New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani defended his housing agenda during a fiery press conference while criticizing federal immigration measures affecting city residents. He stressed that the proposed federal rule is not yet in effect and could take effect no earlier than September 18, 2026. Mamdani vowed that New York City would use every available legal tool to challenge the policy, saying the city remains committed to protecting immigrant families and preserving the diverse communities that define New York.
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NewsTranscript
00:00December of 1907 was not a happy time to be a tenant in New York City.
00:05Two out of every three New Yorkers were living in crammed tenement housing, like those brought
00:11to life here at the Tenement Museum.
00:13It was brutally cold.
00:15Nearly 100,000 New Yorkers had just lost their jobs in an economic crisis, and in response,
00:22many landlords had decided to raise the rent by 33%.
00:25What New Yorkers needed in 1907 was a city government that worked for them, one that prioritized
00:32their struggles, one that took material action to hold bad landlords accountable.
00:37They did not have such leadership in City Hall.
00:40But in its absence, New Yorkers did what New Yorkers do best.
00:43They organized.
00:45More than 10,000 families came together to protest these conditions, one of the largest
00:51tenant movements in our city's history.
00:53That movement ushered in a century of tenant organizing and of progress.
00:59Today, New York City is home to the strongest tenant protections anywhere in the United States
01:05of America.
01:11And yet we know this work remains unfinished.
01:15Too many still pay soaring rents only to live with kitchens full of cockroaches and bathroom
01:20pipes that leak and rust.
01:22Yet today, New Yorkers have a city government that is quite different from the one in 1907.
01:27Throughout our first four months in office, City Hall held New York City's first ever rental
01:33ripoff hearings, attended by more than 2300 New Yorkers across the five boroughs.
01:38Forums where tenants could share their struggles and ideas directly with those who have the
01:42power to deliver change.
01:44I spoke with New Yorkers who told me about vents filled with mold, nights spent shivering in
01:50the dead of winter, elevators that sat out of order for months on end, and landlords who,
01:55amidst all of this, refused to do anything about it.
01:57These New Yorkers did not share these stories only for them to be promptly forgotten.
02:03They shared them so they would serve as the foundation of the policies City Hall would
02:07pursue, the change we would deliver.
02:11Today, City Hall delivers on that promise.
02:14This rental ripoff report, also known as RRR, not to be confused with the 2022 Tollywood smash
02:21hit, is based on thousands of testimonies shared at rental ripoff hearings across our five boroughs.
02:28It outlines the actions our administration will take to improve the lives of tenants who
02:33call the city home.
02:34These actions fall under four major categories.
02:38First, we will improve housing quality by strengthening our enforcement of common housing code violations
02:45and complaints.
02:46For the first time ever, inspectors will investigate every single heat complaint.
02:52Also, for the first time ever, if HPD inspectors come at a time when you're not available,
02:58you will be able to reschedule a visit at a time that works for you.
03:03New Yorkers have been able to schedule food deliveries and the time they pick up their
03:07clothes at the dry cleaner for years.
03:10They should be able to do the same when it comes to an inspection of their home.
03:14We will also tackle pests, eradicate mold, and fix broken elevators.
03:19Three of the largest concerns voiced by New Yorkers during the rental ripoff hearings.
03:24We will address the underlying causes of mold for the first time.
03:28No longer will landlords be allowed to slap a new coat of paint over a wall of black mold
03:33and pretend that the issue is fixed.
03:40And we will keep New Yorkers safe by confronting the causes and devastating consequences of residential fires.
03:46Second, we will continue to hold bad landlords accountable.
03:49We will take on the worst landlords in the city with our Fix the City campaign.
03:53And we will reform our systems for cataloging building registrations and penalties.
03:59Right now, everything is still done on paper.
04:03That not only slows things down, it makes it harder to hold those who violate the law accountable.
04:10Digitizing this process will not only help us crack down on repeat violators,
04:14it will also allow us to support the many landlords who operate with integrity.
04:19Third, we will empower tenants across New York City.
04:23The best protected tenant is an organized tenant.
04:26That is why we will legally recognize tenant unions protecting New Yorkers from harassment
04:31or threat of eviction for seeking solidarity with their neighbors.
04:39And we will partner with organized tenants across the city to deliver the accountability they deserve from their landlords
04:46and, in certain cases, to support the successful transfer of their buildings to more responsible owners.
04:52Fourth, we will make the housing market fairer and more transparent.
04:59This includes requiring the disclosure of AI or digitally altered images and video
05:04on misleading rental listings that waste New Yorkers' time and money.
