We Went To Zohran Mamdani’s First ‘Rental Ripoff Hearing.’ Everyone Was Mad.

NEW YORK — Residents lined up outside a Brooklyn high school Thursday to air their grievances about the city’s landlords, inaugurating one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s flagship initiatives.

The event was the first of five planned “Rental Ripoff Hearings,” which aim to “uncover policy recommendations that will more effectively and systematically protect tenants in their homes.” Led by Mamdani’s Director of Tenant Protection Cea Weaver — who infamously claimed that “Homeownership is a tool of white supremacy” — said the proceeding would focus on recording violations, requesting repairs, and exposing abusive landlords.

In her presentation, titled “New Yorkers vs. Bad Landlords,” Weaver told the room that the mayor’s office would use the feedback collected at the rental rip off hearings to inform housing policy going forward.

One resident in attendance described the poor conditions of her apartment to The Daily Wire. 

“The ceiling caved in,” she said of the three-bedroom apartment she shared with roommates. “There’s rodents and rats and we haven’t had heat the last two winters.”

Asked why she remained in the apartment, she explained that it is rent-stabilized and that she is a comic artist who cannot afford another apartment. She said her share of the monthly rent is $300, while the total rent for the unit is $900. The average rent for a three-bedroom apartment in New York is $4,841 a month.

But not everyone was happy with the hearing. Leftist critics objected that the hearings were limited to private housing, excluding residents in New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) properties — about one in 16 New Yorkers.

In the middle of Thursday’s session, a masked woman wearing knee-high green socks stormed the stage to criticize this exclusion.

“NYCHA should be allowed in the motherf*cking building,” she yelled. “Poor people need a f*cking voice.”

Weaver and other members of the Mamdani administration let the woman interrupt the hearing for nearly two minutes before addressing the masked individual. Weaver informed the woman that NYCHA could speak to representatives just like the other New Yorkers. They then helped the woman exit the stage. As she exited, she almost took the wooden podium with her.

Private landlords, too, are unsurprisingly unhappy with the hearings.

“They should pull from a combination of tenants, landlords, financiers, developers, and economists,” New York real estate broker Adam Frisch told The Daily Wire, saying the hearings were too one-sided. “Everybody looks at the situation with their own biases, and it’s the role of the mayor to sit down with tenants and landlords and say I know you’re both unhappy. Let’s see what we can do.”

Landlords blame rent stabilization for the poor conditions of certain apartments. Without the ability to raise rent, they say, they are unable to generate sufficient revenue to maintain their buildings.

Pinnacle Group, a major New York landlord, filed for bankruptcy in 2025, claiming that the “sharp increase in financing costs outpaced rental revenue, which could not be correspondingly increased due to rent stabilization.”

Mamdani, who promised while campaigning to host a Rental Ripoff Hearing in each of the city’s five boroughs, was not present at Thursday’s event. He had spent the day in Washington, D.C., meeting in the Oval Office with President Donald Trump. The pair discussed strategies to increase housing in New York City.