For the people, not for Wall Street
How Zohran Mamdani’s election could challenge private equity landlords
December 1, 2025
Zohran Mamdani will begin his term as New York City’s mayor on January 1, bringing with him a groundbreaking spate of policy proposals aimed at promoting affordability and improving quality of life for working New Yorkers. The incoming Mamdani administration has made it clear that it plans to disrupt the Wall Street-dominated status quo, with political impacts potentially reverberating throughout the country.
Central to Mamdani’s platform is his plan to reform New York’s housing system. One policy proposal in particular has received special attention: the rent freeze. Zohran’s housing plan involves controlling housing costs for a huge sector of the city’s rental units by freezing rent for more than two million New Yorkers living in rent stabilized apartments for all four years of his administration.[1] The Private Equity Stakeholder Project routinely promotes rent control and rent stabilization policies as the most direct and effective intervention for dealing with runaway rent inflation. While rents have risen to an untenable degree throughout the housing system in recent years, the returns-focused private equity business model especially incentivizes firms to saddle tenants with excessive and untenable rent increases.[2] Some corporate landlords are even facing lawsuits from the Department of Justice, a bipartisan group of state Attorneys General, and over 30 class-action plaintiffs for allegedly using price-fixing software to inflate profits at the expense of tenants.[3] A rent freeze, which is supported by 66% of voters,[4] would save New York tenants up to $590 per month.[5] While New York’s real estate industry is saying it wants to engage with Mamdani,[6] organized real estate interests in the US have a strong historical record of emphatically opposing progressive policy interventions of this nature, with some private equity firms previously pumping money into efforts to oppose rent control and other common sense housing policies.[7]
In addition to the rent freeze, Zohran has also pledged to build 200,000 permanently affordable, rent stabilized units over the next ten years.[8] This will be made easier by a spate of recently passed land use reforms[9] that will reduce the power of city council in the development regulation process and make it modestly easier for certain types of housing to get one-off exemptions from the city’s anti-density zoning rules.[10] While some tenant and labor organizations rejected these measures because they will reduce city council power to intervene in the development process in a way that could backfire under future mayors,[11] other housing groups say the measures are crucial for implementing Mamdani’s affordable housing goals.[12]
In addition, there will be more capacity to ensure that apartments are up to code. Mamdani plans to overhaul the code enforcement structure by increasing agency collaboration, improving 311 services, and allowing the city to make and charge landlords for repairs in cases where they refuse to act. “The worst landlords will be put out of business,” the campaign site states matter-of-factly.[13] Tenants of private equity and similar large corporate landlords are especially likely to benefit from robust code enforcement services. Studies have found that landlords of this type often systematically neglect to maintain their properties in order to increase profit margins.[14] These increased regulations will give the tenant movement of New York, which has already long been building power to fight back against maintenance neglect, more legal teeth. In many ways, Zohran’s platform is a direct response to the growing base of tenant power that has already been fomenting in the city. For example, the New York State Tenant Bloc is working to unite together a quarter million tenants to fight for affordable rents, social housing, support for unhoused people, and increased regulatory enforcement on slumlords and speculators.
What’s more, in the housing realm and beyond, plans to curb corporate exploitation are woven throughout Mamdani’s platform. The mayor-elect has pledged to “fight misleading advertising and predatory contracts, and ban all hidden fees.”[15] Joining the transition team is former Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, who pursued consumer protection interests in her previous role[16] including a landmark junk fee ban that required event ticket sellers, hotels and short term lodging providers to provide clear, up-front price disclosures to consumers.[17] Taking action against landlords who use junk is especially important for people renting from corporate landlords and private equity firms, who are known to tack on hidden and excessive fees for everything from rental applications to pet rent to common room usage.[18] “Rental junk fees have harmful effects on most renter households but disproportionately impact the lowest-income and most marginalized tenants. Often undisclosed, unpredictable, and arbitrary, such fees can quickly accumulate for tenants, impacting their ability to access stable and affordable housing,” writes the National Low Income Housing Coalition in a policy brief.[19] In 2024, Khan’s FTC reached a settlement with corporate landlord Invitation Homes in response to allegations of the company’s “unlawful actions against consumers, including deceiving renters about lease costs, charging undisclosed junk fees, failing to inspect homes before residents moved in, and unfairly withholding tenants’ security deposits when they moved out.”[20]
New York’s business elite is already reacting to Mamdani’s win, with some voicing concerns around increased taxes, the proposed rent freeze, and “safety on city streets.” As stated above, others expressed interest in working with the Mamdani administration in hopes of compromising on policy outcomes.[21] Others are threatening what can only be described as a capital strike. According to the New York Times, one unnamed private equity firm “has already been running the numbers to understand the financial impact to its business posed by the incoming mayor’s policies” and is looking to move executives to other cities, mostly in the Sunbelt, in response.[22] While a departure of private equity from New York is probably a good thing for most of the city’s residents, exactly how this will actually play out remains to be seen.
