Mamdani has also promised to freeze rent prices and open city-owned grocery stores.
Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani defied expectations on Tuesday night to upset former Governor Andrew M. Cuomo in the Democratic primary for the New York City mayoral race, thanks in part to his promise to give away a lot of free stuff.
The self-described democratic socialist is now the favorite to beat incumbent New York City Mayor Eric Adams in the general election in November. Promising rent freezes on regulated units, among other measures, Mamdani has taken aim at the high cost of living in New York City and promised to lift up the city’s working class.
“We have won because New Yorkers have stood up for a city they can afford,” he said. “A city where they can do more than just struggle. One where those who toil in the night can enjoy the fruits of their labor in the day.”
All New Yorkers can get behind a lower cost of living — but are Mamdani’s ideas practical?
And just how much would they cost?
The answer, it turns out, is a lot.
Mamdani’s own estimate is that the city would have to raise $10 billion annually in new revenue — mostly through higher taxes on businesses and the wealthy — to fund his expansive socialist agenda.
Here’s a look at four of Mamdani’s policy proposals and what they would do to the City of New York.
‘Freeze the Rent’
The young socialist found his winning mantra early on the campaign trail: “Freeze the rent.”
Responding to skyrocketing living expenses and the cutthroat rental market in New York, Mamdani has promised to immediately freeze rent prices for all stabilized tenants and “use every available resource to build the housing New Yorkers need and bring down the rent.”
Mamdani has also pledged to invest $70 billion in publicly subsidized housing over the next ten years and to open up public land for housing development.
But, as Ken Girardin of the Manhattan Institute writes, freezing the rent on regulated units would do nothing for the city’s housing supply shortage.
Thousands of rent-stabilized units are currently sitting vacant because the law doesn’t let their owners raise rents enough to recoup the costs of improvements.
Freeze rents, and even more will follow — idled apartments that aren’t available to anyone, at any price.
And Mamdani’s freeze would bring poorer living conditions for rent-stabilized tenants.
Owners are already struggling to cover operating costs that rise far faster than allowable rents, so a freeze would immediately limit what they can spend on maintenance or improvements. More buildings would fall into disrepair sooner.
New Yorkers saw this play out in the 1970s, CEO of the New York Apartment Association Kenny Burgos writes, when years of capped rents, combined with inflation, led to buildings with revenue that didn’t cover operating expenses. The city’s budget suffered, and the government fell into bankruptcy.
Government-Run Grocery Stores
Mamdani has promised to create a network of city-owned grocery stores with the goal of lowering prices by reducing overhead. He estimates that the first five stores would cost a total of $60 million to build.
“They will buy and sell at wholesale prices, centralize warehousing and distribution, and partner with local neighborhoods on products and sourcing,” Mamdani’s campaign website says.
But local store owners are complaining that the Soviet-style scheme would ultimately fail to deliver cheaper goods while leading to a decline in quality and forcing competing private businesses to close down.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson announced a similar proposal in 2023 to open city-run grocery stores in underserved “food desert” neighborhoods. After pushback from critics, he backed off the idea, but a handful of smaller areas in the U.S. have set up similar stores with negative or little profit.
Publicly Funded Gender-Transition Treatments for Minors
Mamdani has suggested investing $65 million in public health care to provide gender-transition treatments to New Yorkers, both youth and adults. If elected, his administration will direct $57 million to public hospitals, community clinics, federally qualified health centers, and nonprofits that provide so-called gender-affirming care, according to his campaign website.
He has also vowed to create a new, $87 million office dedicated to the LGBT community and to hold accountable private hospital systems that deny gender-affirming care, which he says is in violation of the New York State constitution and multiple state and city laws.
A recently published study by the Department of Health and Human Services found that the available studies on “gender-affirming care” for minors are poorly conducted and there isn’t evidence to show that such interventions effectively treat gender dysphoria or improve mental health. The study also concluded that much of the existing literature ignores the growing body of evidence that gender-transition treatments, such as puberty blockers, hormone injections, and surgeries, leave young people with lifelong sexual dysfunction, lowered bone density, and nerve disorders, among other issues.
Free Child Care and Bus Service
In his long list of freebies, Mamdani has promised to eliminate bus fares in the city and offer free child care for every New Yorker between the age of six weeks to five years, in addition to bringing wages for child care workers to match the starting rate of public school teachers.
“The lack of universal child care has cost our city’s economy more than $20 billion in the last few years alone,” Mamdani said in a campaign video.
He has estimated that his free child care program will cost the city up to $5 billion, but Liena Zagare of the Manhattan Institute writes that it will likely cost more. Free bus fares, meanwhile, will cost as much as another billion and threaten to turn the public transit system into a mobile homeless shelter and hub for violence.