And then there’s Mamdani
Mamdani’s plan is to have DCWP [Department of Consumer and Worker Protection] work with the City Council on new legislation that would stipulate landlords could require either a credit check — paid for by the landlord or broker — or proof that an applicant’s income meets the common 40-times-the-rent standard, but not both. …
The 68-page report laid out an ambitious slate of tenant-focused proposals, including legally recognizing tenant unions, directing HPD to investigate every heat complaint citywide and requiring landlords to disclose any AI-generated or digitally altered images and videos in rental listings so applicants are not misled by doctored apartments.
The report’s ideas came from “Rental Ripoff Hearings” where 2,300 of tenants across the five boroughs detailed housing conditions, fees and landlord practices they wanted City Hall to change.
The idea, as many people have said, is to reach the endpoint of city confiscation of these rental properties. Freeze rents on rent-stabilized apartment and make it almost impossible for landlords to get the money to pay for repairs and all the rest, and then as landlords pull out of the business entirely the city can take over. There seems to be little to no public acknowledgement by the present city administration that landlords are not money fountains, but that the rental business is subject to market forces and landlords have to make money in order to keep apartments in working order.
Oh, and Mamdani has some other plans of the more international variety:
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) says he is reviewing whether his administration could arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his anticipated visit to the city for the U.N. General Assembly this fall.
The mayor made these comments an interview with Lulu Garcia-Navarro on Saturday episode of The New York Times’ “The Interview” podcast.
“I believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu belongs in The Hague,” Mamdani said. “He’s a war criminal who has been charged by the International Criminal Court, and what you will find is that is an opinion that is held by many, purely because of what his actions have wrought over these past many years.”
No surprise there.
“the rental business is subject to market forces and landlords have to make money in order to keep apartments in working order.”
Governments are not subject to the need “to make money in order to keep apartments in working order”. NYC can borrow, raise taxes or as is too common, simply allow the apartments to deteriorate. Good luck getting anything out of a communist city hall.
How does the mayor of a city have authority to arrest a PM of another country?
Maybe Israel should consider bombing NYC.
Arrest Netanyahu, get a visit from the Mossad. Maybe not a bad outcome.
When the city takes over the apt, they will soon fall apart. And will be crammed with people.
Some village in Uganda has an opening for an idiot.
The ICC has no authority in the USA. Detaining Netanyahu would be an illegal kidnapping.
Mamdani is not an idiot. He is a very dangerous person. He knows what he wants and he knows what he’s doing and so far his he’s succeeded in his efforts.
Personally, I find him Satanic — a “Deceiver” in the Satanic mould — but that’s the Catholic in me talking.
When I look at him or hear him speak I detect a powerful odor of mendacity — of evil, pure and unadulterated. His smiling countenance makes me shudder. It is the rictus of evil.
New York City is going to Hell, literally. Or, rather, Mamdani is bringing Hell to New York City.
Rent control is an obvious taking even if the object wasn’t to take over properly.
Israel should tell the ICC to withdraw their illegal warrants or face the consequences. If they don’t, kill the criminals who issued them.
In a Uganda village he could play the idiot for a while, then they could introduce him to Mr. Crocodile.
@IO49: “…I detect a powerful odor of mendacity…”
and I could not help noticing how closely that matches “Mamdanicity”
Mendacity?
Really?
The destruction of NYC continues apace.
As does that of Seattle, etc., etc.
“When Socialists Tell You Who They Are, Believe Them”—https://www.zerohedge.com/political/when-socialists-tell-you-who-they-are-believe-them
It might be a good idea for someone – a good professional photographer comes to mind – to spend some time (and money) photographing NYC, both at distance and in detail, documenting what NYC is, today.
Because in ten years it will look like Detroit, and there will be some people, mostly “former NYC residents and ex-natives” who might like some well done photos of “what NYC was like before…”
I doubt there is a corrective measure sufficiently effective to correct the city’s path short of a national civil war, and even in that instance, one city is just one city; Americans, and their imitators, have spoken, and decline seems what they prefer.
