Zohran Mamdani’s War on Private Property

New York City is launching an all-out war on property rights under the leadership of new Socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani. History suggests it won’t end well.

Mamdani’s chief lieutenant in “decommodifying” private property is Cea Weaver, who serves as his Director of the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants and now wields direct power over New York City’s housing market. Weaver, a veteran tenant activist, has pledged to dramatically expand rent control, more tightly regulate landlords, and ultimately erode private ownership of housing.

As AMAC Newsline previously reported, Weaver has notably called for treating private property as a “collective good,” stated her desire to “impoverish the *white* middle class,” and described homeownership as “a weapon of white supremacy.” She has also advocated for a “universal right to housing” and the creation of a rental market that is “entirely financed by the government.”

But Weaver’s crowning achievement (at least in her own eyes) was helping shape and pass the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019, a radical overhaul of the city’s housing regulations. At the time, Weaver was the statewide coordinator for Housing Justice for All, a left-wing activist group that boasted about “closing landlord loopholes.”

In reality, the 2019 law eliminated nearly every remaining way rents could stabilize and adjust to market forces, exacerbating the city’s housing shortage. It abolished vacancy increases, preventing rents from rising even after tenants moved out, and locked in so-called “preferential rents,” turning temporary discounts into permanent price ceilings regardless of inflation or rising costs.

At the same time, it strictly limited what landlords could recover through rent to pay for repairs and improvements. Landlords remained responsible for maintenance and upgrades, but without a viable way to pay for it.

Housing Justice for All touts these developments as an expansion of “tenants’ rights.” But when owners cannot raise rents to account for rising costs, they respond the only way they can: by minimizing expenses. Buildings deteriorate because regulation makes upkeep financially impossible.

Meanwhile, socialists like Weaver and Mamdani point to the deterioration that their own policies caused as evidence of market failure.

The consequences of the 2019 legislation are impossible to miss. A 29-unit rent-stabilized building in East Harlem sold in early 2025 for just $285,000 – a 97 percent drop from its 2016 purchase price – after rent controls and regulatory constraints rendered it financially untenable.

Because nearly half of New York City’s apartments fall under rent stabilization policies, the effects extend far beyond isolated cases.

As the Wall Street Journal has reported, building values have plummeted and refinancing has grown increasingly difficult following the 2019 legislation. Signature Bank, which had heavy exposure to rent-stabilized multifamily properties, collapsed in 2023 after depositors lost confidence. The FDIC struggled to unload the mortgages and ultimately transferred management of many properties to nonprofit groups backed by public pension funds – exactly the type of result Weaver hoped for all along.

Other lenders soon followed. Flagstar Bank narrowly avoided a similar fate after receiving a private capital infusion, but has since reported late payments on more than $2 billion in rent-stabilized loans on multifamily units.

Pinnacle Group, one of Flagstar’s largest borrowers and among the city’s biggest owners of rent-stabilized housing, filed for bankruptcy after capped rents failed to keep pace with rising expenses and maturing debt. A private buyer stepped forward to purchase the buildings and resume operations, but the Mamdani administration intervened in the bankruptcy to oppose the sale.

In court, city attorneys argued that rent restrictions would make it economically impossible for any private buyer to maintain the properties. The Mamdani administration thus conceded on the record that its own regulatory regime renders private ownership unviable.

In short, the 2019 Housing Stability Act made private ownership of rental properties financially untenable by design – and now Weaver and Mamdani want to double down on it. The idea is to wage regulatory war on landlords, making it impossible for them to turn a profit, allow properties to become dilapidated, and then use that as an excuse to assert government control over the city’s housing supply. Mamdani is intentionally creating slums to manufacture a crisis that justifies his communist fantasies.

The late Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck, who spent decades studying the failures of expansive welfare systems, once observed that rent control “appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city—except for bombing.”

In a functioning housing market, price performs a task no regulator can replicate. It rations the supply of apartments to those who value them most, while signaling where investment, maintenance, and construction should occur. A binding rent ceiling disables both market functions at once. Demand rises, supply contracts, and shortages appear.

Unable to use price to balance risk, cost, or demand, landlords turn to non-price criteria instead. Screening intensifies. Preference shifts toward tenants perceived as cheaper to maintain or less likely to move. Informal favoritism and, at times, under-the-table arrangements emerge. Housing continues to be allocated—but no longer through open bidding or transparent prices.

The distributional effects follow predictably. Incumbent tenants are insulated from the market. New entrants face higher non-price barriers and fewer options. Young people and lower-income households struggle to find housing more than those who can afford to buy.

New York is now in new territory. Mamdani and Weaver seek not just to regulate private property, but to eradicate it. As they strip property owners of the ability to maintain their buildings and then block private rescue, they will blame the resulting decay on the failures of the free market. But it will ultimately be just the latest entry on the long list of suffering wrought on everyday people by failed socialist policies.

Sarah Katherine Sisk is a proud Hillsdale College alumna and a master’s student in economics at George Mason University. You can follow her on X @SKSisk76.