05:09You shouldn't have to worry whether or not the apartment you are viewing online is real.
05:14After all, it's called street easy, not street hard.
05:19All of these actions and improvements come as a direct result of every tenant who attended a rental ripoff hearing.
05:26Every tenant who chose to speak up.
05:29Every tenant who refused to tolerate another year of negligence and disrepair.
05:33Every tenant who demanded more from their city government.
05:37This work is just beginning.
05:40We will build on the success of the rental ripoff hearings as we hold five NYCHA In Your Neighborhood events.
05:45One in each borough beginning this September.
05:48These two are forums where NYCHA tenants' ideas and concerns will be translated into material change across public housing.
05:55In the words of Mayor John Lindsay, cities are for people and for living.
06:01Every New Yorker deserves to live a dignified life in a dignified home in the city they love.
06:08That is a responsibility that government can, must, and will fulfill.
06:13So, thank you very much.
06:15Thank you, everybody.
06:21My name is Sia, I'm the Director of the Mayor's Office to Protect Tenants, and thank you so much to
06:26Mayor Mamdani for the opportunity to hold these hearings across the five boroughs, and to the many New Yorkers who
06:32were welcome to the governing table here with us.
06:34And thank you to the Tenant Museum.
06:36I love this museum.
06:37I really am grateful to be here.
06:39I'm going to pass it over to the HPD Commissioner, Dina Levy.
06:47Morning, everybody.
06:48Thank you, Mayor Mamdani, and I also want to thank Executive Director Weaver, Deputy Mayor Borzog, and Commissioner Tagani for
06:59their partnership in getting us to this point.
07:01But most of all, I want to thank the thousands of New Yorkers who came out to these hearings to
07:08tell us what they need and what they expect from us, to share their experiences about what it is like
07:15and what is hard about living in New York.
07:18HPD is one of several agencies that has an awesome responsibility.
07:22We ensure that New Yorkers are safe and secure once inside their homes.
07:28Through these hearings, we have heard loudly and clearly where we need to step up our efforts.
07:33As the mayor said, the report outlines a series of changes in the way we will be doing business.
07:39Over the last two weeks, I went out and visited four of our local offices throughout the boroughs where all
07:45of our code inspectors and all of our lead inspectors work.
07:48And we had an all-hands-on-deck meeting to talk about these changes, changes to how we inspect heat
07:55complaints, how we deal with lead complaints, how we help tenants stay safe and prevent very serious and very dangerous
08:03fires.
08:03I am very happy to report that folks were not only happy to hear this news, they were excited to
08:09get out and do this work.
08:11I also want to say that the report lays out new initiatives that we think are necessary in terms of
08:18upscaling our special enforcement programs, including our new Fix the City initiative, which will target chronically and willfully negligent landlords
08:29to finally put an end to these predatory practices.
08:32It also lays out our plans for a new initiative called Enforcement Days, which will take referrals from organized resident
08:41associations so that we can do roof-to-cellar inspections across housing portfolios, enabling both HPD and DOB to address
08:51systemic non-compliance more quickly and more aggressively.
09:01These reforms are a direct product of what tenants came, told us from every borough, from every neighborhood that they
09:09need, and that feedback will now serve as our call to action.
09:14I want to thank the staff at HPD who joined me at these hearings, and to the dedicated teams in
09:21our code enforcement and housing litigation units for their ongoing commitment to making sure that New York City is a
09:29safe and secure place to live.
09:31Thank you so much.
09:36Thank you so much, and I'd now like to pass it to DOB Commissioner Ahmed Tagani.
09:47First, I want to thank the mayor and the deputy mayor.
09:50Your leadership and example has set the tone, not only at DOB, but clearly across the agency, that when we're
09:56thinking about how we're forming policy, we're working to get out of our own way and make sure that the
10:02tenants and the people of New York have the clear path to setting the direction and setting the focus on
10:09how we deliver city services.
10:11So we are grateful as commissioners and having this opportunity to be leaders in this administration.
10:18I'll also say that I've been in government for some time, and I am amazed at how easy and incredibly
10:29core it is to our work that I get to have partners like Sia and Dina and Sam at DCWP,
10:38and the people who have been picked in this administration,
10:41because not only have we been given this charge to focus on solving root causes and no longer putting Band
10:49-Aids, but we genuinely talk and work and collaborate actively together every day,
10:55because we know together and working in partnership and breaking down silos and barriers, we will achieve the greatest success.
