Primary Voter Guide: The Mayoral Candidates’ Plans on Housing

Here’s what the Democratic candidates on Tuesday’s primary ballot say they’ll do to build more homes, and whether or not they’d freeze the rent for stabilized tenants.

For months, the candidates running for New York City mayor have pitched their platforms and policies to voters—and housing has often dominated those discussions, perhaps more than in any election in recent memory.

Polls find housing is the top issue on voters’ minds, and with good reason: the number of apartments available to renters is the lowest it’s been in decades, with options particularly scarce for low-income households. The average studio rents for more than $3,000 a month, while thousands of New Yorkers sleep in the city’s shelter system each night (you can read more on the primary candidates’ homelessness plans here).

“New York’s housing crisis won’t be solved without bold pro-housing leadership—and in this election cycle, we’re seeing a lot more of it,” housing advocacy group Open New York wrote in an email to followers earlier this month.

The organization has endorsed a slate of “pro-housing” City Council candidates, and while it hasn’t done so explicitly in the mayoral race, it did highlight four Democratic hopefuls in email and social media campaigns for having “consistently shown up for housing”: Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, NYC Comptroller Brad Lander, State Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani and State Sen. Zellnor Myrie.

Meanwhile, tenant groups have coalesced around Assemblymember Mamdani and his pledge to freeze rents for stabilized tenants. He’s been endorsed by Tenants Political Action Committee, Inc. and the NYS Tenant Bloc (the latter has urged voters to rank Mamdani first, Lander second, and encouraged “leaving Andrew Cuomo off your ballot entirely”). Both Lander and Cuomo have touted the support of NYCHA tenant leaders (though some of the those named by the former governor disputed his endorsement claim, according to reporting by The City.)

Abundance New York, an advocacy group that describes itself as “for housing and against homelessness” has recommended ranking Myrie first and Lander second. And real estate industry groups—including the Housing for All PAC funded by the New York Apartment Association, which represents owners of multifamily rental buildings—have spent millions in support of former Gov. Cuomo.

Here’s what the Democratic candidates on Tuesday’s primary ballot say they’ll do to build more homes, and whether or not they’d freeze the rent for stabilized tenants.

How they’d build more housing

The candidates agree that the city needs significantly more housing. Their plans to boost supply differ when it comes down to details, including how many units they pledge to build, where they should go and how to pay for it.

Common themes across the various campaigns: pledges to prioritize repairs at vacant NYCHA apartments; maximizing publicly-owned sites, as well as vacant or underutilized land, to build new housing (including, for several candidates, on campuses owned by religious organizations); and streamlining the government approval process to speed up the pace of development.

“You want to be ambitious about affordable housing production, and housing supply generally, when you have a housing supply crisis,” said Brendan Cheney, director of policy and operations at the New York Housing Conference. “For the most part, bigger is better.”

Here’s what the candidates have said about their plans to address the city’s housing shortage:

