> Mamdani's and by extension, his voters', ignorance about the effects of price controls
Mamdani isn’t pitching widespread price controls, but rent control over a small section of New York housing twinned with abundance-style new development.
“In a 2022 paper, the political scientists Anselm Hager, Hanno Hilbig, and Robert Vief used the introduction of a 2019 rent-control law in Berlin to study how access to rent-controlled apartments influenced local attitudes toward housing development. The fact that the new law included an arbitrary cutoff date (it applied only to buildings constructed before January 1, 2014) allowed the authors to create a natural experiment, comparing otherwise-similar tenants in otherwise-similar buildings.
Heading into the experiment, the authors hypothesized that having access to a rent-controlled apartment would keep tenants in their existing units longer and therefore make them more resistant to neighborhood change. Instead, they found the opposite: Residents who lived in rent-controlled apartments were 37 percent more likely to support new local-housing construction than those living in noncontrolled units” [1].
Mamdani will learn that you need to be friends with the people your voters hate to get things done.
Developers are the single most important players in lowering housing costs, but they are part of the "landlord" contingent in voters minds.
If he doesn't learn that, the city is going to be in bad shape. Impossible to get an apartment unless you want to get an illegal sublet at regular old $4500/mo prices.
The market isn't going to function ideally in a place like New York.
In other cities, a significant market-based response to high rents and housing demand is to increase supply with another ring of suburbs. Is there anywhere within reasonable commute radius left to develop around NYC at scale?
Uncapping rents might trigger some refurbishment of idle or marginal space by dangling enough money in front of landlords, but you're not going to pull another 500,000 units out of your rear that way.
We can acknowledge that NYC housing is a finite and desirable resource, but we can also say that we don't want to turn it completely into an auction for the highest bidder. Rent control helps encourage diverse and vibrant communities, part of what makes the city compelling in the first place.
> Is there anywhere within reasonable commute radius left to develop around NYC at scale?
I get the challenge of existing property/buildings other states, etc - but it always seems weird to me that you can have single story buildings less than one mile from Manhattan in Hoboken, etc. (as the crow flies, I get transit, etc).
Feels like the big problem is we can't change anything easily anymore.
Hoboken has the fourth-highest population density of any municipality in the US. Although it is mostly low-rise in character, there aren't many single-story buildings there at all.
A good chunk of Hoboken was originally swampland; you can't exactly put in skyscrapers there. And even if you could, the other infrastructure (roads, water mains, sewers, trains, parking) absolutely could not support that level of development. You would basically need to bulldoze the entire town and build much wider roads etc... which would then cut into how much land could be devoted to housing.
Edit to add: genuinely baffled by the downvote. I lived in Hoboken for 7 years, and regardless of any personal opinions on the pros and cons, the town indisputably has infrastructure problems at its current density level: frequent water main breaks, flooding, over-crowded trains, buses that are too full to take on passengers, sink-holes, constant traffic jams at the few exits to town, double-parking / obstructed bike lanes, waiting lists for municipal garages (one of which is literally falling apart). The density level is objectively quite high relative to the US [1] and it's quite simply factually incorrect to list Hoboken as an example of insufficiently-dense housing in the US.
I did not downvote, but I think your comment is a good example of the "Yes We Can't" feeling that I mentioned in it being too hard to change things.
Manhattan wasn't exactly easy land to build on either.
Manhattan also has an inherent economy of scale that Hoboken lacks; Hoboken is barely over 1 square mile of land.
Meanwhile the lower-rise neighborhoods of Manhattan have roughly the same population density and building height as Hoboken. So why are you calling out Hoboken? What single-story buildings are you even talking about there, and why are you ignoring the presence of single-story buildings in Manhattan? They're rare but they absolutely do exist -- I just ate lunch in a single-story Manhattan building literally yesterday.
Left wing type policies can be very effective at producing housing in places like China where the government just says we are going to have 10,000 flats here and here and maybe contracts the construction to developers but deals with all the regulatory and permitting issues. Even in capitalist places like Singapore and Hong Kong a lot of the housing was built like that.