Mamdani and Cea Weaver (his tenant advocate) have added an important twist to the confiscation of rental properties. The City itself will not acquire the property. Instead, an NGO (approved by the City, naturally) will acquire and administer the property.
This has two benefits over property owned by the City itself. The first benefit is that this will enrich Mamdani and his political friends. As we have seen with other NGOs, such as in LA and Seattle, little of the money acquired by the NGO actually makes it to the people the NGO is supposed to be helping.
The second benefit is for the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America). An NGO, unlike the City, may donate to political parties. Hence, rents will become a means to power the DSA and further their aims of taking over America.
Biggest question I’d not the a Muslim Marxist wants to arrest the head of state of Israel but will anyone go along with that order and carry it out. Certainly Mamdani won’t be the one to walk up to netanyahu and declare ” Your under arrest.”
Since Neo has the tag “Israel” on this thread: I know, it’s MSNOW, but it’s still an interesting article of the Israel fracture occurring in the Democratic party and the role of AIPAC, and of course Mamdani. I think it’s an analysis worth reading.
https://www.ms.now/news/aipac-democratic-primaries-2026-israel
My very first thought when I read that Mamdani planned to arrest Bibi was “yes!” I mean, knowing the Mossad, this could solve two problems at once: ignoring the International Court and having Mamdani disappear permanently. Then I started reading the comments, and the second and third comment both had the same thought. Yeah. Not a good idea. Mamdani had obviously not been watching the news the last time Mossad dropped in to Kampala, Uganda. Or maybe he wasn’t born yet.
When we met I was sure out to lunch
Now, my empty bank account tastes as sweet as the punch
–“Along Came Mamdani” (after “Along Came Mary”)
The greatest genocide in history was the Mandami genocide when the Muslims killed 400 million Hindu Jews and Buddhists in their conquest of India. When Mamdani sees a Jew or a Hindu or Buddhist, you could see the blood coming out of his gums with a thought of exterminating them he makes Sandy Cortez ‘s people seem like amateurs.
I’ve commented before about my experience serving a church that rented the parsonage and how much power and control *tenants* have.
If a tenant damages the property and/or does not pay rent there is not much a landlord can do. You can evict – but that takes time and basically means you stop losing money. You can sue – but that takes time and tons of money and often means you cut your losses. You get what you spend on the lawsuit.
My parents went through this when we lived overseas and we had tenants rent our home in the States. They won their lawsuit which meant they did not lose any more.
My mom went through this during the pandemic with one of her tenants.
What Mandani is proposing is basically theft.
To me, Mamdani looks evil. There is a smug look to him, that bodes ill for anyone he has power over.
He may very well destroy NYC.
Go ahead, go after Netanyahu!
Having an NGO.take over would deflect any blame away from the city when everything goes into the toilet.
Speaking of psychopaths with power and connections, Hunter Biden, bless him, would appear to be the g(r)ift that never stops g(r)ifting…
From the “This Cokehead’s for You” File:
“Hunter Biden calls Merrick Garland the ‘greatest mistake’ made under the Biden administration”—
https://www.foxnews.com/media/hunter-biden-calls-merrick-garland-greatest-mistake-biden-administration
‘Twould appear that THE MOST crooked AG in the history of the Republic just wasn’t bent enough for THE most crooked former First Son…
— Kate
And Mamdami knows it. So do his lawyers. This is cosplay to keep his base excited.
It’s the exact same thing we saw with a whole bunch of Dem State Attorney-Generals in which they promised to enforce all applicable State laws to ICE personnel. It’s an easy promise to keep. If an ICE agent robs a bank or commits rape or sets fire to a bystander’s house while on duty, yeah, he can be prosecuted just like any other felon.
