Zohran Agonistes

Zohran Mamdani’s upset in the Democratic mayoral primary prompted awe and outrage. There’s no denying the remarkable feat accomplished by Mamdani’s campaign, which reportedly mobilized fifty thousand volunteers across the city. The indignation from reactionaries and aggrieved centrists was swift and predictable. Hysterical commentators portended the fall of New York City, while one Wall Street exec warned of reprisals to come after our “hot commie summer.”

In the months ahead of the general election, Mamdani’s adversaries will portray his promises—free and faster buses, rent freezes, universal childcare—as ludicrously utopian, dangerously radical, or somehow both. They will wring their hands over his political experience and affiliations or use the blunter instrument of bigotry to smear and divide his historic coalition. How should Mamdani navigate these many road blocks on his way to Gracie Mansion, and—should he find himself there come November—what levers can he pull to lower housing costs, empower public sector development, and advance the interests of renters and workers over rentiers and capitalists? We ask respondents to imagine what might be possible under a Mamdani mayoralty and how they would counsel his entourage in the fight ahead.

On primary night, as I and virtually everyone I know was celebrating the victor Mamdani’s momentous triumph over the putz Cuomo, I knew that our enemies were picking over the city for every last screw they could turn to tighten the vice on our socialist nominee, should he best the machine’s machinations a second time and prevail in the general election come November.

The screws I know of are too numerous to name in this short entry, and surely there are many more to find. Many of Mamdani’s major promises require state funding and approval (from increasing the corporate tax to universal childcare), which could always be denied by the governor. A few items (like raising the bond cap) require federal action, which at this point is a contradiction in terms. These obstacles threaten to brand him as a promise breaker, an idealist slapped with the most horrid federal budget since Reagan, and, worst of all, a socialist administrator of austerity. Now that Trump’s budget has passed, Mayor Mamdani may oversee a housing authority that must evict approximately 300,000 households from public and subsidized homes, raise the rent on NYCHA’s remaining residents, and explain to the public why there is no more funding for housing code inspections.

Viewed this way, it seems that we are sending our best and brightest into a buzz saw. His resources will be slashed, and he’ll be left holding the near empty bag.

But what is the alternative? Allow one of the worst men in politics to speed back into power? Reelect our transparently corrupt mayor? Hand the keys to the Guardian Angels? This time, Thatcher was right: There is no alternative to electing a socialist mayor of America’s largest city—even as more powerful politicians will conspire against him, and all of us.

Some have noted that the Trump presidencies represent the inverse of the most famous line from Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: History repeats itself, first as farce and then as tragedy. This moment in New York calls to mind that work’s next most-quoted line, which we might fashion into a call-to-action: Though we do not get to select the circumstances, we must make history nonetheless. —SAMUEL STEIN, HOUSING RESEARCHER

As awareness of Zohran Mamdani’s campaign grew, the candidate began to test his supporters on the basics of his platform. “Freeze the…” he would invariably call to a group of canvassers huddled on the sidewalk or a congregation on Sunday morning or a 5,000-person-deep preelection rally. Without fail they would shout back: “RENT!”

“Freeze the Rent” is the distinguishing demand of Mamdani’s platform. New Yorkers, who can hardly agree on anything, agree that the rent is too high. Seventy percent of the city rents. But tenants typically vote at a lower rate than homeowners, so politicians typically ignore our issues. Zohran opted for a different approach. He put renters front and center, and in turn, we delivered a stunning victory.

Come January, it will be time to deliver. A rent freeze is both extraordinarily popular with Mamdani’s base and one of the major planks of his campaign that is achievable without action from Albany or DC. But that doesn’t make it easy. The real estate titans who are accustomed to running New York City are already fearmongering about the policy, claiming that a rent freeze will force them to refuse repairs or hold units off the market. The only way to make rent cheaper, they claim, is by allowing them to raise it.

While this sounds ridiculous on its face, the real estate industry is in the unique position of being able to both make doomsday predictions about the state of the housing market and to turn those predictions into reality by cutting off investment into the rent-stabilized market. Landlords hold tremendous power over our day-to-day lives and, collectively, the life of the city. For many housing policy advocates and well-meaning bureaucrats, the threat of the 1970s fiscal crisis—when capital fled New York, apartment values plummeted, and living conditions for a huge number of working class New Yorkers fell with them—looms large. Landlords are threatening to exacerbate the housing crisis and threatening housing stability for a majority of New York City.

