Can’t believe he’s dumping money into affordable housing instead of data centers and parking lots, smh some people really don’t know how to run a city
Once I met a billionaire. Big burley billionaire, crying. He says to me. Crying over my shoulder. Big fella, burley. He says. Crying. He says, sir! Sir! My dada center! These people won’t let me build my dada center!
He says. Crying. My dada center, with it, I could. But without it, I can’t, I really can’t. I could learn everything there’s to know about all of them. I could know how much of my future money they have and how to remove it. It’s mine! Give it to me! Crying! My dada! My dada center! Er er er er! Big big fella. Burly crying fella.
From the exact color of all their shirts, the foods they eat, the curvature and contours of all their sexual organ parts and the gas they purchase to ride to work. All of it should be in my dada center sir! But it’s not! They won’t let me build it he says.
So I made a deal with them. I talked with them and we made a deal. It’s so good we never seen a deal like this ever before in the entire human history. The deal. It’s an art if you didn’t know. I talked to them and the deal with them was very. Very nice deal. It allows them to not complain about the da da center. Isn’t that a good deal? And their women. Beautiful women. You can. Because you’re famous. You can just grab them by the pussy. And they let you do it when you’re famous. Ya no? Good good deal we made.
They have 60k+ apartments that are empty. How about we start there?
If you take things away from rich people by force (and by things I mean an empty apartment that serves no purpose other than to gain in value), those same rich people will levy armies against you to reclaim what they lost.
If you undermine what they have by building more, it’s harder for them to justify waging war with you as no capital theft has taken place. All that they might experience is a slight deflationary force that might encourage them to rent out what they have at at a fair market value in order to keep up with the newer alternatives
It’s not like that’s the only thing Mamdani’s admin does, but you had to spoil a good joke didn’t you.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/13/nyregion/mamdani-nyc-affordable-housing.html
New York City received more than seven million applications last year for about 10,000 affordable apartments. But despite the extraordinary demand, the units often remain empty for months as a plodding government bureaucracy selects potential tenants.
(…)
On Wednesday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration announced a host of changes designed to reduce the median amount of time these apartments remain empty to less than three months.
TBF this is not the 60k you’re refering to. There’s other articles taking the view of landlord associations and I must admit they make some sense even after discounting for bias.
But it’s a start.
So why are they empty? There’s got to be more to what your saying.
With rent control and new building standards its more economical to write them off as a loss for taxes than renovate. This is where its would be ideal to give tax breaks/looser rent control to make them habitable.
Its way more eco friendly to fix what we already have in place than build new. Not that I’m against building new but if we attacked on both fronts that would be 110k homes for people vs 50k.
its more economical to write them off as a loss for taxes than renovate
There’s a simple solution for that. If a house sits empty for more than six months, it becomes the property of the city. Maybe add a provision that lets the owners surrender unoccupied houses willingly in return for a small flat compensation. Problem solved.
Becoming the property of the city will be a nightmare to deal with. Instead just crank up the property tax to 25% of the property value per year for any year the property is empty more than 6 months.
That’ll fix the issue almost immediately.
It’ll also force rents lower because you can’t afford to wait for a tenant who can pay exorbitant rents.
