New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced a new “block by block” initiative to tackle the city’s affordable housing crisis Tuesday morning.
The plan focuses on 400,000 affordable housing units, enhancing tenant protections and investing in public housing. Some 200,000 of those units will be new, rent-stabilized homes built over the next decade, as well as preserving and stabilizing an additional 200,000 homes.
The first 100% of primary residence demand should never be anything other than affordable. Any other category of housing should only be tolerated in the stock beyond that threshold.
The normalisation of affordable housing as a legitimate concept is one of the most carcinogenic social infections.
Nobody would build anything if the first X number of units had to be affordable, unless I’m misunderstanding you. The city needs 200k units of affordable, and so until that need is met, any new unit is affordable? Development would be stifled entirely. And I hate it, as someone who likes affordable housing, but it’s a give and take, and nobody is going to spend money on a project that they can’t make money. Mandatory set-asides on projects over X number of units is the only feasible compromise.
Affordability is a function of an economic environment, which makes it an intrinsically imaginary problem.
All governments have a unique ability, through policy, to require the provision of a base load of subsistence resources before extraction is tolerated, not doing so is literally a choice.
Tolerating the concept of affordable housing creates an unnecessary, and debasing, stratification.
To rephrase my original assertion, the first 100% of primary residence demand should just be understood to be housing. Secondary, short stay, premium, and other use cases should only be tolerated in the stock beyond that initial 100%.
I appreciate what you’re saying, but I don’t understand how it’s feasible. You have people with second homes in beach communities, and so they shouldn’t have those, those second homes should be primary residences. But those communities, now, are not situated to support people in those as primary residence, not at 100%. I’m talking schools, police, fire, utilities, the whole nine. All of those things take into account basically nonuse during a certain time. And that’s excluding the fact that if these were occupied full time, people wouldn’t be able to get to work every day, it would be chaos. And yes, there are solutions, but feasibility is key, and I just don’t see it being feasible.
I like what Mamdani is doing. If you’re essentially wasting space, having essentially uninhabited apartments in a city that needs affordable places to live, he’s taxing the shit out of them (I’m simplifying). And so ideally this creates some pool of funds to be used toward affordable housing, but at the end of the day I still think the best thing to do is mandate set-asides for affordable, 20% of the units on any project. An alternative is obviously that the government builds housing, but the benefit of private development is that now those affordable units are also tied to market rate units, and so the developer has an interest in maintaining all the units. With a 100% government funded affordable housing project, it just leaves the door open for cuts that turns it from an opportunity into a slum.
I don’t disagree with you, I just don’t know that it’s realistic. But I do think its philosophically where the discussion needs to begin, and then we need to account for pesky reality.
I think it’s interesting how housing makes it explicitly official that we have a two-class system. There’s “affordable” housing and “other” housing.
I’m starting to understand why he won…
Somebody like this at the very top would be so … what’s the word of I’m looking for… refreshing.
b…b…but… socialism can never work? /s
Except in all those decent countries where is does work.
nu uh, it doesn’t count, those countries either aren’t really socialist, or it wouldn’t work here because… draws card those countries have less heterogenous populations /s
Socialism for the people can never work! Now for corporations… it’s always viable! Bailouts for everyone!
Fuck Batman, Mamdani is the hero Gotham needs.
… ok :(
Aww, now I feel like such a heel! 😄
What if we give you Tucson in stead? That should be about the amount of cursed you’re used to 😉
Ok! :D :D
I’m sure with all the latent mental illness he’ll be great in bed!
In the defense of Bruce/ Batman I’m pretty sure he would give up his wealth and hang up his cape if it would actually save Gotham. Problem is Gotham is quite literally cursed like on multiple levels, pretty sure a demon world from 40k is less cursed also it’s in New Jersey which probably isn’t helping the situation.
quite literally cursed like on multiple levels
Unfortunate.
also it’s in New Jersey
I dont like this reference, since two face said “You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”
and I dont want him to die…
Everybody dies
I’ll believe that when I see it!
Hmm, good point 🤔
Alternative to CBS.
Wait…cbs headlike 400k. Alternative link headline 200k.
…whaaaa???
There’s already 200,000 and they want to add 200,000 more.
Ok, so then the CBS headline is just false.
Can’t “plan” to build 200,000 houses, if they’re already built.
Eh, they didn’t say “plan to build 400,000 affordable housing units”, they said “plan for 400,000 units”. The plan involves building 200,000 units, and stabilizing 200,000 existing units. That’s not really a false headline.
Thank you for your service 🫡
Aww shit. This is a thing now. Damn.
Nooooo! More supply means prices fall! That’s socialism!
/S
spoiler
They didn’t
Where does the $22 billion come from?
I’m not a New Yorker, but it’s obviously likely taxes. There’s a lot of really rich people in NYC, so there’s some raising of taxes that can be done to them as well as some upper middle class.
There’s point is, there’s money that can be found.
HOW is he Going to Pay for this Thought? ALL he’s Done is get MILLIONS and MILLIONS of Dollars from Corporations!
HOW is he Going to Pay for this Thought?
