The crowd was eager before Mayor Zohran Mamdani said a word. Hundreds packed the Hostos Community College auditorium on Thursday evening, many wearing hats that read “The Rent Is Too Damn High” in Mamdani’s trademark yellow and red.
The Students Rental Ripoff Hearing, hosted by More Perfect Union University, arrived two days after Mamdani’s administration released Block by Block: The Housing Plan for a New Era.
Nearly 80% of Bronx residents are renters, the highest share of any borough in the city, according to NYU Furman Center, and more than a third spend over half their income on housing. The borough’s rental vacancy rate sat at 0.82% in 2023, the lowest in the city, according to the NYC Rent Guidelines Board.
For many in that auditorium, those numbers are not statistics. They are the reason some no longer live in the Bronx.
“I don’t need to be the one to tell you that New York City is facing one of the most severe housing crises in the United States of America,” Mamdani told the crowd. “That is something that each and every New Yorker feels on the first of the month.”
The Mayor described housing as the heaviest financial burden working New Yorkers carry and said the crisis was the result of decades of government decisions that gave landlords incentives to spike rents and left tenants with nowhere to turn.
Block by Block, he said, represents a different set of decisions. The plan sets a target of 200,000 new affordable homes built and another 200,000 preserved over the next decade, backed by a $22 billion capital investment over five years, according to the mayor’s office.
On enforcement, Mamdani said the city’s current system for responding to tenant complaints has failed the people it is supposed to serve.
“In a city where you can order Uber Eats on your phone and you can see every step of where that delivery is,” he said, “why is it that when you call 311 and you ask for an HPD inspector and they come, and you don’t happen to be home, all you get is a piece of paper on the floor?”
Under the new plan, tenants who miss an HPD inspection appointment will be able to reschedule at a time they are actually home.
Since taking office, he said, the administration has held landlords accountable to the tune of $65 million.
Mamdani committed to a Bronx-focused interagency effort to address housing quality and economic inequality in the borough, saying the administration had heard from long-term Bronx tenants who felt they had been “excluded” and treated as “secondary to anyone’s concern.”
He added: “We never want you to come to the conclusion that you must leave this city in order to live your life.”
Brittany Lanzano was the last person Mamdani called on. A Bronx native and lead advocate at CUNY Cares, she moved out of the Bronx four years ago when her rent reached around $2,500 a month. Queens was about $1,000 cheaper.
She asked Mamdani what Block by Block would do for low-income students in the Bronx. Mamdani responded that programs like CUNY Cares matter because the city has too often assumed that creating a program is enough.
“We’ve said, if a program exists, that’s enough,” he said. “We have to tell people about the program.”
“I love that he took out the time, him and his team, to think about us,” Lanzano said after the event. “I graduated on these same stages. I performed and participated here for years. Now here’s the mayor having his speech and speaking to us about what he’s gonna do for us.”
Sebastian Leon Martinez, a member of Young Democratic Socialists of America and tenant organizer, was priced out of his first Bronx apartment at eight years old after a rent increase of more than 20 percent following the 2008 financial crisis. He asked Mamdani how the administration plans to work with tenant unions.
Mamdani said they are “a critical part of how we can ensure that tenants are actually enjoying the rights that they deserve.”
Under Block by Block, when a tenant union reaches majority membership in a building, the city plans to coordinate enforcement days bringing multiple agencies together for roof-to-basement inspections.
“Power isn’t just something used by people with money or property,” Martinez said. “It’s also by working-class people who can actually materialize their own needs into real action.”
Ashley Walker, a graduate student at Hostos and City College studying political science, came to listen. A single mother who has been out of work while undergoing cancer treatment, Walker relies on Social Security Disability Insurance and receives $2,600 a month which after only rent leaves her $800.
Currently her disability is under review which could lead to a loss of support.
“Right now, with that ending and with rent going up, I don’t have the ability to pay for that,” she said. She is taking summer courses to finish her degree faster and has been looking for jobs and internships to cover the gap.
“I’m going to have to work a lot sooner than what I had originally planned. And that’s the scary part.”
Joshua Adam Santiago, a 31-year-old CUNY grad student at Lehman studying music education, is still in the Bronx, living with his mother. His family has rented the same apartment for decades. He earns less than $30,000 a year.
Renting even a room, which can run $800 to $1,000, is out of reach.
“I’ve had to modify my entire perspective on my ability to afford housing in and of itself,” he said.
“The Bronx never stopped burning,” Santiago said, “and it’s burning now just as bad as it was then.”
Kylie Clifton is a contributing writer at the Bronx Times. She can be reached at kylie.clifton23@gmail.com or (269) 615-0800. For more coverage, subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and
