Mayor Zohran Mamdani entered office on Jan. 1, promising to transform housing systems in a city where 69% of residents don’t own their homes. As the first renter to become mayor in almost five decades, the 34-year-old issued a flurry of executive orders and policy changes within his first week at City Hall. Now, Mamdani faces growing scrutiny over whether he can uphold his ambitious housing plan while navigating political pushback from landlords. 

With just 1.4% of New York City apartments available for rent, only 0.4% of those cost less than $1,100 per month. To address the affordability crisis, Mamdani’s key proposals — overwhelmingly popular among renting voters — include 200,000 new rent-stabilized homes over 10 years using $100 billion in public capital funds and stronger tenant protections. His Housing By and For New York initiative similarly focuses on supporting families earning less than $70,000 a year by expanding publicly funded projects. 

At his first news conference, Mamdani tapped activist Cea Weaver to run the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants. Weaver founded Housing Justice for All in 2017, a New York-based coalition advocating for stronger tenant protections through legislation and legal action. Most recently, the coalition launched its Housing Access Voucher Program, creating a rental subsidy program for individuals at risk of or experiencing homelessness. 

Weaver’s department was revived through Executive Order No. 3 — one of the 12 orders Mamdani issued within the first few days of his inauguration, several of which pertained to housing. The office consolidates enforcement of all tenant-related codes under one agency, in an effort to speed up communication and inspections. In cases when landlords refuse tenants’ urgent repair requests, Mamdani said the city will make the repair and bill the landlord.

The mayor also announced the anti-harassment unit’s $2.1 million settlement with A&E Real Estate, meant to address hazardous living conditions and tenant harassment adding up to more than 4,000 housing code violations. Executive Order No. 8 aims to address such issues via public “Rental Ripoff” hearings where tenants share experiences with abusive landlords and help strengthen a public enforcement plan. 

However, the 300,000 residents living in 335 public housing developments overseen by New York City Housing Authority are not immune to severe leaks, mold and unreliable heat, as repair requests have ballooned to nearly $80 billion. In response, Deputy Mayor for Housing Leila Bozorg said the administration is pursuing an “all-hands approach” to ensuring NYCHA residents are represented in partnerships and decision-making.

“While NYCHA does have a backlog, during 2025 alone, 2.50 million repair work orders were created, and 2.49 million were closed or cancelled,” NYCHA Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Skalar told WSN in a statement. “At the same time, NYCHA is now inspecting all its public housing apartments each year to ensure that tenants’ repair needs are identified and prioritized for skilled trades.”

Bozorg also said she is looking to see the contentious Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Houses redevelopment project in Manhattan move forward. The initiative would demolish NYCHA buildings to build more than 2,000 mixed-income towers, which critics warn could cause displacement and slow resident input. 

“There are a lot of tenant protections in the federal rules that prohibit selling the buildings for market rate housing or displacing existing tenants permanently. It’s certainly a change for public housing residents if their path is to consider private management and private capital, but it’s still under the Housing Authority’s basic rules,” Wagner professor Sarah Gerecke told WSN. “But there are fears that it won’t work out that way. New York City has a track record of several thousand units that have already gone through this process.”

If tenants are displaced through the Chelsea development, the project would contradict Mamdani’s campaign promise to prevent displacement. However, Skalar said 94% of households will be able to remain in their apartments until their new homes are built.

By creating an Office of Deed Theft Prevention, Mamdani plans to overhaul the tax systems to ensure wealthier areas contribute more fairly, help homeowners meet sustainability requirements and eliminate the tax lien sale program that has historically led to home loss.

The administration also revived the Just Home initiative in late January, which will create 83 affordable apartments in the Bronx for formerly incarcerated New Yorkers with complex medical needs. The project is part of a broader push to expand supportive housing, with the New York City Health Department also requesting more than 350 additional units for justice-involved individuals. 

Approved by voters in November, Mamdani launched the Expedited Land Use Review Procedure in late February to speed up the approval process for affordable housing and climate resiliency projects. The first project, on city-owned land in the Bronx, is expected to create around 84 affordable units after just 90 days of review, rather than the typical seven months. The city is also advancing its methodology to fast-track affordable housing developments in the upcoming year, to prioritize growth in the 12 community districts with the lowest rates of affordable housing. This aligns with Mamdani’s promise to triple the production of permanently affordable homes by constructing 200,000 new units over the next 10 years. 

Mamdani’s efforts to reshape the housing markets have faced numerous political and structural pushbacks. A federal judge approved a $451 million sale of more than 5,000 rent-stabilized apartments from the landlord Pinnacle Group — with thousands of open code violations — to a new owner, a subsidiary of Summit Properties, which has its own history of violations. Despite the city’s attempt to block the deal, the court ruled in favor of the buyer, who promised to address longstanding issues including leaks, mold, infestations and heating problems.

The administration faced another legislative blow when a key anti-displacement bill, the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act, failed in the City Council. The bill would have given nonprofits priority to purchase distressed buildings to preserve affordability. Talks of revisiting COPA came up during the meeting, and an emphasis was placed on addressing landlords’ worries about reducing housing supply.

In early February, Mamdani also had to back away from a major campaign promise to expand the CityFHEPS rental voucher program — an initiative that partially covers eligible tenants’ monthly rent up to five years. While he had previously supported expanding the program, he said its full implementation — potentially costing $10 billion — was not sustainable as the city faces a projected $7 billion deficit. 

It is also unclear whether Mamdani will be able to uphold his campaign promise to freeze rent for all stabilized tenants. The independent NYC Rent Guidelines Board sets rent increases, as opposed to the mayor’s offices — though it is the mayor who appoints its members. According to rent stabilization law, the board makes decisions based on economic data rather than mayoral orders, meaning a rent-freeze is possible but not guaranteed. 

In early March, Mamdani drew scrutiny after an undisclosed meeting with President Donald Trump in Washington, where the two discussed plans to build 12,000 apartments over a Queens rail yard — a project proposed by Democrats six years ago. The long-stalled Sunnyside Yard project would rely on $21 billion in federal grants, and mark a significant step in addressing the city’s housing crisis while creating thousands of jobs.

“I think and have always believed that different people, at different points in their lives, need different housing solutions,” Gerecke said. “Giving people more choices in where they can live and different price points is really important.”