A group of landlords represented by former First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro who are trying to overturn the historic two-year rent freeze on the city's 1 million rent-stabilized apartments won a small victory last week when a judge ordered the Mamdani administration to hand over their communications with members of the Rent Guidelines Board.
Mastro and the landlords have argued that because Mayor Zohran Mamdani promised to freeze the rent before he became mayor, he was exerting undue influence on the RGB, which is nominally an independent body that has always been stocked with the mayor's political appointees.