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Mamdani Asked Tenants to Tell Him Their Problems. Hundreds Did.

What it’s like at one of the mayor’s “Rental Ripoff” hearings.

Zohran Mamdani speaks during a Rental Ripoff Hearing at Fordham University on Wednesday, March 11, 2026.

Vincia Barber, 45, is no stranger to New York’s housing system. For the past six years, she has been organizing tenants at 1616 President Street in Crown Heights, Brooklyn — a building that spent years under the ownership of Jason Korn, named New York City’s worst landlord two years running by the public advocate’s office. Last December, after a four-year rent strike, a judge sided with Barber and her neighbors, waiving $250,000 in rental arrears. 

Weeks later, newly installed Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced that the city would be holding “Rental Ripoff” hearings to give people like Barber a chance to tell policymakers about their experiences as New York City tenants. She seized the opportunity, turning up at the very first hearing, which was held at a high school in Brooklyn on February 26. 

Barber was quickly escorted to a classroom behind the school’s gym, where she sat at a desk for a three-minute listening session with a city official. She rattled off a list of complaints about the leaks in her house, the lack of heat, issues with garbage disposal, and the frustration of coordinating with different city agencies and the landlord. Two officials took down her information and promised to follow up. 

“I am really glad that they are doing something like this,” Barber told The Nation after her listening session finished. “I am hoping that they actually take all of the complaints they receive today and use it to inform their policies on housing,” she said.  

Barber’s experience is in some ways a microcosm of what tenants across the city are contending with. Nearly 900,000 serious housing violations were recorded in New York City in 2024. That number likely only represents a fraction of the problems tenants face in a city where a median-income household would need to spend 68.5 percent of their income to rent an average apartment.

Since February, the Mamdani administration has held three Rental Ripoff hearings, one each in Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. So far, 400 people have given in-person testimonies, and 500 more have submitted them digitally, a spokesperson for Housing and Planning in City Hall told The Nation. The spokesperson added that the testimonies will feed into a report proposing policy interventions and inform a housing plan tentatively set to be released in May.

Cea Weaver, the head of the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants and the architect of these hearings, hopes they will also serve as a catalyst for tenant organizing. “The most protected tenant is an empowered tenant who knows their rights and is organizing with their neighbors,” she told The Nation. “I really think if you have a union in your building, you are going to have an easier time getting repairs from your landlord directly and you’re........

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