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Friday, Jan. 16, marks the 16th day of Zohran Mamdani’s term as mayor. amNewYork is following Mamdani around his first 100 days in office as we closely track his progress on fulfilling campaign promises, appointing key leaders to government posts, and managing the city’s finances. Here’s a summary of what the mayor did today.
The City has secured a $2.1 million settlement with a landlord responsible for 14 buildings across Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens, addressing more than 4,000 building code violations and allegations of tenant harassment.
The settlement, announced Friday by Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration, comes shortly after it was finalized by a judge in early January and signals the city’s intention to use the case as a model for holding negligent landlords accountable.
The settlement covers multiple legal actions and requires the landlord to correct the hazardous conditions and comply with court-issued injunctions preventing further tenant harassment.
While negotiations and initial enforcement took place under the previous administration, city officials emphasized that the Mamdani administration will actively use such settlements to advance tenant protections and ensure safe, livable housing.
“Every tenant in New York City has a right to a safe and livable home, and our administration intends to use enforcement tools like these to deliver exactly that,” Mayor Mamdani said. “This settlement will provide relief for tenants who have long suffered from poor conditions and harassment, and demonstrates the type of accountability we will continue to pursue across the city.”
Queens Council Member Shekar Krishnan, whose district includes the highest concentration of affected properties in Jackson Heights, praised tenants, advocacy groups, and city enforcement.
“Every repair we’ve won leaves us with ten more to fight for — their buildings are revolving doors of neglect and major housing violations,” he said. “I’m thankful that Mayor Mamdani and [the Department of Housing Preservation and Development] HPD, on day 16 of the new era, are signaling a new approach to protecting tenants.”
Tenant Diana de la Pava, who has lived in one of the buildings for more than 13 years, detailed chronic elevator outages, mold, pests, and other unsafe conditions affecting elderly and disabled residents.
She described how broken elevators effectively trapped some residents and contributed to preventable health crises. “This is not a communication failure. It is a business model for A & E,” she said during the press conference.
A & E Realty responded with a statement saying it reached the settlement in collaboration with the city. The company noted that it has invested in rehabbing elevators, replacing boilers, and addressing longstanding violations across its portfolio, and added that it is delivering on a repair plan agreed with HPD.
“We look forward to partnering with the City to improve the lives of our residents and continue investing in New York City’s housing stock,” a spokesperson said.
HPD officials highlighted that the settlement represents the largest in the Anti-Harassment Unit’s history.
Over the course of litigation, more than 1,000 violations have already been corrected, with nearly $500,000 in additional emergency repairs made. The city stressed that its enforcement tools include civil contempt motions, emergency repairs, and injunctions to prevent tenant harassment, demonstrating a proactive approach to holding landlords accountable.
The Mamdani administration plans to use this case as a template for future enforcement actions, including upcoming “rental rip-off” hearings in all five boroughs within the first 100 days. The hearings are designed to give tenants a direct voice in shaping housing policy, tracking violations, and ensuring landlords are held accountable in real time.
Incoming Housing Preservation and Development Commissioner Dina Levy said, “By holding bad actors accountable, we are making it clear that no landlord will escape the consequences of violating the Housing Maintenance Code. Tenants should not have to fight day in and day out for basic services — these are fundamental rights.”
Budget: Trash trucks to tax hikes
As new sanitation workers were sworn in on Friday, Mayor Mamdani praised the municipal workforce for keeping New York running through long hours, extreme weather, and often unseen work — a reminder of the city’s reliance on essential services even as officials confront mounting fiscal pressures.
“New York City cannot function without the work that each of you will be doing,” Mamdani told graduates and their families gathered in One Police Plaza. He called sanitation workers “unsung heroes” whose efforts maintain core services day in and day out, from snow removal to street cleaning.
“You have something that few others hold, whether in the city or in this world, a noble purpose. It is the purpose of restoring dignity to the lives of your neighbors, the purpose of making New York new, “Mamdani said, before paying tribute to Brian Dunn, who passed away due to a medical emergency while on duty in the Bronx on Jan. 7.
The graduation ceremony was led by interim Sanitation Commissioner Javier Lojan, who served under former mayor Eric Adams and was retained by Mamdani to oversee the department through the winter, ensuring continuity of essential services as new workers join the ranks.
Hours earlier, Comptroller Mark Levine released a new analysis projecting a $2.2 billion budget shortfall in fiscal year 2026 and a $10.4 billion gap the following year — the largest late-cycle deficits the city has faced since the Great Recession. Levine said the gaps are not the result of an economic downturn, but of spending decisions made under the previous mayoral administration of Eric Adams.
“This wasn’t caused by a bad economy — it’s the result of budgeting decisions from the previous administration that we must now deal with,” Levine said.
Responding to Levine’s assessment in a statement and during a press briefing later in the day, Mamdani agreed the city faces a serious fiscal challenge, while placing responsibility on both his predecessor and state leadership of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
He cited what he described as fiscal mismanagement by the prior administration and a long-standing imbalance in the city’s financial relationship with the state, arguing that New York City contributes a disproportionate share of state tax revenue in return for what it receives.
“We cannot have it such that a New Yorker would go to sleep on a Friday and wonder if on a Saturday their basic services will be in doubt,” Mamdani said at a press conference in Queens, saying he had inheritied a City Hall from Adams that “exhibited incredible fiscal mismanagement, but also a decades long effort from former Governor Cuomo to pilfer from city coffers at each and every turn.”
“And what that has left this city with is, as described by the comptroller, not only a fiscal hole, but frankly, a relationship between city and state, where the city contributes 54.5% of the state’s tax revenues, but only receives. 40.5% in return,” he continued.
Mamdani said his administration would press Albany to address this imbalance as budget negotiations move forward. To help close projected gaps and fund major policy initiatives, he has proposed raising taxes, backing an increase in the state’s corporate tax rate for large companies to 11.5%, up from 7.25%, and additional income taxes on New Yorkers earning more than $1 million annually.
Gov. Kathy Hochul has ruled out raising taxes on high-income earners in this year’s state budget, though she has left open the possibility of changes to corporate income taxes. She did not propose any tax increases in her State of the State address earlier this week.
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Adam Daly
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