You build up. Which is expensive, so developers will want assurances and no "20% affordable units" bs.
There also is always going to be pain. NYC has incredible global draw, so demand runs deep. It might be that you can never build your way under $2k/mo apartments there.
A huge chunk of the plan is converting unused office space into housing in Manhattan, mostly in neighborhoods that were already mostly commercial, so there's relatively little NIMBY pushback.
It's easier than most people give it credit for. A lot of the complaints are from attempts to loosen the building code. There's savings of many millions on the table per refit if they manage to pass those, but they're not as needed as people say. For instance you lay down a raised floor to run utilities, and you can push sewer away from the core for relatively cheap and without shared bath/kitchen.
That being said, a return to allowing boarding house style housing would also not be the worst thing in the world for some buildings, and would probably do a lot to reduce homelessness. Hell, if I were still in my early 20s I'd be into the idea of a room to rent with shared bath/kitchen to save some money even not necessarily requiring the reduced in unit amenities.
> unless you want dorms with communal bathrooms and kitchens.
I personally wouldn't want to live in a space like that (maybe when I was younger), but I'm not convinced this sort of thing is so bad. Some people might like it, if it would cost less than a more traditional home.
Others whose housing situation is marginal, or who are homeless, might find it much preferable to the alternative. That's not an ideal reason for doing it, but perfect is the enemy of the good.
> Others whose housing situation is marginal, or who are homeless, might find it much preferable to the alternative
I lived in an illegally-sublet room with no window when I first moved to New York. I worked on Wall Street, and could afford something better. But I preferred to save money versus having a window I would look out of given my work (on the weekdays) and party (on the weekends) schedule.
Communal bathrooms are fine. Communal kitchens are fine; I know plenty of New Yorkers who might occasionally use their hot plate. (This changed post Covid, for what it's worth.)
This has the same energy as "but if you tax the billionaires they'll just leave!"
I say the same thing to that: good. If you don't want to participate in society (or in this case, your job) out of political beliefs, lets get in talent that will.
>Impossible to get an apartment unless you want to get an illegal sublet at regular old $4500/mo prices.
That's already the situation, and that was with a mayor who was openly bailed out by Trump. About as hand rubbing as you can get.
I think that's why these "radical" solutions stick. When you've hit rock bottom, you don't want the status quo.
This is another example of a little radicalism is a dangerous thing. You don't need to be friends with landlords if you're prepared to simply seize all their property.
I'm not sure if he can do that. I feel like eminent domain needs to be performed by a governor or federal. People need to remember that a Mayor isn't a "president of city that can do whatever he wants".
I'm pretty radical myself and I also just don't think it's necessary. There's more than enough unusued buildings to rebuild upon or renovate than a need to seize property. Even a place as dence as NYC still has a lot of land to utilize.
>Mamdani isn’t pitching widespread price controls, but rent control over a small section of New York housing twinned with abundance-style new development
He's not actually pitching any new price controls. He's proposing a temporary rent freeze on rent stabilized (rent control is tiny in comparison and unaffected by this) apartments that are already subject to limits on rent increases.
How do I know this? I live in a a rent stabilized apartment. The rent for which, even though increases are "limited" (usually somewhere around 3-5%) has more than doubled since I moved in.
So no. Mamdani isn't suggesting making any changes to the law as it has existed for at least 50 years, rather he's suggesting stopping rent increases while fast-tracking new housing, which would likely stabilize the housing market.
As an aside, which most folks don't understand, is that the vacancy rate in NYC is ~1.5%. Healthy housing markets have vacancy rates of 4-6%. Like many places in the US (and elsewhere), NYC has a housing shortage. But in NYC, that shortage is much more severe than almost anywhere else in the US.
