NEW YORK – Over 250 Bangali tenants from across the city celebrated milestones for an ongoing citywide rent freeze campaign on Saturday, June 20 at the fourth annual membership drive hosted by Astoria Tenants Union (ATU এস্টোরিয়া ভাড়াটিয়া ইউনিয়ন), a chapter of CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities. New York’s tenants have been fighting a historic campaign to freeze the rents for 1- and 2-year leases for 2.4 million rent-stabilized tenants, who are facing the triple threats of ICE escalations on immigrants, wartime inflation, and benefit cuts that will take effect in July. ATU’s membership drive will feature speeches from elder and youth tenant leaders from ATU, reflections on the rent freeze fight, and remarks from Assemblymember Diana Moreno (AD-36) and Mayor Zohran Mamdani (TBC).
The celebration takes place ahead of the final vote on rents on June 25. Following a historic mayoral election where tenants put rent freeze on Mamdani’s platform, tenant leaders have been calling on the RGB—the mayor-appointed board that sets rents each year—to freeze rents for over 2.4 million rent-stabilized tenants, including nearly 40,000 Queens tenants. If won, the rent freeze would take place for both 1- and 2-year leases—paving way for the first-ever freeze on rents for all leases.
Farhana Rahman, a CAAAV Astoria tenant leader, said, “I joined CAAAV as soon as I arrived to America. CAAAV has taught me my rights and how I make this new city my home. Working class and immigrant tenants are facing the triple threats of ICE escalation, benefit cuts, and wartime inflation. With landlord incomes up 30% over the past four years, the city has a responsibility to answer to the tenant majority and freeze rents for 1- and 2-year leases.”
At the rally, tenants spoke about why a rent freeze is so essential and why the RGB should not reward landlords—who have been neglecting building repairs, threatening tenants with eviction, and threatening tenants with ICE deportation—with further rent hikes. In Queens, rent hikes would threaten the ability of immigrant tenants to shelter in place amid continued ICE escalations throughout the borough. Under the previous mayoral administration, the Rent Guidelines Board hiked up rents four years in a row — by a total of over 12 percent — and net operating income for rent stabilized landlords grew by 30 percent in that period. Meanwhile, half of rent-stabilized tenants are now struggling to make ends meet, two-thirds lack emergency savings, and evictions in rent-stabilized buildings jumped nearly 12% in 2025. The Trump administration has also initiated cuts to critical social supports including SNAP, housing aid, healthcare, and childcare, while ramping up ICE raids and abductions in sanctuary cities. In this context, a rent freeze is a common sense intervention. An analysis from the Community Service Society shows a rent freeze would save New Yorkers up to $7 billion — nearly $600 per month. And 78% of New Yorkers now support a rent freeze.
Last year, New York’s tenant movement out-organized real estate, corporate, and MAGA interests to put a rent freeze on the ballot and elect a mayor responsive to tenants. Tenant Bloc collected 20,000 signatures from rent-stabilized tenants, who pledged to vote for a rent freeze mayor, and one million New Yorkers voted for that demand – a core plank of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s agenda – in November. Tenants make up a 70 percent majority in New York City, and they are calling for the Rent Guidelines Board to deliver that rent freeze amid a deepening affordability crisis.
CAAAV and its Astoria Tenants Union chapter has been a key player in the fight against predatory speculation in immigrant and working class neighborhoods such as Astoria and Chinatown. In 2019, CAAAV, in a coalition with other Queens-based organizations, forced Amazon HQ2 out of Queens, where the billion-dollar tech corporation had been speculating and driving up rent for tenants. In 2022, CAAAV ATU pushed the multi-billion-dollar development Innovation QNS to grant the biggest concessions ever made by a private developer on private land in NYC, guaranteeing that 50% of the units will be marked as “affordable.” Ahead of the June mayoral primaries, CAAAV has been fighting for a four-year rent freeze—the first step toward rent control for all New Yorkers.
Despite rent hikes under the Adams administration, tenants continued to face poor living conditions, and tenant reports of a lack of heat or hot water increased. Studies have affirmed that tenants see no improvement to their building or apartment despite rent increases. Rather than investing rents into repairs and maintenance, rent-stabilized landlords used tenants’ rent to finance their debts and speculate on buying new properties — betting on their ability to destabilize apartments and displace New Yorkers.
Rent stabilization exists to protect the working people of New York; 37% of very low-income NYC households live in rent stabilized housing. While the state’s biggest lobbies — the Real Estate Board of New York, New York Apartment Association, and the Small Property Owners of New York — have been fighting to overturn and strip back rent-stabilization, tenants are organizing to ensure the policy serves its true purpose: to protect New Yorkers and keep them in New York.
CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities builds working class power among Asian immigrants living in Chinatown and Astoria, in order to fight gentrification and real estate speculation in New York City.
Irene Hsu
許爾珊
ihsu [at] caaav.org
Communications Manager, CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities
