{"id":250760,"date":"2026-06-01T12:35:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T12:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/250760\/"},"modified":"2026-06-01T12:35:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T12:35:08","slug":"hey-zohran-your-new-magic-housing-plan-has-been-failing-for-decades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/250760\/","title":{"rendered":"Hey, Zohran: Your ‘new’ magic housing plan has been failing for decades"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s \u201cBlock by Block\u201d <\/a>plan to build 200,000 subsidized apartments entails a lot of handwaving, magical thinking and reliance on \u201cresponsible stewards\u201d . . who have been failing to manage the real-estate portfolios they already have.<\/p>\n

In Mamdaniland, the problem with housing is all the owners who stubbornly insist on trying to make a profit \u2014 or just break even.<\/p>\n

If \u201ccommunity land trusts, nonprofits or even the tenants themselves\u201d control the city\u2019s housing stock<\/a>, these miracle-workers will \u201cexpand New Yorkers\u2019 access to safe, stable, and affordable homes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"NYCNYC Mayor Mamdani delivering remarks at the Africa Center\u2019s Annual Africa Day Celebration. Robert Miller for NY Post<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the magic of socialism!<\/p>\n

Problem is, programs that do all this are so old and tired<\/a> that Mamdani\u2019s Gen Z policy experts appear never to have heard of them, maybe because the experiments had already failed when they were building fantasy housing projects out of Legos.<\/p>\n

\t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPost Editorial Board<\/p>\n

A key element of Mamdani\u2019s plan involves seizing properties<\/a> from landlords whose buildings are in major disrepair \u2014 largely because they can\u2019t legally raise the rents to meet their rising costs \u2014 and giving those buildings to nonprofit community organizations or tenant co-ops.<\/p>\n

But Community Development Corporations, non-profit groups<\/a> that own and manage \u201cdeeply affordable\u201d apartments, have been around for decades, and are barely managing to keep themselves afloat as it is.<\/p>\n

CDCs operate more than 200,000 subsidized city housing units, and face the same problems as private landlords: rising costs (especially insurance), unsustainable debt, deferred maintenance and nonpaying tenants.<\/p>\n

Turns out that removing the \u201cprofit\u201d line from a balance sheet by getting rid of private ownership doesn\u2019t repeal the laws of math when costs run higher than income.<\/p>\n

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In the 1980s, many landlords walked away from buildings they couldn\u2019t pay for anymore; the Koch administration helped tenants turn their apartment houses into co-ops that got major tax benefits in exchange for remaining forever affordable.<\/p>\n

A significant number of these Housing Development Fund Corporation cooperatives are in perpetual crisis<\/a>. They lack the finances<\/a> to get bank loans, and the tenants often can\u2019t afford to cover the costs of major capital improvements like a new boiler or roof.<\/p>\n

So more than 20% of these HDFC co-ops are now at high risk for foreclosure.<\/p>\n

Distressed buildings across New York City have major issues that won\u2019t go away by shuffling the paperwork.<\/p>\n

Socialism is only magic in theory, and magical thinking always leads to disaster.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s \u201cBlock by Block\u201d plan to build 200,000 subsidized apartments entails a lot of handwaving, magical…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":250761,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[433,42273,25779,304,33624,2907,9,56,63,65,64,299,82],"class_list":["post-250760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-affordable-housing","tag-cea-weaver","tag-department-of-housing-preservation-and-development","tag-editorial","tag-hdfc","tag-housing","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-opinion","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250760","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=250760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250760\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}