a state Assembly member (meaning he spends well below that 30 percent threshold). In a press release, Cuomo said the law is needed to ensure stabilized apartments are going to New Yorkers in need and to “stop the Zohran Mamdanis of the world from gaming the system and boxing out lower income New Yorkers.” Cuomo’s law wouldn’t kick Mamdani out of his apartment, though. He’d have to leave of his own accord before those rules would kick in.
Before I get into the particulars of the proposal, it is important to note that the mayor does not have the authority to make this kind of change, and a law limiting access to rent-stabilized apartments would be a hard sell to state lawmakers.
Cuomo framed the proposal as a complement to the elimination of high-income decontrol in 2019. That was another form of rooting out tenants from stabilized housing if they made too much.
Prior to June 2019, one of the ways that stabilized units could be deregulated was if the rent exceeded a certain threshold and the existing tenant’s gross income was $200,000 or more for two consecutive years. Cuomo’s proposal “builds on the important 2019 reform… by keeping these units in the system while making sure they are reserved for households that actually need affordable housing.”
I asked his spokesperson why this latest form of means testing wasn’t paired with that change in 2019, when Cuomo was governor and had more sway over state law, but I didn’t hear back.
High-income decontrol was used less frequently by landlords than the other avenues. A 2020 Rent Guidelines Board report found that 160 stabilized units had been deregulated in 2019 (before the rent law passed) through high-income decontrol. Nearly 8,000 were deregulated through another practice eliminated in 2019, high-rent vacancy decontrol, during that same period.
As with high-income decontrol, Cuomo’s new version of means testing would be enforced by the state’s already overextended housing regulator. There’s also a question of whether adding these new rules will further slow down how quickly tenants can move in (the city recently made changes to its housing lottery to cut back on the bureaucratic hurdles delaying tenant access to affordable apartments).
If the goal of “Zohran’s Law” is to reshape the rent-stabilization system into an affordable housing program where housing is set aside for New Yorkers earning a certain amount, it is treading in the opposite direction of the city’s other housing programs.
Under the city’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing program, for instance, rents are considered “affordable” because they are generally set so that tenants do not pay more than 30 percent of their income on rent. That’s not always the case, and there is, of course, a whole debate around what is truly affordable housing, but that is a guiding principle for what is considered affordable.
Someone who pays more than 30 percent of their income on rent is considered rent-burdened, and requiring tenants to either be on the verge of that or beyond it in order to access stabilized housing arguably diminishes whatever “stabilizing” quality the housing provides.
Tenants’ groups unsurprisingly criticized Cuomo’s proposal. TenantBloc’s Cea Weaver called means testing rent stabilization “a backdoor plan to gut it, ensuring that the people who keep our city running – teachers, grocery clerks, delivery workers, nurses – get pushed out.” Landlord groups also weren’t too hot on the idea either. Leaders of the New York Apartment Association posted on social media that the proposal doesn’t address what they see as the main issue: That rents are kept well below the costs of operating these properties.
“NY city and state government has used rent stabilized housing as its affordable housing program for decades,” NYAA’s Jay Martin posted on X. “It’s sucked it dry pretending to care about the quality of the housing for renters by attacking the owners for not conjuring revenue out of thin air.”
What we’re thinking about: What actions, within the mayor’s actual power, would you like to see the next mayor take in connection with rent-stabilized housing? Send a note to kathryn@therealdeal.com.
A thing we’ve learned: The building that houses the Morrin Centre, an English-language library in Quebec City, was constructed in the early 1800s as one of the city’s first prisons, according to the centre’s website.
Elsewhere in New York…
— NYCHA will provide rental assistance to the nearly 5,500 low-income households who are set to lose aid after the federal government decided not to renew the Emergency Housing Voucher program, which is set to run out of funds five years ahead of schedule, according to Gothamist. In order to fund this assistance, the housing agency will stop issuing new Section 8 vouchers to the thousands on the waiting list.
— The Adams administration will close New York City’s last hotel dedicated to housing homeless migrants, the Row NYC, Gothamist reports. The hotel complex was the first of many to be converted during 2022’s surge of asylum seekers. It joins the list of 64 other migrant shelters that have been shut down since last June.
— Zohran Mamdani launched a “Five Boroughs Against Trump” tour on Monday, framing himself as the strongest opponent to the president while attacking rival Andrew Cuomo over alleged ties to Trump, amNY reports. Touting endorsements by Ruth Messinger, Keith Powers and Harvey Epstein, it’s the latest development in Mamdani’s attempt to center the race around opposition to Trump and his agenda. — Quinn Waller
Closing Time
Residential: The top residential deal recorded Monday was for a condominium unit for $28 million at 730 Fifth Avenue. The Midtown condo is 4,500 square feet and last sold in 2023 as a new-construction unit for $24.3 million.
Commercial: The top commercial deal recorded was $54.5 million for a commercial unit at 85 Jay Street. The rental Dumbo units are a part of the 728-unit, 21-story Front & York condo.
New to the Market: The highest price for a residential property hitting the market was for a penthouse at 255 East 77th Street for $24 million. The Upper East Side condo is 5,500 square feet and listed by Compass’ Alexa Lambert, Alison Black and Shelton Smith. Breaking Ground: The largest new building project filed was for a proposed 26,232-square-foot, six-story, mixed-use building at 6420 Bay Parkway in Brooklyn. Xiao Huang of NYX Engineer is the applicant on record. — Joseph Jungermann