"The 34-year-old democratic socialist’s pledge for a four-year pause on any increases on the city’s 1 million or so stabilized units, effectively giving a reprieve to about 2 million stabilized tenants, was at the center of his campaign"
I'm not directly familiar with Berlin. But this story about shortages is the expected outcome:
BERLIN, March 20 (Reuters) - Germany, lagging in its building goals to alleviate a housing shortage, needs to construct 320,000 new apartments each year by 2030, a study on Thursday showed.
> 34-year-old democratic socialist’s pledge for a four-year pause on any increases on the city’s 1 million or so stabilized units
Out of 3.7mm [1].
> not directly familiar with Berlin
Not comparable. Berlin froze rents “on more than 1.5 million” apartments in 2020 [2] out of about 2mm. 25% versus 75%.
Also, Berlin’s politicians didn’t propose a construction agenda. Mamdani has. (“New York City voters on Tuesday delivered a strong message in support of building more housing, passing three proposals that pitted City Hall against the City Council in an effort to rewrite decades-old development rules” [4].)
Increasing supply brings down prices. But a builder will not build at a loss or an imminent threat to their rental income from expansion of rent freezes.
A city with an expanding rent-freeze is not inviting new supply.
> Increasing supply brings down prices. But a builder will not build at a loss or an imminent threat to their rental income from expansion of rent freezes.
>
> A city with an expanding rent-freeze is not inviting new supply.
Builders build rent stabilized housing ("affordable apartments") in tandem with market rate unsubsidized units. There is an enormous backlog of development proposals that the city council has been sitting on for a while now. Vacancy rates in NYC are 1.4%. anything under 5% is defined as a critical housing shortage.
New housing is in such extreme demand that people pay $5k/mo for a shoebox.
I think the builder builds if you pay them. I don't think they care about what the rent will be because they just build stuff.
So, just pay them, and figure it out later.
The alternative is what we're currently doing, and have been doing for the past few decades: nothing. This does not work. Our current housing situation is simply not sustainable.
>a builder will not build at a loss or an imminent threat to their rental income from expansion of rent freezes.
A builder isn't a land owner. They make contracts, negotiate a price, and build to that price. They're dealing with a government, so there's more money in the bank to spend if the government is truly focused on solving an issue.
A city with an expanding rent-freeze is not inviting new supply.
>A city with an expanding rent-freeze is not inviting new supply.
Okay, cool. I honestly don't want an atchitect who can't think 5 years on advance (when these rent control proposals are scheduled to end, should they be enacted). That short term quarterly thinking is precisely why we have been unable to build housing.
awesome stuff! loved this comment cause it is the kind of thing US political party (one in particular) teaches its faithful followers that is rooted in some crazy ideology without a shred of any evidence to back it up (especially since here we are talking about NEW YORK CITY not some shithole in the South). Goodspeed mate, wild stuff!!
You are ignorant of both the situation and the proposals.
None of the new housing (unless the builder takes advantage of specific tax breaks which requires them to make their housing "rent stabilized" for a limited time, and even then when the new housing goes on the market, it will be offered at "market rates) will be subject to any rent regulation at all.
The units targeted for a rent freeze are either:
1. Units in buildings with more than six dwelling units where the building was built before 1971 (the vast majority of units affected);
2. Buildings where the developer (knowing ahead of time that this was the case) took advantage of certain tax exemptions/abatements that require them to offer their units at market rates when first put on the market, but then are constrained (as are the units in 1 above) by the NY's rent stabilization laws[0].
To wit: You're talking out of your ass and it smells that way too. Yuck!
First - a rent freeze directly transfers inflation costs to the property owners. It is a tax by another name.
Second - there is no similar freeze on property taxes - or the expected inflation in maintenance costs, insurance, and so on. Again - a tax on property owners by another name.
Third - starting with a rent freeze is an indicator of a property owner unfriendly administration. Any builder would have to calculate this into their expected returns on capital investment.
It's not property-owner-unfriendly, it's landlord-unfriendly.
Which is just fine in my book.
Builders do not have to "calculate" any of this into their "expected returns", because new construction will not be subject to rent freezes or even stabilization. You're selectively ignoring a key part of what the GP said in order to further your incorrect argument, and that's not cool.
