Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani has made housing and tenant protection the throughline of his first months in office, moving in early 2026 to tighten enforcement against the city’s worst landlords, open the city’s first-ever public hearings on rental abuses, speed up affordable construction on city-owned land and sue a landlord accused of running illegal short-term rentals in rent-stabilized buildings. The push has unfolded alongside separate tenant fights playing out in the courts and on the streets, from a stayed plan to demolish public housing in Chelsea to a City Council campaign against deed theft.
On February 8, Mamdani and Housing Preservation and Development Commissioner Dina Levy released an updated list of the 250 buildings with the most severe housing code violations citywide, placing them under heightened oversight through the city’s Alternative Enforcement Program, according to the mayor’s office. The administration said the program, now in its 19th year, lets the city closely monitor repeat offenders, conduct more frequent inspections, issue Orders to Correct and step in to make repairs when owners fail to act, billing landlords for the cost. The 250 buildings selected this year account for nearly 55,000 open violations and owe the city nearly $4.5 million for emergency repairs already performed, the office said. The mayor’s office added that the list builds on a $2.1 million settlement announced the prior month with A&E Real Estate Holdings covering 14 buildings, which it described as the largest ever won by HPD’s Anti-Harassment Unit and which required extensive repairs, compliance with Orders to Correct and injunctions barring tenant harassment.
“In our first month in office, we’ve been clear: New York will no longer look the other way while bad landlords put tenants at risk,” Mamdani said in the announcement. “The Alternative Enforcement Program gives us the power to closely monitor repeat offenders and step in to fix conditions when landlords refuse to do their jobs.” The mayor’s office said that during the winter’s cold emergency, HPD treated heat-and-hot-water failures as an all-hands-on-deck effort, responding to roughly 37,000 complaints in January and closing 98 percent of them as of February 4. The scale of the cold-weather crisis was steep: City Limits reported that the city received nearly 80,000 calls about a lack of residential heat and hot water in January, more than in any other month on record, with some tenants saying their buildings were falling through the cracks.
Two days later, on February 10, the administration announced the dates and locations for what it called New York City’s first-ever Rental Ripoff Hearings, a series of five public hearings, one in each borough, where tenants are invited to describe their experiences renting in the city. The mayor’s office said the hearings were established by Executive Order 08 and are meant to create a direct line between tenants and City Hall, with renters speaking about problems ranging from mold, broken appliances and unsafe construction to hidden fees and surprise charges, and meeting one-on-one with senior officials including the city’s housing and consumer protection commissioners. The city will have 90 days after the hearings conclude to deliver a plan to protect tenants and hold bad landlords accountable, according to the office.
“You can’t fight for tenants without listening to them first,” Mamdani said. “What tenants share at these hearings won’t lead to empty promises. Their testimony will guide our work and help shape the policies we advance to build a city New Yorkers can afford to call their home.” Leila Bozorg, the deputy mayor for housing and planning, said in the same announcement that tenants would be able to speak directly with city officials “so their experiences can shape real policy reforms,” citing challenges “from hidden fees to code enforcement failures.”
The administration also moved on the supply side. At a March 25 press conference at 784 Myrtle Ave. in Brooklyn, Mamdani launched what he called the Neighborhood Builders Fast Track, a program he said creates a pre-qualified roster of developers to cut pre-development time for new projects from 18 months to 10 months. Coupled with referendums passed late last year, the mayor said, the change would cut the time it takes to build affordable housing in the city by up to two and a half years. Mamdani said the program would mean the creation of about 1,000 additional affordable housing units on city-owned land, including more than 100 units at 784 Myrtle and more than 300 units combined at sites on Jerome Avenue in the Bronx and Farmers Boulevard in Queens. He appeared alongside Bozorg, Levy, Council Member Chi Ossé and Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, as well as Metro IAF faith leaders, according to the transcript released by the mayor’s office; later that day, the mayor’s public schedule showed him meeting privately with Gristedes president and chief executive John Catsimatidis.
On the enforcement front, the Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement announced on February 7 a lawsuit against landlord Mark David Militana, alleging unregistered short-term rentals and related violations across nine apartments in two rent-stabilized brownstones he owns on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. The office said the suit seeks penalties that could exceed $4 million, a court order barring the activity and a court-appointed receiver to take control of the buildings. According to the office, the city’s short-term rental laws explicitly prohibit such rentals in rent-regulated units to protect housing stock and affordability, and the lawsuit details how Militana’s listings were switched to long-term rentals on Airbnb after that platform came into compliance with the verification requirements of Local Law 18 — after which, the office said, he built his own booking website and refused to stop despite a cease-and-desist letter issued in November 2024. “New York City’s rent-regulated buildings exist to house New Yorkers — period,” Mamdani said in the release, adding that his administration is committed to enforcing short-term rental laws and holding bad actors accountable. The office said photos of the properties were available courtesy of the agency.
The administration’s tenant focus carried into the spring. On May 6, Mamdani held a press conference at 530 E. 169th St. in the Bronx to make what his office billed as a tenant protection announcement, joined, according to Public Advocate Jumaane Williams’ published schedule, by Williams, who later spoke at the groundbreaking for the Anchor House Expansion at 1041 Bergen St. in Brooklyn. Earlier in the year, on February 11, Mamdani traveled to Albany to deliver testimony at the 2026 Joint Legislative Budget Hearing and hold a media availability, his office said, part of the state-level budget fight that shapes city housing funding.
Beyond City Hall, several tenant battles unfolded on their own tracks. In Chelsea, tenants of NYCHA’s Elliott-Chelsea and Fulton Houses, joined by lawyers and advocates, planned a March 14 press conference at Fulton Houses after a Manhattan appeals court put on hold the housing authority’s controversial plan to demolish and replace 2,056 public housing apartments across the developments, according to a media advisory from the Chelsea Public Housing Coalition. Organizers, who billed the residents as “Heroes of the West Side,” said tenants were cautiously optimistic about the Appellate Division ruling staying the demolition and demanded that all plans to demolish and privatize their homes be permanently scrapped. “This brings us hope, because I don’t want to move,” Theresa Thornton, a disabled tenant who uses a wheelchair, said in the advisory, adding that apartments offered for relocation had halls too narrow for her wheelchair and bedrooms too small “to even fit a drawer,” and that her rent could rise under a new Section 8 lease while she lives on a fixed income.
The questions raised in Chelsea echoed across the public housing system. At NYCHA’s Isaacs Houses in Yorkville, residents were set to become the first NYCHA tenants of the year to vote on whether to abandon the traditional public housing model for one of two options that would secure more funding but could change how their buildings are managed, City Limits reported.
Homeowners pressed their own demands. On February 2, Council Member Chi Ossé and the People’s Coalition to Stop Deed Theft, joined by other elected officials, planned a press conference outside Governor Kathy Hochul’s Manhattan office calling on her to use her executive authority to enact a temporary stay on eviction proceedings for homes experiencing deed theft until state resources are secured to protect homeowners, according to media advisories from Ossé’s office. The coalition, which the advisories described as a grassroots alliance of deed theft victims, homeowners, advocates, legal experts and community leaders, said it would outline a two-part strategy to stop the displacement of Black and Brown homeowners and deliver the resources, enforcement and oversight needed to end deed theft across the city.
The state, meanwhile, signaled its own role in the housing-supply push. In an item it circulated in late March, the MTA said Hochul had announced a request for proposals to build 300 homes on underutilized MTA property in Brooklyn.
