Live data from Hacker News

Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

nbcnews.com

201–210 of 1001 posts

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#201

I hope this turns out well for New York, but I am doubtful. Rent control is such a colossally bad idea, a rent freeze is going to be a disaster. This is going to further increase the lottery nature of New York City real estate, and reduce investment. His plans are set to drive finance and businesses out of the city in his goal to give away money to everyone, which will bankrupt the city. Socialism has a bad track rec…

Zohran isn't proposing putting any new units under rent control (really rent stabilization), only temporarily halting raises to rents for existing stabilized units. This will make it harder for the city to attract new buildings to join rent stabilization in the future, but will benefit existing habitants. It won't have any effect on the ability to profitably develop market rate units at all.

Property developer here. I have zero faith that NYC would not put rent control on new units in the future. I will invest nothing in NYC and will tell every other developer I know to avoid it like the plague.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#202
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the small minority that get fully subsidized plans of course it’s great. Free stuff is always great for the receiver. But that’s only 5M people. For everybody else it just made healthcare more expensive. Nothing, absolutely nothing, in the ACA brought down costs . And hiding it behind ever increasing subsidies eventually comes to a breaking point.

What about those who had pre-existing conditions who were able to get insurance? Doesn't that bring cost down for them?

High risk pools existed before the ACA.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#203
post #106

I hope this win signals (to both parties) that voters are receptive and will get engaged when a clear message is presented about cost of living and quality of life issues. Some of which are taken for granted in most other western countries. I’m no political wonk, and I’m curious what others with more insight might say about his ability to fund and implement his polices. I’m reminided of Obama and his hopeful message…

I kinda feel Obama is more of a Trojan horse. It was not he tried and failed to get what he campaigned for implemented, it was more like he did a U turn after he got elected. e.g. he called for universal health care but once he was elected he started saying it was "too radical". I hope the same doesn't happen with Zohran. If he was going to fail after all, I wish that will at least be after he had fought as hard as h…

The Affordable Care Act wasn't a complete solution - and I don't get the feeling universal health care was necessarily achievable - but it is the reason that I have health care and mental health services today. So I consider it to be a meaningful - if incremental - improvement. I imagine there are quite a few people aside from myself who are happy to have it.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#204

Republicans have completely given up on cities and without being able to even field a worthy candidate it’s the sign of a dying party longer term. You simply have to have some influence in cities. But they had none after a 20 year run where they remade NYC after decades of failure. Bloomberg went independent but he got in as a Republican after a successful Giuliani admin (yes he’s tarnished that). But what happened?…

> You need to control cities to have any future. It seems like the strategy is to control state legislatures through extensive gerrymandering, then use state sovereignty to control the cities from without. Blue cities in otherwise red states are not able to experiment with local policies anymore, much to everyone’s detriment.

That’s not even the point though. You can always do these things but you still have no cultural power and you’ve yielded the important structures and financial capitals. That’s not a long term strategy.

And it’s not that difficult to win these things, especially when you look at how objectively poor the oppositions performance has been in them. Historically they’ve been contested.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#205
post #73

You guys have it all wrong. There was only one candidate for the dem party, Here's the list: 1) Cuomo. Sexpest who has been accused by many women of some pretty shitty stuff. Also a member of a multi-generational dynasty, which is not good. 2) Mayor Adams. Federally indicted by the Feds. They have a 99% conviction rate. Not because they're corrupt, but because they only go after people who have dome some really egreg…

[flagged]

California in free fall? Lol.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that he is proposing a 4 year freeze on about 1 million units. https://www.curbed.com/article/zohran-mamdani-housing-rent-f... archive: https://archive.ph/hnK4Q "The 34-year-old democratic socialist’s pledge for a four-year pause on any increases on the city’s 1 million or so stabilized units, effectively giving a reprieve to about 2 million stabilized tenants, was at the center of his campaign" I…

> 34-year-old democratic socialist’s pledge for a four-year pause on any increases on the city’s 1 million or so stabilized units Out of 3.7mm [1]. > not directly familiar with Berlin Not comparable. Berlin froze rents “on more than 1.5 million” apartments in 2020 [2] out of about 2mm. 25% versus 75%. Also, Berlin’s politicians didn’t propose a construction agenda. Mamdani has. (“New York City voters on Tuesday deliv…

Increasing supply brings down prices. But a builder will not build at a loss or an imminent threat to their rental income from expansion of rent freezes.

