Stop Red-Baiting Zohran Mamdani on Housing

Since democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani won New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary in late June, Fox News has predictably sounded the alarm with heavy doses of red-baiting. For example, politics reporter Alec Schemnel reported on the network’s digital news site in early July the discovery of evidence that claims of Mamdani being a communist “may not be as unfounded as Mamdani claims.” Schemmel wrote that Mamdani was “garnering backlash for previous comments he has made espousing language steeped in radical socialist and communist ideology.”

Schemmel related to readers his titillating discoveries about Mamdani’s communist beliefs: a 2021 video of Mamdani calling for leftists to be uncompromising in pursuit of “seizing the means of production;” a 2020 social media post where Mamdani called for seizing private luxury housing as residences for the homeless during the Covid-19 pandemic; a 2021 speech before The Gravel Institute where Mamdani called for luxury housing to be converted into “communal style living.”

It is on the subject of housing policy where Schemmel concentrated nearly all his effort to prove Mamdani’s commitment to “radical socialist and communist ideology.” He summarized Mamdani’s housing policy as an effort to move “toward the full de-commodification of housing,” a future where housing access is not conditioned by ability to pay but where the government guarantees “high quality housing to all as a human right.”

Mamdani made the above quotations in his capacity as a private left-wing activist; Schemmel was relatively reticent in relating the actual housing policy proposals Mamdani has advanced in his quest to become New York City’s chief executive. Schemmel’s reticence to inform his readers about those proposals is understandable because doing so would complicate his efforts to portray Mamdani as the second coming of Stalin.

There is a very high risk that if Mamdani wins the mayorship, not only will Trump’s thugs try to sabotage his program but business leaders and rich investors will engage in capital flight, withdrawing their money from the city, destroying its credit rating and tax base.

For example, nowhere in his housing policy platform has Mamdani, contrary to Schemmel’s implication, called for “the full de-commodification of housing.” He has called for increased government spending on existing public housing stock, affordable housing, and social housing (a form of public housing) to exist alongside the private housing market. He has called for these policies because rents have skyrocketed in NYC—the Wall Street Journal reported in June that the average monthly rent for a 2 bedroom apartment in the city was $5,280.

Schemmel noted that Mamdani has stated his personal inspiration in the possibilities for social housing—and has specifically cited the model of government-backed social housing in Vienna, Austria as a proper example for a similar program in New York City. The Vienna social housing model has clearly been a success in providing safe, affordable housing with modern amenities for a significant portion of Vienna’s non-wealthy population. Schemmel seemed to subtly admit the success of the Vienna model for he did not try to argue that it had been unsuccessful. Instead, he only briefly referenced it, quoting Mamdani as having “conceded” that residents of such housing in Vienna “still pay part of their earnings in rent to cover operational costs and a sizable chunk of the [Vienna] population lives in private housing.”

In reality, nowhere has Mamdani or his co-thinkers denied that renters in Vienna’s social housing still pay a portion of their income in rent for that housing—or denied that such housing exists alongside a substantial private housing market. The point is that the rent for social housing is significantly lower than in Vienna’s private housing market and provides a significant percentage of the city’s working- and middle-class residents access to high quality housing.

Nearly half of Vienna’s housing is social housing: Half of that total is directly operated by the city government and the rest run by government regulated limited profit corporations. The successful social housing program is perhaps part of the reason why Vienna was named the world’s most livable city for the third consecutive year in 2024 by The Economist. The housing is often constructed in ways allowing residents easy walking access for such amenities as food, healthcare, and education. According to Vienna’s mayor, this massively government-subsidized housing program exists alongside a dynamic capitalist economy: Vienna, with its services and manufacturing industries, represents 25% of Austria’s overall Gross Domestic Product.

For another successful example of social housing—one that has provided affordable and safe housing to a modest but tangible number of working- and middle-class people—one does not have to go outside the United States. Alec Schemmel—like perhaps most Americans and even many New Yorkers—is probably not aware that New York State already has a successful social housing program, created—when American anti-communism was at its highest crest—by the Mitchell-Lama Act of the New York State legislature in 1955. The Mitchell-Lama Act is one of the main subjects of a book—Homes for Living: The Fight for Social Housing and a New American Commons—published earlier this year by Jonathan Tarleton, an urban planner and designer in addition to being a writer.

Tarleton notes how Mitchell-Lama, in the decades after its passage, “funded the construction of 140,000 apartments across 270 developments in New York City (and more across the state). Roughly half of those homes in the city take the form of what’s known as a limited equity co-op.” Limited equity co-ops under Mitchell-Lama receive substantial governmental subsidies. After buying a “share” in a co-op apartment, residents pay a monthly fee that covers the building’s mortgage, maintenance fees, and other costs, paying a monthly rate that is substantially below the average apartment rents in NYC.

Mamdani’s Prospects

There is a very high risk that if Mamdani wins the mayorship, not only will Trump’s thugs try to sabotage his program but business leaders and rich investors will engage in capital flight, withdrawing their money from the city, destroying its credit rating and tax base. This would severely limit Mamdani’s ability to fund his proposed welfare state expansion with regard to housing, transportation, government-run grocery stores, and other areas. New York’s business-friendly Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul is also legally empowered to veto Mamdani’s fiscal proposals. She has publicly endorsed Mamdani for mayor but likely had major reservations in doing so as she has previously vigorously denounced Mamdani’s proposals for tax increases and government borrowing.

There is immense pressure on Mamdani to heavily dilute his program. Social movements rooted in ordinary people will have to keep up constant pressure on him to keep his campaign promises.

Correction: A previous version of this article referred to Jonathan Tarleton as the editor of the radical left NYC newspaper The Indypendent. He is not, and the article has been edited to reflect this.