Why the future of NY under a ‘Mayor Mamdani' has already arrived
Some of my wealthy acquaintances in high-end commercial real estate say of Mamdani, 'Yes, he's an antisemitic, dopey dilettante who would impose a Soviet-style rule over us if he could, but, hey! The state, not the city, really has the power! The mayor is a paper tiger! Remember how de Blasio said he'd get rid of carriage horses on Day One!'
Take no comfort in that.
5 Naysayers repeatedly speculate about the horrors awaiting New York City if Zohran Mamdani is elected.
AP
It's mercifully true that Mamdani couldn't make the buses free and thereby accelerate the MTA's fiscal tailspin (perhaps he'll have time to learn between now and Election Day that such a step would be up to the MTA, a state body over which the mayor has very limited influence).
Nor should his pipe dream of city-run grocery stores panic supermarket and bodega owners, given the city's comically inept and corrupt record with such crucial tasks as making NYCHA apartments liveable.
Yet, despite the mayoralty's tightly circumscribed authority, Mamdani could wreak havoc in two realms where significant progress in recent years has been made. The one most vital to New Yorkers on a day-to-day basis is crime. After an up-and-down start, Mayor Adams seems to have tamed the beast. Under NYPD commissioner Jessica Tisch, major crime is dramatically down. If the trend holds up, murders this year will total under 300, the holy-grail figure not seen since before the pandemic.
Mamdani could undo all of that in a flash. Although he now denies he'd attempt to defund the NYPD despite having once proposed precisely that imbecilic notion, it would take only the appointment of a new top cop more committed to protecting criminals' 'rights' than to public order to kick-start the tailspin.
The administrations of Adams, Bill de Blasio (yes, de Blasio) and Bloomberg did their best to alleviate the 'housing crisis.' After all, this is far more the fault of state and earlier city laws than to 'homelessness' largely due to mental illness and drug addiction.
5 Mamdani wants to make public transport free, along with taking an anti-police platform.
Christopher Sadowski
All three mayors promoted or approved rezonings that both opened up more districts to residential development, and enabled construction of 'affordable' units within those districts — the latter by requiring their inclusion for the size bonuses developers need to make projects economically viable.
For elected officials and urbanologists who apparently prefer a North Korea-style housing program (free, government-assigned apartments for everyone in horrible buildings), no amount or percentage of affordable units is ever enough. But Bloomberg, de Blasio and Adams, in different ways, relied on a real-world approach.
5 A 'Mayor' Mamdani would have the power to replace newish NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who has made inroads against violent crime.
Luiz Rampelotto/ZUMA / SplashNews.com
Variances to existing rules needed approvals under the city's Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, or ULURP. The often contentious, seven-month slog sometimes included compromises, but the result was creation of tens of thousands of new units from the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn to Morris Park in The Bronx.
Kiss such progress goodbye if Mamdani wins. His animus toward upper- and middle-class New Yorkers is well known. The loyalties of a man who wants to freeze all stabilized rents clearly are not with developers and landlords upon whom the city must rely to create and maintain sound housing.
5 Former council member Kristin Richardson Jordan, who took an anti-development and anti-'gentrification' stance, derailed a large-scale Harlem housing development that would have delivered low-cost homes to her district.
LightRocket via Getty Images
He'd more likely take his cue from anti-development and anti-'gentrification' zealots such as former council member Kristin Richardson Jordan, who single-handedly torpedoed a big Harlem project that would have brought 1,000 new rental homes to Malcolm X Boulevard and West 145th Street, half of which were to be priced below market.
The ability of a single council member to block even projects supported by his or her entire community — a veto power called 'member deference' — has been so abused, Adams wants to put measures on the November ballot that would turn approval authority over to the City Planning Commission.
5 The site under consideration was — and remains — an empty lot.
Stephen Yang
Yet, even if voters show more common sense than Democratic primary voters last week and support the change, a mayor Mamdani could still — and almost surely will — stop any housing development in its tracks that doesn't impossibly make new apartments free or almost free.
That's because ultimately, the mayor must sign off on any plan that passes ULURP muster. If you doubt he'd put the kibosh on new-housing proposals desired by just about everybody, just listen to him — and tremble.
scuozzo@nypost.com
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