The Deal With the Rent
Eric Adams, the landlord mayor
“We don’t want to aggravate the eviction process, but we also got to look at small property owners,” Mayor Eric Adams said last week. “You know, if you are a mom-and-pop that owns a 10-family unit, and you have, you know, your electric bills are going up, your water bills are going up, this is your only source of income.”
There it was, simple and sure: Adams, a landlord himself, won’t do anything to push back against the possibility of significant rent hikes on rent-stabilized apartments. None of this was a surprise. The otherwise inconsistent, ideologically peripatetic politician has never changed his tune here. Since last year, he has been against the idea of freezing or limiting rent hikes, repeatedly prioritizing the needs of landlords over tenants. Inflation, coupled with the willingness of the de Blasio era Rent Guidelines Board to freeze rents multiple times on the more than one million rent-stabilized tenants, has given the landlord lobby enough ammunition to push for large increases. Adams has already appointed two tenant-hostile members to the board and has the ability, over time, to replace all nine members.