New York — Real estate developers spent millions to stop Zohran Mamdani from becoming New York City’s mayor, claiming his policies would destroy the city.
Mamdani wants their help.Mamdani was elected on a platform of rent freezes and government-backed housing, proposing a $100 billion plan during the campaign to create a Vienna-style social housing model. But his new $22 billion plan to get New York City out of its housing crisis relies on developers.
His strategy uses market-oriented policies — easing building regulations, loosening zoning restrictions and rescuing the city’s crumbling public housing stock through private financing — to advance his social democratic goals of 200,000 affordable homes over the next decade.
Mamdani changed his mind about the “role of the private market in housing construction” late in his campaign, and he again detailed his political evolution in an announcement speech last week. Successes in Austin, Minneapolis and Seattle proved that loosening zoning laws and other regulations are necessary to add housing and bring down rents, he said.His evolution shows the tensions between political ideology and the challenges of building housing.
Developing new housing in the United States is devilishly complicated, lined with obstacles like zoning laws and public review processes that can vary by zip code. It’s especially difficult in high-cost New York, where land is in short supply and regulations are stringent. Mamdani is making compromises to add housing that low and middle-income New Yorkers can access.
That leaves private developers central to Mamdani’s plans to make up an $80 billion maintenance backlog in the city’s crumbling public housing system, too.
“He may be ideologically a socialist, but the city is very boxed in by what it can do,” said Eric Kober, a senior fellow at the public policy think tank Manhattan Institute and a former top official at New York City’s Department of City Planning.
Mamdani is a “left-YIMBY,” Kober said, referring to the pro-development YIMBY (“Yes In My Backyard”) movement. But his housing plan still contains policies like rent regulations that squeeze private developers and may undermine the city’s ability to produce as much housing as other cities.
“The private sector is not doing this for charity,” Kober said. “If you don’t let them make money, they will take it and invest it somewhere else”