India, April 4 -- On a recent weeknight, three tenants of an ageing Bronx building were trading apartment horror stories inside a packed ballroom lined with city bureaucrats.

The occasion was the third in a series of "rental rip-off hearings," a new forum launched by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani for disgruntled renters to air their complaints directly to housing officials - and in some cases, the mayor himself. As she waited in line, Gulhayo Yuldosheva said she worried that noxious mould in her apartment had worsened her child's asthma.

Nearby, her downstairs neighbour, Marina Quiroz, was showing a video of rats scurrying through her kitchen to a representative of the city's tenant protection office. Ann Maitin, a longtime resident of ...