Mamdani’s “Rental Ripoff” Show Trials Aim to Shame Landlords

A show trial is “held in public with the intention of influencing or satisfying public opinion, rather than of ensuring justice,” according to Oxford.

That sounds like what Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s “rental ripoff” hearings will be. His executive order asks tenants and activists to testify about “illegal, unfair, abusive, deceptive, or unconscionable landlord practices.”

He doesn’t call for testimony about unfair, abusive or unconscionable practices by tenants, although landlords have lots of horror stories. His order doesn’t request facts about how laws and economic forces have made maintaining rent-stabilized housing so challenging.

No, these hearings are only for landlord shaming.

New York City has thousands of landlords. Of course some are bad apples. In a functional housing market, with ample housing supply and no rent regulation, bad landlords would go out of business because tenants would move.

But Mamdani favors price controls, where tenants stay with a bad landlord because the rent is kept artificially low — as is the vacancy rate, so tenants can’t easily move.

Instead of normalcy, where landlords and tenants try to make each other happy, our system relies on enforcement, which is always going to fall short. This will be a recurring narrative at the “rental ripoff” hearings.

But is it fair to call them show trials? How do we know that “ensuring justice” isn’t the aim of these hearings?

For one thing, no one will be fact-checking, rebutting or even questioning any testimony. For an example of how this might go, at Mamdani’s press conference announcing the hearings, tenant activist Fitzroy Christian complained about being charged for scratching the floors of his rent-stabilized apartment.

“When I want to clean under my bed, and I want to clean under my couch, and I want to clean behind my dressers, I have to pull them away. When they scratch the floors, the landlord says I damaged the floors, and I get billed for damages. And that becomes a permanent part of my rent.”

At a real trial, a lawyer might ask Christian these questions:

Who should pay to repair floors damaged by a tenant?
What other damages caused by tenants should they not have to pay for?
How does a fee for scratching your floors become a permanent part of your rent?
If you must move furniture, why not buy sliders for $5.99?
Who is really damaging apartments — neat freaks who clean under sofas and beds? Or troubled tenants who punch holes in walls, clog pipes and abuse dogs?

Christian also cited a report published “not too long ago” about fees that make affordable housing unaffordable. The report was published in 2013.

A lot has changed since. The Rent Guidelines Board kept rent increases below the rate of inflation for 10 consecutive years. The 2019 rent law eliminated the 20 percent vacancy bonus and essentially banned renovations. Insurance premiums soared, water rates jumped and property taxes kept going up. Some tenants stopped paying rent and it became extremely difficult to evict them.

Unable to boost revenue to match these cost increases, landlords cut back on maintenance. It will be impossible at Mamdani’s “ripoff” hearings to tell which landlords ignored violations because of malice or because of math.

Incidentally, Mamdani’s order says landlords can speak at his hearings. But that is kind of like inviting sheep to a gathering of wolves. I highly doubt Bronx landlord Les Lerner will testify about how tenants game the system, as he explained last year to The Real Deal:

“HPD has designed a system that allows tenants to weaponize violations, and housing court has designed a system whereby violations and repairs prevent non-payment cases from advancing. This is all an orchestrated scheme to prevent evictions.”

Landlords will surely be hammered at the mayor’s show trials. But should they be worried about anything besides being portrayed as demons? Yes.

Show trials are not just to let people vent. They aim to grease the skids so some action can be taken without anyone stopping it.

Both parties practice political theater. When Mamdani was in grade school, congressional Republicans held hearings to publicize fabricated or exaggerated IRS abuses, after which they slashed the agency’s budget. About one of every six dollars owed in federal taxes now goes uncollected.

The worst show trials, such as in Communist China or Stalin’s Russia, result in executions. Mamdani is not in that realm of evil, but he likely plans something.

A probable goal is to enact COPA or otherwise transfer ownership of distressed buildings to mission-driven nonprofits. Never mind that these organizations — and the Housing Authority — are struggling to maintain their own rental buildings, despite not having to pay property taxes.

At the very least, by turning public opinion even further against landlords, the hearings will make it harder to launch programs or pass laws that help them pay for repairs.

A key question is how much power tenant activist Cea Weaver — whom Mamdani put in charge of a revamped Office to Protect Tenants — will have. Weaver has made clear she believes for-profit ownership is the cause of the housing crisis.

Will she be kept in check by more moderate, higher-ranking Mamdani aides such as Deputy Mayor Leila Bozorg? Will new HPD Commissioner Dina Levy be reasonable or ideological?

The best-case scenario is that now that Mamdani has the keys to the kingdom, he will realize no secret remedies for housing violations have been hidden within its walls. Unfortunately, the “rental ripoff” show trials will only promote scapegoating, conspiracy theories and magical thinking, making real solutions even harder to achieve.