But also he can only do it for a very small fraction of housing in the city, about 16,000 units. And even that Adams may undercut before he leaves office.
No. He's proposing a rent freeze on rent stabilized housing, not rent controlled housing.
Despite the widespread (and why would folks who don't live in NYC and shouldn't really care about local elections except as they repeat flat wrong assertions about Mamdani and his proposed policies) incorrect framing, in NYC (which is what we're talking about here), rent control is a specific program governed by a specific set of laws. Rent stabilization is a different specific program governed by a different set of laws.
While there are only ~24,000 rent controlled units, there are ~1,000,000 rent stabilized units.
The latter is what's affected by Mamdani's proposal. This isn't new either. Rent stabilization in pretty much its current form has existed for more than 40 years and rent control much, much longer.
So this isn't some new policy that "commie jihadi" is proposing. And freezes on rent stabilized units have been done repeatedly, the last time in 2020/2021.
In contrast to how he suggested it.