Landlord Representative Resigns From RGB On Day Of Rent Freeze Vote

Christina Smyth, a landlord representative on the Rent Guidelines Board, has resigned hours before the nine-member body is scheduled to vote on whether to freeze rents on 1 million apartments. 

In her resignation letter, which was obtained by Bisnow, Smyth accused the board of not acting independently in its decision-making process, as the law requires. Although the mayor appoints members, they must vote based on public testimony and data presented over several months.

“This year’s RGB order was decided last year on the campaign trail,” Smyth wrote. “Everything since has been theater. The hearings, the reports, the public comment, the data. None of it was ever going to change the result.”

One of Mayor Zohran Mamdani's core campaign promises was to freeze the rent on New York City's 1 million stabilized apartments for the next four years. In February, he appointed six new members to the nine-member board.

In May, the RGB held a preliminary vote that set the potential increase from 0% to 2% for one-year leases and 0% to 4% for two-year leases. If approved, it would be the first time in the board's history that two-year leases would be frozen, Smyth wrote.

During the preliminary vote, owner representatives proposed rent increases of between 3% and 5.5% for one-year leases and between 6% and 8% for two-year leases. 

In her letter, Smyth said the board has ignored its own research, which shows that operating costs are up across the board and income is falling. In the Bronx, the borough with the largest concentration of rent-stabilized units, average net operating income is already in the negatives before accounting for debt. 

Ann Korchak, the board president of Small Property Owners of New York, called Smyth the “only meaningful voice” representing small landlords and said in a statement that the landlord group is “deeply concerned” by Smyth's decision to step down.

“More disturbing is the reason for her resignation,” Korchak said. “If the vote is already predetermined by the majority Mamdani-appointed RGB, then this independent board would be acting illegally by injecting political influence into its objective decision on rent adjustments.”

Distress has been on the rise since the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019. In closing certain loopholes that some property owners used to deregulate, the rent reforms changed the calculus behind all buildings. Property values plummeted, sending owners underwater on their mortgages, with few options to refinance. 

“The board is choosing to ignore its own evidence because the evidence points to a conclusion the politics will not allow,” Smyth wrote. “The record is now being built to fit a decision that was made before the first hearing was held.”

Smyth said that in addition to crossing a legal line, the RGB is also failing its constituents. Roughly 2.5 million people live in rent-stabilized housing. 

“When these buildings fail, it is not the people who cast these votes who pay the price,” Smyth wrote. “It is the family in the building no one is maintaining. They are the ones with the most to lose, and they are the ones I am most worried about.”

Some owners have tried to walk away from their properties, while others have kept units vacant as maintenance costs have risen. In a letter to the RGB, the Division of Homes and Community Renewal estimated that more than 57,000 rent-stabilized apartments were sitting empty as of April last year, an increase of about 8,000 units from the year prior.

Some experts have compared the current circumstances to multifamily divestment that took place in the 1970s and ’80s. The passage of the Emergency Tenant Protection Act of 1974, alongside redlining practices and greater economic stress, caused landlords to set their buildings ablaze, seeking insurance payouts.

Although there is no evidence of that practice taking place today, the number of multi-alarm fires has doubled in the last year. The New York Fire Department’s leadership attributes the incidents to the aging housing stock.

“When rent-stabilized buildings fail, when owners walk away and tax liens pile up and tenants are left in deteriorating apartments, the problem does not end with this board. It lands in Albany,” Smyth wrote. “The state will inherit a housing stock it allowed to be starved of necessary revenue. Albany will be left to clean up the mess, and the bill will run for years.”

Smyth called on Gov. Kathy Hochul to make changes to the HSTPA. Specifically, she asked that landlords be allowed to raise rents to a sustainable level after a tenant moves out. 

Due to tenant protections and succession rights, an apartment can remain occupied by a single household for decades, and rents are bumped only by what is approved by the RGB. Prior to 2019, once a family vacated an apartment, the landlord could increase rents to a market rate while keeping the unit regulated for the next renter.  

Doing so would bring “tens of thousands of newly renovated, rent-regulated apartments back online in months, not years,” according to Smyth.

“This is the path to protecting tenants and preserving housing at the same time,” Smyth wrote. “A freeze does neither.”

Smyth was appointed to the board in 2022 by then-Mayor Eric Adams. She is the founder and owner of Smyth Law PC, a real estate law practice that represents multifamily residential building owners, operators and management companies.

According to the RGB’s rules, five members constitute a quorum, meaning that a vote will likely take place Thursday night, regardless of Smyth’s resignation. The Mayor’s office didn’t immediately respond to Bisnow’s request for comment.

“I took this appointment to do honest work with real numbers,” Smyth wrote. “I will not put my name on a conclusion the facts do not support.”