Mamdani has the potential to flip this power dynamic on its head and govern for the tenant majority. The best way to deliver a rent freeze and head off the real estate industry’s threat is to call their bluff. Mayor Mamdani must invest in a public sector developer that can rival private real estate. No more will we let slumlords off the hook: If they won’t freeze the rent and provide us with quality and affordable homes, the public sector will make the repairs and send them a bill. If they don’t pay the bill, we’ll put them out of business. If the private sector will play a role in providing housing, as Mamdani has said it should, the best way to hold it accountable is some healthy competition from the city!

This is a monumental task, but there is no one better suited to it than a mayor who knows that his road to Gracie Mansion was paved with tenant votes. On primary night, Mamdani reminded his supporters of the words of Nelson Mandela: It always seems impossible until it’s done. —CEA WEAVER, TENANT ORGANIZER

For the benefit of my mental health, I’ve avoided reckoning with the prospect of a Mamdani loss come November. Defeating an alliance of xenophobes and insecure capitalists again will require the tens of thousands of volunteers who thwarted that alliance’s Super PAC millions to do the opposite: to eschew further laurels for a spectacular primary, grapple with the heightened threat of a wounded establishment, and continue building. If there’s one thing that makes that task straightforward—one other core ingredient for a general victory—it’s the consistency of Mamdani himself. As the campaign heats up, there will be even more questions about a genocidal state’s right to exist, and the proverbial beard-darkening will only get darker. To stay the course is to reaffirm the widespread appeal of a campaign focused on the well-being of New Yorkers and unapologetic about the role the public sector must play in improving it, above all when it comes to housing.

Barring a blowout in November or an unlikely upset in next year’s gubernatorial primary, a Mamdani administration will face state and federal obstruction of the tax and bond dollars needed to realize the breadth of his housing agenda. This may require strategic pivots. I’m not suggesting Mamdani go back on his core housing message to “Freeze the Rent.” But he will need to contend with legitimate concerns among natural allies in his expansion of social housing, among them nonprofit developers who face difficulty maintaining the existing regulated stock without more operating dollars. His administration must ensure that stable rents aren’t tied to lower quality. An aggressive focus on housing rights enforcement and long-term maintenance of existing homes can deliver early wins that will buy him time to realize his agenda via a fully staffed and empowered city government. So can ensuring that existing resources, no doubt misused under the Adams administration, are put to work. That includes vacant apartments, languishing vouchers, and the talent of the public servants already onboard. Mamdani has shown himself to be a willing collaborator, not too pure to support a policy of a political adversary if its benefits for New Yorkers are real (see: City of Yes). This will be the Mayor Mamdani who can deliver on the inspiring vision of his campaign, keeping sight of the basic things that will make the lives of New Yorkers easier. —JONATHAN TARLETON, URBAN PLANNER AND WRITER

Recently a man of about thirty, dark haired and chatty, sat beside me on the 6 train and asked for advice on the use of his voucher. Between his knees was a clear plastic bag holding his belongings, and from it he produced a thin, handwritten slip indicating an upcoming appointment at the 30th Street Men’s Intake Shelter. He explained a convoluted scenario: An eight-week work program had been inexplicably cut to four, and by working too little he’d become ineligible for a housing subsidy. “I need money,” he said. “What am I supposed to do?”

The voucher known as CityFHEPS (which stands for City Fighting Homelessness and Eviction Prevention Supplement) was created in 2018 to provide rental assistance to people living in homeless shelters. Once approved, voucher holders contribute 30 percent of their incomes toward rent and the city pays the rest, up to $3,058 for a family of four for a renewable period of up to five years. By most accounts, the program is a mess. Scathing reports by the state comptroller and city council have described how tenants and landlords have been stymied by an exceedingly complex approval process and late payments from the city.

