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Comment by testfoobar | Hacker News Reader

My understanding is that he is proposing a 4 year freeze on about 1 million units.

https://www.curbed.com/article/zohran-mamdani-housing-rent-f... archive: https://archive.ph/hnK4Q

"The 34-year-old democratic socialist’s pledge for a four-year pause on any increases on the city’s 1 million or so stabilized units, effectively giving a reprieve to about 2 million stabilized tenants, was at the center of his campaign"

I'm not directly familiar with Berlin. But this story about shortages is the expected outcome:

https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/germany-must-build-32...

BERLIN, March 20 (Reuters) - Germany, lagging in its building goals to alleviate a housing shortage, needs to construct 320,000 new apartments each year by 2030, a study on Thursday showed.

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> 34-year-old democratic socialist’s pledge for a four-year pause on any increases on the city’s 1 million or so stabilized units

Out of 3.7mm [1].

> not directly familiar with Berlin

Not comparable. Berlin froze rents “on more than 1.5 million” apartments in 2020 [2] out of about 2mm. 25% versus 75%.

Also, Berlin’s politicians didn’t propose a construction agenda. Mamdani has. (“New York City voters on Tuesday delivered a strong message in support of building more housing, passing three proposals that pitted City Hall against the City Council in an effort to rewrite decades-old development rules” [4].)

[1] https://www.nyc.gov/content/tenantprotection/pages/fast-fact...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/world/europe/berlin-gentr...

[3] https://www.berlin.de/en/news/8283996-5559700-housing-stock-...

[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/04/nyregion/nyc-ballot-measu...

Increasing supply brings down prices. But a builder will not build at a loss or an imminent threat to their rental income from expansion of rent freezes.

A city with an expanding rent-freeze is not inviting new supply.

[flagged]

First - a rent freeze directly transfers inflation costs to the property owners. It is a tax by another name.

Second - there is no similar freeze on property taxes - or the expected inflation in maintenance costs, insurance, and so on. Again - a tax on property owners by another name.

Third - starting with a rent freeze is an indicator of a property owner unfriendly administration. Any builder would have to calculate this into their expected returns on capital investment.

It's not property-owner-unfriendly, it's landlord-unfriendly.

Which is just fine in my book.

Builders do not have to "calculate" any of this into their "expected returns", because new construction will not be subject to rent freezes or even stabilization. You're selectively ignoring a key part of what the GP said in order to further your incorrect argument, and that's not cool.

As for your first and second points... tough shit for the landlords. That's a cost of doing business. Taxes, even implicit ones like this, change all the time. And a landlord owning a rent-stabilized unit should already know that there are limits on what kind of rent increases they can push through, and that those limits could change at any time, even to zero.

> tough shit for the landlords. That's a cost of doing business

If Mamdani does this, not only is he fucked, but he might take down the national progressive movement with himself.

"Tough shit" is a good Twitter reaction. It's terrible policy. Berlin did that, and it backfired in the most predictable way possible.

New York needs more housing. New York City's public finances simply do not permit a massive public housing construction binge, and Albany can't fund a socialist mayor's public works with upstate tax dollars. That means that housing must be privately developed. New York City, just today, transferred power away from City Council and to Gracie Mansion to help facilitate new housing. That means the impediment is local opposition. The literature shows that opposition gets dampened when folks aren't afraid of gentrification; rent freezes do that.

If Mamdani takes the easy route and "tought shits" the landlords, his housing policy grinds to a halt. Market rents, covering 75% of New York apartments, will spike. The experiment will be over. He doesn't strike me as an idiot, which is why I don't suspect he'll do this.

>If Mamdani does this, not only is he fucked, but he might take down the national progressive movement with himself.

Like Obama with ACA? He fully thought he'd be a one term president over trying to push it in. Sometimes the best thing for a city is not what's best for reelection. And I very much don't want a candidate who's only minmaxing around what will get him re-elected.

I think we need to have more faith in the people. As gen Z says, "let him cook". We're thinking too Establishment here in a time where we clearly need a different strategy. Establishment had nearly 2 decades to resolve this and it only got worse instead. Why not try a new plan while observing what went wrong before and adjusting?

Or at least be able to scrutinize when the people who want to ruin his 2028 campaign (should he rerun) are the same that tried these same tactics this year. If these tactics were effective, Mamdami wouldn't have gotten in.

Doesn’t seem like you read the comment you are replying to.

> You are ignorant of both

> You're talking out of your ass

You can't comment like this on Hacker News, no matter what you're replying to.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

>> You're talking out of your ass

>You can't comment like this on Hacker News, no matter what you're replying to.

Fair enough.

>> You are ignorant of both >You can't comment like this on Hacker News, no matter what you're replying to.

Would "the facts don't support your assertions in either case." be more acceptable? Or is noting a lack of knowledge in any way unacceptable?

I'm not trying to be snarky here. I just want to make sure I don't run afoul of the guidelines and make more work for you and the other already over-worked moderators.

Thanks!

It's good that you're committed to observing the guidelines, thanks.

It should be easy enough to reply without ugly personal abuse or swipes like "ignorant".

If someone's comment indicates a lack of important knowledge about the topic, you can just politely point out the missing information, the way you might in a respectful conversation with a friend over dinner or a beer. That's what we're aiming for on HN.

>a builder will not build at a loss or an imminent threat to their rental income from expansion of rent freezes.

A builder isn't a land owner. They make contracts, negotiate a price, and build to that price. They're dealing with a government, so there's more money in the bank to spend if the government is truly focused on solving an issue.

A city with an expanding rent-freeze is not inviting new supply.

>A city with an expanding rent-freeze is not inviting new supply.

Okay, cool. I honestly don't want an atchitect who can't think 5 years on advance (when these rent control proposals are scheduled to end, should they be enacted). That short term quarterly thinking is precisely why we have been unable to build housing.

I think the builder builds if you pay them. I don't think they care about what the rent will be because they just build stuff.

So, just pay them, and figure it out later.

The alternative is what we're currently doing, and have been doing for the past few decades: nothing. This does not work. Our current housing situation is simply not sustainable.

> Increasing supply brings down prices. But a builder will not build at a loss or an imminent threat to their rental income from expansion of rent freezes. > > A city with an expanding rent-freeze is not inviting new supply.

Builders build rent stabilized housing ("affordable apartments") in tandem with market rate unsubsidized units. There is an enormous backlog of development proposals that the city council has been sitting on for a while now. Vacancy rates in NYC are 1.4%. anything under 5% is defined as a critical housing shortage.

New housing is in such extreme demand that people pay $5k/mo for a shoebox.

awesome stuff! loved this comment cause it is the kind of thing US political party (one in particular) teaches its faithful followers that is rooted in some crazy ideology without a shred of any evidence to back it up (especially since here we are talking about NEW YORK CITY not some shithole in the South). Goodspeed mate, wild stuff!!

Berlin reverted the rent freeze later because it was deemed unconstitutional. Many people had to pay back the money they "saved". Without entering in the other discussion the Berlin case was not a success.

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