Nonprofit groups were crucial in the Democratic Socialist-led coalition that fueled the rise of Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani \u2014 and this week his City Council allies will start to repay the favor.<\/p>\n
The council is poised to vote on the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act<\/a>, a\u00a0bill\u00a0that would favor city-approved (read: politically connected) nonprofits over private buyers when certain residential buildings go up for sale.<\/p>\n Nonprofit service providers, or NGOs, employ an estimated\u00a0662,000 workers\u00a0in New York City, including some\u00a080,000\u00a0in social-services jobs.<\/p>\n The city spent\u00a0$15.6 billion\u00a0on human-services contracts, most paid to NGOs, in the last fiscal year. Many of these groups depend almost entirely on city contracts.<\/p>\n As my colleague Stephen Eide recently\u00a0pointed out, the NGO sector on average offers lower pay than its private or public counterparts, but it attracts young, true-believer types motivated by leftist ideology \u2014 in other words, Mamdani\u2019s core voters.<\/p>\n Cutting checks to nonprofits also avoids saddling the city with the decades of generous pensions and benefit obligations that accompany traditional public employment.<\/p>\n So, no surprise, nonprofit headcount has expanded dramatically over the past two decades.<\/p>\n The growing number of people employed in this low-paid sector probably helped fuel the appeal of Mamdani\u2019s proposals to freeze rents and offer fare-free buses and no-cost childcare.<\/p>\n Yet the city extends little performance oversight over these groups, and doesn\u2019t require them to achieve tangible improvements, like measurably reducing homelessness. \u00a0<\/p>\n That means nonprofits operate with less public scrutiny and accountability than the traditional public workforce, while enjoying a freer hand to engage in activism \u2014 like pushing for \u201ccommunity-led\u201d housing ownership.<\/p>\n Nonprofit advocates claim handing buildings to nonprofits<\/a> will lead to more \u201cpreserved\u201d affordable housing.<\/p>\n In practice, such preservation often depends on\u00a0public subsidy programs\u00a0\u2014 meaning the taxpayer is picking up the tab<\/a> for these units and their tenants.<\/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 Resources have to come from\u00a0somewhere, no matter who owns the buildings.<\/p>\n For all the superficially high-minded talk about community ownership and empowerment, COPA offers a powerful vehicle for political patronage.<\/p>\n Its unstated purpose is to take opportunities from the private sector \u2014 including mom-and-pop landlords \u2014 and turn them into jobs for politically connected NGOs.<\/p>\n All while insidiously undermining private property rights, a socialist dream.<\/p>\n Since 2019, New York\u2019s severe rent-stabilization regime has made it impossible for landlords to raise rents enough to cover mounting\u00a0operating\u00a0and maintenance costs<\/a>.<\/p>\n Thousands of regulated apartments \u2014 particularly in 100% stabilized buildings \u2014 are already in deep\u00a0financial distress<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0deteriorating physically.<\/p>\n Add higher interest rates and the prospect of Mamdani\u2019s rent freeze, and these buildings will take on water even faster.<\/p>\n Many owners are\u00a0trying\u00a0to get out<\/a> before they go under.<\/p>\n When they do, COPA will funnel their properties to nonprofits at a discount, as delays, legal compliance costs, and other transaction frictions imposed on market buyers dampen demand and depress sale prices.<\/p>\n If rent regulations push buildings into insolvency, Albany and City Hall will find it politically expedient to bail out these \u201cvirtuous\u201d nonprofits \u2014 certainly far easier to do so than to aid their\u00a0long-suffering\u00a0private counterparts<\/a>.<\/p>\n After all, New York\u2019s far-left leaders can count on NGO employees\u2019 votes.<\/p>\n All of this will translate into jobs in housing nonprofits for Mamdani\u2019s downwardly-mobile, college-educated base.<\/p>\n Unsurprisingly, Mamdani\u2019s\u00a0transition committees\u00a0are stacked with nonprofit-sector leaders.<\/p>\n Many of them worked for Mamdani ally Bill de Blasio, who more than any other mayor specialized in growing the city government without much to show for it.<\/p>\n De Blasio, however, inherited a strong economy: He could afford to expand the public payroll by 35,000 employees and bloat the budget by\u00a0$25 billion.<\/p>\n