• Adrienne Adams: On the campaign trail, Adams has touted her housing record as City Council speaker, and said she would continue that work if elected mayor. She spearheaded last year’s negotiations over the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, which the Council approved in December and which is expected to spur up to 80,000 new homes (though that’s less than the mayor’s initial proposal projected, after lawmakers pushed for carveouts.) The speaker’s final deal included $5 billion for affordable housing, NYCHA repair funds, and infrastructure upgrades. “It would have never passed the Council the way that it was presented by the mayor,” the speaker said during a City Limits mayoral forum earlier this spring. “So we took it, we re-zhuzhed, revamped it, and we call it City for All, and I made sure that NYCHA was included.” She’s also pointed to her Fair Housing Framework, which the Council passed in 2023, which sets affordable housing production targets for each community district.
• Michael Blake: A former member of the State Assembly and Obama administration official, Blake’s housing plan calls for 600,000 new units, with a portion of apartments set aside for veterans, recent college graduates, and “native New Yorkers who want to come home but have been priced out.” He would fund this, he said, through a pied-à-terre tax on vacant luxury apartments, and would only support tax breaks for developers if they deliver on affordability. “I don’t believe that a developer nor a landlord should be able to keep incentives from the city if they have not actually hit what they said they were going to do when it came to low- and middle-income housing,” Blake said at City Limits’ candidate forum in April. He’s also called for replacing the Area Median Income (AMI) formula with Local Median Income, and doing away with credit scores when screening applicants for affordable rental housing or homeownership.
• Andrew Cuomo: The former governor’s housing plan—published this spring, and initially criticized by his competitors for appearing to use ChatGPT—calls for building or preserving 500,000 apartments over the next 10 years. Cuomo says two-thirds of those homes would be “affordable to low- and moderate-income New Yorkers” including units for what he calls the “‘missing middle”—households earning up to 120 percent of Area Median Income, or $194,400 for a family of four. He also pledged to “ensure a substantial number of units” for residents at 30 to 50 percent of AMI (four-person households making between $48,600-$81,000 a year). Cuomo says he would fund new construction by pushing for a $5 billion, five-year housing subsidy program split between the city and state, as well as “leveraging New York City pension funds as a source of capital.” He calls for maximizing the use of tax abatements like 485-x (a replacement program for the expired 421a, offered to developers in exchange for affordable units) and to convert offices to housing.
• Brad Lander: City Comptroller Lander’s plan calls for 500,000 new units over the next 10 years. That includes approximately 50,000 homes as part his plan to “build new neighborhoods full of Mitchell Lama style development” on four of the city’s 12 municipal golf courses. These communities would have “lots of great new parks and open space,” he pledged at City Limits’ candidate forum in April. “We need to be ambitious and creative, and it has to be driven by resident voice and vision,” he said at the time. Lander says he would declare a “housing emergency” that would allow certain rezoning plans to go through an expedited 90-day public review process, to speed up the rate of construction. He also wants to leverage city pension funds to finance affordable home ownership opportunities for city workers. He’s pointed to his work as a councilmember in negotiating the Gowanus rezoning, a deal that included funds for nearby NYCHA apartments and other local upgrades, as an example of engaging residents around new development.
• Zohran Mamdani: The Astoria Assembly member, who has been closing in on expected frontrunner Cuomo in recent opinion polls, calls for building 200,000 “publicly-subsidized, affordable, union-built, rent-stabilized homes” over the next 10 years. He would expand the number of units produced through existing affordability programs for seniors and extremely low-income households (those earning less than $72,000 a year for a family of four). He also says he would “fully fund and staff” the city’s housing agencies, and make it easier for developers to build by doing away with things like parking minimums (which the City of Yes deal reduced in some neighborhoods, but failed to eliminate entirely). Mamdani says he would pay for his plan by raising $70 million via municipal bonds, and by pooling funds from rental assistance programs (like CityFHEPS) to support affordable housing.
• Zellnor Myrie: The Brooklyn state senator has the most ambitious housing plan when it comes to its top line number, saying he wants to build or preserve 1 million homes over the next decade. “We can’t keep nibbling around the edges,” he said at a televised debate earlier this month, when asked if that number was realistic. “Is it going to be a challenge? Of course it’s going to be challenging,” he added. “But anything worth anything is going to be hard to do.” His plan calls for constructing 95,000 mixed-income units on NYCHA-owned land—essentially scaling up the current proposal for the Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Houses in Lower Manhattan—as a means to fund repairs at 150,000 public housing apartments (but only if tenants at a given NYCHA campus voted to go that route). Myrie says he would build another 85,000 units by allowing more density in Midtown Manhattan. And he proposes the creation of new neighborhoods on “underutilized land,” like around the Brooklyn Marine Terminal and the Aqueduct Racetrack, and by building in industrial areas “sandwiched between residential neighborhoods.” He also wants to reallocate funding being used for new homeless shelters to construct 50,000 homes for rental voucher-holders.
• Jessica Ramos: At City Limits’ candidate forum in April, the state senator from Queens criticized the city’s practice of doling out “tax breaks for big real estate,” and said she would leverage taxpayer dollars, as well as public and private sector pension funds, to build “not just low income rental opportunities, but modest equity homeownership opportunities.” In response to the New York Housing Conference’s candidate questionnaire, she said she would promote modular building practices to build homes faster, as well as office conversions and expanded supportive housing.
• Scott Stringer: The former city comptroller and Manhattan borough president proposes a “Robin Hood Housing Plan,” pledging to use eminent domain to seize rundown properties from neglectful landlords, then renovate them into affordable rentals or coops. His also calls for building on vacant or underused city-owned land, and for the creation of a $500 million “Revolving Loan Fund” that would help nonprofits and Minority and Women-owned Business Enterprises (M/WBE) pursue “community-driven, neighborhood-focused housing projects.”
• Whitney Tilson: At a televised mayoral debate earlier this month, the former hedge fund manager and Teach for America founder said his housing plan would “unleash the private sector.” That’s “the only way to rapidly build anything like the scale that we’re talking about,” he said. He wants to simplify zoning rules, streamline city agencies and overhaul the public review process, called ULURP, to reduce red tape. “It’s outrageous that businesses and real estate developers have to hire expediters to deal with the city bureaucracies,” Tilson said. In a questionnaire with the New York Housing Conference, he called for relaunching “a more targeted 421a” (an expired tax break meant to incentive the construction of affordable units). He also says he would push state lawmakers to amend 2019 rent law protections that limited how much landlords can hike rents to cover repairs on stabilized units, so owners “can earn a fair return on necessary investments.”