Above all else, Zohran’s election is a clear win for tenants. In a statement, Cea Weaver, director of the New York State Tenant Bloc, shared the following: “Zohran Mamdani’s win is just the first step in a longer fight to lower the rent – a fight we are ready to take on. We know landlords and developers will throw everything they have to stop us. They can go ahead and try. We are ready to freeze the rent with the mayor-elect and continue this momentum into next year’s statewide races.”[23] While this was just one election in one city, it has opened a new crack in the floodwall that tries, increasingly unsuccessfully, to hold back the rising tide of tenant power.
[1] https://www.zohranfornyc.com/platform
[2]https://www.chrc-ccdp.gc.ca/resources/newsroom/corporate-investment-housing-linked-unaffordable-rents-evictions-and-long-term
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/h121qm7fgaczmngkwi3i8/SHanson_JMP_WSL.pdf?rlkey=4dt8m40bs052mr60pz0e05hl5&e=2&st=qjkyl1ij&dl=0
[3] https://pestakeholder.org/explore-the-issues/housing/the-real-deal-on-realpage/
[4] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/09/09/polls/nyc-mayor-poll-toplines.html
[5] https://www.cssny.org/publications/entry/how-would-a-rent-freeze-impact-nycs-rent-stabilized-tenants
[6] https://archive.ph/56zkf
[7] https://pestakeholder.org/news/report-exposes-how-real-estate-industry-private-equity-firms-maintain-housing-crisis/
[8]https://www.zohranfornyc.com/platform
[9] https://www.nydailynews.com/2025/11/04/nyc-voters-approve-ballot-questions-aimed-at-boosting-housing-construction-council-control/
[10] https://jacobin.com/2025/10/new-york-housing-ballot-measures
[11] https://www.thecity.nyc/2025/10/07/council-ballot-affordable-housing-zoning-unions/
[12] https://citylimits.org/ballot-measure-fight-enters-final-month-and-what-else-happened-in-housing-this-week/
[13] https://www.zohranfornyc.com/platform
[14]https://www.lisc.org/media/filer_public/ea/7f/ea7ff227-aa3b-499e-9c53-4058ca45ec99/lisc_kc_institutional_investors_report_2025_digital.pdf
[15] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pem255jxQEoWCN3Ic5ILZa2a9a4oDtqe/view
[16]https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/12/federal-trade-commission-announces-bipartisan-rule-banning-junk-ticket-hotel-fees
https://nypost.com/2025/11/05/business/zohran-mamdani-taps-lina-khan-as-co-chair-of-nyc-mayor-transition-team/
[17] https://consumerfed.org/press_release/ftc-junk-fees-rule-takes-effect-today/
[18] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pem255jxQEoWCN3Ic5ILZa2a9a4oDtqe/view
[19] https://nlihc.org/resource/national-consumer-law-center-releases-brief-rental-junk-fees
[20] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/09/ftc-takes-action-against-invitation-homes-deceiving-renters-charging-junk-fees-withholding-security
[21] https://archive.ph/8O9hw
[22] https://archive.ph/8O9hw
[23] NYS Tenant Bloc press release “MAMDANI’S VICTORY IS A WIN FOR TENANTS.” Nov. 4, 2025.
