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Lawyer suing to block NYC rent freeze tried swaying previous board vote, ex-chair says
By
David Brand
Published Sep 30, 2026
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Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images
By
David Brand
Published Sep 30, 2026
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Landlords suing to overturn an upcoming rent freeze on nearly 1 million rent-stabilized apartments say they suspect top officials in Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration attempted to meddle in the Rent Guideline Board's June decision.
Now, a former board chair tells Gothamist that the landlords’ attorney, Randy Mastro, did just that when he was the city’s top deputy mayor last year.
Former Rent Guidelines Board Chair Doug Apple said Mastro contacted him by phone and “advocated for a low vote” ahead of the board’s 2025 decision, when the panel chose to increase rents by 3% on new one-year leases. At the time, Mastro was serving as first deputy mayor under then-Mayor Eric Adams.
“I had private conversations with the first deputy,” Apple said in an interview. “He had an interest in the outcome and wanted to understand what we were thinking and advocated for a low vote.”
The board had been considering a range of increases up to 4.75% on one-year leases before its decision to raise rents by 3%.
Apple said Mastro’s intervention followed public comments made by Adams, who had called on the board to approve an increase at the lower end of its predetermined range.
“Clearly, City Hall publicly said they wanted the lowest vote possible. You can assume any private conversations aren't going to be different than that,” he said. “Those private conversations were about a low vote.”
Although the mayor appointed each of the Rent Guidelines Board’s nine members, the panel is considered an independent body that considers data and public testimony before making its annual decision.
Apple declined to share more details about his conversations with Mastro. He said Mastro’s efforts did not work and that "the board made an independent decision” on last year’s rent increase.
In a statement, Mastro confirmed the conversations occurred.
“I have publicly acknowledged that then-RGB Board Chair Doug Apple and I had conversations at the end of the RGB’s process last year in which he informed me the board was going to propose rent guidelines with which Mayor Adams had publicly disagreed. I responded telling him why we disagreed with the board,” Mastro said in a written statement.
But Mastro said there is a “a world of difference between conveying to the board chair that the mayor disagreed with the board’s decision and orchestrating” what he called “a sham process with a preordained outcome to do exactly what the Mayor dictated and promised in his campaign.”
“That never happened in the Adams administration,” he said. “That is exactly what has happened in the Mamdani administration.”
Apple spoke with Gothamist after a new court filing from the city’s Law Department revealed that Adams administration officials had communicated with the Rent Guidelines Board on hundreds of occasions last year.
A judge last week ordered 13 city officials, including Mamdani and members of the Rent Guidelines Board, to turn over communications in order to determine whether his administration attempted to influence the board’s vote to freeze the rent after Mamdani had made doing so a key pillar of his mayoral campaign last year.
In a letter to the court, New York City Corporation Counsel Steven Banks said a search of records revealed nothing “improper or untoward” by the Mamdani administration. But, he said, the review did show that Adams administration officials — including Mastro’s chief policy advisor, Reggie Thomas — had communicated with Apple at least 228 times last year.
In contrast, Banks wrote, Arvind Sindhwani, Mamdani’s point person for the Rent Guidelines Board, communicated with RGB Board Chair Chantella Mitchell 104 times.
Manhattan Judge Brendan Lantry ordered all communications turned over in the discovery process remain sealed from the public. A City Hall spokesperson declined to share the emails mentioned in the court filings, or to comment on the conversations between Apple and Mastro.
In his letter, Banks said the landlords’ “wild claims about the RGB process are baseless.”
Apple’s allegation that Mastro advocated to influence the board’s decision last year comes one day before the rent freeze is set to take effect on new one- and two-year leases for tenants in roughly 1 million rent-stabilized apartments citywide. The board’s June vote marked the first time the panel had ever approved a freeze on two-year leases.
The group of landlords suing to overturn the decision each own rent-stabilized apartments. They said the Rent Guidelines Board ignored data showing that owner costs have risen and that the Mamdani administration had interfered with the board’s independence. They asked the judge to require the board to reconvene and hold a new vote.
Mamdani had promised to “freeze the rent” if elected. He named six of the board’s nine members, but stopped publicly calling for a rent freeze after taking office.
The morning of the vote in June, landlord representative Christina Smyth abruptly quit her post, writing in a resignation letter that the board was constructed to deliver a predetermined decision.
But the next day, the lone member to oppose the rent freeze, economist Arpit Gupta, said he did not experience any interference “unlike in some previous years.”
Gupta was appointed in 2022 by Adams. In an interview, Gupta said he did not personally experience meddling or receive explicit voting instructions during his time on the board under either mayor.
Alex Armlovich, another Adams appointee who left the board in February, also said he did not receive explicit instructions from the Adams administration. He instead pointed to comments Adams made publicly at the time.
“There was a lot of pressure on swing votes to do something lower,” Armlovich said. “We did ultimately make an independent decision.”
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Zohran Mamdani
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new york city
David Brand
David is a reporter covering housing for Gothamist and WNYC. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or Signal 908-310-3960.
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