Mayor Mamdani must have seen my social media posts because his new housing plan appears to take many of my ideas into account. For years I've been saying New York's affordability crisis isn't complicated: we don't have enough housing. Apparently City Hall finally agrees.
The headline is 200,000 new affordable housing units and another 200,000 preserved over the next decade. But the real story is how the administration plans to get there. Instead of relying entirely on government-built housing, the plan embraces rezonings, office conversions, transit-oriented development, mixed-income projects, accessory dwelling units, and redevelopment of underutilized public land.
Translation: build more housing.
In fact, buried beneath the political branding is a pretty remarkable admission. The administration acknowledges that decades of underbuilding have contributed to rising rents, displacement, and affordability challenges across the city.
Will there be more tenant protections? Absolutely. More enforcement against bad landlords? Definitely. But the surprising part is that the plan also recognizes that private developers, investors, and market-rate housing all have a role to play in solving the crisis.
I've spent years arguing that if New York wants lower housing costs, it needs more housing. It turns out the Mayor's office may have been following along after all. Either that, or great minds think alike.
