In the long standing battle between landlords and tenants in New York City, the latter group of New Yorkers seem to have now found an unlikely new set of allies—the city’s mayoral candidates! In a recent public hearing conducted by the Rent Guidelines Board in Manhattan, three of the Democratic candidates for mayor, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and City Comptroller John Liu, said that they were against a proposed increase in the rents for rent-stabilized apartments in the city.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy housing is becoming scarcer. And with cold weather on the way, city, state, and federal officials are trying to assemble a pool of vacant houses to supplement New York City's shelter system. While many people have been clinging to their apartments despite not having heat or hot water, officials are worried that another wave of people, numbering in the hundreds if not the thousands, will seek shelter as temperatures fall. “We feel a real imperative to have something in place when the second surge comes,” said Matthew M. Wambua, the city’s housing commissioner. With the electrical outages and the encroaching winter season, many people are left wondering where, and how, they are going to stay warm.

Last week’s Hurricane Sandy left many New Yorkers without food, water, power and most of all, without a home. Mayor Bloomberg instated safety precautions in which residents in “Zone A” across the city were mandated to evacuate their building’s to prepare for the life-threatening disaster that was to come. Now, a week later, New Yorkers are trying to recover from the storm but many residents are still displaced. Some residents have long waits of weeks and months before returning to their homes. There are few residents who have no clue as to when they can return to their place of rent due to a lack of communication from building managers. With so many New Yorkers still displaced, the question of how rent payments are being handled lingers in the air.