In the New York City mayor’s race, housing policy is one of the top issues. Nearly 90% of voters say it matters, and 88% call for more affordable housing. Who can blame them? The city is now the second most expensive place in the world to live.
I’m a Democrat, but housing supply isn’t a left-or-right issue. It’s just math.
We are 540,000 homes short of current demand. Scarcity drives prices up, so the law of supply and demand tells us we need to build more to close the gap. Most Democrats and Republicans agree on that.
That’s what Zohran Mamdani fails to understand. Throughout the campaign, the 33-year-old mayoral candidate insisted that New Yorkers “can’t afford to wait for the private sector to solve this crisis.” But private developers building market-rate housing is the only reason most New Yorkers have roofs over their heads today.
While only 48% of rental units are currently unregulated, nearly all of those were originally market-rate and only later subjected to stabilization. Developers build, but only when the economics work. That’s not ideology, it’s just reality.
To his credit, in a June 10 interview, Mamdani claimed to have “changed his mind” about private sector construction, likely because of the backlash to his earlier position. But the damage is done.
While, for months, other candidates offered overall housing targets (one candidate plans to build one million new homes in 10 years), Mamdani’s only concrete number is to “put our public dollars to work and triple the city’s production of permanently affordable, union-built, rent-stabilized homes.”
He assumes private builders have failed without asking without acknowledging the city’s own role in creating barriers. Property tax policy, zoning, land use rules, and environmental review requirements all stifle new construction. The first priority should be removing roadblocks, not cementing them in place.
In 2024, the top large metro for new housing construction was Austin, Texas. Not because of public-sector development, but because local officials slashed regulations, fast-tracked permits, and loosened zoning. There’s a lesson here.
Mamdani also supports a disastrous — and likely illegal — across-the-board rent freeze. This would chill new construction and lead to deterioration of existing units.
A survey shows that 81% of economists, including progressives, oppose rent control because it discourages development and leads to worse conditions for tenants. Homelessness and poor living conditions rise as a result.
Yet Mamdani is doubling down. It makes him no different than some of his allies who want to ban the algorithmic pricing software landlords use to help make pricing decisions, like a Kelley Blue Book for apartments. It’s a backdoor form of rent control that would exacerbate the housing shortage.
Even Democratic leaders see the danger. Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis vetoed a similar measure, warning it would reduce supply and worsen affordability.
There is a reason the city’s Rent Guidelines Board currently allows increases for rent-stabilized apartments based on a calculation that weighs the landlord’s maintenance costs against the tenants’ cost of living.
Longtime New Yorkers remember the nightmare of excessive rent control. “The ‘lost years’ — from 1977 to 1991, when cumulative net housing construction was negative — were driven, in part, by severe limits on landlords’ ability to raise rents while costs … were rising,” economist James M. Barr explains. During that time, the city demolished more apartments than it built. Mamdani’s rent freeze would bring that era back.
Mamdani also plans to petition Albany to expand rent stabilization to all newly built homes. Without massive tax incentives, which state lawmakers may be unwilling to grant, this will lead to less private sector construction and place a much heavier burden on tenants who still live in market-rate units.
Worst of all, Mamdani plans to finance this by taking on $70 billion in new debt. That would massively increase the share of city tax revenue eaten up by interest payments.
It would also blow past the state-set debt limit, which the city is already just $28 billion away from hitting. Mamdani would have to beg Albany to raise it. If lawmakers remember the 1975 fiscal crisis, when the state took over the city budget, they’ll say no.
New Yorkers deserve bold housing plans grounded in reality, not ideology. It’s good that Mamdani now says he sees value in the private sector, but reversing course at the last minute won’t undo months of harmful rhetoric. We need leadership that’s focused on building more homes, not just making headlines.
Towns is a former Democratic member of Congress from Brooklyn.
