Below is my column in The Hill on the new housing plan of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to seize the properties of the “worst landlords” and hand them over to tenants or tenant groups. It is a plan that is hardly unexpected given the socialist agenda of the Administration. However, it promises to replicate the failures of socialist systems of the past.
Here is the column:
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani promised in his inaugural address to introduce New Yorkers to “the warmth of collectivism.” It now appears landlords will likely to be the first to feel the heat.
This week, Mamdani revealed an effort to transfer properties to tenants and non-profit groups. Mamdani announced that “through our new citywide campaign, Fix the City, we will focus on the worst landlords in New York City.” For landlords, it has been clear that the fix was in for some time.
Mamdani faced criticism for his appointment of Cea Weaver as the new director of the Office to Protect Tenants. She previously called for efforts to “impoverish the white middle-class” and called homeownership “racist” while demanding the seizure of private property.
Videos of Weaver echoed thread-worn socialist mantras that are the signature of the Mamdani Administration. “I think the reality is, that for centuries we’ve really treated property as an individualized good and not a collective good,” she said. “And transitioning to treating it as a collective good and towards a model of shared equity will require that we think about it differently and it will mean that families — especially white families, but some POC families who are homeowners as well — are going to have a different relationship to property than the one that we currently have.”
Weaver famously tweeted out her beliefs about private property, which are apparently widely shared in the Mamdani administration: “Private property, including and kind of ESPECIALLY homeownership is a weapon of White supremacy masquerading as ‘wealth building’ public policy.”
Other socialists on the national level have pursued the same policies to target landlords. In pushing national legislation, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) joined fellow Democrats in calling for the passage of the HELP Act to “crack down” on some evictions and bar the use of evictions on credit reports. Pressley has declared that “evictions are an act of policy violence.”
Mamdani insists that he will be targeting “the worst landlords in New York City.” Yet, who constitutes the “worst landlords” could prove a relative notion to the ardent socialist. Mamdani proposes to transfer their properties to “responsible stewards,” including tenants and nonprofits.
In his 112-page report, Mamdani is again pushing to unleash his “Block by Block agenda for expanded rent controls, promising not to exempt landlords from Rent Guidelines Board limits. He and his allies have previously heralded Cuba and South Africa as models for policy changes.
Mamdani faces a considerable challenge in fulfilling his pledge to build 200,000 new affordable homes, with an additional 200,000 stabilized units over the next decade. There is reportedly only a 1.4 percent rental vacancy rate, with 100,000 New Yorkers sleeping in shelters each night.
Rent controls have generally been a disaster, reducing landlords’ ability to make improvements to their properties. They cannot recoup those investments due to rental limits as costs, particularly insurance, skyrocket.
The result is a type of planned failure. As landlords postpone improvements, they are often cited by the city in housing hearings. When those findings and fines increase, the landlords risk being declared “negligent” and subject to a transfer due to unpaid citations.
There is no argument that the worst landlords warrant the loss of their properties. But transferring such properties to tenants or non-profit groups is a new and costly form of subsidy. Ordinarily, delinquent properties can be sold on the free market to pay off outstanding debts. That allows neglected properties to be put to the most profitable use, which in turn generates more taxes and jobs for the city. If these properties go to non-profits or tenants, that can further reduce the city’s tax revenues.
More importantly, neither tenants nor nonprofit organizations have a proven track record of maintaining properties without substantial city subsidies. It is a mirage created by activists, hiding the true cost to taxpayers.
Mamdani continues to pursue policies that will suppress, not surge, new construction. His administration is requiring construction companies to pay a minimum of $40 per hour for city-funded affordable housing, which will further discourage investors.
He announced a $22 billion subsidy for housing costs, with 25 percent going to the New York City Housing Authority. These increased costs will likely grow as fixed budgetary items for the city.
Although it is economically dubious, it is politically dynamite. Much of Mamdani’s support comes from young people who have no memory of or experience with the failures of socialist policies in the twentieth century. He simply promises things like free buses or city-run grocery stores as if they can be supported by free money without addressing their true costs.
His grocery stores show the same economic sleight of hand. The city is planning to spend $30 million to create the first store — four times what such stores normally cost. On top of that cost, it was discovered that the city had already appropriated $25 million for the improvement of the site. That is $55 million for a site that will not go on the market for the highest bidders, but rather be operated by the city at a loss.
In my book Rage and the Republic, I discuss this trend in Western countries toward socialist policies. It is what I refer to as the “economic factionalism” that has been used in prior years by figures ranging from Huey Long to Bernie Sanders.