A city with an expanding rent-freeze is not inviting new supply.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#207
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rent control in particular is an economic basket case policy, the fact that it's popular at election time should have about as much bearing on it making sense as the fact that another "experimental" candidate was considered by voters in 2024 to be "better on immigration" As for offering free stuff, the problem that - if you look at relative population numbers - NY, CA, etc are already facing is that on the margin peo…

Rent is a nonproductive component in the economy. It shouldn't even exist. If we want an economy that actually provides goods that people need we should focus on productive components like building more houses and actual shelter rather than using limited housing to extract profit, often without even improving the housing itself. > are already facing is that on the margin people he hopes will pay for it will just move…

> If we want an economy that actually provides goods that people need we should focus on productive components like building more houses and actual shelter

What if we built some on spec and then charged people who live in them a monthly fee to recoup the cost. That way we could build more houses immediately without having to get all the money together all at once. We could then use the extra money to build even more houses.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#208

Mamdani's and by extension, his voters', ignorance about the effects of price controls in markets will be an interesting real-time political experiment. When the inevitable unintended outcomes become to emerge who will be blamed? https://rentguidelinesboard.cityofnewyork.us/resources/apart... https://www.zohranfornyc.com/platform Quoting Paul Krugman (Nobel prize winner and liberal columnist at the NYT). "The analysi…

> Mamdani's and by extension, his voters', ignorance about the effects of price controls Mamdani isn’t pitching widespread price controls, but rent control over a small section of New York housing twinned with abundance-style new development. “In a 2022 paper, the political scientists Anselm Hager, Hanno Hilbig, and Robert Vief used the introduction of a 2019 rent-control law in Berlin to study how access to rent-con…

Mamdani will learn that you need to be friends with the people your voters hate to get things done.

Developers are the single most important players in lowering housing costs, but they are part of the "landlord" contingent in voters minds.

If he doesn't learn that, the city is going to be in bad shape. Impossible to get an apartment unless you want to get an illegal sublet at regular old $4500/mo prices.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#209
post #73

You guys have it all wrong. There was only one candidate for the dem party, Here's the list: 1) Cuomo. Sexpest who has been accused by many women of some pretty shitty stuff. Also a member of a multi-generational dynasty, which is not good. 2) Mayor Adams. Federally indicted by the Feds. They have a 99% conviction rate. Not because they're corrupt, but because they only go after people who have dome some really egreg…

>his policies are relatively common sense and middle of the road. Rent control isn't middle of the road, it's 100% socialist. Same thing with city run grocery stores. He also wants to defund the police while replacing them with community outreach people, as well as raising the minimum wage to $30 in 5 years which is absolutely wild. None of this is middle of the road in any way, shape, or form.

When your road is all the way to the right, then yea, none of it is middle of the road.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#210

I hope this turns out well for New York, but I am doubtful. Rent control is such a colossally bad idea, a rent freeze is going to be a disaster. This is going to further increase the lottery nature of New York City real estate, and reduce investment. His plans are set to drive finance and businesses out of the city in his goal to give away money to everyone, which will bankrupt the city. Socialism has a bad track rec…

It's unfortunate because all you have to do is talk to landlords to figure out what's happening (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KbGulTc4TY). Lots of people own buildings, but they're legally prevented from renting them out without taking a loss. The result is you can't bring units back onto the market after they empty, and it becomes harder to find housing.

Austin reduced rent prices by ~20% by building more housing even as the overall city population grew. Other small cities have seen rents decrease through active immigration policing. We know how to fix housing pricing there's just no motivation too, people want expensive, exclusive neighborhoods

Post reply on HN