Supply and The Mam: how will a Democratic Socialist mayor address New York City’s housing supply shortage?

New York City now has one of the tightest housing markets since 1960. NYC’s new mayor Zohran Mamdani is a Democratic Socialist that campaigned on certain high-profile policies to address the housing shortage: $70 billion in new city-funded capital investment in affordable housing, accelerated land use approvals for such projects, a rent freeze for rent-stabilized apartments and increased taxes on companies and wealthy residents.

This Eye on the Market looks at the NYC housing shortage, its resulting demographic/economic costs and at prior policies enacted by the Adams Administration to jump-start housing development. We then focus on Mamdani’s housing proposals and challenges they face, in part due to constraints on NYC borrowing and its fiscal burden which is already high vs other cities. We conclude with research on the generally long-term negative impacts of rent freezes on the housing stock. 

Bottom line: if Mamdani’s $70 billion housing plan does not take flight, NYC will have to keep hammering away at restrictive zoning policies that impede development, forge private-public partnerships to improve housing abundance and affordability, and design solutions to the problem of uneconomic rent stabilized renovation cost-recovery rules.

Watch the Podcast

Click here for important information.