With the highest rental rates in the country (with median rents at $3,616) and a shortage of units, there is widespread support for building new affordable housing. But government rent controls, mandatory wage increases and property seizures will inhibit such efforts.
Mamdani’s free buses, city-run stores and this new housing effort will achieve one overriding goal: introducing socialism in New York City, “block by block.”
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
So, the plan is to go hard on code enforcement with landlords they choose. Increase fines to the point where the city has a claim greater than the market value of the property. The city then has title transferred to a new owner of the city’s choice. So, why isn’t this an unconstitutional taking if the fines can be shown to be applied in a punitive and uneven manner?
If property is private, and not public, how could any code be constitutional, understanding that it would deny an individual his property?
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“[Private property is] that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual.”
– James Madison
Today in history.
99 years ago today, Donald Trump’s father, Fred Trump, was arrested at a Ku Klux Klan rally in Queen’s NY
Was Abraham Lincoln there?
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“[Racial separation] [is necessary], and [though difficult] must be effected by colonization… The enterprise is a difficult one, but ‘where there is a will there is a way’; and what colonization needs most is a hearty will… Let us be brought to believe it is morally right, and at the same time [not against] our interest, to transfer the African to his native clime, and we shall find a way to do it.”
– Abraham Lincoln, Springfield, Illinois, June 26, 1857
Trump’s father? This is scraping the bottom of the barrel. First, it isn’t Trump himself. It was decades before Trump was born.
Second, even left-leaning Wikipedia admits there is no evidence Fred Trump supported the KKK.
This kind of comment shows how desperate the Left in this country has become.
wholly agree, and that is my one concerned aside when it comes to the high level of “free speech” in this country.
As you note, “A 2019 academic paper, published in the Journal of Urban History, which discussed Fred Trump’s arrest in detail and the KKK’s presence in Queens at the time, also notes that non-Klan observers were arrested too, adding that the lack of available evidence makes it difficult to conclude “whether Trump was discharged because the police realized they made a mistake, whether they decided his comparatively minor violation was not worth pursuing further, or some other set of circumstances altogether.” https://www.newsweek.com/was-donald-trump-father-kkk-1864382
Lin,
Thank you for pointing out the obvious questionable claims the annony makes without any real evidence or facts of, well, anything.
“99 years ago today, Donald Trump’s father, Fred Trump, was arrested at a Ku Klux Klan rally in Queen’s NY” that can be easily read as Fred Trump got arrested protesting against the KKK.
Who is to say who is right?
And how does that have any bearing on DJT today? It does not.
Every group has its victim card to be played to shut down anyone who disagrees or as some bizarre form of justification for their own heinous behavior. I really don’t care anymore, I’m immune to that ploy.
“In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.”
– Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto
These dems are ill. Repubs should be confronting this wreck, pillage and plunder illness with sound advice from a bank of psychiatrists and psychologists.
It won’t matter what you give the tenants, the people without homes they will destroy them. Here’s an example of the mental condition: Give them a new car. They will immediately remove the new tires and sell them, purchase old junk tires or find some in a junk heap. Next the carburetor will be sold, then the doors etc until the new car is a junk heap.
They behave like this because of compulsion. Mamdani is one of them. He’ll tear up nyc block by block. He’s ill in reality.
I may not recall correctly, but I think some of the triggers for the Spanish Civil War were similar policies by the newly elected socialist /communist government. It wanted to steal private property for the commons and began doing it.
Franco is viewed as bad in our narratives but I have begun to rethink him after reading Orwell’s ‘Homage to Catalonia.’ Franco was up against a hard core of murderous Stalanists and needed to be tough.
He is seen as sympathetic to Germany and Italy, and he did get much needed aid from them; but they could never drag him into the world war. Spain was surrounded by belligerents in death struggles but Franco managed to keep Spain out of the conflict.
It is also significant that downed Allied pilots and others tried to get to Spain to be returned to England and war fighting. That could not have been done without the complicity of the Franco government. Allied pilots who arrived in Switzerland were interned for the duration but if they reached Spain they could get back in the war.
This seems to be a part of history ignored as is the fact that the Soviet Union first entered the war as an ally of Nazi Germany. Don’t trust leftist history.
Mandami is taking a known and dangerous path.
Mamdani, AOC, etc… are modern day Urban Zapatistas
The Mexican Revolution (1910–1920)
The term Zapatistas generally refers to two connected Mexican movements, both centered on agrarian reform and Indigenous rights:
The Mexican Revolution (1910–1920): The original peasant guerrilla forces led by Emiliano Zapata. His “Liberation Army of the South” fought to redistribute stolen land to poor farmers under the slogan “Tierra y Libertad” (Land and Liberty).
