Credit: Benny Polatseck/Mayoral Photo Office on Flickr
With just two weeks left in office, Mayor Eric Adams has appointed four new members to the city’s Rent Guidelines Board, in an effort to block Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s push for a rent freeze. With these appointments and reappointments, Adams’ allies now hold a majority on the nine-member board, which sets rent increases for the city’s one million rent-stabilized apartments.
The first new appointee, Arpit Gupta, is an associate professor of finance at New York University’s Stern School of Business. His research focuses on using large datasets to study “default dynamics” in household finance, real estate, and corporate finance. Gupta, first appointed to the RGB in 2022, is now being reappointed as a public representative.
Christina Smyth, the second appointee, is the founder and owner of Smyth Law PC, a real estate law firm representing multifamily residential building owners, operators, and management companies across Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. Previously appointed to the RGB in 2022, she has now been reappointed as an owner representative…