- 14-year-old Mehjabin Habib testified at a Rent Guidelines Board meeting in Queens, expressing fear of increased rents and ICE threats in her rent-stabilized neighborhood in Astoria.
When 14-year-old Mehjabin Habib took the microphone at an early June meeting held by New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board in Queens, her legs shook. She was there to give testimony as a rent-stabilized tenant from a largely Bangladeshi neighborhood in Astoria (Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s former New York Assembly district), and she wanted to get it right. Rent-stabilized housing is one of New York’s bright spots in a city otherwise notorious for its sky-high cost of living, but for years, Habib had lost neighbors—and friends—pushed out by increased rents. “I love New York City, and I don’t want to leave,” she said. To Habib, the more than 12 percent increase in rents under former Mayor Eric Adams constituted “a threat to our safety.”
But at the top of her mind was not just the undue budgetary pressures placed on her family, a latent anxiety for parents that children so often absorb. Habib’s community has faced harassment from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement; having a home to run to was the “first line of defense” when federal agents came knocking. “As a U.S.-born citizen who comes from an immigrant family, I am still afraid of ICE,” she told the board. “When ICE is detaining any person of color on the street, I fear being outside my home.”
Habib is a youth member of the Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence, or CAAAV, one of many groups organizing tenants to demand a rent freeze. This Thursday, June 25, New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board will hold its final public meeting and vote to determine whether this cornerstone of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s campaign will become a reality. The RGB regulates annual lease adjustments for rent-stabilized apartments, affecting 2.4 million tenants—arguably the most organized group of voters that helped lift Mamdani into power. A rent freeze was, for many, the campaign promise that elevated him beyond the likes of Andrew Cuomo. Today, however, those I spoke to say freezing the rent is all the more necessary, particularly for a sizable contingent of immigrant tenants facing threats from their landlords by ICE…