32. NYC Mayor Mamdani vs Slumlords: Rent Control, Housing Policy

If you’ve been following the conversations around housing affordability, rent control, and landlord accountability, this episode dives into one of the most controversial real estate debates happening right now. Violeta breaks down the major housing and real estate proposals being pushed by New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani and shares her perspective as a real estate investor on what these changes could mean for landlords, tenants, and the future of investing.

From cracking down on slumlords and issuing massive fines for neglected properties to discussions around rent freezes, affordable housing, insurance relief, and over-leveraged investors, this episode explores the tension between protecting tenants and protecting property owners. Violeta also shares her own experiences dealing with distressed properties, preventative maintenance, refinancing strategies, and the realities of managing affordable housing as an investor.

We cover:
• Zohran Mamdani’s controversial housing and real estate proposals
• Rental “rip-off hearings” and tenant accountability initiatives
• Why slumlords are facing larger fines and possible property seizures
• How neglected maintenance impacts tenants and neighborhoods
• The risks of over-leveraging rental properties through refinancing and HELOCs
• Preventative maintenance, CapEx planning, and responsible investing
• How LLC structures can make landlord accountability difficult
• Rent freezes, rising insurance costs, and increasing property taxes
• Affordable housing challenges for both tenants and landlords
• City-backed insurance relief programs for affordable housing owners
• The balance between profit, ethical investing, and community impact

This episode is a reminder that real estate investing isn’t just about cash flow and appreciation — it also comes with responsibility. Violeta shares why ethical investing, proper maintenance, and long-term planning matter not only for protecting your assets, but also for protecting the people who live in your properties.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Free Latinas in Real Estate community
   https://www.skool.com/real-estate-jefas-9075/about
• Mamdani’s News Links: 
  • https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/nyc-rent-guidelines-board-preliminary-vote-freeze-hike-rents/
  • https://www.nyc.gov/mayors-office/news/2026/04/mamdani-administration-unveils-first-of-its-kind-insurance-progr

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Why are you taking my asset? Well, why did you wait? Like, there's so many steps to get to where the government, the city takes your property that you had so many chances from the beginning to setting up your strategy correctly, to just not being a slumlord, and then you have so many opportunities to fix your negligence. And then you want to get mad that then at the end the city takes your property. Today, let's get a bit controversial for some real estate investors. Because, you know, for many real estate investors, of course, the goal is that we want to make an income, protect our assets, you know, reduce our risk, and you know, cut some unnecessary costs. But I want to talk about what's been going on in New York City because the new mayor, Saukran Mamdani, hopefully I said that correctly. I practiced it a few times and I think I still messed it up. But, anyways, he's been making some headlines on a lot of changes that he is bringing to New York City. But I want to focus on the real estate ones because I have some thoughts. And of course, you know, real estate investors everywhere are up in arms about all the changes that he is implementing or trying to implement because this can set the stage for change in other states. But first, if you are new here, first time seeing me or hearing me, hola, I am Violetta. I am a real estate investor of over 10 years, and I share real estate cheese on here. I talk about you know how to get started in investing in real estate, share other Latinas and other people in the Latino community investing in real estate. But also, I like to just get into some cheese of what's been going on in real estate overall. And so in today's episode, I want to talk about some of the changes that Mam Dani has been doing in regards to real estate, and in particular, he is taking action to try to combat, of course, the high rent, but really taking action and trying to hold slumlords accountable. And so there's a lot of things that he's been bringing forward and implementing, and so of course, is a lot of controversy and a lot of headlines everywhere. So there was no shortage of headlines for me to pick from, so there's a lot, but I just want to cover a few main ones. The first thing I want to talk about is how he kind of started this whole process of trying to hold landlords accountable, and he started holding rental rip-off hearings, is what they're called. And I want to play a little clip before I get into it so you can see what I am talking about. Um, it's from the New York City Mayor's Instagram page. So let me show you that.

SPEAKER_00 3:06

Thank you for coming. Please begin right now. So, one thing I can tell my landlord consider the fact that we are getting leaves. Our building is falling apart. You know, we don't have working elevators consistently, and I have like multiple disabled uh neighbors on my floor, so it's really difficult for them. I feel that the landlords are using institutional guarantors to discriminate against gig workers, um, people who don't have traditional jobs. Someone needs to stick up for the people, and that's why I'm here.

