Mamdani’s Strategy to Take Over Private Housing Laid Bare

On its face, Mamdani’s dream of the city eventually ending private property, or at least private housing, seems pretty far-fetched. 

Despite claims to the contrary, it’s quite clear that Mamdani wants to do this, and he even, at times, campaigned on taking apartment buildings away from owners. But more convincingly, he appointed as his point person on housing Cea Weaver, who many times has said she wants to convert the housing market to one controlled by the state, and who has made it quite clear that she would like actual communists be in charge. 

NEW from me:

During a 2021 podcast appearance, Cea Weaver said one of her goals was to “block evictions” and “chip away at homeownership” pic.twitter.com/xHs5RHlFvm

— Jon Levine (@LevineJonathan) January 14, 2026

But merely WANTING to accomplish a goal means a lot less than having a PLAN to achieve that goal with the means available. 

Despite the left’s willingness to push or go past the established boundaries set in law, there ARE limits, and one has to wonder whether Mamdani can get from here to his utopia. 

The answer, surprisingly, is yes, or at least much of the way there. 

Step 1: ‘Organize’ tenants to file dozens and dozens of complaints with the building department to establish cause for investigation.

Step 2: Squeeze these same landlords with massive compounding fines they will not be able to get out from under. Use rent strikes and rent… https://t.co/PTknvuzg1D

— Councilwoman Vickie Paladino (@VickieforNYC) January 20, 2026

Step 1: ‘Organize’ tenants to file dozens and dozens of complaints with the building department to establish cause for investigation.

Step 2: Squeeze these same landlords with massive compounding fines they will not be able to get out from under. Use rent strikes and rent control laws to limit income, making compliance with tenant complaints financially impossible.

Step 3: Use the outstanding debt with the city resulting from the fines and noncompliance as leverage with mortgage and bankruptcy courts to have the buildings turned over to the city and/or designated nonprofits at fire sale prices.

That’s how private property will be stripped from owners, and how politically-favored activist nonprofits will become the new land barons of NYC.

They will do this on increasingly small properties, and eventually even to private homeowners who rent an upstairs or basement apartment.

And once they take over these properties, they will be left to rot, just like NYCHA is. That’s the future the marxists want for us. It’s just plain evil.

Councilwoman Vickie Paladino of Queens has been following Mamdani and fighting the left in New York City for some time now, and understands that there is more than one way to skin a cat. 

Mamdani doesn’t have the authority to just seize housing, for which we may be thankful. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have alternate means to accomplish the same goal, if at a slower pace. And Mamdani has even campaigned on the first step in his plan—going after landlords the city describes as unacceptably bad and fining them into oblivion and then seizing their property. 

On its face, the city’s strategy to bully landlords into providing better service is appealing, but there are many reasons to believe that this is not actually the plan. I would add one step to Vickie’s: ensure that rent-controlled apartments are priced at levels that make sustaining a building unaffordable, as has happened in the past in rent-controlled areas. Anybody who visited the South Bronx in the 70s could see blocks and blocks of empty buildings abandoned by landlords who could not maintain their buildings and pay their taxes, leaving a scarred landscape in their wake. 

Some of the nominally most valuable real estate in the world left to rot in a city in dire need of housing, all because the market was destroyed. 

If landlords can’t afford to maintain their buildings, and the city fines them and then “fixes” the problems resulting in outrageous costs the owner cannot pay, bankruptcy will inevitably result. And then the city swoops in to grab the building through legal means, using a judicial system already rigged to enable leftist policies. 

If you organize tenants to report landlords—this is Cea Weaver’s entire career up to now—the process can move quite swiftly. Left-wing residents organize and target a landlord, the city fines them and bankrupts them, and then rinse and repeat. 

Snopes and other leftist outlets might call this protecting tenants, but the fact is that it is a strategy to transfer ownership from private hands to the state. 

Ironically, the city itself has a horrible record of maintaining properties. 

In other words, the city is a terrible landlord itself. If Mamdani’s policies were aimed at the city, it would lose its own buildings. 

But Mamdani wants to build a mini-Soviet Union, not actually make things better for New Yorkers. All he needs to do is SAY the right words and he is the next Fidel Castro in their eyes. 

And in ours. Only we see him more clearly. 

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