Zohran Mamdani’s incoming mayoral administration has professed centering New York City’s housing politics squarely upon an affordability agenda. However, Mamdani may encounter increased intergovernmental challenges at the federal level, even though his first meeting at the White House with President Donald Trump appeared congenial.
While Mamdani’s housing policies are more closely aligned with those of former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s left-leaning administration than with the outgoing centrist Mayor Eric Adams’ administration — whose City of Yes program liberalized zoning ordinances and provided significant incentives to developers spurring recent commercial development — there are stark differences.
Specifically, Mamdani’s program signals a pivot from de Blasio’s supply-and-finance mechanics toward power-shifting regulation: tenant-side protection and empowerment, rent freezes, and nonprofit-first pathways promoting tenant ownership of real property. The legal and political implications will be immediate and consequential.
De Blasio’s ‘finance-and-zoning’ vs. Mamdani’s ‘power-and-protection’
De Blasio approached affordability via large-scale targets that mobilized public and private balance sheets: mandatory inclusionary housing tied to rezonings, long-term preservation financing, and steady budgetary allocations to subsidize deeper affordability. Those frameworks relied on public dollars earmarked to leverage private capital on zoning to capture equity for regulated units. The approach kept production coalitions intact but often produced cross-subsidy affordability bands that critics clamored were unevenly distributed.
Mamdani’s early signals point in a different direction. Rather than working primarily through inclusionary deals, the Mamdani administration appears prepared to rebalance the playing field with tenant-forward regulation and public-interest acquisition strategies. A multi-year rent freeze — pursued through appointments to, and evidence presented before, the Rent Guidelines Board — would represent a categorical break even from the incremental de minimis annual rent increase adjustments under the de Blasio administration. Many believe that Mamdani will back the recently proposed City Council’s Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA) proposal (Int. 0902-2024), which would give qualified entities — nonprofits and community land trusts — a first opportunity to purchase certain multifamily buildings and to match competing offers.
Legal scrutiny can come from landlords testing any action by the guidelines board that appears pre-committed or insufficiently grounded in the statutory record, and broader measures like COPA could reinvigorate landlord takings, equal protection, and preemption challenges. This, despite the fact that the constitutional challenges lodged against the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act passed in June 2019, which overhauled New York’s rent regulation laws by effectively maintaining the status of the City’s approximately one million rent regulated apartments in perpetuity, largely failed, as courts found that the Legislature has wide discretion in adopting regulations concerning real property within the confines of their jurisdictional limits per longstanding constitutional precedent.
LaGuardia, Moses, and FDR: a prism for Mamdani and Trump
An analysis of the dynamics between the indefatigable Fiorello La Guardia, nicknamed “the little flower” (the English translation of his Italian first name), and his collaborator, Robert Moses — the power broker regarded as the most powerful civil servant in United States history who is credited with building New York City — on the one hand, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, considered by many as one of the greatest presidents in U.S. history, on the other, offers a useful frame for the incoming dynamic between Mamdani and Trump.
Although this tripartite political power group often clashed with FDR withholding or threatening to withhold federal funds for New York City development projects, the urgent need for the creation of more housing in New York City was as true in the 1940s as it is today. FDR’s New Deal resources paired a strong mayoralty with substantial federal support, enabling ambitious local works despite intracity factionalism. In that moment, alignment across city and federal actors — however uneasy —unlocked capital, cleared legal paths and normalized speed augmenting New York City into a modern metropolis.
Mamdani confronts a similar image: a city administration with reform-oriented policies facing a federal administration with differing views on urban regulatory approaches — and one with a microscope on sanctuary cities like New York City. That inversion has practical consequences.
Federal preemption discussions may influence U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development rulemaking, Justice Department litigation strategies, and grant conditions, potentially impacting tenant-protection policies. In effect, where La Guardia leveraged federal tailwinds, Mamdani will need to anticipate headwinds, build painstaking administrative records for the Rent Guidelines Board and housing actions, and design policies to preempt funding contingencies.
The lesson from the LaGuardia–FDR era highlights the importance of federal leverage, which can function as both a regulatory check and a source of support. While the Mamdani–Trump dynamic initially appeared to be fraught with contention, in their recent meeting, both politicians shared the view that more affordable housing is urgently necessary and must be built. But they may ultimately disagree on the legal machinations by which to get there.
What a Mamdani administration may mean for New York City real estate
With respect to the real estate industry as a whole, Rent Guidelines Board appointments and records may be lawyered aggressively; rent-freeze or near-freeze outcomes could invite statutory and constitutional challenges even though they will have high bars to prevail; and any COPA proposed governmental legislation supporting acquisitions by nonprofits for the creation of tenant-owned properties could be similarly legally attacked on constitutional grounds. Parallel to the early de Blasio defeat of the Responsible Banking Act, industry litigants will probe preemption and ultras vires boundaries wherever city policy appears to re-regulate domains governed by state or federal law.
Yet the market signal is not uniformly presently negative as purchase and sales continue to thrive: there may very well be a continued appetite for leasing and real estate investments given the high-level of New York’s talent and business ecosystem as it has continuously been one of the largest global centers of economic commerce since the mid-19th century.
Mamdani is preparing to establish stronger tenant protections and public-interest purchase pathways and then build them within those guardrails. The success of these policies will hinge on legal craftsmanship, administrative rigor, and the City’s ability to convert legislative frameworks into executable capacity. Politics are bold, but the law will ultimately decide how far and fast they travel.
Massimo F. D’Angelo is a partner at Blank Rome and co-chair of the firm’s real estate industry group.
