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Does Zohran Mamdani represent the second coming of Stalin for New York City? All the red-baiting attacks on him cannot detract from the sensibleness of his call for social 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.
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.
From Tacoma, Washington to Kansas City, Missouri, people power is key to creating communities where working people can live.
In the United States, the housing situation is abysmal and getting worse.
A few statewide and local statistics are emblematic of a broader national problem. For example, in Washington state, according to the New York Times, rental housing prices rose by 43% from 2001 to 2023 while, during the same time period, the income of state renters grew by only 26%. Meanwhile in New York City, The Wall Street Journal reported last month that the average price of a two-bedroom apartment was $5,560. The Journal headline of the article in which that statistic was cited nicely embodied a rising feeling among ordinary New York City residents: “New York’s Housing Crisis Is So Bad That a Socialist is Poised to Become Mayor,” referring of course to Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist who is the frontrunner to win the city’s mayoral election in November. Rates of homelessness, evictions, and foreclosures remain high around the country.
In the face of this ever growing crisis, mainstream politicians—Democrats and Republicans—have virtually nothing useful to say. They’ve doubled down on existing national, state, and local government subsidies for affordable housing—which do not even remotely begin to produce the supply of housing at levels needed—while insisting that the unregulated free market in housing (increasingly controlled by an ever smaller number of corporations) operate as much as possible.
Tacoma, Washington is a city of about 222,000, 35 miles southwest of Seattle. It is largely a working class town; the Tacoma News Tribune recently reported that 77% of the jobs within it “don’t pay enough for a single worker to be able to comfortably afford housing on their own.” In the whole of Pierce County (of which Tacoma is the county seat), 37% of renters spend more than 30% of their income on housing.
A group which has attempted to alleviate this situation, with modest but tangible success, is Tacoma For All (T4A), a group founded by United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 367 and the Tacoma Democratic Socialists of America. T4A’s most noticeable achievement has been launching and successfully influencing the passage of Initiative 1 by Tacoma voters in November 2023, securing relatively strong eviction protections for the city’s renters and a cap on rent increases.
In order to assist in meeting the crisis of affordable housing, KC Tenants and T4A have both made a strong push for government-funded social housing within their particular locales.
However, the most impressive achievement of T4A has been its building of an organization, democratically run by its dues-paying members, devoted to educating ordinary people about their legal rights as tenants and to acting in solidarity to protect the rights of other tenants against the depredations of corporate landlords. The organization regularly sends teams of organizers to knock on doors of Tacoma apartment buildings, asking tenants about any issues they might be having with landlords, and offering the organization’s assistance and solidarity in addressing those issues. T4A has established Tacoma Tenant Legal Aid to help tenants pursue their rights. The organization has achieved real successes in helping Tacoma residents stay in their homes
Another successful grassroots organization is KC Tenants in Kansas City, Missouri. It is profiled in Jonathan Tarleton’s 2025 book Homes for Living: The Fight for Social Housing and a New American Commons. While the group is anti-capitalist, KC Tenants foremost approach to tenants is not to preach socialism but to help them navigate bread-and-butter housing issues. The presentation of their critique of racial capitalism or lessons on the virtues of social housing comes later in the process of integrating tenants into their organization. As KC Tenants organizer Tara Raghuveer told Tarleton, the group’s initial approach is to simply ask tenants, “How the fuck are you?...We knock [on] doors asking people how they’re living now, which by itself is a very politicizing line of questioning because the people are not living good.”
For tenants suffering from serious psychological trauma and anger because of housing issues, the approach of KC Tenants organizers—the message that people are here to offer assistance to them without judgement and structures for solidarity with other people going through similar issues—can be exhilarating, even liberating. Similar feelings have also been felt by KC Tenants professional organizers. One of them is Magda Werkmeister, who at one point left Kansas City for back East to complete a college degree but eventually returned to continue working with KC Tenants. She told Tarleton that she returned to the group because “I was missing out on something that makes life more joyous, and I think that was just the sense of community… and these people that you are able to care about and [who] care about you.”
In order to assist in meeting the crisis of affordable housing, KC Tenants and T4A have both made a strong push for government-funded social housing within their particular locales. Other municipalities have followed suit: For example, Seattle voters approved funding for a city social housing developer in February, and in May the Chicago City Council passed a Green Social Housing Ordinance.
Social housing is a form of public housing: It is meant to assist persons of a wide range of income levels (not merely low income) and utilize government subsidies to ensure the rents it charges are substantially below market rate. The most successful example of social housing in the world is found in Vienna, Austria. The success of Vienna’s social housing seemingly played a role in Economist Intelligence naming it in 2024 as the world’s most livable city.
