Mayor Zohran Mamdani is right about the lack of decent, affordable housing in the city, but he\u2019s worse than clueless about solutions.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the take-away from the housing plan he dropped<\/a> Tuesday.<\/p>\n Hizzoner blames Gotham\u2019s housing woes on greedy landlords, so his \u201csolution\u201d is to hand as much ownership as possible<\/a> to government and community groups.<\/p>\n Hello? Try to find a single New York City Housing Authority tenant who likes having government as their landlord \u2014 and waiting months or years for, say, an elevator to get fixed.<\/p>\n Yet Mamdani plans to build and preserve 400,000 \u201caffordable homes\u201d over the next decade, at a whopping cost of $22 billion \u2014 with many run by nonprofit groups or the city itself.<\/p>\n This guarantees disaster.<\/p>\n \t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPost Editorial Board<\/p>\n The mayor clearly knows NYCHA is dysfunctional<\/a> but blames President Ronald Reagan for launching an era of funding \u201ccuts\u201d for public housing.<\/p>\n Sorry: Reagan shelled out $1.1 billion for day-to-day operations of public authorities in 1983; by 2023, Washington spent $5.1 billion \u2014 a five-fold spike (far above inflation).<\/p>\n Meanwhile, much of Mamdani\u2019s plan is more of a jobs program: He wants all construction work here to pay combined wages and benefits of at least $40 an hour and to \u201cexpand project labor agreements\u201d (effectively, union-dictated terms) for new developments.<\/p>\n Great: So the city will get the fewest number of homes built for every dollar spent.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tGet opinions and commentary from our columnists\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter!\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n He also vows to crack down on landlord violations, which is OK \u2014 except that the overwhelming number of serious violations are in largely rent-stabilized buildings, where rental incomes barely cover costs.<\/p>\n The mayor\u2019s rent freeze will make that worse \u2014 and any new owner (public, private or nonprofit) will face the same grim math.<\/p>\n Indeed, thousands of such buildings now face foreclosure, with more and more landlords behind on their mortgages.<\/p>\n How does Mamdani expect them to make repairs?<\/p>\n No, all this is simply an excuse for expropriation: \u201cWe will take aggressive legal action to remove negligent owners and property managers,\u201d the mayor brags, and \u201cwill work to transfer ownership to responsible stewards,\u201d including \u201ccommunity land trusts, nonprofits or even the tenants themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n