Mamdani’s housing plan will not work

In the race of the mayor of New York, housing policy is one of the best numbers. Almost 90% of voters say that this counts and 88% call more affordable housing. Who can blame them? The city is now the second most expensive place in the world to live.

I am a democrat, but the offer of housing is not a left or right problem. It’s just mathematics.

We are at 540,000 houses unless there is current demand. The rarity brings prices to rise, so that the law of supply and demand tells us that we must create more to fill the gap. Most Democrats and Republicans agree on this.

This is what Zohran Mamdani does not understand. Throughout the campaign, the 33-year-old town hall candidate insisted that New Yorkers “cannot afford to wait for the private sector to resolve this crisis”. But private developers build housing at the market rate is the only reason why most New Yorkers have roofs above their heads today.

While only 48% of rental units are currently unregulated, almost all of these were originally at the market rate and only subject to stabilization. The developers build, but only when the economy works. It is not ideology, it’s just reality.

On his credit, in an interview on June 10, Mamdani said he “changed his mind” on the construction of the private sector, probably due to the reaction to his previous position. But the damage is caused.

While, for months, other candidates have offered global housing objectives (a candidate plans to build a million new houses in 10 years), the only number concrete in Mamdani is to “put our public dollars at work and triple the production of the city of affordable, built and stabilized permanence houses”.

It assumes that private manufacturers have failed without asking without recognizing the own role of the city in the creation of obstacles. Land tax policy, zoning, land use rules and environmental examination requirements stifling all new constructions. The first priority should be to remove road dams, not to cement them in place.

In 2024, the big Grand Metro for New Housing Construction was Austin, Texas. Not because of the development of the public sector, but because local managers have reduced regulations, accelerated permits and loose zoning. There is a lesson here.

Mamdani also supports a disastrous – and probably illegal – freezing freezing. This would cool a new construction and lead to the deterioration of existing units.

A survey shows that 81% of economists, including progressives, oppose the control of rents because it discourages development and leads to more worse conditions for tenants. The homelessness and bad living conditions increase accordingly.

However, Mamdani doubles. This does not make him different from some of his allies who wish to prohibit the algorithmic pricing software used by the owners to make pricing decisions, such as a Kelley Blue book for apartments. It is a stolen form of rent control that would exacerbate the shortage of housing.

Even Democratic leaders see danger. The Democratic Governor of Colorado, Jared Polis, opposed a measure to a similar measure, warning that he would reduce the supply and aggravate affordability.

There is a reason why the City rent guidelines council currently authorizes increases for apartments stabilized to rent on the basis of a calculation which weighs the owner’s maintenance costs compared to the cost of the living of the tenants.

Longtime New Yorkers remember the nightmare of excessive rent control. “The” lost years ” – from 1977 to 1991, when the cumulative construction of net housing was negative – were partly motivated by serious limits of the owners’ ability to increase rents while costs … increased,” said economist James Mr. Barr. Meanwhile, the city has demolished more apartments than they built it. Mamdani’s freeze freezing would bring this time.

Mamdani also plans to petition Albany to extend the stabilization of rent to all newly built houses. Without massive tax incentives, which state legislators may not want to grant, this will lead to a construction less in the private sector and will grant a much heavier burden to tenants who still live in market rates units.

Worse, Mamdani plans to finance this by taking $ 70 billion in new debts. This would considerably increase the share of tax revenue of the city consumed by payments of interest.

This would also blow beyond the limit of state debt, that the city is already at only $ 28 billion in the strike. Mamdani should beg Albany to raise him. If the legislators remember the 1975 tax crisis, when the state took over the city’s budget, they will say no.

New Yorkers deserve daring housing plans founded in reality, not on ideology. It is good that Mamdani now says that he sees value in the private sector, but that the inversion of the course at the last minute does not undo the months of harmful rhetoric. We need leadership focused on the construction of more houses, not just to make the headlines.

Towns is a former democratic member of the Brooklyn Congress.