The city’s Rent Guidelines Board boldly embraced common sense Monday by voting to permit rent increases for the city’s nearly one million rent-stabilized apartments — modest ones of 3% for one-year and 4.5% for two-year leases. 

It was a courageous move in today’s political climate.

Of course, struggling property owners should be able to collect enough rent to cover their rising expenses — insurance, property taxes, utility costs, not to mention sheer overall inflation.

Yet Zohran Mamdani, city Democrats’ mayoral nominee, is only doubling down on his promise not to raise, but to freeze regulated rents.

We’ve seen this rent-freeze movie before, though — and we should be grateful to the RGB for not green-lighting a sequel.

Former two-term Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has endorsed Mamdani’s rent-freeze pledge, did just that three times during his eight years in office, and throughout his tenure his RGB appointees never approved an increase of more than 1.5%. 

As a result, the city reaped a whirlwind of deferred maintenance and health hazards.

In 2021, the federal Census Bureau’s New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey told the........

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