Thursday, October 1, 2026
How broken is New York’s approach to housing and fundamental fairness? Broken enough that an independently wealthy former assemblyman earning a six-figure salary occupies a rent-stabilized apartment meant for low-income families. Worse still, New Yorkers have just elected him mayor.
That simple fact about New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani tells you more than any dense policy analysis ever could. It exposes a system that is fundamentally flawed by design, not by accident.
Rent stabilization was created to protect working families and lower-income New Yorkers by preventing excessive rent hikes and guarding against sudden evictions. And the goal has always been straightforward and well-intended: to keep housing affordable for those who need it most and allow people with limited means access to neighborhoods they would otherwise be priced out of.
In practice, however, the rent stabilization program often delivers the opposite result because of a glaring flaw: it isn’t “means tested.” In other words, there are no income checks, no requirement to prove continued need, and no expectation that those who no longer qualify will give up their apartments. Once you’re in a rent-stabilized unit, you’re in forever, no matter how much money you make. In any other assistance program, that would be indefensible. In New York housing policy, it’s business as usual.
For years, higher-income New Yorkers have unapologetically occupied rent-stabilized units in desirable neighborhoods, while lower-income families have been locked out. By allowing these affluent tenants to hold on to subsidized apartments indefinitely, the system freezes access to many of the city’s most desirable communities. The result is the opposite of integration: poor and working-class New Yorkers are squeezed into fewer neighborhoods, while apartments meant to promote fairness become lifetime perks for the wealthy.
To exacerbate the problem, rightfully disillusioned landlords and developers refuse to build more apartments, making the city’s housing crisis even worse.
The numbers tell the story. Without income verification, high-income earners occupy an estimated 30 percent of all rent-stabilized units. That leaves more than 300,000 low-income New Yorkers shut out of affordable housing in neighborhoods with better resources — places they should have fair access to.
It’s the biggest scam going. Can you imagine millionaires standing on line and robbing their needy neighbors of food assistance? Yet in this case, no one says a word. Instead they elect the very same people who have shamelessly profited from this government-sponsored racket.
This is no accident. The powers that be count on political inaction to protect their wealthy constituents and donors.
But the solution is equally straightforward: require income verification, as we do with every other public assistance program. If a tenant doesn’t prove financial need for the subsidy, they must step aside so a family who does need it can live there.
If lawmakers truly cared about affordability and weren’t just paying us lip service, they would obviously embrace reforming the program. That’s why I introduced a bill to bar high-earning people from holding these deeply discounted units by requiring income verification. My bill would prevent those earning more than 125 percent of the area median income from holding on to these deeply discounted units. Plainly speaking, if you make a large salary, you don’t also get low-income rent.
That’s common sense, because nobody would rightly argue that someone making more than 125 percent of AMI should be on public assistance. Yet Gov. Kathy Hochul and the Democratic majority allow this practice to go unchecked, all while simultaneously decrying the lack of affordable housing. They talk endlessly about equity and justice, but when confronted with abuses like Mamdani’s, their moral clarity evaporates. The easier path is to dismiss the criticism as partisan and avoid the meaningful reform the system needs.
In any other state, the revelation that a wealthy elected official was benefiting from subsidized housing would spark universal outrage. In New York it becomes just another shrug-inducing headline in an endless cycle of dysfunction.
I say “enough.” New Yorkers are in the midst of a disastrous affordability crisis, but with this single act of common-sense legislation we could actually make a tremendous improvement in the lives of everyday New Yorkers.
I urge my colleagues to pass this bill and require wealthy New Yorkers to move out of rent-stabilized apartments to ensure that their vulnerable neighbors get them. If they refuse to act, the affordability crisis will worsen, fueled by hypocrisy at the top and indifference everywhere else.
Jack Martins represents the 7th State Senate District.
