Just 50 days into Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration, most Brooklynites are still forming their opinions of New York City’s newest leader.
The mayor is still in the midst of the transitional process, appointing staff and filling offices. Still, Mamdani — who said in his inauguration speech that he would “govern expansively and audaciously” — has made dozens of announcements in his first seven weeks.
On Day 19, he renewed the city’s support for a supportive housing project in the Bronx. He announced the city’s first step towards universal childcare on Day 36, and on Day 44 re-started a number of transit projects halted by the Adams administration.
He has also made several missteps. More than 20 people died during a two-week stretch of freezing weather in New York City, prompting criticism from Council Members who said the administration could have done more. Several of his appointees have been slammed over past social media posts, and some city leaders expressed outrage over the mayor’s proposal to raise property taxes by nearly 10% in his preliminary budget for FY2027.
Mamdani’s moves in Brooklyn
Brooklyn is home to the largest number of registered Democrats in New York and a key piece of Mamdani’s electoral victory. The mayor made one of his first in-office stops in the borough on Jan. 1, when he toured a derelict apartment building owned by Pinnacle Realty in Prospect Lefferts Gardens.
Two days later, the mayor made good on a local campaign promise in Greenpoint, home to one of his strongest voter bases, when he announced his administration would implement the full redesign of McGuinness Boulevard.
Mamdani announced on his third day in office that the city will implement the full, originally-planned redesign of McGuinness Boulevard. File photo by Lloyd Mitchell
Council Member Lincoln Restler, who represents nabes from Greenpoint to Boerum Hill, is a longtime supporter of Mamdani, and strongly backed his mayoral campaign.
“It’s just a breath of fresh air in New York City government,” Restler said. “He has brought energy and integrity back to City Hall.”
The progressive Council Member said working with former mayor Eric Adams and his administration was “profoundly challenging.”
“There was corruption, incompetence, non-responsiveness that pervaded the administration,” Restler said. “We now have a mayor who wants to be responsive to the needs and concerns of our communities, who wants to partner with local elected officials to improve our collective quality of life.”
Affordability was the cornerstone of Mamdani’s campaign, from a promised rent freeze to universal childcare, and Restler said he’s committed to supporting that agenda.. The mayor has already taken steps toward free ‘2-care’ and 3-K and on Feb. 18 appointed five new members to the Rent Guidelines Board, bringing the fabled rent freeze closer to reality.
Mamdani, backed by Gov. Kathy Hochul, has announced a small, paid-for program to start this year. File photo by Lloyd Mitchell
“Some of the things I’ve been most excited about are universal childcare and ensuring that young families can get by and incentivizing more young families to stay and raise their kids in Brooklyn,” Restler said. “I’m deeply committed to an affordability agenda more broadly that centers the challenges working families face in our increasingly-expensive city.”
Where Restler feels confident in Mamdani’s abilities and agenda, some aren’t so sure.
‘I don’t know where he’s been’
Robert Comancho, a lifelong Bushwick resident and longtime chair of Brooklyn’s Community Board 4, said the neighborhood has been fighting the same battles — gentrification, housing affordability, crime — for decades, through many mayors. He wished the mayor had made more local inroads to start his tenure.
“I don’t know where he’s been [for] 50 days,” he said. “He didn’t come to Bushwick, he didn’t see the key players in Bushwick, he didn’t come to our churches in Bushwick, he didn’t see CBOs in our community.”
For decades, Bushwick was a major Hispanic and Latino community, with large populations of Puerto Rican and Dominican immigrants and their families. In recent decades, it has been gentrified significantly.
Since 2000, the neighborhood’s Black and Hispanic populations have plummeted, per the NYU Furman Center, while the number of white residents has skyrocketed. Since 2006, median gross rent in the nabe is up nearly 70%, and nearly 80% of residents are paying between 30-50% of their income on rent.
Mamdani visited a Prospect Lefferts Gardens apartment building to tour units and sign housing-related executive orders on his first day in office. File photo by Lloyd Mitchell
Comancho worried about the neighborhood — and Brooklyn as a whole — being painted with a broad brush. Bushwick is very different from other areas, he said, with diverse populations including families who have lived in the area for generations and recent immigrants now fearful of retaliation from the federal government.
He said affordability is needed, but feels it’s not clear how the mayor wants to execute his promise, and if it would benefit those most in need in Bushwick. He wanted the mayor to visit each community board and neighborhood to ask about their specific needs.
“When you say affordable, affordable for who? How?” he said.
He said Bushwick needs more apartment buildings with family-sized units, priced affordably for those families. Many new developments in Brooklyn are catered toward younger people living with friends or roommates, he said, and are too pricey for longtime residents.
A City Hall spokesperson pointed to Mamdani’s promise to build 200,000 new affordable homes across New York City over the next ten years. The city also said Mamdani’s newly-appointed head of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, Dina Levy, is committed to preserving existing stabilized units and ensuring good living conditions as she is to building new units.
Workers prep a city-owned site in Williamsburg for construction in 2022. File photo by Susan De Vries
A bill by Brooklyn Council Member Sandy Nurse last year will require that starting in 2027, 50% of newly-constructed units funded by the city are affordable to “very low-income” households, and at least 30% for “extremely low-income” households — or households earning $72,900 or less for a family of three. Separate legislation introduced by Bronx Council Member Eric Dinowitz would require housing projects funded by the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development include 25% two-bedrooms and 15% three-bedrooms “to consider the needs of families and aging adults.” That bill was passed by the Council, but vetoed by former mayor Eric Adams at the tail end of his term.
