Mamdani Faces Refusal of Far-Left Activists To Allow Private Investment Needed To Repair City’s Public Housing

Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s comfort zone when it comes to housing policy and much else is demonizing private ownership and his predecessors. Hizzoner, while announcing his ambitious Block by Block housing program to address the city’s never-ending housing crisis — the same one Jeff Bezos in a CNBC interview recently attributed to government over-regulation — made sure to call out “landlords who neglect their tenants with impunity” and previous administrations whose “absence of good government created the conditions we now face.” Those conditions are worst, however, not in private buildings but in the city’s dilapidated public housing system, where mold, heat failures, leaks, and elevator outages are so common the city maintains a web site to provide daily updates about them. (On Wednesday alone, there were 17 elevators out.) If Mr. Mamdani is to fulfill his pledge to put right a public housing “legacy of neglect,” he will have to confront not the legacy of Ronald Reagan (whom he could not resist blaming) but today’s left-wing tenant organizers, intent on blocking the only reliable means to bring new funding to public housing, one that the Housing Authority itself is asking for — private investment. Mr. Mamdani on Tuesday pledged $5 billion in public funds for capital repairs to the nation’s largest public housing system—but that’s a drop in a leaky bucket compared to its $80 billion in deferred maintenance. To make up the difference, even the democratic socialist acknowledges he’ll have to turn to the private sector — through the New York state program called the Permanent Affordability Together Act (which he opposed as a state legislator). The law makes it possible for the New York City Housing Authority to turn to private developers to make the needed investments and even to manage the “projects” after doing the work. Last year alone, it brought in $1.6 billion for Housing Authority renovation projects. People walk through the Jacob Riis public housing unit at New York City. Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesYet Mr. Mamdani’s challenge lies in another of his “block by block” promises made in his Gowanus speech — “comprehensive renovations guided by resident input.”The problem for Mr. Mamdani is that residents, spooked by an even-more-radical left than his, is rejecting the private funding their developments so desperately need. Similar projects are going on by the hundreds across the country — but only in New York do tenants have to vote to approve private investment or management. In many projects to date, they are actually voting no. That’s thanks to the organizing of a group called the Justice for All/Save Section 9 Coalition which views any private investment — or worse still private management — as outright “privatization,” even though the Housing Authority would still own the buildings. (Section 9 is the status quo). It asserts that “directors of banks are poised to take control of properties” and has urged tenant rent strikes, which would further starve the city of funds. Memo to Mr. Mamdani: this group, prone to the same sort of rhetoric as his own, is winning tenant elections. Damage at a Bronx high-rise apartment building on October 1, 2025. Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesTo date, there have been nine such votes — and in four, at the Throggs Neck Houses Addition, Stanley Isaacs Houses, Coney Island Houses, and Jacob Riis Houses, tenants have opted against private investment or management. In four others, tenants voted for an option called the Preservation Trust — which keeps the Housing Authority, with a long track record of incompetence, as the property manager. In only one vote, at the Randall Avenue-Balcom Avenue Houses, did private money and management carry the day. Mr. Mamdani has already missed a chance to lobby for private funding. In March, tenants of the Stanley Isaacs Houses in Manhattan, which needs some $248 million in repairs, voted against its own tenant leadership to reject so-called privatization. Mr. Mamdani could have reassured tenants and backed the private investment he now acknowledges he needs — but he stayed away. That these big decisions about the future of New York public housing are in the hands of extremely small numbers of tenant voters. At the Isaacs Houses, the outcome was decided by just 525 votes, 309 of which backed the status quo. At the Hylan Houses, a vote to allow private funding but retain Housing Authority management drew just 176 total votes. Authority employees and their families, some of whom live in the projects themselves, can vote to keep their own jobs. A few votes matter. At Hylan, a first vote ended in a tie. The Housing Authority itself is desperate for the outside money. Its chief executive, Lisa Bova-Hiatt, enthused about the Hylan Houses vote that it showed “the residents of this development are ready for something new.” Many tenants elsewhere apparently are not. If Mr. Mamdani is going to get more than token repairs to the aging, dilapidated public housing system, he’s going to have to use his political capital in these tenant votes — and he’ll have to use it to oppose the far left. It will be a test of whether he’s actually pragmatic enough for that showdown. True pragmatism would mean endorsing a sign outside Housing Authority projects: “under new management.”

Mamdani Faces Refusal of Far-Left Activists To Allow Private Investment Needed To Repair City’s Public Housing

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