Zohran Mamdani has a plan to seize private property and take over the apartment-housing business in New York City, and it's not exactly rocket science. He even ran for office on a platform of doing so, although he didn't describe it in exactly those terms.
It's pretty simple, really, and doesn't require men with guns knocking on doors and putting landlords up against the wall, as his good friend Hasan Piker likes to fantasize about. While Piker screams on Twitch about capitalist blood and guts running in the streets, Mamdani and his housing czar, Cea Weaver, are following the tried and now true DSA method of using the existing institutions to more gradually implement their communist agenda.
Mamdani and Cea Weaver's plan is simple: squeeze landlords from all sides. Freeze rents, increase taxes, organize tenants to complain about landlord violations, impose massive fines, seize property when fines can't be paid.
As I said, it's not rocket science. They outlined the plan over the past couple of years, and Councilwoman Vicki Paladino warned about it.
Step 1: ‘Organize’ tenants to file dozens and dozens of complaints with the building department to establish cause for investigation.
— Hon. Vickie Paladino (@VickieforNYC) January 20, 2026
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
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.
Well, Mamdani just froze the rent by installing loyalists at the Rent Guidelines Board (ah, yes, bureaucrats get to decide some rents in New York City!), circumventing the legal process, and declaring that rents cannot be raised despite inflation biting into maintenance costs.
Rent Guidelines Board member Christina Smyth just resigned from the board — hours before they were slated to vote on whether to enact Mayor Mamdani's rent freeze promise.
— Josie Stratman (@JosieStratman) June 25, 2026
This rebuilt board was required to deliver a rent freeze. Everything since has been theater," she wrote. pic.twitter.com/kBM7knYGv4
The landlords are supposed to be represented on the board, and they were of course outvoted, leading to the resignation of one of the board members in disgust. As if it could be any other way. Give "technocrats" power, and they will technocratize, which inevitably means taking over and implementing their own agenda.
Mamdani is SO good at doing this. He may have the Hugo Chavez agenda, but he is tailor-made for the TikTok generation, and has a smile and demeanor that makes the oily Gavin Newsom look like a third-rate teen actor in a community theatre playing Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman.
It might be hot outside but the rent is freezing. pic.twitter.com/EXPaI8emyv
— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) June 26, 2026
I mean, come on...you can't say he doesn't sell communism well, can you? I even like him in these commercials. Until I remember that he is a front man for a movement that looks forward to the day when they can enslave people and wipe out the Jews.
Ironically, those living in NYC rent stabilized apartments are the ones not "paying their fair share" https://t.co/DIfDbNerDG
— Buck Sexton (@BuckSexton) June 26, 2026
Like all socialists, he is selling "fairness," "affordability," and unicorn farts. Tapping into resentment, he makes people feel good and virtuous for wanting to steal from others. He's the kind of guy who can wax poetic about how people living off the taxpayers' dime have a human right to taxpayer-subsidized soda and Doritos because of "food deserts" or something, and who can pull your heartstrings while explaining that Venezuelan rapists and Haitian deadbeats are the warp and woof of our civilization.
44% of rent stabilized units in NYC are occupied by people born outside of the US…
— Geiger Capital (@Geiger_Capital) June 26, 2026
American-born citizens are subsidizing the foreign-born to live in our financial capital, while driving up prices of the remaining supply. https://t.co/tiuh1IxdNX pic.twitter.com/57BZoudeLr
Rent control, everywhere and always, leads to reduced housing supply, declining maintenance, and eventual abandonment of the private sector in the housing market. Add in onerous regulations, tenant unions, massive fines, and government seizures for unpaid fines, and you get the transfer of property from the private sector to the government.
When Milei abolished rent control in Argentina, leftists predicted a housing apocalypse. The opposite happened: private housing suddenly flooded the market, leading to a massive drop in rents and an expanded supply. And that was even BEFORE new housing could be built.
Whenever a Democrat talks about "affordable housing," know that they actually mean government-subsidized housing. For Organized Crime Democrats, that means creating a cartel of developers charging hundreds of thousands to a million dollars per unit to build crappy units. When the socialists are in control, it means something closer to Cabrini Green.
Zohran Mamdani and the DSA crowd are communists, making a play to control our major cities and the Democratic Party, and the Organized Crime Democrats are just waking up to that fact, far too late. Trump is squeezing their fraud machine, starving them of money on the one end, and the DSA is coming at them from the inside.
It's ironic that these forces are squeezing the Democrats from both ends, and the rise of the DSA is certainly an unintended consequence of the defunding of USAID and some NGOs, which have benefited both Democrats and their radical allies.
Johnson: Over half of Democrats say they want to live in another country. Go. We can’t deport that many. pic.twitter.com/189AyKtjAZ
— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) June 26, 2026
But the DSA is far more ideologically committed than the OCDs, who only wanted money and power. And by taking over cities, the DSA has a new source of revenue, in addition to the Chinese Communist Party and the radical billionaires.
It's hard to predict that an organization as old and entrenched as the Organized Crime Democrats is doomed, but obviously, they fear that they are. They thought that allying with the Bolsheviks and elevating Barack Obama to sainthood after he trounced Hillary! in 2008 would ensure their continued existence. But of course, that was a fool's bet.
Now they have to fight, and hating Trump will not be enough. They have to turn their fire on the Bolsheviks and go to all-out war, and I'm not sure they have the stomach to do so and the will or ammo to win.
I would say "Pop the popcorn," but I am scared of these people, and with reason. They aren't all plotters and schemers like Mamdani and minions. Many are violent revolutionaries, and Mamdani loves them too. Hasan Piker talks that game, but Antifa and Luigi Mangione are real heroes to these people.
It's not just Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer on the menu. We all are.
UPDATE:
Elissa Slotkin, one of the 'CIA Democrats,' is taking the next step in the Color Revolution.
Hakeem Jeffries is confronted with Elissa Slotkin calling for new leadership in the Democrat party:
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 26, 2026
SLOTKIN: If people can't understand that the game has changed then they need to let others lead.
JEFFRIES: “I have no idea what Elissa Slotkin was talking about." pic.twitter.com/Izp48sRsPf
Not certain whose side the CIA Democrats are on in the brewing civil war, but it sure ain't ours.
Editor's Note: Do you enjoy HotAir's conservative reporting that takes on the radical left and woke media? Support our work so that we can continue to bring you the truth.
Join HotAir VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member