Landlord on NYC Rental Board Resigns, Decrying ‘Theater’

Christina Smyth was always the odd one out on this year’s Rent Guidelines Board.

Now Smyth is literally out — having resigned Thursday, the morning of the board’s final vote on rent levels in rent-stabilized apartments.

Smyth was a landlord member of the board, re-appointed by then-Mayor Eric Adams. In a statement announcing her resignation, she decried the board’s political theater.

“This rebuilt board was required to deliver a rent freeze. Everything since has been theater,” Smyth wrote.

Six of the board’s nine members were appointed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who campaigned on a rent freeze. His members are required to deliver on that promise, no matter what the data says, according to Smyth.

“The Rent Guidelines Board has stopped being a fact-finding body. It has become a body that starts with an answer and vibe codes its way backward to justify it,” the statement says.

The resignation sends a fiery message before the board’s vote Thursday evening and creates an awkward situation for the Mamdani administration, which had been trying to emphasize the board’s independence in light of concerns about process and the spectre of a possible legal challenge.

Smyth’s resignation references the possibility of a legal challenge to the board’s decision. The board has gone beyond the limits of the law, she said.

“A board that votes to freeze rents while knowingly disregarding its own evidence of rising costs and falling income is not acting within those limits,” Smyth wrote. “I am not going to lay out the legal argument in a public statement. But the limits are real, and a record built this way will not hold up the way its authors expect.”

In May, the board agreed to support rent increases in a range of 0 to 2 percent on both one- and two-year leases, leaving a freeze very much on the table. Smyth was the lone dissenting vote. The other owner member of the board, Maksim Wynn, of Procida Development Group, who was appointed by Mamdani, abstained.

Her statement also references the board’s own findings that costs for operating buildings are rising faster than inflation. Prices rose on a bundle of goods and services for landlords at about 5.3 percent in one year, according to board data.

Tenant and rent freeze advocates alternatively point to the board’s finding that net income for landlords of rent-stabilized units rose by more than 6 percent in the most recent data. However, those findings include all buildings with rent-stabilized units, including newer buildings that opted into rent-stabilization willingly. Net operating income actually declined in some areas, like the Bronx. The figure also doesn’t include major capital improvements.

Smyth said she does not believe a rent freeze will help tenants, and will instead lead to conditions in their homes deteriorating.

“When these buildings fail, it is not the people who cast these votes who pay the price,” she wrote. “It is the family in the building no one is maintaining. They are the ones with the most to lose, and they are the ones I am most worried about.”

Smyth asked the governor in her statement for help fixing the process, specifically in bringing back the ability to raise rents by a percentage upon vacancy.

“Done right, that brings tens of thousands of newly renovated, rent-regulated apartments back online in months, not years,” she wrote. “It does it with no cost to the state. It will give these buildings a financial lifeline without affecting current renters.”

This avenue to raise revenue was closed in 2019 by the statewide Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act. Tenant advocates said it incentivized landlords to harass tenants out of units in the hopes of raising the rent.

Neither the mayor’s office, nor Chantella Mitchell, the chair of the board appointed by Mamdani, immediately responded to a request for comment Thursday.