Since moving to Washington, D.C., I have witnessed the persistent littering of the streets with socialist, propagandized leaflets promising cheaper housing courtesy of the Democratic Socialists of America.
After becoming accustomed to the daily eyesore, and with the recent victory of a DSA member in Washington, D.C.’s Democratic primary, I wondered what the DSA’s actual plan to fix housing costs is.
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The DSA has garnered recent legislative success in hyper-liberal regional and local elections. Prominent DSA members like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani are — like most grifters — making lofty promises to their constituents. Their promises have not fallen on deaf ears, with the DSA finding success among those most burdened by housing costs: young voters.
In the 2025 New York City mayoral election, 77% of voters aged 18-29, along with 69% of voters aged 30-49, voted for Mamdani. Mamdani voters said their most important concern was New York City’s cost of living. Young people’s worries about the cost of living, especially housing, are warranted. Real wage growth versus the consumer price index is -3.2% from 2020-25. Combined with more than 90% of people living in counties where median rents and housing prices grew faster than median incomes, housing costs have stopped many millennials and Gen Zers from buying a home at all. The DSA has used an understandable source of frustration for votes.
The problem lies in the fact that the DSA’s proposed policies are disastrous for affordable housing. The policies that the DSA champions are counterproductive, and they will further exacerbate the problem. To receive a political endorsement from most DSA chapters, one of your housing policies must include rent control. Despite the siren’s song of rent control improving housing affordability, the policy will only harm the housing market. The best, proven policy for lowering housing costs is the deregulation of the housing market.
Housing markets thrive when developers are given autonomy. We have seen this before, when Minneapolis, Minnesota, passed policies that loosened zoning codes and land use restrictions, allowing developers to build more housing. Because of this, Minneapolis saw a 12% increase in housing units, a negligible 1% increase in average rent, and a 12% decrease in the homelessness population. This occurred while the rest of Minnesota saw double-digit growth in rent costs and homelessness.
Just across the Mississippi River, St. Paul, Minnesota, implemented rent control. St. Paul enacted a rent-control ordinance that capped annual rent increases at 3% annually. Due to those efforts, in a year permits to build apartments in St. Paul plummeted by 79%, while St. Paul experienced a 6% drop in land value that cost the city $1.6 billion. That same year, Minneapolis was able to build 1,919 housing units in comparison to St. Paul’s 288. Implementing hostile policies such as rent control kills housing development.
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Despite the mistakes of other governments across the nation, the DSA’s poster child, Mamdani’s solution to the housing crisis is to follow the DSA playbook and spend New York City’s way out of it, to the tune of $22 billion over a five-year investment on rent-controlled homes. Like any socialist project, the massive cost burden will be borne by the taxpayer. The project’s hefty price tag will be in addition to the approximately $114 billion of outstanding debt New York City holds.
Despite the recent political success of the DSA, its poisonous policies will not lead to a healthier, cheaper housing market but a tighter, more expensive one. The goal of solving housing affordability through rent control has been tried and has failed countless times. The DSA needs to stop propagandizing and learn that the solution to fixing the housing market and increasing affordability is simple: giving freedom to the market.
Grayson Ryland is a regional field manager at the Leadership Institute.