SPEAKER_01 3:35

Okay, so as you saw, it's basically it seems like it's just these hearings, they're gathering data where tenants can go there and air out their grievances and talk about, you know, what they have been dealing with, what they've been struggling with, and kind of basically reporting their landlords on some of the negligence that they've been doing. And for me, I know you know, some people might not like it because it's like, oh, it's just, you know, tenants are going to go out there, you're disgruntled tenants and blah blah blah. But I feel like this is a good way to start because a lot of times a lot of government thing, like when the government gets involved, as someone that, you know, I've been in the military and worked around government and it saw it time and time again where they just kind of like jump the gun and just put something in place just to kind of like shut up everybody, right? Like just to be like, Oh, look, I did something, but it always fell short because they never actually took the time to gather data. And I see these hearings as that, like they are actually hearing straight from the tenants, you know, because most of the time their paperwork gets lost, you know, they might file something or whatever, and you know, it gets lost or just put off or whatever. So here he took a good first step to like being there and hearing them and gathering data. And and you probably saw like the boards where they're kind of like putting what is it, the building, uh bad repairs or whatever, right? So they're gathering the data so that way they can make a better educated decision on what type of action they want to take. So I think this was a good thing. I know some people might not think so, but to me, I think this is a great approach to actually hear the tenants and see what they've been struggling with instead of just kind of assuming and just making some random change that's not gonna be as effective. So I think it's good. Of course, you are going to have some disgruntled ones, but it is what it is. I think the good that can come from this is worth it. The next one that I want to talk about that of course a lot of people, especially real estate investors, are not going to like is the fingers of landlords. So the idea is that he's going to start finding landlords when repairs aren't being made, specifically for like heat and AC or the house is falling apart and forcing them to, you know, make those repairs. And then the thing is that they're going to build a landlord, and essentially, if they get acquire a few they don't pay or whatever, then the city puts a lien on it, which then, you know, I am not too familiar with the process in New York City, but then you know, after so long that they don't pay it, and the city comes up and holds the property or it goes into foreclosure and they buy it up, and in that way they acquire these properties from these slam lord slum lords, not slamlord, slum lords, and then you know, fix them up and whatever they end up doing with them. So, yeah, a lot of people might not be too too happy, but I want to play a clip from the mayor when he was announcing and who he's targeting because he did just acquire or fine a very large sum of money, 31 million to two big major slum lords, right? So let's play that clip.

SPEAKER_00 7:08

Organized alongside them. And that organizing made a difference, and one that we are here together today to mark. For today, we are announcing an unprecedented action against the current landlords of Robert Fulton Terrace and Fordham Towers, Guran Singh and Rajmati Pursaw. After two years of litigation, HPD has secured $31 million in penalties, the largest civil penalty won in HPD history. All on behalf of the residents of these buildings. This is a long time coming. For years, Singh and Prasad let more than a thousand violations accumulate while they collected rent month after month. They have over-leveraged this building and Fordham Towers multiple times. They are on public advocate Jumani Williams' list of worst landlords, and for good reason. That is why this court penalty includes the appointment of a chief restructuring officer who is in charge and has already hired a property manager to ensure that repairs are actually made. We have negotiated that at least $900,000 for the chief restructuring officer be put towards repairs immediately. These funds come directly from the landlord's accounts, money that should have otherwise been allocated towards this work long ago. And we will not only make the urgent repairs that are needed today, but also the long-term improvements that tenants deserve. We are calling on Fannie M.

