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Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s first nine months in office leave no doubt: To him, New York City’s housing problems are the fault of private landlords.
That mindset inspired the “rental ripoff” hearings that encouraged tenant complaints, community-organizing efforts meant to spark tenant unions and a fast-track program to get maintenance complaints into housing court more quickly.
Now, landlords say, a new threat may be looming.
For decades, NYC’s generous tenant-assistance programs have stepped in to rescue renters under threat of eviction, by having taxpayers cover their “arrearages” and head off years-long battles in housing court.
It’s an obscure program known as the “one shot deal” (a misnomer, because tenants can apply repeatedly) — “emergency assistance,” according to the city’s Human Resources Administration, for tenants who “will lose your housing if you do not get help.”
More than 54,000 New Yorkers received such aid last year, and no doubt many deserved it.
But it’s also been an invitation for abuse — one that cries out for reform.
Consider the experience of “Elena,” who owns three 20-unit pre-war, rent-stabilized buildings in the Tremont section of The Bronx.
She and her husband inherited them from her immigrant Greek father-in-law, who invested his life savings to buy them.
“Most tenants are good,” she told me, “but there are a handful of bad seeds who just don’t pay.”
When she notifies such “bad seeds” that she’s about to begin formal eviction proceedings, they often apply for the one-shot deal to cover their large arrearages.
Unpaid rent in just one of her buildings tops $100,000.
But despite the lack of rental income, she must continue to maintain the aging buildings — even as insurance and taxes increase, and rents, thanks to Mamdani, are frozen.
Then some resume their deadbeat ways just months after getting the city’s emergency help, starting the cycle all over again.
No other city has a system so generous.
A Los Angeles program — now closed to new requests — caps assistance at $15,000; Gotham has no cap at all on payments or on applications.
Philadelphia caps arrearage relief at $3,500.
Meanwhile, a tenant in one of Elena’s buildings who received “one-shot” help previously has now racked up a new arrearage of $22,000.
Another building manager told me of a case of a single $90K arrearage.
New York City provided rental assistance to 52,200 households for fiscal year 2025 — at a cost of $555 million, or more than $10,000 apiece.
Emergency assistance for tenants truly in need is actually a good concept, says Valentina Gojcak, whose OneSource Property Management firm runs 40 rent-stabilized buildings.
When a reliable tenant faces a temporary health or financial challenge, the program sends needed funds to the landlord while the tenant gets over the hump.
That allows both parties to avoid a housing-court process than can take two years or more — and keeps landlords, as she put it, from being “forced to provide unpaid shelter.”
But in her experience, some tenants are deliberately stiffing their landlords.
They may be “working in cash-only jobs who are choosing to send money back to family in their home countries,” she told me. “They’re using landlords as banks that don’t get any interest on what amounts to a loan.”
That’s why the early months of Mamdani’s mayoralty have her concerned.
In the first quarter of this year, turn-down rates for one-shot applications rose — 75% were declined, compared to 62% in the same period in 2022, the first quarter under Mayor Eric Adams.
In light of the city’s eviction rules, that means more landlords are being left in the lurch.
If Mamdani’s HRA refuses an increasing number of rent-relief requests, landlords will be forced to begin the protracted eviction process — during which they’ll get no rent revenue at all.
A tighter tourniquet on private landlord income will force owners into bankruptcy, after which the city can swoop in and help taxpayer-supported non-profits obtain the buildings instead.
That’s in keeping with the socialist views that originally inspired the public housing program — and those held by Mamdani aides like Cea Weaver, who believes for-profit housing should be replaced by government ownership.
For her part, Gojcak suggests a small fix that could make a big difference: Allow tenants and landlords to jointly petition HRA for needed rental assistance, if renters are truly in distress — and to get a quick decision if they qualify.
That way landlords could get back rent without going to housing court to begin a years-long battle.
Of course, that would require Mamdani to realize that the best way to provide well-maintained housing in Gotham is to help not just tenants but landlords, too.
Howard Husock is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of “The Projects: A New History of Public Housing.”