Thoughts are for free.
No. Thought costs upbringing. If you’re raised by a restrictive parent, you don’t think for yourself.
If you’re raised by a parent who’s not afraid to let you fail for yourself, you get an oppertunity to think why you failed, and how to not fail next time.
For every critical thought you have, something in your past taught you to think.
Corporations need low income housing to hire talent into NY.
If I had a $ for every thousand of housing units promised by a politician that was never delivered I would be rich as fuck. I’m not holding my breath.
Mamdani’s track record for getting shit done is pretty good so far.
And building affordable housing is inherently difficult. Madani is good but is he that good? We’ll find out. I wish him all the best of course.
Building affordable housing isn’t really difficult. What is difficult is building affordable housing that is AT LEAST as profitable as expensive housing.
The issue is that in order to do this with a free market housing system the government has to put it’s finger on the scale. Investors aren’t going to fund affordable housing projects if there is another investment that yeilds better returns at a similar risk. So, the government has to essentially guarantee the profitability of the investment into affordable housing.
You can reduce a lot of the final cost of the units by the government literally just building housing like the government builds roads. Shelter (like roads or public transit) serve a public good.
The issue with this is that this makes the cost of housing fall for the the entire market. Well, it’s only an issue to the investors and landlords really. It’s why they work to ensure all neoliberal governments keep doing “public private partnerships” in every aspect of government.
See “Red Vienna” and it’s housing system if you want more details. We have decades long examples of how even socdem policies can be successful. The issue isn’t with building. It’s with the government actually working towards objectives of its population and not the objective of profit.
Edit: LMAO. The top result for red Vienna is literally Mamdani talking about it 5 years ago.
Yes, in a fantasy world where you don’t have to worry about interest groups, market or economy building affordable housing is easy.
In reality you will have to fight investors and landlords. You will have to compete for limited building materials (200k housing units is a lot, you will have to buy the materials somewhere). You will have to compete for the land with other projects. You will have to plan and expand infrastructure around those projects. And after you figure out the zoning, permits, designs and materials someone will have to build those units. Governments don’t really employ people to build housing the way they may employ people to maintain public infrastructure. So you either have to create huge public construction company or do public private partnerships. There are countries where public housing works but it doesn’t happen overnight. I really hope Mamdani can do this but I’ve seen projects like this fail many times before. Because they are hard.
It’s not a fantasy world mate. It literally exists in Vienna. It literally accounts for all the things you mentioned. You have to actually fight for it though. And if Mamdani fails because of capitalist interest; you keep fighting for it. Because it’s literally proven to be possible.
The “good things aren’t possible” perspective is really getting annoying. You’re like a spouse that was abused for years that’s telling me why you can’t leave your abuser.
Governments don’t really employ people to build housing the way they may employ people to maintain public infrastructure.
They literally do. They just don’t in America.
So you either have to create huge public construction company or do public private partnerships.
Construction cost is not the issue we are discussing mate. We are discussing investment incentives to build affordable housing. That is the part you are failing to understand. The construction company is not the one incentivized to build luxury housing. They are building based on the choice of investors to build specific housing. Cost of labor is not the issue here mate.
You’re not even addressing the key part that is changing. The key part that is changing is that the government is choosing directly to put it’s money into building affordable housing. The government can take a “loss” on this (the same way it does with roads) because the government isn’t concerned with turning a profit on a single investment. It can operate for a public good that returns benefits and prosperity to the community.
Roads don’t have to be profitable to build. Houses don’t have to be profitable to build. Firefighters don’t have to make a profit stopping fires.
Having all those things is PROFITABLE to the society.
I was going to add that this system does work in places like Vienna but it requires complete change of of mindset around housing not only from officials but also from the public. Half of affordable housing in Vienna was built by co-ops mate. The entire model around planning and financing of housing projects and ownership has to change mate. This is not something you can do in a couple of years mate. As I said, I’m not against the idea. I hope he will make it. I’m just saying that I’ve seen big promises around affordable housing many times before and those always failed. Because changing the entire system is hard mate. And it takes time mate. Like all newly elected mayors Mamdani is very popular now but we’ll see if he can even win the next elections. Mate.
People like you spend the whole time boo-hooing the people actually doing the work to create change. Nothing you said here is anything useful. It’s not constructive criticism of any of the actual policy. You have spent the last two comments talking about stuff that is irrelevant, addressed in my initial comment, or addressed in Mamdani’s video.
Now you are essentially just saying “it’s hard”. Yes. It’s hard. It doesn’t get easier by you offering zero constructive criticism. You’re essentially just listing reasons for “why we shouldn’t even try”.
You may think you’re in favor of affordable housing. And maybe you are on principle. But you’ve spent this whole thread basically repeating excuses that politicians have fed you for decades for why good things are not possible. You need to change your mindset mate.
Why lead with negativity?
You’re right.
OMG! 400,00 housing units. That’s amazing. Madani is the best!
Sarcasm is still negativity.
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Will he need to change any zoning laws in New York to do this?
I would think as mayor he would probably be the person in the best position to do such a thing.
