The Rent May Always Be Too Damn High

New York City's Affordable Housing Problem Will Take Miracles And Sacrifices To Fix

In the week after the June 24 primary election for mayor, I was determined to meet with voters in conservative neighborhoods where Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani (D-Astoria), a democratic socialist, had performed surprisingly well. In a Howard Beach precinct where Mamdani won, I met a couple who, despite being conservative, voted for Mamdani because they bizarrely thought he had run “to the right” of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and also believed he was Italian-American, as his name ended in an “i” and he was from Astoria.

When I dug further into why they thought he was running “to the right” of Cuomo, they noted that it was because he discussed “prices” and “cost of living,” as Donald Trump had in 2024. They both voted for Trump. They had a hard time believing Mamdani was a socialist because they believed socialists “support making everything more expensive.¹”

This confirmed to me that the issue of affordability and the cost of living are not partisan. It is driving voters to consider whichever political stance they need to support in order to hear the issue discussed.

Housing Affordability has been a major issue in New York City since I was a child growing up in Queens. It has driven hundreds of thousands of people out of the city over the last few decades. It inspired the creation of a tongue-in-cheek minor political party. It is also what drove such tremendous support for a democratic socialist this summer in a city where democratic socialism seemed dead as recently as last year.

The average rent breaks records, and prices per square foot in condos and homes in the most sought-after neighborhoods are well over $1,000 per square foot. The issue of affordability has become so endemic to New York life that candidates for office rarely talk about it in serious terms anymore. Mamdani filled that void, focusing his entire campaign on the issue of affordability in housing, transportation, childcare, and even groceries. Some of Mamdani’s policies are unrealistic, while others may not be beneficial and could even make affordability worse, but he’s at least discussing them in ways few other candidates have.

How did New York become so unaffordable anyway?