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Let's understand a few things about what's actually about to happen here if Zohran gets his way -- which he almost certainly will, unless courts intervene.
First and foremost, Cea Weaver and DSA 'organizers' will be unleashed with the full institutional and legal support of the city government to ramp up tenant complaints in targeted buildings. No complaint will be too small. No building will be too small. Everything will be treated as catastrophic. Full-scale demagoguery will ensue, complete with protests, rent strikes, street theater, and harassment of property owners.
Accordingly, the city buildings department will be weaponized to begin writing as many violations as possible in order to bolster the city's effort to justify a seizure. It won't matter how small or large the violations are, the total number will be breathlessly cited as evidence of mismanagement. It will be impossible for landlords to clear these violations in good faith.
The combination of a weaponized buildings department writing hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, rent strikes, and constant threats and harassment against landlords by militant activists will make the situation untenable for any property owner to realistically fight back, and the city will seize the property. The landlord will be lucky to walk away without prison or being beaten to death in the street by an angry mob (as Zohran's buddy Hasan Piker referred to landlords -- 'let the streets run red with their capitalist blood').
But that's only the first half of the plan, and everyone needs to pay very close attention to the big picture here, because it's hugely important and has national implications.
The properties will then be turned over to nonprofits. This is no small detail. This is in fact the whole point.
The idea here is to build up Zohran's DSA-connected nonprofits with a multbillion-dollar portfolio of hard assets -- New York City real estate. This portfolio could theoretically reach into the hundreds of billions or even the trillions, depending on how aggressive they get.
Now these highly political nonprofits would become the new land barons of New York, complete with all the political clout, leverage, and reach that goes along with it. It would be a true nightmare scenario.
As it stands now, the nonprofits depend mostly on the largesse of grants, donations, and other third-party resources to stay afloat. They are lavishly funded of course, and many do hold significant assets, but it would all pale in comparison to simply handing them the keys to a New York City real estate empire, courtesy of Zohran Mamdani and the DSA.
The resources at their disposal would be immense. The organizing potential that goes along with those resources will have national implications. Every DSA candidate in every town and city in the country would be trained, funded, and staffed by organizers with ties to the NYC nonprofit empire backed by a trillion dollars in free real estate. And they would be shameless in leveraging those resources for pure political power.
That's the game plan here. That's the whole ball of wax.
Zohran isn't interested in making housing better for anyone. If he was, we'd be talking seriously about solving the NYCHA disaster.
Hell, if he was even remotely sincere about seizing these properties from 'bad landlords' for the 'public good' he'd be focused on turning them over to the city itself, as misguided as that would be.
No, this is about nothing more than consolidating political power for the DSA. Just like everything else these people do. Giving the DSA a massive war chest backed by seized real estate.
Once you understand that they have no interest in fixing anything other than elections, it all makes a lot more sense.
Brecca Stoll@breccastoll
NOW: Mamdani says his admin will transfer ownership from bad landlords to non-profits. “For buildings that have suffered chronic neglect, we will work to transfer ownership to responsible stewards. Stewards that include community land trusts, non-profits, or even the tenants themselves.”
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