What they wanted their base to think they meant to do was apply rules to stop ICE from deporting people. They can’t do anything about that, and they know it, but they were hoping their base voters would hear it and get excited. It’s all about the 2026 election. Keep the base ginned up with technically true statements that don’t mean what they hope the base voters think they mean.
Mamdami can’t touch Netanyahu. But he’s hoping to make his base more excited, esp. since the downside of his policies are already starting to bite.
— SHIREHOME
It wouldn’t get that far, MOSSAD would not need to get involved. It’s hard for me to imagine there are enough NYPD personnel stupid enough to obey if Mamdami was foolish enough to actually try it (though he might have some put on a show of it). If they did, Netanyahu’s Israeli and American Federal security would stop them. They would use lethal force if need by on the idiot cops, but more likely they idiot cops would be arrested and charged with various Federal crimes and end up looking like total idiots.
As I said, I could maybe imagine Mamdami sending some police to ‘serve a warrant’ that won’t be permitted, and then saying, “I really tried! But the Trump’s thugs stopped us!”
Cosplay again.
I suspect since UN “diplomats” routinely flout the law, NYPD probably knows more about diplomatic immunity than mayor poindexter does.
As many here have noted, Mamdani looks evil.
I thought he was an only son. Sooo … I looked it up.
He’s an only child!ll
Which is not an excuse, but it adds to my understanding.
And hey: he could be Obama’s only son!
IYKWIM.
Just did a cursory search; I queried “where in the world has rent control led to an increase in the number of apartments available?
Surprise surprise, NOWHERE !!
And then I tried individual nations like Finland, Sweden, Germany, Holland, Spain , England, etc.
Again; rent control never resulted in more apartments available.
Price controls on anything always produce the same result; higher prices and a decrease in supply.
What a surprise.
by the way, Jersey City, NJ has seen an decrease in rents as a result of a building boom over the last few years. Again, a greater supply has led to a reduction in rents.
Mamdani, Cea Weaver, &c. Ordure and vomit all of them.
For those who think the Mossad would take care of things if Mamdami arrested Netanyahu: Israel has its own “deep state” issues, and there is a lot of Israeli Deep Staters with Netanyahu Derangement Syndrome, including in the Mossad.
Not unrelated: I have a friend in Israel who I have know for forty years. He suffers from NDS badly. When I asked him, after 10/7 what did he suggest the Prime Minister do in response to the attack, he didn’t have an answer. All he knew was that whatever Bibi and the Right coalition did, it was WRONG.
With “the base” riled up, though, Mamdani WILL get the results he wants:
Wide-ranging, out-of-control pogroms.
(For all the right reasons, of course—moral, ethical, humane…a Trifecta!)
Just what the spin-doctor ordered…
Smash the Jewish State!
Terrify da Jews, or at least make their lives as uncomfortable—as miserable—as possible… Hey, maybe the vermin’ll move out!
(Which will ALSO! help to destroy the city!!!)
+Bonus—Brendan O’Neill:
“It is not ‘Islamophobic’ to stand up for Jews and Western civilisation”—
https://www.spiked-online.com/2026/07/17/it-is-not-islamophobic-to-stand-up-for-jews-and-western-civilisation/
H/T Powerline blog.
Opening graf:
The utility of prices set by vendors or negotiated between parties is that they economize on information. Disrupting price systems generates deadweight loss. Also, rental housing is a commodity whose supply is abnormally decentralized, whose utility is not (for a given household) given to unpredictable spikes, and for which variation in quality is much more driven by considerations of amenity than considerations of function. Price controls are not advisable or legitimate outside of the issue of natural monopolies or producers operating in monopoly situations.
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Last I checked, personal income per capita in the 19 counties around Manhattan was 37% above the national mean and exceeded among metropolitan regions only by that of greater Washington and that of San Francisco – San Jose – Oakland complex. It’s a prosperous area; one of the downsides of living around New York is that real estate is comparatively expensive; people still move there, work there, live there. Ya pays ya money and ya takes yer choice.
