{"id":132166,"date":"2026-02-13T05:10:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T05:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/132166\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T05:10:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T05:10:11","slug":"new-york-city-mayor-mamdani-seeks-to-stop-aid-to-homeless-while-grandstanding-on-taxing-the-rich","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/132166\/","title":{"rendered":"New York City Mayor Mamdani seeks to stop aid to homeless while grandstanding on taxing the rich"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following his endorsement last week of New York\u2019s right-wing Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2014a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)\u2014took a major step on Wednesday toward halting the expansion of a critical rental voucher program for the city\u2019s poor. <\/p>\n

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks during a press conference, Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2026, in New York [AP Photo\/Yuki Iwamura]<\/p>\n

The move is part of an effort to close the city\u2019s budget deficit, which was revised down this week from $12.6 billion to $7 billion, in part due to a reassessment of revenue from Wall Street bonuses.<\/p>\n

In a reversal of a central campaign promise, the Mamdani administration has moved to block the expansion of CityFHEPS, a rental voucher program that currently supports roughly 140,000 of New York City\u2019s poorest residents. The program, aimed at preventing homelessness and eviction, was set to be expanded under legislation passed by the City Council in 2023 and upheld in court after legal challenges by Mamdani\u2019s predecessor, Eric Adams. <\/p>\n

Mamdani, who denounced Adams at the time for refusing to implement the law and pledged to \u201censure expansion proceeds as scheduled and per city law,\u201d is now requesting that the case be delayed in order to renegotiate the scope of the program. His administration is actively working to convince the Council to scale back or entirely halt the planned expansion.<\/p>\n

Roughly 47,000 additional households would become newly eligible for the vouchers under the expansion, but Mamdani and budget officials have claimed the cost\u2014projected at $17 billion over five years\u2014is \u201cunsustainable.\u201d At least 40,000 people are in limbo waiting for aid in the least affordable rental market in the United States. <\/p>\n

Mamdani\u2019s decision to try to block funding for the CityFHEPS program, a move applauded by the conservative \u201cfiscal watchdog\u201d Citizens Budget Commission, spells disaster for tens of thousands of working class families. <\/p>\n

This is the first open admission by the DSA mayor that his administration\u2019s priority is not meeting the urgent needs of the poor but balancing the budget in the interests of Wall Street. Far from a break with austerity, Mamdani is exposing himself as a conventional bourgeois politician.<\/p>\n

The housing situation for millions in New York City is not simply unaffordable\u2014It is desperate. Roughly 157,000 public school students, or about one in seven, are homeless. Another 300,000 people live in deteriorating public housing maintained by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA).<\/p>\n

As an article in the New York Times pointed out this week, Mamdani has so far failed in his attempts to regulate private landlords, including his campaign pledge to freeze rent hikes on rent-regulated buildings. <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Also on Wednesday, Mamdani appeared before a joint budget hearing of the New York State Legislature in Albany to request funds to help close the city\u2019s budget gap.<\/p>\n

This largely pro forma annual visit to the Democratic-controlled state legislature gave the city\u2019s pseudo-left mayor an opportunity to grandstand in support of his proposal for a 2 percent income tax on New Yorkers earning more than $1 million a year.<\/p>\n

It is widely understood that neither the governor nor the legislature will make the slightest move to tax the wealth of the ruling class. Every politician in the room, Mamdani above all, understood that the call to \u201ctax the rich\u201d was meant to paper over the austerity program the DSA mayor has begun to implement.<\/p>\n

Mamdani\u2019s comments were marked by a fawning obsequiousness toward Hochul: \u201cI am encouraged by the partnership we have built with Governor Hochul, and the results it is already yielding,\u201d apparently referring to the limited and provisional funding the governor has provided for Mamdani\u2019s pledge to establish city-sponsored daycare for two-year-olds, a program whose continuation after 2026 is entirely dependent on fluctuating state tax revenues.<\/p>\n

Mamdani has struck up an alliance with Hochul\u2014much as he did with Donald Trump in November\u2014in which all the advantages accrue to the right-wing governor, who has herself presented an austerity budget for the state. <\/p>\n

In an article published Tuesday, \u201cKathy Hochul Is a Good Problem for Zohran Mamdani to Have,\u201d Jacobin magazine, the unofficial organ of the DSA, does its best to cover for Mamdani and counter outrage over his endorsement of Hochul. <\/p>\n