Mexican Revolution
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Revolution
Constitutionalists in the Mexican Revolution
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutionalists_in_the_Mexican_Revolution
Referring to Mamdami and his like as Urban Zapatistas sounds right. It brings the danger into clearer focus and it does not bode well for this country.
Zero Madmani should have been previously precluded from his acts of dictatorial communism by existing and prevailing precedent preserving the power solely of owners to “claim and exercise” dominion under the absolute right to private property, which is distinctly not public property prior to the invocation of eminent domain.
The right to private property includes the exclusive right to “claim and exercise” dominion, operate an enterprise, rent, sell, hire, fire, pay, and direct employees, etc.
Zero Madmani is a direct and mortal enemy of the American thesis of freedom and self-reliance, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, actual Americans, and America.
The singular American failure is the judicial branch, with emphasis on the Supreme Court.
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“[Private property is] that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual.”
– James Madison
_____________________
5th Amendment
No person shall be…deprived of…property…
_________________________________________________
14th Amendment
No State shall…deprive any person of life, liberty, or property….
“. . . demanding the seizure of private property.”
When Mamdani was elected, he promised to govern like a socialist. And like his brother in spirit, Lenin, he has.
When Lenin took power, he enacted “The Decree on Land,” which permitted the government to seize private land and homes, and redistribute them to the peasants.
That Decree includes this socialist nightmare: “(1) Private ownership of land shall be abolished forever;”
Next up in the socialist’s destruction of individual rights and wealth was “The Fundamental Law of Land Socialization,” which permitted the government to seize natural resources, live stock, machinery.
Under those socialist policies, Lenin seized private land, homes, apartments, natural resources, private businesses and industries. In 1920-21, a famine killed some 5-10 million Russians, with some so desperate that they resorted to cannibalism.
The only question now is: Will the citizens of NYC wake up before it’s too late?
This announcement is the perfect tactic by a communist such as Mamdami. Even if the courts stop him from doing it, he still builds his rep with his followers who are demanding that society be torn apart to satisfy their demands for a responsibility free life for them. The lazy, the wasteful the corrupt, are all thrilled with the Mamdami approach.
NY city (government) run homes… Yeah no big deal.
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Extensive reports and widespread public tenant complaints confirm that New York City’s government-run housing—primarily managed by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA)—faces massive infrastructural and administrative challenges. The agency suffers from an estimated $80 billion capital-needs gap, decades of deferred maintenance, and thousands of units sitting vacant amid a severe housing crisis
Severe Maintenance Backlog: Residents face prolonged wait times for critical repairs, including broken elevators, plumbing failures, mold, and pest infestations
Vacant Apartments: Bureaucratic hurdles, stalled repair funding, and stricter lead/asbestos rules have caused thousands of NYCHA apartments to remain empty for months or even years, delaying new placements for families
But this fool can do it better… right
You stole the text you fraud.
From who you fool.
Is not all text stolen and fraudulent to a greater or lesser degree? Students do learn well.
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“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
– 1603, Hamlet, William Shakespeare
Looks more like a summary to me.
But if you want a source, Thousands of NYCHA apartments sit empty as 165,000 NYC families remain stuck on waitlist
“The number of vacant New York City Housing Authority units more than doubled in recent years, from about 2,840 in 2022 to roughly 6,740 by 2025, according to a report on the probe released Tuesday by the city Department of Investigation.”
https://nypost.com/2026/03/03/us-news/thousands-of-nycha-apartments-sit-empty-as-165k-nyc-families-remain-stuck-on-waitlist/
Amazing that Turley points out the horrific precedent to be set by Mamdani’s proposed seizure of property from “bad landlords” while endorsing it later in the piece as being beneficial to the public (greater) good. Can’t have it both ways, Professor!
Exactly my sentiments.
Well, actually you can because of the difference in the way the property is utilized or disposed of after the seizure.
“. . . while endorsing it later . . .”
A sincere, non-hostile question:
I read the piece twice, but didn’t see any such endorsement. Can you point out the passage that you think is an endorsement?
Professor Turley wrote:
There is no argument that the worst landlords warrant the loss of their properties.
That is a bizarre statement, especially since in the same article he criticized Mamdani for failing to define who the worst landlords were. He also doesn’t define the term, while saying they should lose private property they legally own. This from a professor who usually defends civil rights rather than suggesting people should lose their civil rights.
A private property owner’s gain or loss exists in the market value of his property.
If an occupant buys or rents a property, he wants it.
Maintenance and repair are negotiable.
Thanks for citing the passage.
That’s a tough call.