It seems likely that Zohran Mamdani—who has cited the Vienna model of housing as a major influence—will have immense difficulties in implementing social housing in New York City, as well as his other proposals like free childcare and free bus service. These programs will require tax increases on the city’s businesses and wealthy as well as increases in New York City’s debt limit; both require the approval of New York’s business-friendly Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul and she is unlikely to accommodate Mamdani’s requests to any significant extent. Moreover, there is risk that city business leaders and the wealthy—fearful of the threat to their bottom line should Mamdani win election in November and try to implement his relatively mild democratic socialist program—will engage in capital flight, wrecking the city’s tax base.
Regardless of whether Mamdani is, somehow, able to resist the establishment pressure and implement major parts of his agenda—or whether that pressure forces him to sell out that agenda—it is obviously crucial that ordinary people and grassroots activists stick unflinchingly to core principles and relentlessly pressure politicians to follow them.
Homelessness is solvable in our lifetime if our country commits to ensuring that every person has a safe, affordable, dignified, and permanent place to call home.
In the largest eviction of a homeless encampment in recent history, around 100 unhoused people were recently forced to vacate Oregon’s Deschutes National Forest—or else face a $5,000 fine and up to one year in jail.
The forest was the last hope for the encampment’s residents, many of whom were living in broken down RVs and cars. Shelters in nearby Bend—where the average home price is nearly $800,000—are at capacity, and rent is increasingly unaffordable.
“There’s nowhere for us to go,” Chris Dake, an encampment resident who worked as a cashier and injured his knee, told The New York Times.
Today, a person who works full-time and earns a minimum wage cannot afford a safe place to live almost anywhere in the country.
This sentiment was echoed by unhoused people in Grants Pass, 200 miles south, where a similar fight unfolded. A year ago this June, in Grants Pass v. Johnson, the Supreme Court’s billionaire-backed justices ruled that local governments can criminalize people for sleeping outside, even if there’s no available shelter.
Nearly one year later, homelessness—and its criminalization—has only worsened.
Today, a person who works full-time and earns a minimum wage cannot afford a safe place to live almost anywhere in the country. The federal minimum wage has remained stagnant at $7.25 since 2009, and rent is now unaffordable for half of all tenants.
As a result, there are now over 770,000 people without housing nationwide—a record high. Many more are just one emergency away from joining them.
The Supreme Court’s abhorrent decision opened the door for cities to harass people for the “crime” of not having a place to live. Fines and arrests, in turn, make it more difficult to get out of poverty and into stable housing.
Since Grants Pass, around 150 cities have passed or strengthened “anti-camping” laws that fine, ticket, or jail people for living outdoors—including over two dozen cities and counties in California alone. A Florida law mandates that counties and municipalities ban sleeping or camping on public property. Due to a related crackdown, almost half of arrests in Miami Beach last year were of unhoused people.
Emboldened by Grants Pass, localities have ramped up the forced clearing of encampments—a practice known as “sweeps.”
While officials justify them for safety and sanitation reasons, sweeps harm people by severing their ties to case workers, medical care, and other vital services. In many cases, basic survival items are confiscated by authorities. Alongside being deadly, research confirms that sweeps are also costly and unproductive.
Punitive fines, arrests, and sweeps don’t address the root of the problem: the lack of permanent, affordable, and adequate housing.
President Donald Trump is only doubling down on failed housing policies. He ordered over 30 encampments in D.C. to be cleared based on a March executive order. And his budget request for 2026 would slash federal rental assistance for over 10 million Americans by a devastating 43% (all to fund tax breaks for billionaires and corporations.)
For too long, our government policies have allowed a basic necessity for survival to become commodified and controlled by corporations and billionaire investors. We must challenge this if we ever want to resolve homelessness.
Housing is a fundamental human right under international law that the U.S. must recognize. Homelessness is solvable in our lifetime if our country commits to ensuring that every person has a safe, affordable, dignified, and permanent place to call home.
As housing experts have long noted, governments should invest in proven and humane solutions like Housing First, which provides permanent housing without preconditions, coupled with supportive services.
Despite the obstacles, communities continue to fight back—including in Grants Pass, where disability rights advocates are challenging the city’s public camping restrictions. Others are forming tenant and homeless unions in their cities, organizing rent strikes, and pushing for publicly funded housing (or “social housing”) that’s permanently affordable and protected from the private market.
The Grants Pass decision may have opened the door to new cruelties, but local governments still have a choice to do what’s right. Now, more than ever, we must demand real housing solutions.