Rent for stabilized tenants: to freeze, or not to freeze? 

Fitzroy Christian, like many New Yorkers, is severely rent burdened, meaning he pays more than half of his income on rent. He says another rent hike could mean he goes from paying over 60 percent of his earnings each month on rent to nearly 70 percent.

Christian is a rent regulated tenant who’s lived in the Kingsbridge area of the Bronx for the last 49 years. How much his rent goes up is determined by the Rent Guidelines Board, a body appointed by the mayor, that sets the allowable rent increases for 2.4 million stabilized tenants annually.

A rent freeze is Christian’s top concern in the mayoral election. He worries a rent hike would push people out: “The lower income folks are the ones who have two jobs, three jobs so that they can survive. That is the engine that runs New York City. It is unfair for these people now to suffer the burden of having to relocate forcibly.”

The mayor has the power to appoint all nine members of the Rent Guidelines Board. While some candidates have insisted the board should operate independently and consider data on landlord costs, income, and profits, others have pledged to freeze the rent this year.

The rent guidelines board froze the rent three times under Mayor Bill de Blasio, raising it 5 percent total over eight years.The board has raised rent 9 percent in three years under Mayor Eric Adams.

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This year, every leading candidate except for Cuomo and Tilson said they support a rent freeze.

Cuomo has come under criticism from tenant groups for how much money his campaign has received from real estate donors, both directly and via indirect support from Super PACs. One PAC called Fix the City has received over $9 million in donations, more than $3 million of which was from individuals and organizations working in the real estate industry, according to a City Limits' analysis of records through the end of May.

Rich Azzopardi, a spokesperson for the Cuomo campaign, declined to comment, referring City Limits to the PAC directly.

“An ever-growing and diverse array of donors—including members of New York’s real estate industry—are recognizing that Andrew Cuomo is the only mayoral candidate who has proven he can get big things done. Building our way out of the City’s affordable housing crisis and facilitating its continued economic growth are critical to ensuring long-term success for all New Yorkers,” said Liz Benjamin, a spokesperson for Fix the City.

Some of the current controversy over rent-stabilized housing started when Cuomo was governor. The state's 2019 Housing Stability and Tenant Protection (HSTPA) act, which strengthened rent stabilization protections in New York City, passed under Cuomo's tenure. Those laws are still a thorn in the side of some real estate interests, who argue they compromise some rent stabilized owners' ability to keep up with rising expenses.

Capping rents will hurt buildings already struggling with deferred maintenance, they say. City Limits reported in October that housing code violations increased 25 percent year over year, many concentrated in neighborhoods with older, rent stabilized buildings. 

“[F]reezing rents amidst rising costs is like scratching a mosquito bite—a short-sighted response that will make problems worse,” Sarah Watson and Howard Slatkin, of the nonprofit Citizens Housing and Planning Council, wrote in an opinion piece for City Limits last week.

But advocates working to increase tenant protections said Cuomo passed that 2019 law only after overwhelming pressure mounted from the legislature. “We were very clear then and now that Andrew Cuomo is a friend to the real estate industry, and that there was nothing to be gained from negotiating with Andrew Cuomo,” said Cea Weaver, director of the New York State Tenants PAC, which has endorsed Mamdani.

Those rallying in support of a rent freeze point to Rent Guidelines Board data which found the owners of buildings containing stabilized units saw a more than 12 percent increase in their Net Operating Income (NOI)—earnings left over after operating costs—in 2022 and 2023. At the same time, average inflation-adjusted wages were down 0.4 percent, meaning tenants are struggling.

“We’re taking on second jobs. Skipping meals. Choosing between rent and food, child care, or medicine,” wrote Weaver in a recent Daily News editorial. “There is a clear solution: freeze the rent.” 

Here’s where the candidates stand on a rent freeze:

• Cuomo said that the board should operate independently and follow the law. Former Mayor de Blasio immediately hit back on X (formerly Twitter), writing “what a cop out…As if a Mayor doesn’t have a majority on the Rent Guidelines Board.”

• Mamdani is the only candidate who said that he would support a rent freeze for all four years of his mayoral term.

• Lander, Adams, Myrie, and Stringer raised their hands in support of a rent freeze for just this year at the June 12 debate (through clarifying her comments at that event, Adams also added that “there needs to be a balance there” for owners.) Blake and Ramos have both also "expressed support," according to NYS Tenant Bloc.

Primary Day is Tuesday, June 24. Look up your poll site here. Check your voter registration status here.

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