The article reveals in passing that the alliance between Hochul and Mamdani was part of what were doubtless quid pro quo dealings, carried out with the connivance of the Democratic Party leadership. The relationship, Jacobin reported, grew \u201cout of talks between the two last summer and fall. Those talks and the friendly relationship that grew out of them resulted in\u00a0Hochul\u2019s endorsement\u00a0of Mamdani.\u201d<\/p>\n

The article argues that Mamdani\u2019s alliance with Hochul is a necessary evil and, indeed, proof of \u201csuccess.\u201d It claims that Mamdani\u2019s relationship with the right-wing governor is \u201ca partnership\u201d that is \u201cembedded in huge victories.\u201d Jacobin insists this is not \u201cselling out\u201d but \u201cwhat effectively wielding state power looks like.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even when acknowledging that the endorsement took place while Hochul was actively helping break the strike of 15,000 nurses<\/a>, Jacobin portrays this betrayal as a noble \u201cdilemma\u201d of \u201csocialist governance\u201d to secure supposedly \u201chistoric\u201d gains.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

In fact, Mamdani has no doubt played a key role in talks behind the scenes to shut down the nurses\u2019 strike, along with his Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice, Julie Su, formerly of the Biden administration. <\/p>\n

Within the past week, the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) shut down the strikes at two out of the three hospital systems where workers are striking, Mount Sinai and Montefiore. At New York\u2013Presbyterian, workers voted \u201cno\u201d on NYSNA\u2019s tentative agreement, a massive repudiation of the trade union apparatus. <\/p>\n

The article presents Mamdani\u2019s betrayals as a masterful piece of political maneuvering. Jacobin writes: \u201cSocialists in New York have long succeeded with an inside\/outside strategy, gaining state power while also organizing grassroots pressure. The Mamdani administration is a triumph of that strategy.\u201d<\/p>\n

What DSA \u201csuccess\u201d Jacobin is touting it never makes clear, but supposedly Mamdani is \u201cinside\u201d and has little choice but to endorse Hochul; his supporters on the \u201coutside\u201d can help him by pressuring Hochul to the left. This \u201cinside\/outside strategy\u201d is in fact a formula for shielding those \u201cinside\u201d from criticism and trapping those \u201coutside\u201d within the Democratic Party.<\/p>\n

Mamdani\u2019s austerity measures and his endorsement of Hochul\u2019s re-election bid have exposed him as an operative of the ruling elite.<\/p>\n

All of this has thrown the DSA into a crisis. In response to the Hochul endorsement, the New York City Democratic Socialists of America (NYC-DSA) released a statement cynically attempting to distance itself from the very mayor who is a member of its organization and for whom it campaigned. It reads in part:<\/p>\n

NYC-DSA does not believe that Governor Kathy Hochul has risen to meet this moment. \u2026 [W]ith fascism here, and ultra-wealthy hospital CEOs refusing fair pay and benefits for nurses amid a historic strike, New York cannot afford to let the Governor continue to protect billionaire donors at the expense of SNAP, Medicaid, truly universal childcare, and the enactment of the mayor\u2019s affordability agenda.<\/p>\n

The NYC-DSA and several other organizations, including United Auto Workers Region 9A, have organized a protest in Albany for February 25 designed to pressure Hochul to include progressive tax hikes in the final state budget. This is a desperate antic to hold on to the credibility of Mamdani and the DSA itself, predicated on the conception that, no matter what rotten alliances one of their own makes in office, popular pressure can still force concessions from the Democrats. <\/p>\n

In fact, these developments expose the real function of Mamdani and the DSA: to provide left cover for the Democratic Party, politically disarm the working class and impose the demands of Wall Street. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Following his endorsement last week of New York\u2019s right-wing Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul, New York City Mayor Zohran…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132167,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[34327,56556,2000,2907,52164,9,24,55,54,56,63,305,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-132166","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-budget-cuts","9":"tag-cityfheps","10":"tag-homelessness","11":"tag-housing","12":"tag-jacobin","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-city","15":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","16":"tag-new-york-city-news","17":"tag-ny","18":"tag-nyc","19":"tag-nycha","20":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}