New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani discussed his meeting with President Trump about housing in greater detail Friday.
“It was a productive meeting in the sense that, after our first meeting in the Oval Office, one of the topics of conversation that we focused on was housing. Housing not only because it was the foremost, and continues to be, the foremost crisis in New York City, but also because it’s a place of immense interest in this moment, across the political spectrum,” Mamdani said. “And I knew that leaving that meeting, it was my responsibility to return with tangible proposals for what a partnership could look like in building exactly that in New York City.”
Details of Mamdani’s proposal to President Trump
Mamdani he’s been working with his team to figure out ways to bring federal partnership back to New York City to tackle housing needs on a large scale. The proposal they came up with would involving building the largest rail deck in the world over Amtrak’s Sunnyside Yard in Queens, and then building 12,000 units of housing on top of that.
Such a proposal would only be possible with federal partnership.
“And so we put forward a proposal to build more housing in a single project than the city has seen since 1973. More housing than you would get combining Hudson Yards and Battery Park City together. And not just housing, but also parks, also child care, also hospitals – an entire new neighborhood,” Mamdani said.
The mayor said Mr. Trump “was interested in this proposal and I anticipate it will be the subject of conversations to continue.”
I had a productive meeting with President Trump this afternoon.
I’m looking forward to building more housing in New York City. pic.twitter.com/XnPbt0KXYU
— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) February 26, 2026
Mamdani said his proposal includes creating the largest rail deck in the world.
“It is going to be a long process,” Mamdani said. “The reason to focus on this one specifically is in a city where we know that land is so precious and so finite, here lies an opportunity to create more of it, by creating the largest rail deck the world has ever seen. And then on top of that rail deck, building more housing than we’ve seen since the construction of co-op houses and Co-op City.”
Mamdani said he anticipates it “won’t be the last” meeting on the topic he’ll have with the president.
On the ICE raids
The mayor said the two also discussed the detention of Columbia University student Ellie Aghayeva.
“I shared my concerns as part of my longstanding belief that ICE raids are not only cruel, they also do nothing to advance the cause of public safety, and I care very deeply about public safety in our city,” Mamdani said. “I shared with the president that I thought that these continued detentions, as well as cases of those who are out of detention but face the prospect of having to be forced back into detention, do nothing to advance that cause, and I asked for those cases to be dropped.”