I agree that “worst” needs to be clearly defined, especially to distinguish his position from the property thief Mamdani.
On the other hand, it’s pretty clear that JT rejects Mamdani’s socialist usurpations. Also, it’s an op-ed, usually about 750 words. And one cannot do everything.
The same stealing of private property is taking place in the Data Center arena. Governments stealing private property for other private use is vile, even when a oublic benefit can be shown: e.g. increased property taxes. Oak and hemp.
Kuck out the UN and convert that space for homeless vets. Screw the Rockefellers
There is a reason the Takings Clause specifies it has to be a “public use.” The word “use” was carefully chosen, but five Scotus justices in Kelo said, basically, who cares? I wish it said “public benefit” instead of “public use,” so — presto changeo — we now hold that it says “benefit.” That is one of the worst decisions ever rendered by the highest court in our land, and it cannot be overruled soon enough.
Public use is not the same as public purpose. Public use refers to property being used by the public or under public control (e.g., roads, parks, schools). Public purpose (or public benefit) is a broader concept—government action that advances a public objective (economic development, increased tax revenue, job creation) even if the property ends up in private hands. Courts and jurisdictions differ on whether “public use” in constitutional text can be interpreted to include “public purpose,” but the two terms are conceptually distinct.
Courts enjoy no power to modify or amend the Constitution, in this case, from use to purpose.
Purpose is nebulous, and it is not American fundamental law.
Use is clear.
That was my whole point.
I guess this is just one more thing we can thank John Roberts, CJ, SCOTUS for giving us.
Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005)
-g
Roberts was not yet on the court when Kelo was decided. He joined the court three months later.
In Kelo v. City of New London, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the majority opinion; Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist dissented (joined by Scalia; O’Connor also wrote a separate, noted dissent). Brief summary:
Majority (Stevens): Held that the City’s taking of private property to sell for private redevelopment qualified as “public use” under the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause because the economic development plan served a public purpose (job creation, tax revenue). The Court applied a deferential standard to legislative determinations of public necessity.
Chief Justice Rehnquist (dissent): Argued the takings violated the Fifth Amendment because the transfer to private parties was not a public use; warned the decision allowed governments to take property from those with fewer political resources. Emphasized historical meaning of “public use” and expressed concern about protecting property rights.
Mamdani’s free buses, city-run stores and this new housing effort will achieve one overriding goal: introducing socialism in New York City, “block by block.”
Mandani’s supporters, just like many US voters, are kids living in fantasy. Times were when the word “kids” described minors under the age of 18 give/take. Many individuals today under the age of 40 act like kids because they exhibit a lack of emotional development, stuck in pre-teen years.
Renee Good, the lesbian who was shot/killed by an ICE officer because she attempted to run him over, had a wife, Rebecca Brown Good, who watched the aforementioned from the side of the street. When she saw that her wife was killed, she screamed “why did you use real bullets?….It was my fault, I made her come down here”.
These kids like Renee and Rebecca Good, 30+ year old parents, live in a continuous video game, cosplaying “good guys vs bad guys”. Likewise for the rioters in the Newark, New Jersey Delaney Hall ICE detention center. They have minimal interpersonal skills in real life as to vocations, careers, intimate relationships, spouses, raising offspring to be functioning adults, but they have nothing but time on their hands to adopt “costumes” and role play fantasy personas demanding x, y and z as in the case with NYC’s Mayor Mamdani, his wife, and their supporters.
ANTIFA is another cosplay organization run by emotionally stunted “kids”. Described by Democrats/Legacy Media as an “idea” and not a true organization, a jury in California found an ANTIFA member guilty of conspiracy to riot. The manner in which the convicted ANTIFA member, Jeremy Jonathan White, dressed for his conspiracy to riot, is death defying. He is a character in a video game.
Our country is populated by such kids, the result of parents not taking their roles seriously when it comes to forming the conscience of their offspring or what OLLY calls “self-government”, I think. Naturally the Left are ready, willing and able to wave their magic wands, and declare them a figment of our imagination. Small comfort for the billions of dollars in damages these kids inflict on local communities and US Federal officers. But when it comes to having mountains of bricks, helmets, tactical gear and incendiary devices, money is not a liming factor for these kids. George Soros and his allies fund these gamers.
COURT OF APPEAL, FOURTH APPELLATE DISTRICT
DIVISION ONE
STATE OF CALIFORNIA
THE PEOPLE,
Plaintiff and Respondent,
v.
JEREMY JONATHAN WHITE,
Defendant and Appellant.
