New York City’s Public Housing Is Infamously Trashy. Zohran Mamdani Wants a Lot More of It.
14th July 2025
New York City socialist Zohran Mamdani has pledged to target “negligent” landlords and seize their properties if elected mayor. Local real estate experts told the Washington Free Beacon the policy would mark a significant expansion of city power—and lower the quality of affordable housing for New Yorkers.
Mamdani’s housing policy memo vows to punish landlords who “repeatedly put New Yorkers at risk,” including by forcing them to sell their property “through a public foreclosure process.” Mamdani would, in theory, have the power to do so: The mayor’s office can temporarily seize buildings under New York’s Real Property Actions and Proceedings Law.
The city used that law in the 1970s and ’80s amid a housing crisis to take over abandoned buildings and work with local nonprofits to rehabilitate them. Mamdani’s plan, however, appears to cast a much wider net by applying the law on a “case-by-case basis” to “non-compliant” buildings rather than abandoned ones.
Mamdani says doing so will see the city turn “poor quality housing” into “deeply affordable” and “safe” homes. New York City real estate professionals disagree. They point to the poor quality of the city’s already existent public housing, which is known for “dreadful living conditions” and high rates of violent crime. By “supercharging” the public housing system, New York Apartment Association CEO Kenny Burgos argued, Mamdani will reduce the quality of affordable housing, not improve it.