New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s first “rental ripoff” hearing scheduled for Feb. 26 will not permit tenants in the city’s public housing projects to detail their complaints about the quality of their housing.
The New York Post reports that only renters and landlords in privately owned buildings will be allowed to speak at the event. None of the half-million tenants of the New York City Housing Authority are being allowed to participate, despite years of complaints about the quality of life within the city’s public housing projects. The agency has been placed under a federal monitor since 2019 following reports of dangerous conditions and fraudulently certified inspections.
Humberto Lopes, CEO of the nonprofit Gotham Housing Alliance, accused the Democratic Socialist mayor of attempting to censor criticism.
“The city’s own tenants — those living in public housing — are demanding a real plan to improve their living conditions,” Lopes said. “It appears the Mamdani administration woke up to their own hypocrisy. If these hearings were truly about holding bad landlords accountable, the over 500,000 residents in NYCHA would be able to meaningfully participate. This is clearly the city trying to distract from its own failures while putting on a show, instead of having a real conversation with property owners, renters, NYCHA residents, and everyone else about how to improve housing for all.”
The Mamdani administration updated the city’s website for the hearing to address the question of why public housing tenants are not being allowed to speak.
“While these hearings focus on price gouging and living conditions for private-market renters, senior leadership and staff from NYCHA will be on-site to ensure that residents can submit in-apartment repair requests, file heat/hot water complaints, or discuss development-wide issues,” the website said. “In the coming months, our administration will release a housing plan focused on improving housing quality for all New Yorkers, including those in public housing.”
Photo courtesy of Mayor Mamdani’s social media platform
Hmmmm I wonder what happened FAIR HOUSING……could be in question if it is even being adhered to….Please encourage everyone’s opinion, IT IS the AMERICAN way.
Hypocrisy at it’s finest.
He doesn’t care about the poor living in the housing projects. He wants to go after “rich” landlords.
Because the hearing is about private market landlords not public housing – not the forum for it – its about landlords price gouging – There will be a separate forum for public housing tenants to speak about their issues which is everything except price gouging. Its not that complicated to understand. Seems we want to make issues where there isn’t one. Just like the report states their are thousands on public housing so how would you ever resolve the private landlord issue which is what this about if you are hearing all the public housing complaints -one issue at a time – one step at a time.
Price gouging is when someone takes advantage of an emergency, like a hurricane or disaster, and suddenly raises prices to unreasonable levels because people have no choice. That is very different from rents adjusting over time based on supply and demand, operating costs, taxes, insurance, and market conditions.
Mamdani is not as stupid as his critics. He is organized, he has thinking advisors, he thinks outside the box and I suspect deal with issues and serious problems in time. At lease he is dealing with real issues unlike our president who comments on straws, Nancy Guthrie’s unfortunate kidnapping, lies about everything, resolves no serious issues facing America, etc..
Mamdami is trying to fix a problem that has been plaguing the city and also the country. Capitalists want to enrich themselves by any way possible.
But, tenants should also be held accountable for keeping their units clean and taking care of them. Laws in Germany hold that the tenants are responsible for cleaning the stairs and sidewalks. In large buildings there are rules. Also, when a tenant leaves, he is supposed to leave the unit in the same condition as when he moved in. So if the carpet is soiled, he has to clean or replace it etc.
I hope when implementing these commie tax hike rules he included his parents