LIZ PEEK: Con man Zohran Mamdani wants to ignore real causes of NYC's affordability crisis
Zohran Mamdani is a con man.
Not just because the socialist currently atop New York’s mayoral leaderboard lives in a rent-controlled apartment, which should offend everyone, but because he promises to make life more affordable for New Yorkers while ignoring the real causes of the Big Apple’s cost-of-living crisis.
Mamdani is correct: New York is one of our country’s most expensive cities, ranking either first or second in cost of living, vying with San Francisco for top honors. In a list of top ten most costly cities to live in, all but one – Miami, Florida – are in blue states like California and Massachusetts.
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Has any liberal reporter asked Mamdani why that might be? Why the cost of housing, transportation, electricity and other essential services in those Democrat-run cities is significantly higher than in other towns across America?
No, they have not, because the answers are not flattering to Democrats. It is the overreaching and intrusive hand of government – the hand that Socialists like Mamdani want to empower – that raises the cost of everything.
Take housing, which is one of the biggest issues for New Yorkers and those struggling to make ends meet across the nation. Five of the ten most expensive cities in America in which to buy or rent a home are in California. The reason for the Golden State’s high housing costs is simple: local governments and the state make it almost impossible to build.
One recent study from the Rand Center on Housing and Homelessness compared the cost of building a new apartment in California and Texas. It found that the cost of building an average apartment in Texas was roughly $150,000; in California the cost was about $430,000, or 2.8 times more. Ironically, "For publicly subsidized, affordable apartments—a sector that California has spent billions on in recent years—the gap is even worse." Such units evidently cost over four times as much as affordable apartment units in Texas.
Why the disparity? Higher prices paid for land, labor, architectural and engineering costs were all culprits, but the major "soft cost" differential was development fees to local governments, which average roughly $30,000 per unit in California against only about $800 in Texas. In other words, local officials have their hands out, taxing and adding fees every step of the development process, driving up total costs enormously.
But the study showed the main reason building in California is so pricey compared to Texas is that it takes too long. For a privately financed developer, it takes about two years to produce an apartment building in Texas compared to over four years in California. In building, time is money as "land costs must be carried for longer, equipment and labor are on jobsites longer, and that loans are taken out for a longer term, and so on."
As the Rand economist Jason Ward notes, "Most of the differences that the study uncovered stem from policy choices made by state and local governments." Many are legacies of the so-called "slow growth movement" in California, which has shaped housing production since the 1980s." He points out that the "slow growth" movement has worked; California’s population has shrunk, thanks largely to the choking cost of living in the state.
As in California, it takes too long to build in New York, thanks to burdensome regulations, and it is expensive thanks to union demands and other costs. Even the left-leaning New York Times concluded last year, "It has become quite difficult, time-consuming and expensive to build and maintain apartment buildings here." Navigating the zoning and regulatory thicket, complying with onerous building codes, getting approval from the numerous agencies and political bodies involved, including the City Council, can take years and drives costs higher. The Times cites a study showing New York is the most expensive place in the world to build.
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Does Mamdani want to lighten the rules and regulations that drive housing costs higher? No. Socialists want more government interference, not less.
New Yorkers also pay high costs for electricity, thanks to leftist policy decisions. The average residential electricity rate in New York City is 52% higher than the national average. Officials, bowing to environmentalists, have tried to phase out fossil fuels, including affordable, plentiful and relatively clean natural gas, and also shrink nuclear power’s share of the pie, even as they push electrification. The increasing reliance on solar and other renewable fuels, which is endorsed by Mamdani, has driven electricity costs higher.
How about transportation? The cost of mass transit in New York skyrocketed 56% between 2012-13 and 2022-23, according to State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. New York is not alone; mass transit systems everywhere have suffered rising expenses and in some cases declining ridership, leading officials to boost fees.
Some of the problems are local, but the relentless rise in costs also tracks back to a law passed by Congress called the Urban Mass Transportation Act of 1964; Section 13(c) of that law required local agencies, like New York, accept federal transit grants, to workers from modernization or efficiency moves that could result in layoffs. This law has meant that transit systems cannot implement measures to cut costs which, thanks to hefty union settlements, have risen above the rate of inflation.
Would Mamdani buck the unions that are costing New York transit riders ever-higher fees? Doubtful. Transport Workers Union President John Samuelsen has backed the socialist’s plan for free bus fare; he no doubt calculates that if there are no fare revenues, people will be less likely to blame high transit system deficits on labor costs.
Mamdani is lying to voters about the sources of – and the solutions to -- the affordability crisis in New York. His Big Government proposals, including raising taxes to fund free buses, free childcare and other handouts, will only make matters worse, as they have everywhere.
Socialism is not new; it’s just bloated government run amok.