On January 9, 2021 — three days after the riot at the U.S. capitol — defendant Jeremy Jonathan White and several fellow Antifa movement activists traveled from Los Angeles to San Diego to meet local Antifa activists to counterprotest a planned right-wing “Patriot March.” Donning full tactical armor and armed with bear spray and a taser, White led Antifa marchers up and down the Pacific Beach boardwalk as many of the Antifa protesters violently confronted right-wing marchers. The scene devolved into a riot and police ultimately declared the Antifa protesters an unlawful assembly.
[…]
White arrived in San Diego “kitted up” in black bloc: black clothing, full body armor, a tactical helmet, a tactical vest, a gas mask, and medic patches on his chest and shoulders. White was armed with bear spray, a flashlight-taser, a knife, and scissors. He had three walkie-talkies and gave one to Lightfoot and Robert. White also had a first aid kit and tourniquet.
White’s trio walked from their parking lot to the pier with the other group of Antifa activists from Los Angeles. When combined with activists from San Diego, there were initially about 40 to 50 Antifa activists “dressed in all black.” The crowd grew to “a couple hundred people.” At times, White led the Antifa group on a march up and down the boardwalk waving an Antifa flag as the group chanted “kill all Nazis” and other slogans. This was the first time law enforcement was aware of Antifa members traveling from Los Angeles to San Diego to protest. It was also the first time Antifa activists openly displayed Antifa flags at a San Diego rally.
https://www4.courts.ca.gov/opinions/nonpub/D084553.PDF
The same thing is now playing out in Seattle where the new mayor who lives in a commie fantasy land makes fun of her tax base fleeing the city, and encourages people to boycott one of the city’s main employers.
Somehow, the low-IQ voters in such cities, when given the choice between misery and improvement, will always vote for misery. The voters in Los Angeles have a chance to prove me wrong tomorrow, but my hopes are not high that they will suddenly become sane or intelligent.
Estovir,
Well said.
Are these kids failing to launch, is it a sign and symptom of bad parenting? Failing public schools that often have been highjacked by leftist indoctrination? Failing higher education which we all know and have seen have been highjacked by leftist indoctrination.
Watching the video of Renee Good, blocking the road with her vehicle, honking the horn, all smiling like it was some kind of game. The response by her wife, “why did you use real bullets?….It was my fault, I made her come down here”.
“Why did you use real bullets?”
This is the real world.
This is not a game.
Estovir, you are laying out a very clear and sophisticated case. I am trying to say the same thing in a simpler, street‑level way. It is really not that complicated. We are getting the kind of behavior we have trained people for.
The founding generation were formed in a specific and measurable way for our constitutional system of self‑government. I have spent a lot of time identifying those formation traits and then tracing how far we have drifted from them over the last 250 years. “Cosplay” really does capture what we are seeing now. Every generation is formed by its environment, and ours is no exception. But when a people are formed without the habits and disciplines a republic requires, you end up with citizens cosplaying citizenship and officeholders cosplaying statesmanship. In a system where the government reflects the people who elect it, that is how you wind up with a government cosplaying a constitutional republic instead of actually being one.
What people like X or Anonymous keep dodging is not my terminology, it is the basic challenge: if I am wrong about formation, then show it. Point to a healthy constitutional republic whose citizens were not formed for self‑government, or to a broken one whose citizens were. Until someone can do that, all the talk about codes and ordinances is just arguing over symptoms while refusing to look at the disease.
you end up with citizens cosplaying citizenship and officeholders cosplaying statesmanship. In a system where the government reflects the people who elect it, that is how you wind up with a government cosplaying a constitutional republic instead of actually being one.
🔥
This is really quite good.
I read in high school the book The Lives of a Cell Notes of a Biology Watcher by Dr Lewis Thomas MD. It opened my eyes to how our world follows all of the movements of biology. I carried that paradigm into my profession and find it explains our current culture situation perfectly well.
Molecular mechanisms …..intercellular signaling….personal interactions….society as an organism. The cell-cell signaling can be part of homeostasis or pathology. Likewise with our society.
https://www.cellsignal.com/pathways/by-disease-area
Estovir, thank you. That systems lens you describe from Lewis Thomas tracks very closely with how I was trained to think through Deming and Total Quality Leadership. Once you really absorb a systems approach, you cannot “unsee” it. Before that, I lived in the old forest‑and‑trees paradigm, reacting to individual trees and assuming each one was its own story. Afterward, I found myself starting with the forest every time, asking what kind of system keeps producing the same patterns, and only then drilling down into the details.
Learning to see the world that way fundamentally changed how I look at civic life too. The behavior we argue about is still important, but it now reads to me as system output rather than a random collection of one‑off events.