In his inaugural address on Thursday, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani vowed that his administration would “strive each day to ensure that no New Yorker is priced out of basic necessities.”
Exactly how he plans to accomplish that remains far from clear.
When a New York Magazine journalist recently asked Mamdani to name a city that has successfully lowered its cost of living, he couldn’t come up with a single example. For a politician who campaigned almost entirely on affordability, that silence spoke volumes.
But let’s be generous. Lower rents are possible — if the mayor follows the right playbook.
Two ways rents fall: destroy demand or grow supply
There are really only two basic ways a city becomes more affordable:
- Make people not want to live there
- Build enough housing so supply meets demand
The first approach is economic self-harm.
In the 1970s, New York offered a painful lesson. Fiscal mismanagement pushed the city to the brink of bankruptcy, services were slashed, crime rose, and population fell. Rents were cheaper largely because people simply didn’t want to live here.
Today’s crisis is different. Housing costs are high because we made building too hard. Layers of regulation, long reviews, zoning limits, and added costs choke off supply.
The good news? Other American cities have proved that if you let people build, rents fall.
Austin’s blueprint: loosen rules, build homes, watch rents drop
Take Austin, Texas — an overwhelmingly blue city in a red state.
After COVID, Austin experienced a massive population surge. Rents shot up fast. Instead of denying the problem or leaning on strict rent control, Austin did something simple and powerful:
👉 it made building housing easier.
Starting in 2023, Austin leaders:
- eliminated minimum parking requirements
- allowed up to 3 homes on previously single-family lots
- reduced minimum lot sizes
Construction exploded.
- 15,000 units built in city limits in 2025
- 26,700 units in the greater metro area
- big increases in duplexes and triplexes in formerly single-family neighborhoods
Compare that to New York City, which builds around 25,000 units a year with eight times the population.
The results?
- rents down 22% since summer 2023
- studio–two-bedroom rents down 6.6% since Nov 2024
- Austin is now the most affordable big rental market in the country
And Austin is not alone:
- Sarasota, Florida saw rents fall nearly 43% after similar pro-building reforms.
What doesn’t work: rent control myths
New York keeps clinging to the opposite strategy.
Decades of rent regulation have:
- discouraged new construction
- accelerated deterioration of rent-stabilized buildings
- pushed owners toward default and bankruptcy
It’s basic economics:
👉 when more homes exist, landlords have to compete
👉 competition pushes prices down
What Mamdani could actually do — today
New York has:
- capital
- developers
- demand
What it needs is permission.
A Manhattan Institute report outlines realistic, ideologically compatible steps Mamdani could embrace, including:
- eliminating even more parking mandates
- allowing retail-only sites to be redeveloped as housing
- mapping higher-density zones under new mayoral powers
- reducing costly, multi-year environmental review requirements that block rezonings unlikely to harm the environment
Exempting residential rezonings from burdensome state environmental review could unlock development almost immediately.
Bold speeches won’t change economics
Mamdani promised to govern “expansively and audaciously.”
Fine.
But no mayor — socialist, capitalist, or otherwise — can escape supply and demand.
If New York truly wants affordability, the path is clear:
- build more homes
- faster
- in more places
Cities like Austin have shown it works.
The question is whether Mamdani wants to follow a proven blueprint — or keep repeating policies that made rent skyrocket in the first place.
