The Rent Guidelines Board (RGB) met for its final vote on June 25 at El Museo del Barrio in Manhattan. Following years of consecutive rent hikes and intense, relentless organizing by Fifth Avenue Committee (FAC), Neighbors Helping Neighbors (NHN), and Brooklyn Tenants United (BTU), the board delivered the ultimate good news for rent burdened tenants: a historic 0% rent adjustment for both one-year and two-year lease renewals.
The Breaking Point for Tenants in Brooklyn
For FAC, NHN and BTU, the path to victory was paved on the evening of June 11, 2026, during the RGB’s Brooklyn public hearing. The auditorium hummed with a collective urgency as hundreds of tenants and advocates gathered for the third of four public hearings to determine the rent adjustments for rent-stabilized units.
Armed with signs, t-shirts, and raw testimonies, tenants and coalition members from Housing Justice for All outlined how rent increases would further burden tenants, many of whom are on the financial brink. Also, tenants painted a vivid picture of systemic neglect in their properties even during years when there were RGB increases. Speakers shared accounts of corporate landlords racking up millions in city fines and hundreds of hazardous housing code violations while failing to provide basic hot water or safety repairs.
A central thread woven through the advocates’ testimonies was the concept of value. Tenants explained how they actively invest their own time, care, and meager savings into making their apartments livable—only to watch certain landlords neglect the properties and leave vulnerable neighbors in freezing conditions.
Judy Martinson, a 63-year-old lifelong New Yorker testifying with the coalition, brought the room to a standstill as she detailed the nightmare of living under a landlord ranked in the top 50 of the city’s worst landlords list:
“I live in a rent-stabilized building. My landlord is number 47 on the hundred worst landlords list… He has had the building taken from him and put in receivership twice. He filed for bankruptcy and let our building go—we have no super, we have squatters down there, and we have a tenant doing the garbage because of the rats outside and mice inside. I am born and raised in New York. I can’t move, I can’t afford it, and I am disabled. I’m not out for a free ride. But if you continue to raise the rent like it has been over the last four years, my building becomes a nightmare. This past winter, we had no heat. We have seniors on fixed incomes, children with disabilities, and single mothers of all different races, creeds, and colors together. I’m not anti-landlord, although I don’t think it’s a job, but we cannot keep enduring these increases.”
The Final Vote and a Surprising Consensus
Two weeks later, on June 25, the energy shifted from exhausting defense to monumental triumph.
RGB Chair Chantella Mitchell called the final meeting to order to vote on Apartment and Loft Order Number 58. While tenant coalitions like FAC and NHN had been fiercely organizing around a rent freeze, few expected the sweeping consensus that followed even though Mayor Mamdani campaigned on a freeze, given the rent increases that happened during the Adam’s Administration.
When the motion was put on the floor for the apartment order, the board didn’t just vote for a freeze on one-year leases—they voted 7 to 1 to pass a comprehensive 0% increase for both one-year and two-year leases commencing between October 1, 2026, and September 30, 2027.
The turning point of the evening came from a surprising source. Maxim Wyn, an owner representative on the board, read a comprehensive statement explaining why even landlord advocates ultimately sided with a rent freeze. Wyn noted that data from the Furman Center and the New York Apartment Association proved that the city’s lowest-income tenants were stretched so thin by a 12% rent hike over the previous four years that raising rents further would backfire on building owners:
“If this board raises the rent 2% for one-year leases and that causes a single additional household in the median 16-unit building to stop paying rent, that will result in a net decrease in annual rental income… At this moment in time… a 0% increase on one and two-year leases is in owners’ best interest.”
Wyn argued that instead of squeezing tenants whose incomes need time to catch up, the city and state must step in to lower building expenses directly through property tax abatements, utility discounts, and water assistance programs. These are points that FAC, as a nonprofit owner of affordable housing, has also called for along with government intervention to lower property insurance.
A Historic Victory for Grassroots Organizing
As the final meeting was adjourned, the room filled with an overwhelming sense of relief and celebration. Mitchell noted that the 0% adjustment was a fair and responsible approach that directly “reflects the depth of affordability challenges facing tenants.”
For the organizers and members of FAC, NHN, and BTU, this final outcome is a direct testament to the power of grassroots organizing. By packing the hearings, submitting nearly 1,000 testimonies, and forcing the board to look at the human cost of the housing crisis, they successfully halted half a decade of compounding rent hikes—securing a vital, historic breathing room for nearly one million rent-stabilized households across New York City.
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