NEW YORK — Zohran Mamdani swept to victory in the mayor’s race with a canny pledge to freeze the rent for New York City’s roughly 2 million tenants in rent-stabilized apartments.

When Mamdani takes office in January, a vote to freeze the rent will still be several months away. But the city’s housing crisis is a much broader, messier problem, and a host of other housing-related issues are sure to command his attention right away.

Here’s a look at a few of them.

The Dire State of Public Housing

New York City’s public housing system — almost 180,000 apartments spread across 335 developments — is a crucial source of apartments that are affordable to the poorest residents.

But residents in the aging buildings have been dealing with persistent leaks, heat outages and pest problems for years. Sometimes parts of the buildings collapse. Needed repairs and renovations total some $78 billion, according to the latest estimate from the New York City Housing Authority, which runs the system.

Mayor Eric Adams accelerated a plan to transfer many of the developments over to private management to unlock a new pool of federal funding to finance repairs. But many progressive politicians believe the public sector should maintain control.

Mamdani, in his victory speech Tuesday, pledged to “work tirelessly to make lights shine again in the hallways of NYCHA developments where they have long flickered.”

Elizabeth Street Garden and Delicate Housing Politics

Few controversies have stayed in the public consciousness as long as the saga of the Elizabeth Street Garden.

For more than a decade, the city had tried to build affordable housing on the site of the garden in the NoLIta neighborhood in lower Manhattan. But the plan angered neighbors, community activists and several celebrities, who waged a ferocious battle and filed several lawsuits to stop the development.

Despite losing in court, they successfully pushed the Adams administration to give up.

Mamdani has said that he will move to evict the garden when he takes office to restart plans to build affordable housing on the site. The garden’s supporters have taken notice.

“Perpetuating the false choice of housing vs. community gardens is a divisive tactic weaponized against communities across N.Y.C.,” the nonprofit group that runs the garden, called the Elizabeth Street Garden, said in an Instagram post last week. “Don’t take the word of developers & lobbyists over the word of the people of this community. We will continue to do everything we can to protect Elizabeth Street Garden from anyone who seeks to destroy it.”

Suri Kasirer, a top lobbyist who has worked with many developers, said anyone who wants to build, whether it’s City Hall or a real estate company, would have to listen to the neighborhoods.

“Everything is a balancing act,” she said. “You can’t come into the community and say, ‘Here’s my project, and that’s it.’”

Should Airbnb Stay Banned?

Two years after New York City began an aggressive crackdown on short-term rentals — stays of less than 30 days outside of hotels — listings on platforms like Airbnb have all but disappeared.

The theory, city officials said, was to make sure illegal short-term rentals did not take housing units off the market, restricting supply and leading to higher rents. Mamdani had supported those restrictions but will face a new effort to loosen them.

Airbnb, some property owners and civic groups are pushing a new bill in the City Council that would allow short-term rentals in single- and two-family homes. They say the restrictions did little, if anything, to reduce rents and just made the city even more expensive to visit.

Michael Blaustein, the Northeast Atlantic policy lead at Airbnb, said, “Supporting responsible short-term rentals means supporting working families, affordability, equity and the vitality of our neighborhoods.”

The issue is especially relevant as the city prepares to host the World Cup with New Jersey next year. Mamdani has said he wants to use the soccer tournament to boost tourism while making the event affordable for fans.

Landlords Fight Back

Humberto Lopes, founder and CEO of H.L. Dynasty, a family real estate firm with about 100 buildings in its portfolio, said he has increasingly felt that landlords were under attack. Clogged dockets in housing court make it impossible to recoup unpaid rent. Pro-tenant laws from 2019 make it difficult to raise rents. And now Mamdani is pledging to freeze the rent.

So Lopes founded a new group with his son, the Gotham Housing Alliance, to rally landlords to fight back.

“The storm is coming,” he said in a video posted on social media announcing the formation of the alliance. “We’re going to have a new mayor coming, and we’re all going to have a problem.”

Lopes said the group has grown to 400 members, including large real estate companies. It has hired a lobbyist in Albany and one in Washington, and will work to stymie parts of Mamdani’s agenda, he said.

“If we come together as one, then we have more control over what he’s going to do and what he thinks he’s going to do,” Lopes said.

The Ripple Effects of Federal Cuts

President Donald Trump has made it clear that he plans to cut social safety net programs the city relies on. That means city money may be needed to plug the loss in federal funds, straining programs for low-income renters.

The Trump administration has moved to reduce food benefits. It has signaled it would pull back on funding for supportive housing for people who were homeless. It has suggested it would reduce funding for federal housing vouchers and implement work requirements for other programs.

Molly Wasow Park, commissioner of the city’s Department of Social Services, characterized the situation as “incremental steps coming from the federal government that are all targeted toward squeezing resources available to low-income households.”

“It’s going to be again and again and again in ways that are both very explicit, and sometimes it’s going to be very insidious,” she said.

The city spends more than $1 billion to help more than 136,000 New Yorkers afford rent and avoid homelessness through a city voucher program known as CityFHEPS.

Park said the city will be forced to be creative in how it responds to the cuts.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Mihir Zaveri/Dakota Santiago
c. 2025 The New York Times Company