I'm on a church pew inside The Beast Next Door on 27th Street in Long Island City, a cocktail bar with exposed brick walls and a floor that has a certain give to it like the building is still deciding what it wants to be. I've got a bourbon with honey and mint. My friend Dagny is across from me with oysters and something called the Sultan's Sin, which is a coffee cocktail, because Dagny drinks caffeine at 9 PM and then texts me at 1 AM asking why she can't sleep.
We'd just come from the Rental Ripoff Hearing at the Academy of American Studies, a public high school two minutes up the street. Both sessions packed. An advertisement truck parked outside with a picture of Mayor Mamdani and a speech bubble: "Hi! I'm Mayor Mamdani and I don't care about NYCHA." It's now my phone wallpaper. Dagny, an ESL teacher I represented a few years back who knows how the system works, sat down with an HPD staffer and told them about a previous apartment where her landlord charged a $200 "emergency maintenance coordination fee" after she called 311 to force a gas leak repair. She had the complaint numbers, the lease clause, and screenshots. The staffer wrote everything down.
Then three of Dagny's friends walked in. They'd gotten the time wrong for the hearing, shown up after both sessions were full, and now they were standing in a cocktail bar looking like they'd just missed the last train. All three from the same building in Astoria. One of them, I'll call her Nina, sat down on the pew next to me and started talking before she'd ordered a drink.
Broken intercom since November. Elevator out for six weeks. Four identical messages from her building's chatbot repair portal: "Your request has been received. A member of our team will follow up shortly." Dated November, December, January, February.
I put down a deviled egg. "You know there are two more of these hearings, right?"
She looked at me like I'd offered her a parachute after she'd already hit the ground. "There are?"
Here's what I told her.
What the Rental Ripoff Hearings Actually Are
On his first day in office, Mayor Zohran Mamdani signed Executive Order 08, directing four city agencies to hold five public hearings across all five boroughs within his first 100 days. The agencies at the table are HPD, the Department of Buildings, the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, and the Mayor's Office to Protect Tenants.
That last one is run by Cea Weaver. If that name doesn't ring a bell: Weaver was one of the architects behind the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019, the law that eliminated high-rent deregulation and changed the game for every rent-stabilized tenant in New York City. Now she's running the enforcement office. At the Queens hearing, she told reporters that NYCHA tenants are welcome to attend and testify just like any other tenant.
The format matters. These aren't open-mic nights where you yell into a microphone for two minutes while a council member checks their phone. You get a number. You sit down one-on-one. You talk. They write it down. You can also stick Post-it notes on boards with broader policy suggestions, which I thought was going to be corny until I watched a 70-year-old woman from Jackson Heights spend ten minutes carefully writing out a Post-it about her landlord removing the building's laundry machines and replacing them with nothing, and then I thought it was the most important Post-it note I'd ever seen.
Within 90 days of the final hearing, the agencies publish a joint report with policy recommendations. Your testimony feeds directly into what the city prioritizes next.
The Schedule
Nina's first question: "Did I already miss the one for Queens?" Yes, but it doesn't matter. Let me lay out the whole thing.
Brooklyn (February 26): Done. 450 tenants registered. Over 200 gave testimony.
Queens (March 5): Done. Dagny and I were there. Both sessions full.
Bronx (March 11): Done. Hundreds showed up at the McShane Center at Fordham. Mamdani attended this one personally, his first, and opened the door to NYCHA residents for the first time. That shift matters.
Manhattan (March 28, East Harlem): Four sessions running from 11 AM to 5 PM. Registration is open now.
Staten Island (April 7, North Shore): The final hearing. The 90-day report clock starts after this one.
Here's the part that made Nina stop mid-sentence: you don't have to attend the hearing in your borough. An Astoria tenant who missed the Queens hearing can register for Manhattan on March 28 and testify about the exact same broken elevator and chatbot repair portal she was going to talk about tonight.
"Wait, seriously?" said one of Nina's friends.
Seriously. Pick whichever date and location works for your schedule.
Can't make it in person? Submit written testimony by email at [email protected] or through the digital form at nyc.gov/RentalRipoff.
What to Bring (A Tenant Lawyer's Advice)
Bring documentation. Photos of conditions. 311 complaint numbers and dates. The lease clause being violated. Bank statements showing mystery fees. The emails where nobody responded.
Be specific. A client once told me, "My landlord doesn't fix anything." I told her to try again. She came back with: "I filed four 311 complaints about a ceiling leak between September and January. Here are the complaint numbers. My management company has not returned a single call." The first version is a feeling. The second is something an agency can act on.
Name the landlord and the management company. The agencies need to know who they're hearing about. If ten tenants from ten different buildings all name the same management company, that's a pattern the city can investigate.
And yes, you can testify about past landlord situations. The official city language encourages tenants to testify about issues they "have experienced." Past tense. The purpose is data collection, not case adjudication. Dagny testified about something that happened in a completely different apartment, and the staffer wrote down every word.
What NOT to Say
Nina's friend was getting fired up, and I've seen enough tenants in housing court to know what happens when emotion leads instead of evidence.
Don't threaten your landlord. I shouldn't have to say this, but I'm a lawyer, so I'm going to say it anyway.
Don't exaggerate. If your heat was out for three days, say three days. Not three weeks. One exaggeration gives landlord lobby groups ammunition to dismiss everyone's testimony.
Don't walk in expecting the city to solve your individual case. This isn't Judge Judy. This is policy input. The agencies are collecting data to shape enforcement priorities. That's powerful, but it's not a ruling on your lease dispute.
If you have an active case in housing court, talk to your attorney before you testify publicly. Nothing you say at these hearings is privileged.
Why This Matters Even If You Already Have a Lawyer
Your individual case is your individual case. These hearings are about something bigger.
The 90-day report will shape how the city allocates enforcement resources. More testimony about junk fees means DCWP cracks down on junk fees. More testimony about habitability failures means HPD answers for response times.
After the eviction moratorium expired, active eviction cases in New York City rose roughly 440% according to the NYC Comptroller. Stabilized rents went up 12% over the last four years. These hearings are one of the few ways tenants push back at the policy level.
If your building has ten tenants dealing with the same problem, get all ten to testify. One complaint is an anecdote. Ten complaints about the same landlord is a damn pattern.
Back on the Church Pew
Nina had stopped talking. Her friends had stopped talking. Dagny was eating my last deviled egg, which I noticed but did not address because I was in the middle of a sentence about enforcement resources and you have to pick your battles.
"So we just register for Manhattan?"
Yes. March 28. Or Staten Island on April 7. Or email your testimony if you can't make either one. Bring the chatbot screenshots. Bring the 311 numbers. Name the management company.
Nina pulled out her phone. Her friends pulled out their phones. Dagny helped one of them navigate the registration page with both thumbs while I held her Sultan's Sin, which was still half full and somehow still warm, which is not something I thought a coffee cocktail could do but The Beast Next Door is apparently a place where the laws of thermodynamics are more like suggestions.
The hearings are one tool. Having a housing attorney is another. They work better together. If you're dealing with any of the issues tenants have been testifying about, contact my office. If you're not sure whether your apartment is rent stabilized, start there. If you're facing an eviction, don't wait for a hearing. Get legal help now.
Manhattan is March 28. Staten Island is April 7. The email option stays open. Your testimony matters. Past and present.
This is general legal information, not legal advice for your specific situation. If you're facing an eviction or landlord dispute, consult with an attorney who can review your actual circumstances.