11:03So not only do we have this opportunity to deliver for you, we're actually rewriting the DNA and nucleus of
11:11your government to make sure that it is responsive today and in the future to the kind of policies that
11:17will make this city better.
11:19Earlier this year, I had the privilege of being part of these rental ripoff hearings, along with the incredible members
11:27of the DOB Office of the Tenant Advocate and our Community Engagement and External Affairs team,
11:32some of whom are here today, so thank you for the work that you've done.
11:36Thousands of our fellow New Yorkers took time out of our busy days to join us in gymnasiums and community
11:43centers in neighborhoods across the five boroughs
11:46to attend these hearings in order to get just a few minutes to share their stories with government representatives.
11:53For the first time ever, New Yorkers saw that their government wanted to hear their voices, wanted to know about
11:59their experiences, wanted to help,
12:01and they jumped at the chance to participate at these hearings.
12:04And the result is a groundbreaking document that changes how we will ensure that not only the housing stock, but
12:13the people in that housing stock are made better.
12:16In these conversations, I couldn't help but think of my own story here in New York, growing up in a
12:24household,
12:25a single mom trying to provide for her kids in an apartment building that wasn't that great.
12:30And very often, as I tell this story to inspectors who are graduating or in the program at different places
12:37I've worked,
12:37it was the housing inspector or the DOB inspector that was the most prevalent representation of government in my life.
12:46And I saw that you can depend on someone.
12:50I saw the results of making that phone call and seeing someone push our landlord to make sure that the
12:56place was correct,
12:57that it was clean, and it was livable.
13:00That little help helps someone like my mom, who was already trying to figure 10 other things for us.
13:06It makes her life just that much easier to be able to focus on other things that are important to
13:11the family.
13:12So in these conversations, we heard about inconsistent elevator service, disruptive construction activity,
13:18delayed building maintenance,
13:20and government enforcement that wasn't getting compliance results from landlords who weren't meeting their legal obligations.
13:28This administration is focused on doing more than any other to better understand these experiences.
13:35And now with the release of this report, we have a blueprint to repair what's broken in our enforcement protocols
13:41and close the gap in our city laws.
13:44We are excited to work with our partners at our fellow agencies in the city council in Albany.
13:51We will go wherever we have to go to deliver for tenants in this city.
13:55We are here to make sure that the majority has their voice in the places it needs to be.
14:01And that means better elevator service in our vertical city,
14:05enforcement actions against bad actors,
14:07and actually having teeth and creating a regulatory environment that incentivizes property owners
14:13to properly take care of their buildings.
14:22So thank you, Mr. Mayor, DM, to my fellow commissioners.
14:27We're excited to have the blueprint.
14:28And now we're excited to get to work.
14:36Hi, everybody.
14:38So many years ago, Commissioner Levy hired me into my very first tenant organizing job.
14:43Not that many years ago, but many years ago.
14:46And that tenant organization still exists.
14:49And I'm really proud to invite up a tenant leader from Hope Tenants Union, Tony Moreo.
15:02Good morning, everybody.
15:04My name is Antonia Moreo.
15:06And I am thrilled to be a member of the Hope Tenant Union,
15:13housing organizers for people's empowerment.
15:18Hope facilitates tenant unity.
15:22Hope offers civic education.
15:24And hope insists on the high road, the path of justice and housing for all.
15:31I was honored to participate in this year's rental ripoff hearings.
15:35And I want to thank Michael Tiger, General Counsel of the NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection,
15:42who listened to my testimony and welcomed my questions with kindness.
15:49Mayor Mamdani's rental ripoff hearings will echo for generations.
15:53The way the lessons of this, our tenement museum, have increasingly resonated for generations.
16:02When I think about hope, I think about Shakespeare.
16:09In the comedy Measure for Measure, set in Vienna, a city famous for its social housing,
16:17the character Isabella talks about the political machine.
16:21She says,
16:23Authority, though it err like others, hath yet a kind of medicine in itself that skins the vice or the
16:32top.
16:34Isabella, the novice nuns, in this is saying that kings, landlords, bishops, judges, and inspectors,
16:42all of these powerful figures are subject to mistakes.
16:47But because they have power, their mistakes have very little in the way of consequences,
16:54at least little consequences to them.
16:59But Sister Isabella also says,
17:03Go to your bosom, knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.
17:10What my heart knows is that we are living in an epic chapter of history.
17:16An epic is not a romance.
17:19It's not a melodrama.
17:21An epic is the story of a new order.
17:25Our city is turning the corner on tenant power.