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It should be noted that building codes, fire codes, landmarking, and land use planning have some agreeable effects, but can be pursued past a point where costs exceed benefits; it is, of course, challenging to decide where that point of inflection is.
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If you are concerned about the material well-being of impecunious people, cash transfers allow a particular household to allocate income according to its own utility function. Transfers are problematic only when they generate perverse incentives (as AFDC did) or when a particular household has criminal tastes (e.g. street drugs). The thing is, we already have Social Security, unemployment compensation, SSI, workman’s compensation, veterans’ benefits, disaster relief, and the Earned Income Tax Credit. We can make some salutary amendments to these programs, but these are properly undertaken by the federal government with addenda implemented by state governments. The only services it makes sense to subsidize are medical care, long term care, schooling, legal services (in a minor way), and shipping-and-transportation (in a minor way). The New York City government has almost nothing to do here. They could work to reduce environmental phenomena which distort and disfigure the lives of the impecunious (e.g. street crime and school disorder), but you know that Mamdani and Cea Weaver don’t give a rip about that.
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What New York City would actually benefit from is (1) a comprehensive review of the utility of items in the building code, fire code, and land use plans; (2) substantive and procedural amendments to land use law which allow free development of certain housing types in designated areas – halfway houses, group homes, flop houses, SRO hotels, boarding houses, apartments with shared kitchens, &c; (3) declaring in such areas that certain low priority provisions in the building codes and land use plans are not in force; (4) sealed bid auctions to liquidate the public housing stock in and around the five boroughs (for which bids of a negative value should be accepted); (5) a multi-stage program to dismantle the rent-control regime and have a fully free-market in rental housing; (6) substantive and procedural amendments in New York law which allow evictions to be implemented with dispatch (70 days stem to stern); (7) reducing the levy rate on assessed valuation to 0% in the most impecunious census tracts of the city and to 1/2 a standard rate in the next-most-impecunious; (8) an inter-state compact between New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut in which they agree to eschew the delineation of greenbelts and debar their localities from so doing; (9) restricting the applicability of anti discrimination law to the public sector, private natural monopolies, the medical sector, labor unions and collective bargaining agreements, shipping services, and businesses which produce services specifically for travelers (e.g. gas stations, the Auto Club, and hotels); (10) extending the applicability of property taxes to all real estate in a jurisdiction, with the state government paying the taxes levied on federal and state property, government corporations paying out of their revenue stream, and the state government re-imbursing in full philanthropic agencies for their property tax payments (club service providers excepted).
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A program to dismantle rent-control would include the following: (a) making controls inapplicable to units made available de novo past a certain date; (b) permitting annual rent increases at a rate pari-passu with the increase in nominal personal income per capita in the 19 counties around Manhattan; (c) requiring the landlord’s permission to sublet; (d) limiting succession to a rent controlled unit to a spouse who has resided there for a certain run of time and to a disabled child or ward who has resided there for a certain run of time; (e) defining any unit vacated by death or vacated by a voluntary departure to be free of controls; (f) providing in law for a landlord to make a registered purchase of a tenant’s right to a controlled rent by paying him a negotiated lump sum and in so doing to make the unit free of controls; (g) providing in law for a landlord to make a bloc purchase of the rights of all the tenants in a given building, with each tenant due a share of the bloc offer which was a function of the square footage of his unit and his years of residency, with side payments to any tenant debarred, and with the consent of 3/4 of the tenants necessary to implement.
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Mamdani and Weaver would never pursue any of these measures and you can wager Gov. Business-as-Usual Hochul would not either.
@ Yukon > “Hence, rents will become a means to power the DSA and further their aims of taking over America.”
Excellent point.
@ HC68 > “Keep the base ginned up with technically true statements that don’t mean what they hope the base voters think they mean.”
A common tool in their portfolio of propaganda propagation.
I would love to see Zohran Mamdani’s social workers go up against Netanyahu’s security detail.
Rent control is unconstitutional. Period. Don’t “dismantle” it. Outlaw it.