Two cities are running opposite housing experiments in real time: San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan cut fees and went from zero to 2,000 homes built in one year, while NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani appointed a self-described communist to run housing, proposed rent freezes that threaten 100,000 units, and is raiding the rainy day fund to cover the fiscal damage.
Read Top Post →Mamdani’s rent freeze threatens up to 100,000 units; his Sunnyside Yard plan promises just 12,000. Net loss: 88,000 homes. LA developer Moses Kagan explained why the math never works: developers are landlords. Freeze what a building can charge and it’s not worth building. Politico’s own sources called the Mamdani-Raman platform “capitalism for developers, communism for landlords.” Cuba tried this in 1958—housing stock has decayed for 65 years.
Mar 08, 2026 · 4 min
Mamdani announced he’s raiding NYC’s rainy day fund and retiree health trust rather than cut spending—the same fiscal playbook that left San Francisco with an $800M deficit. His signature policies: rent freezes that 93% of economists oppose, city-run grocery stores, and reduced policing. Stanford research on SF’s own rent control expansion found it drove a 15% conversion of rental units to condos and pushed citywide rents up 5.1%.
Feb 19, 2026 · 5 min
Mamdani appointed Cea Weaver—who tweeted “elect more communists” and called homeownership “white supremacy"—to run NYC housing policy without City Council confirmation, after the Council already rejected her in 2021. Her mother owns a $1.6M home in Nashville. This is the person now shaping policy for a city with 50,000 vacant rent-stabilized apartments.
Jan 15, 2026 · 7 min