17:30When we organize, we win results.
17:34The Mamdani administration is emboldening us so that we no longer tolerate the violence of evictions as a matter of
17:43business as usual.
17:48My landlord owns dozens of buildings, but he is not a steward of the public trust.
17:55In fact, it is the opposite.
17:56Since 2005, I survived three faulty eviction cases.
18:02I've lost three friends to eviction, two of whom lived on my floor.
18:07And for the past year, year and a half, our supportive housing neighbors have been dissuaded from joining our fledgling
18:15tenant union.
18:16But today's report shows there is a path forward.
18:22I am grateful for Mayor Mamdani's leadership, his commitment to improving our housing quality and holding low-road landlords accountable,
18:33and the commitment to having tenant leaders, not just real estate leaders and bankers, but tenant leaders at the decision
18:41-making table.
18:47Mayor Mamdani's rental ripoff hearings will be remembered in the book of Lady Liberty,
18:54whose torch beacons the homeless, the tempest-tossed to our shores.
19:00So the greatest cosmopolis of interdependent neighborhoods that the world has ever known
19:06will set a new standard of what humanity can achieve when we prioritize collaboration over dominion,
19:15when we prioritize love over profit.
19:20And to me, this man will always be Mayor Cardamom.
19:26Thank you, everyone.
19:28Thank you, everyone.
19:36Thank you very much.
19:39And before we get to QA, we're actually just going to have the mayor do a quick update on the
19:43air.
19:43Yes.
19:44So just before we start any questions, I do want to talk about the air quality.
19:49As New Yorkers can see, and in some neighborhoods, as New Yorkers can smell,
19:53smoke from the Canadian wildfires is over our city.
19:57What the experts say is that today is expected to be the worst day of this event.
20:02The state has forecast air quality in the unhealthy range for the New York City region,
20:07and I want to be clear about what that word means in this instance.
20:11At unhealthy levels, everyone, not just people with asthma and heart conditions,
20:16not just older adults, everyone may feel health effects.
20:20So today, every New Yorker should take precautions.
20:24Limit your time outdoors, especially strenuous activity.
20:28We have made free KN95 masks available at hundreds of locations citywide,
20:34including libraries, police precincts, and a number of firehouses.
20:38Go to on.nyc.gov slash free mask, and you'll find a map of where to pick one up or
20:44call 311.
20:45You can also text notify NYC to 692-692, so we can reach you if conditions change,
20:52and do try and check on your neighbors through their all.
20:55We will keep you updated through the day.
20:57These are conditions that we know are also coming at the same time as a heat emergency for New Yorkers.
21:03So it is very important to stay up to date, to stay prepared,
21:06and to respond with your safety as the most important thing,
21:09because that is what it is for city government as well.
21:16Now we'll start with on-topic questions about the report,
21:19and we have our C. Weaver as well as the Deputy Mayor to answer questions as well.
21:24We're going to start with Ben Miller from The Real Deal,
21:25and if you could just wait for the microphone.
21:28Thanks so much.
21:29Hi, Mr. Mayor.
21:29How's it going, Ben?
21:30Good.
21:31I wanted to ask a little bit about the phases in which the reports, findings,
21:36and results are going to roll out.
21:38There was a good legend in it that said, you know, some of these are administrative,
21:41some of these are legal, some of these are going to require city council buy-in.
21:46What's the method from MOPT to get buy-in from the city council
21:50on the myriad of things that you're hoping to get done with this,
21:53and when does that process start?
21:55Has it already started before the report was released?
21:57Is this a bringing them in situation?
22:00How does that work?
22:02One thing we are fortunate to have in this city
22:06is that there is a broad coalition that understands the urgency of this work
22:10and the necessity of it.
22:11And so when we are speaking to our partners,
22:14whether it be those who serve in the city council or beyond that,
22:18about the importance of tackling the root causes of mold,
22:21of ensuring that we are finally bringing the kinds of tenant protections
22:25that the city should have brought years ago,
22:27we are also oftentimes speaking to an audience that knows exactly what that means.
22:32I mean, you heard it just now that from our DOB commissioner,
22:35it's not as if he had to sit there and listen to understand that these were issues.
22:39He grew up facing a lot of these issues himself,
22:41and I think the same is true for many others.
22:43So I know that we've already started conversations with city council members
22:47around the aspects of this report that require legislative action.
22:51What I will also say is there are other aspects of this report
22:54that can begin immediately,
22:55and we are going to look to take as fast of an approach as we can
22:59with every single recommendation that is here.
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