SPEAKER_01 8:50

All right, so that is a huge, huge win for the tenants, of course, who have been dealing because again, like $31 million, like they've been fighting this for is according to Mamdani, like for two years. And it's not something that was just like out of the blue. Like these companies have been neglecting maintenance and things that are important to just the health and the welfare of your tenants, like heat, safety concerns, all of that. And they've just been neglecting these maintenance and repairs. And as he mentioned on there, was that these properties are just over-leveraged. So it's not about that they didn't have the money to make these repairs, because one thing that we talk about here in this podcast, in this channel, is how important it is when you are out there looking for a rental property, an investment property that you account for that. So included in your cash flow, you should be putting, I like to do 5% for maintenance and also for CapEx repairs for like big repairs, and then also have my funds for maintenance. So that way I don't struggle to maintain my properties uh and do this preventative maintenance. And what's been happening over, you know, the past decades and stuff of these slum lords, what they do is they get these properties and they don't put that money aside, they don't do a lot of preventative maintenance. And let me tell you how annoying it is. I go and look at these properties, and a lot of these things end up being such a huge problem because they did not either allocate funds to do preventative maintenance or they just say, you know what, I don't care. It's not a big deal right now. And so then it becomes a huge deal to now that these properties are run down. I just took over a slumlord property and I'm putting in 20K, 20K to be able to fix the insulation and all these other things. And that's a whole other episode where I'll I'll talk about once I'm done doing this unit flip and I'll go over of what all I did and so on. So if that interests you, make sure you follow the podcast, subscribe to the channel, and so that way you could see that video or the episode when it comes out. But that is important to account for that so that way you don't fall into this slum lord trap. And then the second thing is that they over-leverage, which is another thing that I talk about in social media and here on this podcast, is that a lot of times it's like as soon as you acquire equity, a lot of investors then they go and pull out as much equity as they can to go buy another property. But then now you have, you know, less money because now you have a higher mortgage, you know, uh, if you're not as strategic with how you refinance, you do a cash out refinance or whatever, or you take out a HELOC or whatever, and then you fall into the trap where now you took out too much, you over-leveraged that property. Now you have higher costs in that property. And so now when a repair needs to be done or you need to do preventative maintenance or whatever, now you just have to kind of like wait and just leave it there or whatever. And so then that property starts falling apart, and then now you took that money and put that in another investment, and so that's what it sounds like happened here because they own a lot of buildings and they over-leveraged all of these buildings to now they were struggling to maintain that property, and at the end of the day, the tenants were the ones that were struggling, and they don't have no way to really fix that for them. Like, you know, it is hard to make these slumlords accountable, which is my next point, is that holding slumlords accountable is hard. So, yes, he's doing fines, and those are two big ones that they were able to figure out who the owner was and who's responsible for them. But all throughout New York and in other states, and even here, the way for those who are not familiar, there is a way to kind of hide your identity through what's called like series LLC. They might have other names, other people may call them other names, but basically how it works is that you, for example, here in New York City, you have a property, let's say a building, right? You have your building, you make an LLC there, and it has the asset in there. There's a few ways that you can do it, but let's say you have it's running the business. That LLC is owned by a holding company, which is out of a state that allows you to hide your identity, right? So now you can't see who is there unless you mess up and have your like finances all janky or whatever, then the holding company holds the asset that can then be leased to the LLC in New York that actually runs the rental property management, right? Let's say that. And so when you try to hold these people accountable, you're trying to figure out like who do I hold accountable? Because this LLC is owned by this, another LLC, which is another LLC. And so then there's so many layers to get through that it is tedious, it's hard to figure it out, and so then there's no accountability. And so a lot of these bad landlords have been using again, it's all legal, all legal to be able to do this, but this leaves an opening for bad investors, bad landlords that don't care. They're just worried about the profit. And yes, it's something that helps protect me, which of course it's something that you know I'm interested in because I do want to protect my assets so I could pass it on to my daughter and so on. But at the same time, it's kind of like it's left this loophole for landlords to just take advantage and not be held accountable, which is the reason that Mamdani was saying, Hey, you know what? We're just gonna do fines. Every time you don't do something, we're gonna fine you and fine you and fine you until you have so many fines. If you don't pay it, then we put a lien. And then if you don't fix it, whatever, then it gets foreclosed on, or the city takes it over, which I know some investors are gonna be annoyed with that. Like, why are you taking my asset? Well, why did you wait? Like, there's so many steps to get to where the government, the city takes your property that you had so many chances from the beginning to setting up your