As part of his housing platform, mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has promised to freeze rent on stabilized apartments in New York City, but some are worried this could exacerbate prices by discouraging people from moving out of these units. Speaking with realtor.com, Yonah Freemark, a housing and communities expert at the Urban Institute, says the freeze only applies to stabilized units and won’t affect new housing construction, and by extension, housing affordability. “The potential negative of rent stabilization,” he says, “is if it’s too strong, it might result in reduced investment in those units in terms of improved quality… but the magnitude of that change in quality is not well documented in the research.”

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