As for your first and second points... tough shit for the landlords. That's a cost of doing business. Taxes, even implicit ones like this, change all the time. And a landlord owning a rent-stabilized unit should already know that there are limits on what kind of rent increases they can push through, and that those limits could change at any time, even to zero.
> tough shit for the landlords. That's a cost of doing business
If Mamdani does this, not only is he fucked, but he might take down the national progressive movement with himself.
"Tough shit" is a good Twitter reaction. It's terrible policy. Berlin did that, and it backfired in the most predictable way possible.
New York needs more housing. New York City's public finances simply do not permit a massive public housing construction binge, and Albany can't fund a socialist mayor's public works with upstate tax dollars. That means that housing must be privately developed. New York City, just today, transferred power away from City Council and to Gracie Mansion to help facilitate new housing. That means the impediment is local opposition. The literature shows that opposition gets dampened when folks aren't afraid of gentrification; rent freezes do that.
If Mamdani takes the easy route and "tought shits" the landlords, his housing policy grinds to a halt. Market rents, covering 75% of New York apartments, will spike. The experiment will be over. He doesn't strike me as an idiot, which is why I don't suspect he'll do this.
>If Mamdani does this, not only is he fucked, but he might take down the national progressive movement with himself.
Like Obama with ACA? He fully thought he'd be a one term president over trying to push it in. Sometimes the best thing for a city is not what's best for reelection. And I very much don't want a candidate who's only minmaxing around what will get him re-elected.
I think we need to have more faith in the people. As gen Z says, "let him cook". We're thinking too Establishment here in a time where we clearly need a different strategy. Establishment had nearly 2 decades to resolve this and it only got worse instead. Why not try a new plan while observing what went wrong before and adjusting?
Or at least be able to scrutinize when the people who want to ruin his 2028 campaign (should he rerun) are the same that tried these same tactics this year. If these tactics were effective, Mamdami wouldn't have gotten in.
>You can't comment like this on Hacker News, no matter what you're replying to.
Fair enough.
>> You are ignorant of both
>You can't comment like this on Hacker News, no matter what you're replying to.
Would "the facts don't support your assertions in either case." be more acceptable? Or is noting a lack of knowledge in any way unacceptable?
I'm not trying to be snarky here. I just want to make sure I don't run afoul of the guidelines and make more work for you and the other already over-worked moderators.
It's good that you're committed to observing the guidelines, thanks.
It should be easy enough to reply without ugly personal abuse or swipes like "ignorant".
If someone's comment indicates a lack of important knowledge about the topic, you can just politely point out the missing information, the way you might in a respectful conversation with a friend over dinner or a beer. That's what we're aiming for on HN.
Berlin reverted the rent freeze later because it was deemed unconstitutional. Many people had to pay back the money they "saved". Without entering in the other discussion the Berlin case was not a success.
That article says the main benefit of rent control (besides popularity) is an increase in YIMBY sentiment, but it seems it still has the downsides detractors dislike about it.
It doesn't do much to convince me it isn't a populist campaign promise.
Mamdani isn’t pitching widespread price controls, but rent control over a small section of New York housing twinned with abundance-style new development.
“In a 2022 paper, the political scientists Anselm Hager, Hanno Hilbig, and Robert Vief used the introduction of a 2019 rent-control law in Berlin to study how access to rent-controlled apartments influenced local attitudes toward housing development. The fact that the new law included an arbitrary cutoff date (it applied only to buildings constructed before January 1, 2014) allowed the authors to create a natural experiment, comparing otherwise-similar tenants in otherwise-similar buildings.
Heading into the experiment, the authors hypothesized that having access to a rent-controlled apartment would keep tenants in their existing units longer and therefore make them more resistant to neighborhood change. Instead, they found the opposite: Residents who lived in rent-controlled apartments were 37 percent more likely to support new local-housing construction than those living in noncontrolled units” [1].
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/archive/2025/11/mamdani-...