NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani wants to crack down on ‘bad landlords.’ First he has to find them

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks during a news conference at Gracie Mansion, Monday, March 9, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis) 2026-04-03T10:25:16Z NEW YORK (AP) — On a recent weeknight, three tenants of an aging Bronx building were trading apartment horror stories inside a packed ballroom lined with city bureaucrats.

The occasion was the third in a series of “rental rip-off hearings,” a new forum launched by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani for disgruntled renters to air their complaints directly to housing officials — and in some cases, the mayor himself.

As she waited in line, Gulhayo Yuldosheva said she worried that noxious mold in her apartment had worsened her child’s asthma.

Nearby, her downstairs neighbor, Marina Quiroz, was showing a video of rats scurrying through her kitchen to a representative of the city’s tenant protection office.

Ann Maitin, a longtime resident of the same building, had just met with the mayor. “He let me go over my three minutes,” she said, holding up a spiral notebook’s worth of grievances.

Mamdani, a democratic socialist swept into office on a promise of zealous tenant advocacy , framed the event as a struggle session for renters, assuring the standing room only crowd that their stories would guide the city’s efforts “to actually hold landlords accountable when they don’t follow the law.” To the residents of 705 Gerard Avenue, this raised a practical problem: No one seemed to know who actually owned their building. “It feels like such a basic question,” said Maitin, a retired Verizon technician who recently organized the building’s tenant association. “You’d think we’d have the right to that information.” Read More Their situation is hardly unique.

As corporate owners and investor groups have grown their share of the rental market in New York City, they are increasingly shielding their identities behind limited liability companies, or LLCs.

The practice, which has also been spreading nationally , is legal.

But experts warn it could complicate Mamdani’s promised crackdown, making it harder for the city and tenants to track the chronically negligent owners whose buildings the mayor has vowed to target and even seize. “There are these big slumlords that everyone knows are doing predatory investment, but pinning them down is going to be difficult, for the LLC reason,” said Oksana Mironova, a housing policy analyst at the Community Service Society. “That’s a problem for the administration, and it’s even

原文链接: AP News