strategy correctly to just not being a slum lord, and then you have so many opportunities to fix your negligence, and then you want to get mad that then at the end the city takes your property. It's like at the end of the day, these are people like they don't deserve for you to just be taking advantage and putting them at risk and just having them struggle. So, again, yeah, some people might not like it, but you know what? I'm okay with it. They deserve to get their properties taken away when they're just being slumlords. So, but again, the hard part is finding who is behind that LLC to actually hold them accountable. So, again, that's one way to take care of that. And then the last thing that I want to talk about because I don't want to end it all just like on the landlords, the slum lords, and everything. Mamdani is trying to take some action to provide the landlords some relief, and in particular, landlord insurance relief. So the idea is that they're gonna have a city-backed insurance program that's going to reduce premiums for about 100,000 homes by 2030. And this is for affordable and rent stabilized housing because one of the things that I didn't mention here because I didn't want to get into it, was Mamdani also wants to have a rent freeze basically. And sounds great in theory, but then you have rent freeze, but you still have property taxes going up and insurance like has skyrocketed, like it's been such like a crazy increase. Like one of my properties, like I bought it just I haven't even had it five years, so like four years, and it went from like barely eight hundred dollars for insurance, and now I'm at almost thirteen hundred dollars, and so it's crazy. And you know, I haven't had any claims, I haven't had nothing really has changed, but just insurance has just gone up and it goes up every time you renew, so you then have to shop around. But the insurance companies kind of like basically, I feel like work together that it's really hard to shop around, anyways. So you you still have a higher increase, but by shopping around, you could get a little bit less, but insurance is still going up, and then the taxes as well. I am here in Texas, and let me tell you, we don't have an income tax, but let me tell you, property taxes are through the roof, and this property that I just bought, I had to take that into account of the property taxes, and this neighborhood is a working-class, low-income neighborhood. So, why are the taxes so so high? Like it's it's ridiculous. So it makes me wonder like how that neighborhood is going to be able to keep those homes, right? They're going to end up being lost or they're gonna be priced out because of insurance combined with property taxes. So Mamdanis is trying to come up with something to help other relieve landlords, give them some insurance relief. And here in San Antonio, there is some like grants and some things for companies that are doing affordable housing and doing some affordable rent. But that's something that I am looking at. I just got started here in this market. I just found that out. So my next step is to contact the city and figure out how I can one contribute, but two, also get some of that relief so that way I can still continue. Because again, I still want to make an income, but I still want to have a positive impact, but I also have to work within what the market is, the property taxes and insurance, like those have been my biggest things, right? On top of like these older properties. So, like I'm trying to figure something out, so stay tuned. It is going to be a process, and I know some other real estate investors who are working to that. I have Monica, the Latina millionaire, who's working on building more affordable housing. She's a builder. Make sure I'll link I'll link her down below so you can follow her as well if you have not come across her. But yeah, she's a builder over there in Dallas and she advocates for affordable housing as well. So that's someone that I am inspired by, and you know, kind of following her lead too on trying to do some stuff over here in San Antonio. So, other than that, uh yeah, these are a lot of changes that he is doing again. I didn't go too much into the rent freeze because it's kind of like yes or no, not much info on that right now. But what are your thoughts? I want to hear what your thoughts are. How do you feel about the fines that can lead to you losing an asset? What are your thoughts about like holding these slumlords accountable and just like uh but basically what Mamdani is doing, because there's other things that I didn't talk about here because I didn't want to make this video too long, but like he even talked about having taxes on those who have, I forget off the top of my head, but it's more than like I think it was like five million dollar penthouses or condos or whatever it was that they would have to pay a higher tax because those are just sitting there and the owners just go there like once in a while and they're not living there, but they have a property there that's just sitting there, and so that's one other thing that I didn't mention, but there's a lot of stuff. So let me know what your thoughts are. I know there's some investors that may be triggered and be like, ah, but I think yes, this is in New York, but again, I feel like all eyes are on New York, not just in the real estate stuff, but in just overall in general, the other things that he is implementing, like taxing the rich, which is a whole maybe I'll do that on the money cheese made. Actually, yeah, I just gave myself an idea. Okay, so I'll put that for. And go over those stuff on the Money Cheese Mip podcast. So I'll link that down below too. So that way when it comes out, you could check that one as well. Again, I have my Latinas in real estate community in school. It's free to join. I have resources there. I have five minute breakdowns and I'm gonna post other things. And that's where you could like reach me if you have any questions, if you just want support on how to get started or you're struggling with something. But other than that, that information is down below. And I've rambled a lot. So I'll see you on the next one. Bye.