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housing
Targeting 'Bad Landlords,' Mamdani Invites New Yorkers to Testify at 'Rental Ripoff' Hearings
“What tenants share at these hearings won’t lead to empty promises," said the mayor. "Their testimony will guide our work and help shape the policies we advance to build a city New Yorkers can afford to call their home.”
Feb 10, 2026
After delivering on his promise of universal childcare for New York families, launching a process to ramp up construction of affordable housing, and personally seeing to snow removal after a major storm and the repair of a road hazard that's long plagued cyclists, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday made strides toward fulfilling another campaign pledge: cracking down on "bad landlords."
The effort will involve active participation from residents across the city, whom Mamdani invited to testify at "Rental Ripoff" hearings set to begin later this month in the five boroughs.
“You can’t fight for tenants without listening to them first. That’s why we’re launching Rental Ripoff Hearings in all five boroughs—bringing together renters to speak directly about what they’re facing, from hidden fees to broken tiles and unresponsive landlords,” Mamdani, a democratic socialist, said in a statement.
On social media, Mamdani said the hearings will give New Yorkers "a chance to tell the city EXACTLY what your landlord’s been getting away with" and will help his government to enact "real policy changes."
People who testify will have the opportunity to meet one-on-one with officials from City Hall, "including commissioners from the city’s housing and consumer protection agencies, to help shape future policy," according to the BK Reader.
The city website urges residents to testify about challenges including "getting issues in their homes addressed" and "rental junk fees," like fees for certain amenities, pets, services, and rental payment systems.
The dates of the hearings were announced five weeks after Mamdani signed Executive Order 08, which stipulates that city agencies will publish a report 90 days after the final hearing—scheduled for April 7 in Staten Island—with recommendations for policy changes and action plans.
Kenny Burgos, CEO of the New York Apartment Association (NYAA), which represents apartment building owners and property managers, quickly denounced the planned hearings as "show trials" and "a distraction."
Burgos claimed the NYAA believes that "renters with complaints should have their voices heard," but suggested landlords have little ability to respond to complaints because "thousands of buildings are being defunded by the government through overtaxation, nonsensical rent laws, and failing city agencies.”
Mamdani has argued that "the problems tenants deal with every day need to become real problems for landlords, too" and has called for the doubling of fines for hazardous housing violations.
“What tenants share at these hearings won’t lead to empty promises," said Mamdani on Tuesday. "Their testimony will guide our work and help shape the policies we advance to build a city New Yorkers can afford to call their home.”
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Bernie Sanders' 7 Policies to Defeat Trump and Secure a Better Future for All
"It is not good enough just to be critical of Trump and his destructive policies. We must bring forth a positive vision that will improve the lives of ordinary Americans."
Feb 05, 2026
While taking aim at the oligarchs behind companies including Walmart and the Washington Post this week, Sen. Bernie Sanders also laid out his vision for how to not only "reverse America's decline" under President Donald Trump, but also "create an economy that works for working people and not just billionaires, a vibrant democracy, and a foreign policy based on international law."
In a Guardian op-ed on Thursday, Sanders (I-Vt.) addressed issues ranging from healthcare and housing to nutrition, schooling, and transportation, pointing out that "85 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured, our life expectancy is lower than most wealthy nations, and we have a massive shortage" in health professionals.
The median home price has soared above $400,000, and over 20 million US households spend more than half of their incomes on housing. The senator noted that "as a result of corporate agriculture and the greed of the food and beverage industry, many of our kids are addicted to ultra-processed foods, and we have the highest rate of obesity and diabetes of any major country on Earth."
The United States also "ranks well behind its peers in overall educational attainment, our childcare system is broken, and millions of our young people are unable to afford a college education," wrote Sanders, a leader in the Senate Democratic Caucus who twice sought the party's presidential nomination. "Our public transportation and rail systems lag far behind most other developed countries, and millions of people spend hours a day in traffic jams."
"The decline we are seeing in our country is not just in economics. Our political system is corrupt, dominated by an extremely greedy billionaire class that is able to buy and sell politicians," he stressed. "Even more troubling, our country is rapidly descending into authoritarianism under an unstable, narcissistic leader who wants more and more power for himself."
"Trump is usurping the powers of Congress, attacking the courts, intimidating the media, threatening universities, and prosecuting and arresting his political opponents," Sanders flagged. He also renewed criticism of "Trump's domestic army," US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, for "acting in outrageous and unconstitutional ways," from Maine to Minnesota, where federal agents have recently killed two citizens.
At this difficult moment in American history, we must be honest with ourselves:Our nation, once the envy of the world, is now in profound decline. For the sake of our children and future generations, we must reverse course.
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— Senator Bernie Sanders (@sanders.senate.gov) February 5, 2026 at 12:42 PM
Sanders' response to the chaos and fear of Trump's second term is to advocate for "building a national grassroots movement that fights for the needs of the American working class," which he said can be done "by bringing people together—Black, white, Latino, Asian, gay and straight—around an agenda that takes on the greed of the oligarchs and is based on the foundation of economic, social, racial, and environmental justice."