Low vacancy rates and source-of-income discrimination limit CityFHEPS recipients’ prospects to a handful of neighborhoods. On Reddit, one New Yorker describes applying to over a hundred apartments before finding a landlord who would accept their voucher. For every “Commie Corridor”—political commentator Michael Lange’s catchy nickname for Mamdani’s electoral stronghold in north Brooklyn and western Queens—there are multiple Voucher Valleys: entire zip codes with concentrations of formerly homeless tenants. (In February, City Limits found that 46 percent of all CityFHEPS recipients live in the Bronx, home to just 16 percent of the city’s population.)

A Mamdani administration will have to consider how best to revamp CityFHEPS and other byzantine housing subsidies. In 2024, the Adams administration refused to implement the city council’s legislation to expand the program, and in return the Legal Aid Society filed a classaction lawsuit. On July 10, a state appeals court ruled in the council’s favor, forcing the mayor to extend CityFHEPS to low-income renters facing eviction. That’s a significant win, but there’s still much to improve. Policy advocates tell me the program is hobbled by old technology and a chronically understaffed Department of Social Services, which oversees the city’s aid.

There is reason to be anxious. To execute his broader goals, Mamdani seeks to raise $9 billion by raising taxes on millionaires and the city’s largest corporations—a move that, concerningly, will require state approval. At the federal level, the situation is even bleaker: In May, the Trump administration proposed cuts to the federal housing budget of 44 percent, which would nearly eliminate the nation’s rental subsidies, public housing operating funds, and emergency assistance programs. This measure, combined with the cuts to food stamps and Medicaid in the Big Beautiful Bill, leaves New York state, with its unique constitutional provision to provide social welfare, footing an enormous tab on its own, before Mamdani’s proposals can even be considered. CityFHEPS is expensive,too. The city budgeted over $1.2 billion in the last fiscal year for the program, which moved only a fraction of New York’s shelter population into permanent homes. A recent study argued that, compared with investing in the shelter system, it offers short-term savings but higher long-term costs. However, for a new mayor facing cuts to housing programs that rely on subsidies from the state and federal governments, CityFHEPS has one clear advantage: It is entirely city funded, and a Mamdani administration may be forced to rapidly scale this chaotic, poorly implemented program far beyond what even the city council has asked. With hundreds of thousands of residents using a shrinking supply of federal and state vouchers, an effective CityFHEPS could become a signature response to a manufactured crisis. —DANIELLE JACKSON, CRITIC

Mamdani’s signature housing policy is a rent freeze for rent-stabilized properties—it’s the first thing listed on his campaign platform. However, only a little over a quarter of New Yorkers live in such housing. For the majority of New Yorkers, the road to affordability runs through more—much more—availability and supply. Supporting the Charter Revision Commission’s recommendation to enable increased housing construction by streamlining the land-use process, which will be on the ballot along with the mayoral candidates in November, would be a heartening signal that Mamdani takes this need seriously.

Property tax reform is another place where a Mamdani administration could help deliver immediate relief to many homeowners and potentially even renters. Comprehensive reform has stymied previous mayors and won’t be an easy lift in Albany, but some of Mamdani’s specific proposals, such as allowing the city to value co-ops and condos according to sales prices and shifting some of the property tax burden away from outer-borough homeowners in lower markets, do enjoy broad or even bipartisan support.

We also have to preserve our public housing. Although their units are technically “affordable,” NYCHA tenants pay in ways besides rent—through being forced to often live in substandard and even unhealthy conditions. With declining support from the federal government, the city and state will need to step up their commitments to NYCHA and its residents. Mamdani has proposed doubling the city’s capital commitment. Allowing NYCHA to also sell more of its development rights could unlock several billion dollars more for repairs without dipping into city funds.

Finally, Mamdani gained traction by focusing on four of the largest drivers of expense for everyday New Yorkers: housing, transportation, childcare, and groceries. But there are also many smaller, unremarked-on ways in which life in the city has become more unaffordable for many of its residents. For instance, in 2009, it cost $20 to visit the observation deck of the Empire State Building. Today, a weekend ticket can run as much $64, and if you want to go higher, up to the 102nd floor, the price tag reaches over $100. Perhaps it’s time to follow London’s example and create a free observation deck that New Yorkers can use to look out on the city they call home. Where better to gaze upon a landscape where we’re building the homes we need, public housing is being restored, and the sight of construction cranes means excitement and opportunity instead of “Wish I could afford it” frustrations. —MOSES GATES, URBAN PLANNER