At NYC's First Rental Ripoff Hearings, Tenants Bash Landlords And The City

If you didn’t know better, you may have assumed the crowd gathered outside a Downtown Brooklyn high school was awaiting a parent-teacher conference.

The air was filled with anticipation as tenants filed into K605 George Westinghouse High School on Thursday evening for Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration's first — and for landlords, much-dreaded — Rental Ripoff hearing. The event was billed as an opportunity for tenants to expose poor housing conditions and predatory business practices, and attendees came armed with complaints, ready to testify — including against the city itself.

“We pay our rents every single month, and we deserve to get high-quality housing in return,” Cea Weaver, director of the Mayor's Office to Protect Tenants, said to the assembly of hundreds sitting inside the school’s basketball court. “We know that not every landlord is a bad landlord, but we want to be able to find the ones that are and make sure that the conditions are addressed appropriately.”

Mamdani announced the hearings just days into his tenure with the signing of an executive order. Immediately, landlords denounced the event as a circus act. 

In reality, the hearings were less of a tribunal and more of an interview.

Those who signed up to air their grievances were guided into the school’s black box theater. Inside, desks were arranged into small groups with a city official and an assistant seated at each. At one was Weaver. At another was Department of Buildings Commissioner Ahmed Tigani. 

A three-minute timer ticked as tenants described their living conditions.

“And there are dead rats, yes, rats,” one resident, who claimed that her building had 199 open violations, said as a city representative took notes. 

In the atrium outside the theater, a resource fair was set up, with booths from various city agencies and tenant organizations. One attendee, Courtney Henley, smiled as she greeted representatives from the Legal Aid Society — she had been working with the group over the course of a seven-and-a-half-year-long battle with her landlord. 

She was being illegally overcharged for her rent-stabilized apartment in Bushwick, she said. The matter had been settled in court, but the landlord keeps appealing. The situation inspired Henley to advise others in her community to organize against unfair housing practices.

“I had no idea that people were out here just charging the wrong rent like that,” Henley said. “When it happened to me, it’s what activated me to help other people, because there have to have been a lot of people that lost their home like that.”

To her, the city’s efforts to gather testimony from tenants was a refreshing change of approach.

“It's why I voted for Mamdani, because he was speaking to this issue,” Henley said.

Not all participants were as pleased. Prior to the Rental Ripoff hearings, the New York Post reported that New York City Housing Authority tenants wouldn't be able to participate. Afterward, the city updated its website to add that NYCHA staff would be on-site to speak with residents.

Prior to doors opening, Kevin McCall, a reverend and founder of the Crisis Action Center, stood outside with a sign that said, “The Mayor don’t care about NYCHA.” 

“NYCHA is the city's No. 1 slum landlord,” he said. “They should have been dealing with that in his own backyard before you go on somebody else's.”

Another activist, wearing a mask, jumped on stage following Weaver’s speech, shouting into the microphone, “Let the NYCHA tenants speak.” City officials subsequently directed the protester to NYCHA’s booth. 

McCall, too, spoke to NYCHA representatives at the booth, exchanging phone numbers. He invited them to join the Rental Ripoff-inspired hearings that he is organizing for NYCHA tenants.

Still, he has yet to be convinced.

“I heard this before. They in your face, so they're going to say what sounds good,” McCall said. “But at the end of the day, Miss Barbara is in the apartment right now with a stove that's not working. You have buildings that don't have elevators right now as we speak.”

Angelina Landress, who represents the tenants' association for her building in Flatbush, similarly said that, for now, she views the hearings as little more than optics. Specifically, she called out the city's Department of Housing Development and Preservation, which is tasked with enforcing the city's housing laws.

“They have this whole presentation, and yet there is no accountability. When HPD comes into people's apartments, they do an inspection and nothing happens,” Landress said. “The smoke needs to be directed to HPD.”

News of the hearings outraged landlords, especially after Weaver's office posted a banner promoting the event as a “New Yorkers vs. Bad Landlords” boxing match. 

“The name of these hearings evokes an adversarial pitch, and billing them as Us vs. Them and Tenant vs. Landlord, as if it's a title fight at Madison Square Garden, is proof enough that property owners aren't welcome, or might not even be safe if they show up,” Small Property Owners of New York Board President Ann Korchak said in a statement before the hearing Thursday. 

Before the hearings, the Real Estate Board of New York released an analysis of over 761,000 apartment buildings that it says show how small a proportion of the city's landlords are bad actors.

Just 1% of the housing stock accounts for 58% of executed evictions over the past 24 months, according to the report. Evictions have surged in the city since the Covid-19 moratorium expired, and a mountain of cases is currently working its way through the courts. Rent collections remain below historic norms. 

About 10% of buildings were responsible for 88% of all violations and 94% of the most severe, known as Class C violations, REBNY found.

“The overwhelming share of property owners provide quality housing, create jobs, and generate significant tax revenue for New York City, and these hearings will do little to address the city’s affordability and housing supply crisis," REBNY President James Whelan said in a statement. 

Though they make up just 2% of the overall housing stock, buildings that are at least 75% rent-stabilized account for more than half of the properties with 10 or more Class C violations, according to REBNY. Of those that are fully rent-stabilized, 17% have at least one Class C violation.

Rent-stabilized landlords have seen values plummet since the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019, which restricted ways landlords could increase income. A potential rent freeze — Mamdani’s key campaign promise — would deal a severe blow to their ability to maintain buildings while keeping current on mortgage payments.

As a longtime tenant advocate, Weaver played a pivotal role in the passage of HSTPA. She now oversees the Rental Ripoff hearings.

Issues stemming from HSTPA have impacted nonprofit and for-profit operators just the same. A study of Enterprise and National Equity Fund’s portfolio, which totals more than 37,000 affordable homes, found that approximately 60% of 428 projects are operating with negative cash flow. 

“No one denies that some renters are dealing with serious problems,” New York Apartment Association CEO Kenny Burgos said in a statement prior to the hearings. “But when buildings don’t bring in enough income to cover property taxes, utilities, maintenance and basic operating costs, decline becomes inevitable, no matter who owns them.”

Burgos urged officials to instead focus on reforms that could help stabilize buildings, such as cutting property taxes on apartments. Officials will submit a public report of common problems raised during the hearings and proposals to address the concerns 90 days after the last event, which is scheduled for April 7. 

Mamdani’s executive order specifies that landlords and property managers are welcome to participate in the Rental Ripoff hearings, alongside tenants, legal service providers, advocacy groups and social services agencies.

The mayor himself was not at the hearings. Instead, he was meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House to discuss the potential for $21B in federal grants to build a 12,000-unit housing project.

Tigani told Bisnow between sessions that he had yet to meet with a landlord at the event but stressed that the city is “very open” to helping property owners navigate the system and make repairs.

The day before, Tigani spoke on a Bisnow panel, informing the real estate industry of the Mamdani administration’s pro-development policy initiatives.

“There are landlords who are doing the right thing. It's the fact that we have landlords who are also not doing what they are required to do, legally,” Tigani said. “That creates tension. That paints a broader sector in a way that if those who are not doing what they're supposed to do follow the rules, we could have a more constructive conversation.”