“My vision of affordability is not college roommates where we share rooms. My thing is to create an environment where they can come and also our kids,” he said. “A building where there’s three bedrooms where a kid can open their mind and see what it’s like to have a bedroom of their own without the clutter of a shelter just because they can’t afford to live here.”
Comancho and his wife own their home, he said, and live on a fixed income. Their daughter lives downstairs with her child, and he and his wife help with childcare. Regular costs of living, like mortgage and utilities, take up most of his monthly income, Comanche said.
“We’re 50 cents away from being homeless. And I busted my ass all my life, waited until I felt comfortable to retire, and nothing. You can’t live here,” he said. “This is what [Mamdani] needs to hear, our man that just got here.”
Small but impactful
On the other end of the borough, in Coney Island, resident and Community Board 13 member Maxim Ibadov said Mamdani hadn’t been much of a presence during the campaign, and was glad to see the mayor make his first visit last week to announce the official launch of the Coney Island BID.
The BID had been in the works for some time before Mamdani took office – and has proved controversial among locals, Ibadov said — but they were glad to see him spending time in the neighborhood and working with local politicians, including newly-elected Council Member Kayla Santosuosso.
Despite a slow start in southern Brooklyn, Ibadov said they are encouraged by the start of Mamdani’s tenure. They were thrilled when he moved to fix the infamous bump at the end of the Manhattan Bridge, which disrupted bike rides for thousands of cyclists, including Ibadov.
Mamdani made his first mayoral visit to Coney Island last week. Photo by Erica Price
“Him doing something that small that is so impactful is incredible,” they said. “I appreciate anybody who is doing stuff, and not afraid to get out there and be in front of the cameras and be on social media,” they said. “I’m a drag queen, I’m not above vanity. As a drag queen who does a lot of activism, I know that I need to show up and show face and let people know something is happening. You’ve gotta use your platform and your visibility.”
But they were also cheered by the mayor’s larger actions, especially taking action against ICE agents in New York City to defend immigrant New Yorkers. An immigrant themself, Ibadov said they would like to see Mamdani expand his focus on affordability to support the city’s large, deep-rooted immigrant communities.
“There’s already a big exodus of New Yorkers, like, multigenerational, specifically from ethnic groups, who are moving out of New York City because it doesn’t feel like the city they grew up with and also because it’s becoming so expensive,” Ibadov said.
They want to see more support in place for New Yorkers who want to buy their homes, rather than just renting them. May immigrants moved to the city to pursue the “American Dream,” Ibadov said, and they’ve always seen that dream as meaning “everybody can buy a home, buy a car, put money into education for their kids … enjoy the promises of the American middle class.”
“Call me naive, call me a patriot, but I kind of believe in the American Dream a little bit,” they said. “So I want that to come to New Yorkers. So I’ll be watching.”
‘Some bumps in the road’
The new mayor has also hit a few snags with local Brooklyn politicians.
“There have been some early bumps with how the mayor and his team have approached endorsements in different races,” Restler said. “But I hope that that doesn’t overshadow the critical work of governing and delivering for our shared constituents.”
Mamdani last month endorsed Democratic Socialist Claire Valdez in the race to replace Nydia Velázquez in Congressional District 7. Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso is running in the same race, and received immediate endorsements from a number of local leaders, including Restler and Brooklyn council members Sandy Nurse, Crystal Hudson and Jennifer Gutiérrez.
Velázquez herself endorsed Reynoso, and seemed to critique Mamdani’s decision to back Valdez.
“Honeymoons are short, and people need to pay attention to the work at hand,” she told the New York Times, when asked if she had any advice for the new mayor. She added that Mamdani’s involvement in Congressional primaries could sow divisions in the party.
Some local pols, including Council Member Crystal Hudson, have criticized Mamdani’s CityFHEPS decision.Photo courtesy of John McCarten/NYC Council Media Unit
The mayor drew some local ire this month, when he announced he would not expand the city’s rental assistance voucher program CityFHEPS as he had promised during his campaign.
In a statement, Council Member Crystal Hudson said she was “deeply disappointed” by the reversal.
“The Council passed this expansion to meet the scale of our housing and homelessness crisis, and it was upheld in court, CityFHEPS is one of the most effective tools we have to prevent homelessness and keep families in their homes,” she said.
Mamdani’s preliminary budget proposal for FY2027, released on Feb. 17, drew mixed reactions too. The mayor proposed a 9.5% property tax hike unless Gov. Kathy Hochul approves tax hikes on the city’s richest individuals and corporations, saying the city is facing a significant budget gap.
“Raising property taxes is a non-starter,” Reynoso said on social media. “New York’s property tax system is already broken. In Brooklyn, some homes are taxed at rates up to 3x higher than luxury properties. This would only make an unfair system worse and hit Black and brown communities hardest.”
Hudson, just days after slamming Mamdani’s CityFHEPS plan, seemed to support Mamdani’s request to raise taxes on wealthy New Yorkers.
“The choice is clear: it’s time to tax the rich,” she said on X. “This budget will not be balanced on the backs of Black & brown homeowners.”