On Thursday, shortly after his slate of socialist candidates swept Democratic Party primaries in congressional and state House races, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani secured his first big socialist policy victory when the Rent Guidelines Board approved a rent freeze on 1 million apartments in the city. New York residents voted for socialism, and now they are getting it, good and hard.
Mamdani won on an explicit promise to “freeze the rent,” and after appointing six of the board’s nine members, he engineered that outcome. His supporters are ecstatic. Activists chanted, sang, and cried after the vote. Their jubilation is understandable. A rent-controlled apartment is a valuable property right in New York, even if it comes at the expense of millions of other residents not lucky enough to have one.