Detailing his key policy priorities, the senator wrote:
- We must create a vibrant democracy by ending Citizens United and preventing billionaires from buying elections;
- Whether the Democratic establishment likes it or not, we must guarantee healthcare as a human right through Medicare for All;
- We must build millions of affordable homes and apartments and give our younger generation the opportunity to own a home of their own;
- We must make public colleges, universities, trade schools, and medical schools tuition-free and have the best childcare and public school system in the entire world;
- We must expand social security and bring back traditional pension plans so that every senior in this country can retire with dignity;
- We must raise the minimum wage to a living wage and guarantee every worker the right to join a union; and
- We must demand that the wealthiest people and most profitable corporations in America pay their fair share in taxes.
Sanders isn't alone in arguing that "it is not good enough just to be critical of Trump and his destructive policies. We must bring forth a positive vision that will improve the lives of ordinary Americans." That that was also a lesson from democratic socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani's campaign, which the senator said "has given us the roadmap."
"Starting at just 1% in the polls, Mamdani had the guts to take on the Democratic establishment, the Republican, establishment, and the oligarchs. And he won by organizing a grassroots campaign of more than 90,000 volunteers knocking on doors behind a strong progressive agenda," wrote Sanders, who campaigned for and swore in the city's new mayor.
Mamdani made headlines on Thursday for his Nation piece endorsing Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul's reelection campaign. The mayor wrote that although he and Hochul have "real differences, particularly when it comes to taxation of the wealthiest, at a moment defined by profound income inequality," they also delivered a "historic win together," in the form of a universal childcare program for the city.
"At its best, the Democratic Party has been a big tent not because it avoids conflict but because it channels conflict toward progress," Mamdani added. "A party united not by conformity but by a commitment to structural change—and to the work required to achieve it."
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Rent Control Is the American Way
Taking care of each other is a part of the American way. Politicians doing the right thing on the behalf of vulnerable tenants is also a part of the American way.
Feb 01, 2026
The real estate industry doesn’t want you to know an important fact about rent control: Since World War I, rent regulations have protected poor and middle- and working-class tenants against skyrocketing rents and predatory landlords. Rent control, in other words, has long been a part of the American way.
Soon after World War I, elected officials understood that they needed to protect tenants against sky-high rents due to a worsening housing shortage. Fair rent committees, with an emphasis on “fair,” were set up in 153 cities in the United States, and those committees routinely reached out to landlords to stop unreasonable rent hikes. In Washington D.C. and Denver, rent commissions determined fair rents, and, in New York, state legislators passed emergency laws to control sky-high rising rents.
Politicians knew that they couldn’t allow the status quo of unfair rents to continue, and they knew that they had the power to do something about it. So they stepped in to help hard-working Americans.
During World War II, politicians again did the right thing and expanded rent control. The federal government established rent control for around 80 percent of rental housing in the U.S. in response to housing shortages and rent gouging. When that federal program was phased out, some states, such as New York and New Jersey, established their own rent control policies in the early 1950s.
If there was ever time for politicians to protect tenants, now is that time, and the situation is dire.
Throughout this period, elected officials understood that tenants needed stable, affordable housing that would not force renters to choose between eating or paying the rent or paying medical bills or paying the rent. Americans’ well-being was at stake.
Fast forward to the early 1970s. With worsening inflation, rents spiked. President Richard Nixon pushed for temporary rent controls, and that was followed by American cities passing rent regulations, including Berkeley, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
Unfortunately, in the 1980s and 1990s, the deep-pocketed real estate industry pushed back, aggressively lobbying state legislatures across the country to pass rent control bans or restrictions. Landlords and lobbyists went against the American way of looking out for people.
Today, more than 35 states have laws that stop the expansion of rent control while the real estate industry’s profits, through unfair, excessive rents, go through the roof. Between 2010 and 2019, renters paid a staggering $4.5 trillion to landlords in the U.S, according to Zillow.
Recently, Big Tech and Big Real Estate teamed up to charge wildly inflated rents through a rent-fixing software program by RealPage, which brought about numerous lawsuits and investigations. The software allowed corporate landlords to collude and charge outrageous rents that harmed Americans throughout the nation.
If there was ever time for politicians to protect tenants, now is that time, and the situation is dire. Eviction Lab, the prestigious research institute at Princeton University, found that increasingly unaffordable rents are linked to higher mortality rates. And a wide-ranging study on homelessness by the University of California San Francisco revealed that people ended up living on the streets because of sky-high rents. An urgent way to address these life-threatening problems is to utilize rent control—an American tradition since World War I.
But activists believe that rent control isn’t the only tool to fix the housing affordability and homelessness crises. There needs to be a multi-pronged approach called the “3 Ps”: protect tenants through rent control and other renter protections; preserve existing affordable housing, not demolish it to make way for unaffordable luxury housing; and produce new affordable and homeless housing.
Taking care of each other is a part of the American way. Politicians doing the right thing on the behalf of vulnerable tenants is also a part of the American way. Today’s elected officials must continue that work, especially since tenants throughout the country are facing serious risks of death and homelessness. They must immediately utilize rent regulations and the 3 Ps.
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