Over a half-melted peanut-butter açai bowl at a picnic table in the Bronx’s Pelham Bay community, Kenny Burgos explains why rents for almost a million apartment or condos in New York require to increase. “The Bronx, to this day, has buildings that are practically 100 percent– if not one hundred percent– managed,” he says, his look unblinking. “And those are the buildings that are struggling the most, that have the greatest violation counts.” He’s making the case that, as things stand with our existing housing laws, keeping homes in those buildings habitable means tenants will have to pay more. The 31-year-old former assemblyman and CEO of the New York City Home Association– a group whose members include property owners and supervisors of some 500,000 rent-stabilized homes– knows it’s an undesirable opinion, especially in a city where the majority of people lease. And it’s particularly undesirable now, since the mayor, another previous assemblyman in his 30s, was chosen on a pledge to freeze the rents on those very homes. “I do this work because I understand I’m right,” Burgos says. “And I understand that we are on a course to damage the housing people live in.”
Burgos may invest his days combating Mayor Mamdani’s real estate policies, however he likewise likes the guy. He was two years behind him at Bronx Science, though the set didn’t meet till they were both chosen to the State Assembly in 2020. Burgos, then 26, came in to represent the 85th District in the Bronx. Mamdani was 29 and represented the 36th District– Astoria and much of what has been called Queens’s “Commie Corridor.” They quickly struck it off. “We were both these 2 young guys from New york city City who had similar backgrounds in the sense of our taste in music and internet culture and simply joking around,” states Burgos, still dressed the part in green track pants, gray ASICS, and a YoungLA Tee shirts. “We appreciated each other being in that body because we were attempting to improve what it implied to be an elected official.”
In Albany, they played basketball on Tuesdays. (“I’m much better at basketball, one hundred percent,” Burgos informs me.) Back in town, they as soon as shared a hookah on Steinway Street. While the 2 were routinely puzzled for one another in the Capitol– both are bearded and have a fondness for Carhartt jackets– “we just took our own political lanes,” Burgos states. Now, their ideologies will go head-to-head at the annual Rent Guidelines Board meetings that kick off in March, where occupant associates, property owner groups, and housing wonks make their case for how much to enable stabilized leas to increase, if at all. The prospective four-year rent freeze Mamdani guaranteed is on the line. Burgos and his group have actually spent hours in their Fidi workplace planning the arguments they’ll make to the board. “I’m certainly going to be painted as the heel,” Burgos informs me. “But I just know, based on the information and based on the trend line, that this is not sustainable.”
The affordable-housing crisis is a complicated mix of issues, among them lease hikes outpacing wage development, a historically low vacancy rate, and, per the Abundance crowd, a slow timeline for new advancement. However whether it’s tenants or property owners who pay too much for the rent-stabilized systems that make up nearly half of all leasings stays singularly contentious. According to a recent report by NYU’s Furman Center, nearly half of all the stabilized systems in the five districts are in so-called tradition residential or commercial properties, which were developed before 1974, and are entirely rent regulated (or near it). These apartment or condos are greatly focused in northern Manhattan and the Bronx, where Burgos matured, and are amongst the cheapest in the city– with an estimated median rent of $1,400 a month in 2023– however generally in the worst shape. Mamdani and Burgos agree on some things that might alter to help distressed structures: the city’s complicated property-tax system and sky-rocketing insurance coverage fees.
But regarding why rent-stabilized buildings remain in disrepair– there, the two absolutely do not agree. Mamdani and his group see widespread speculation and slumlordism as the significant causes and argue that just a narrow slice of buildings with at least one supported system remain in monetary distress such that the net operating earnings, or lease minus operational and upkeep expenses, is negative. Burgos gripes that this measurement leaves out property owners’ debt service on their residential or commercial properties. Mamdani has argued that there is a state program in place to assist property owners in alarming monetary straits. Burgos states it doesn’t help: “The ‘challenge’ program is generally a program in name only.”
Burgos likewise thinks a 2019 law is part of what set the city’s rent-stabilized housing on course for disaster. Before the Housing Stability and Tenant Defense Act, proprietors had a fairly seamless way to increase rents and transform managed apartments into market-rate ones. Because this was in theory an excellent way to make money, especially in freshly gentrifying communities, interest in stabilized homes ballooned and property managers took on debt to acquire and keep them, believing their value would continue to increase. When the law passed, however, owners were limited in their ability to raise leas and flip systems and lost 2 of the most significant earnings drivers at their disposal: an automated 20 percent boost in rent in between renter vacancies (which encouraged harassment and evictions) and the capability to hand down large portions of the expenses for house and building enhancements to tenants as rent (which incentivized scams). Margins slimmed considerably. “It was night and day,” Burgos states, arguing that the modifications worsened maintenance deferment, leading to horrid living conditions for occupants like an absence of heat, bug infestations, and leaks. He also sees it as part of the factor 10s of thousands of systems are empty. “Individuals try to frame me as if I wish to raise lease on grandmothers, as if my own grandmother-in-law does not reside in a supported apartment,” Burgos states. But “this is a mathematics issue, not a psychological one.” To his mind, a lease freeze will only make things even worse. “None of that is good for occupants. None of that is good for the City of New York City.”
Burgos landed his present gig in the summertime of 2024 as 2 property manager lobbying groups were combining and required someone in charge. The timing was ideal, Burgos states: He and his partner will have their very first kid, and those Albany commutes were rough. (Burgos owns 2 homes, one in Throggs Neck, where he lives with his household, and another in Soundview that he leases, in case you’re questioning.) Just like his frenemy, Burgos takes his political messaging to the public through Instagram and TikTok, attempting to unspool wonky and complex real estate policy in 60-second clips. It’s a testament to Burgos’s individual appeal– and the overwhelming appeal of the mayor’s project message– that this head of a lobbying group, which invested $2.5 million trying to beat Mamdani, can often discover as an underdog in the battle. “Right around when Zohran will win the basic and a couple of my videos had gone more viral on X, people were like, ‘Temu Zohran!'” Burgos tells me. He’s utilized to being called a knockoff or worse. “If it brings the eyeballs and the ears, they can call me his Wario– I do not care.”
In the afternoon, I walk him back to the health-food shop where we got açai bowls so he can grab a set of C4 energy drinks. “My body’s a temple,” he states, laughing, “then I consume this shit.” A gym rat who dabbles in competitive bodybuilding, Burgos tells me he puts nearly everything he consumes at home on a food scale and can now ballpark a meal’s caloric material on sight. Our melting shake bowls? “The entire thing, think it or not, is easily 1,200 calories,” he states. However, real to form as a facts-not-feelings guy, Burgos argues that what’s good for you isn’t always so cut-and-dried. “Do not confuse healthy with low calorie,” he states. “That is among the most significant mistaken beliefs individuals have.”
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