Zohran Mamdani, the official Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, ran his campaign largely on affordability, placing the New York City housing crisis at the center of his platform.
A 2024 Marist Poll survey found that 73% of New York residents believe that housing affordability is a major problem in their communities. Hardly surprising, when you consider New York City is one of the most expensive cities in the world.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]“It’s also the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, and yet, one in four New Yorkers are living in poverty, and the rest are seemingly trapped in a state of anxiety,” Mamdani said during a Meet the Press appearance on Sunday. “We’ve seen that this is a city that needs to be affordable for the people who build it every day. Our focus was on exactly that, and by keeping that focus on an economic agenda, we showed New Yorkers that this could be more than just a museum of what [it] once was.”
Mamdani—who will face off against incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, who is running as an Independent—has argued in his campaign videos that his housing-focused policies “could be the difference between you having to move to Jersey City and getting to stay in the five boroughs.”
Rachel Fee, executive director of the New York Housing Conference (NYHC), says that Mamdani’s popularity is a testament to how New Yorkers, especially working class New Yorkers, are struggling with rising prices.
“New Yorkers are fed up with sky-high rents and lack of housing choice. And home ownership these days seems like a dream to achieve in another state,” says Fee. “It deserves the focus of the next Mayor. And I think New Yorkers seem very willing to try something different.”
As Mamdani ramps up his campaigning efforts, here are some of the core tenets of his plan to fix New York City’s housing crisis.
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“Freeze the rent”
A policy-turned-rallying cry of Mamdani’s candidacy has been his calls to “freeze the rent.” This has become all the more central as the N.Y.C. Rent Guidelines Board on Monday voted for a 4.5% increase for two-year leases and a 3% hike for one-year leases.
The Rent Guidelines Board, which sets the annual rent adjustments for rent-stabilized apartments, is appointed by the Mayor, and Mamdani has said he would only appoint members of the board who will work with him to freeze the rent. Roughly 70% of New York City residents are renters, and around half of them live in rent-stabilized apartments, according to 2024 data from the NYC Comptroller, and so these price decisions affect many.
New York City’s Mayor Adams released a statement stating he was disappointed in the board for not adopting “the lowest increase possible” in rent, as he requested. But he also argued that calls to “freeze the rent” amount to “bad policy,” saying it’s “short-sighted and only puts tenants in harm’s way.”
Mamdani has cited former NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio in his pledge to “immediately” freeze the rent, stating that the former Mayor “actually did this three times” during his tenure—in 2015, 2016, and 2020.
The mayoral hopeful has also said he will advocate to expand rent stabilization in Albany, the capital city of New York State.
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A recommitment to public housing and building affordable housing
Mamdani has pledged a recommitment to public housing, saying he’ll “double the money we’re spending to preserve public housing, and fully fund and staff our city’s housing agencies so we can actually get the work done.”
Meanwhile, housing experts have argued that a large part of the crisis, both in New York City and nationally, is the lack of supply for affordable housing. There are many reasons for this, including that the annual turnover rate for New York City rental units is 41% lower than the national average, due to limited mobility, overcrowding, and outmigration, according to the Citizens Budget Commission (CBC).
Mamdani plans to address housing shortages by constructing 200,000 new units over the next 10 years. He says these units will be “permanently affordable, union-built, rent-stabilized homes.” He has pledged $100 billion to this effort, funded by his plan to tax the top 1% of New Yorkers to help pay for his ambitious efforts, through city municipal bonds and by activating city-owned land. He hopes to increase zoning for residential buildings and massively increase public spending of housing.
Between 2010 and 2020, New York City added just over 185,000 multi-family units in buildings with four or more homes, according to the NYU Furman Center, and only about 30% of those were affordable to low-income households.
Mamdani has also he is looking to expand other affordable housing efforts including the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development’s (HPD) Senior Affordable Rental Apartments, which produces 100% affordable low-income housing for seniors and HPD’s Extremely Low and Low-Income Affordability, which produces 100% affordable housing for families who earn less than $72,000 for a family of four. He’s also keen to build upon the New York City Human Resources Administration’s Master Lease Program, which helps create subsidized housing for families at risk of eviction.
According to Fee, many of these issues have already been in the works with the city of New York, but Mamdani’s focus hopes to scale them up.
But “the Mayor cannot do it alone,” Fee says, adding there will need to be “some smart politics and some coalition building” at the City Council and in the state’s capital of Albany to change zoning, public spending, and allocate funds to these initiatives. Fee also says neglecting the potential of the private sector to help fund these efforts would be a “mistake.”
“These are things that the city government has been doing, and I think he wants to bring some of them to scale. Whether they are politically achievable… I think that will really test him as a politician,” Fee argues.
Creating a Deed Theft Prevention Office
Mamdani is also vying to create a new office that works to “protect homeowners from scam artists” that attempt to steal deeds, an issue that has specifically affected immigrant communities and Black and Latino neighborhoods in New York. Deed theft occurs when someone takes over the title of a home without the approval or knowledge of the true homeowner.
In fact, 45% of deed theft complaints received by New York in the last five years have been in Brooklyn, primarily in communities of color.
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