NYC NOW - Midday News: Sanders Backs Mamdani for Mayor, ICE Raids Impact Long Island Workers, and Hoboken Considers AI Rent Ban

Episode Date: June 17, 2025

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders has endorsed Zohran Mamdani for New York City mayor and Justin Brannan for comptroller, while former Governor Andrew Cuomo has won support from Hasidic sects in Borough Park. Also, on Long Island, immigration raids appear to be driving away some day laborers who gather at Home Depot stores looking for work. Plus, the Hoboken City Council is weighing a ban on AI rent-setting tools, following similar action in Jersey City.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Tuesday, June 17th. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill. Major endorsements continue to trickle in for New York City's competitive mayoral race. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is throwing his support behind Zoran Mamdani and the Democratic primary for Mayor Sanders. Is also backing city council member Justin Brannon in the primary race for controlling. against current Manhattan borough president Mark Levine. Former Governor Andrew Cuomo has also snagged his own key endorsement.

The Hasidic Sex in Borough Park will back him in the primary after previously calling Adrian Adams as their first choice for mayor. Fewer day laborers are gathering outside some Home Depot's on Long Island after recent immigration enforcement raids in the area. Miguel Garcia often looks for work outside a Home Depot in Freeport. Here, no, here the people live with fear. The people are going to want them in their houses, because these people don't let us gain the money that they need to maintain their family. Garcia says, other day laborers don't come anymore out of fear

and families are losing money because of it. Advocates and witnesses say U.S. immigration and customs enforcement made about a dozen arrests at the Home Depot in Freeport and nearby Hempstead in recent weeks. ICE has not responded to a request for comment. 66 and cloudy and humid out there, we have a slim chance of some showers, clouds, and 71 for a hard today. Stay close. There's more after the break. The Hoboken City Council approved a measure yesterday that bans landlords in the city from using artificial intelligence tools to set rents.

It comes on the heels of a similar law passed in Jersey City last month and other efforts in New Jersey, New York, and across the country. Critics say the so-called rent algorithm software amounts to collusion and is driving up apartment prices. W&MIC Housing and Affordability Reporter, Mike Hayes, is here to talk about why this practice has gotten so contentious. Mike, explain how this rent algorithm stuff. How does this work? Basically how this works is landlords, they can pay to use this software. So say you're running Michael Hill properties. You can take information about the apartments that you own, location, bedrooms, price. And these companies, these software providers, they'll use an algorithm to recommend a price

to you for what to charge per unit. And folks in the industry say this is necessary for big-time corporate landlords who own thousands of apartments who couldn't possibly do all this pricing by hand. But a few years back, executives for this company RealPage, they're the biggest company in this space, as well as the landlords using their platform, they started boasting about how their artificial intelligence tools baked into the rental algorithm was actually helping landlords beat the market rates and charge even higher rents. And that's where all the trouble started.

Okay, tell us more about this trouble that they got into. Yeah, so state attorneys general took notice of this bragging that prices were being inflated. And they started to look into these platforms and said, wait, hold on a second here. We have landlords in markets with lots of apartments sharing proprietary information with each other and using that to charge higher than market rate rents. And the AGs said, hey, that sounds like collusion to us. So we've seen AGs in eight states sue these major corporate landlords and RealPage, alleging that they're violating antitrust laws. And that includes the top law enforcement officials in New York and most recently New Jersey. Now, you say there are lawsuits all over the country, but New Jersey officials, are they taking this a step further?

Yeah, so it's early days for all those lawsuits. I just mentioned. But yeah, in New Jersey, local officials are ratcheting up the pressure. In May, Jersey City became the first city in New Jersey to pass a rent algorithm ban. And that new law in Jersey City says that landlords that use this software going forward, they could be subject to thousands of dollars in fines. Hoboken was supposed to pass this last night. I should clarify this year.

they decided to carry the motion to their next city council meeting. It was like a technical thing that happened with the public notice for their ban. But Hoboken is really interesting here, Michael, because they actually, they're going a step further than Jersey City and saying that if landlords violate their law, which Mayor Ravi Bala told me that if the city council does pass this, he will sign it into law. If that comes to pass, their ordinance reads that landlords can be subject to 90 days in jail. So that's pretty serious. And these two cities, Jersey City and Hoboken, are notable that they're doing this because in the last 10 years, we've seen rents just rise astronomically.

Hoboken, for example, your average two-bedroom apartment has seen the rent go from $2,700. $100 10 years ago to over $4,000 today. And I should also note that, sorry, go on. Pardon me, Mike, quickly, what if anything has been done in New York around this issue? Yeah, glad you mentioned that. New York also ratcheting up the pressure here. Two members of legislature there, Assembly member Linda Rosenthal and Senator Brad Hoyle and Sigel have advocated for a ban of rent AI.

And their legislation has actually passed both the state senate and assembly. Next stop for this bill would be the governor's desk. And Governor Hockel has said that she supports a ban. So, yeah, I would expect her to sign this into law this year. Am I quickly here, how are landlords in the rent algorithm software providers? How are they responding? Yeah, so I've talked to Real Page, the company I mentioned before about this, and they say all our tools are legally compliant.

client. And the landlords entangled in these lawsuits, Michael, are, you know, the big corporate landlords. They're keeping their mouths shut about this right now, understandably. But I've talked to some smaller landlords, particularly in Jersey City who don't use these tools, but they're against banning them as well. They don't think that they're artificially jacking up prices. And they say the real problem here is the lack of new affordable housing coming online in these high-price cities. A lot of folks are saying that WNYC's Mike Hayes for us. Mike, thank you. Thanks, Michael.

Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WMYC. Check us out for updates every weekday, three times a date for the latest news headlines and occasional deep dives. And subscribe wherever you get your podcast. I see.