Mamdani’s Rent Freeze Game Plan—and Everything Else You Need to Know About This Week

• After Eric Adams’s effort to stack the Rent Guidelines Board failed, Zohran Mamdani is now better positioned to appoint a majority to the board, clearing a realistic path to his campaign promise of freezing rent for rent-stabilized tenants across the city. Here’s how it could work. (Curbed)

• Affluent Londoners have been installing an increasing number of woodburning stoves in their households in recent years, favoring them over open-flame fireplaces for their safety and the feeling of "cozy domesticity." But now making a fire at home is under threat, as activists and officials warn that the charming upgrade may actually be worsening the city’s already polluted winter air. (Bloomberg)

• Los Angeles renters are finally entitled to a fridge. Starting January 1, 2026, a new California law requires all landlords to provide working refrigerators and stoves. It’s the end of an era for the city’s bizarre rite of passage where tenants had to buy and haul their own fridges. (The New York Times)

• In Boulder, Colorado, a city-funded modular home factory called BoulderMOD is turning high schoolers into homebuilders, producing houses with Flatirons Habitat for Humanity while giving students hands-on training. The partnership aims to boost the city’s affordable housing supply while also creating a new generation of trades workers. (Fast Company)

• Trump has delayed looming tariffs on furniture and kitchen cabinets for one year, saying he will keep duties at 25 percent instead of letting them jump to 50 percent. The change arose from cost of living concerns and companies like Wayfair and Restoration Hardware taking a tumble in the markets. (The Wall Street Journal)
  

Top photo by Madison Swart/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images