A History Lesson for Zohran Mamdani

—The housing policies he espouses led to the arson wave of the 1970s

If you’re tempted by Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani’s “housing justice” platform—rent caps, eviction bans, landlord seizures, and public ownership—let me offer a quick history lesson. Because the last time New York tried this, it ended in fire.

Literal fire.

It’s not a metaphor. It’s not political hyperbole. It’s the documented history of New York City in the 1970s, when a toxic brew of rent control, landlord disincentives, and collapsing public budgets led to one of the greatest peacetime housing catastrophes in American history. If Mamdani had been in charge then, the results would have looked no different—and if he’s allowed to remake housing policy now, they will likely look far worse.

Let’s rewind.

🎬 Scene: New York City, 1970s

The city was already under stress. The white middle class had begun its flight to the suburbs. Manufacturing jobs were evaporating. Crime was rising. But the housing stock—especially in working-class neighborhoods like the South Bronx, East New York, and Brownsville—was still intact. That is, until the politicians decided to “help.”

Rent control laws, first enacted in the 1940s, were expanded and tightened. By the early 1970s, thousands of buildings were stuck charging rents that no longer covered basic costs—boilers, roofs, taxes, even hot water. Landlords had no legal way to raise rents or remove non-paying tenants. Banks wouldn’t lend on rent-controlled buildings. Maintenance stopped. Disinvestment began. Collapse followed.

🔥 Then came the fires

Landlords abandoned properties. The city seized them for unpaid taxes. And arson swept through entire neighborhoods like a Biblical curse.

Some of the fires were started by owners looking for insurance money. Some were set by tenants trying to get relocated. Others were accidental or just the result of letting buildings rot into deathtraps.

Between 1970 and 1980, the South Bronx lost over 40% of its housing stock. Some census tracts saw over 80% of buildings destroyed. Fire stations were shuttered. Streets were dark, garbage-strewn, silent. The phrase “The Bronx is burning” wasn’t a metaphor—it was an on-the-ground report from the 1977 World Series.

At one point, the City of New York owned more than 100,000 housing units—the biggest landlord in the country. But it couldn’t maintain them. No heat, no repairs, no garbage pickup. Just squalor and bureaucratic dead ends. Entire buildings were bulldozed. Others collapsed. Tens of thousands of families were left with nothing.

🏚️ Government: the landlord of last resort

When landlords walked away, the city stepped in. It seized properties and tried to manage them—but failed. NYCHA, even then, was falling behind. With no money and no institutional capacity, New York became the worst landlord in America. Units sat vacant. Crime flourished. Heat and hot water were luxuries. And thousands more families were pushed deeper into poverty, homelessness, or despair.

Eventually, under pressure from Washington and Albany, the city sold much of its distressed portfolio to nonprofits, developers, and tenant cooperatives. It was the reintroduction of private capital and market pricing—not more public ownership—that stabilized housing and saved the outer boroughs from ruin.

🚩 Mamdani’s Plan: History on Loop

Now comes Zohran Mamdani—fresh from the DSA’s revolutionary fever dream—proposing rent caps, permanent tenant occupancy rights, landlord seizures for maintenance violations, and the mass public acquisition of housing.

It is exactly the playbook that gutted New York in the 1970s. The only difference now is that Manhattan and Brooklyn are even more expensive, the tax base is even more mobile, and NYCHA is already $80 billion in the red.

Let’s connect the dots:

• Mamdani wants to cap rents below cost.

• He wants to make it almost impossible to evict tenants, even for nonpayment.

• Then he wants to seize buildings when landlords can’t make repairs.

• Then he wants the city to manage them—a city already on the edge of a fiscal crisis.

This isn’t housing justice. This is history repeating itself with a beard and a bullhorn.

🧨 And Wait Until the Insurance Industry Wakes Up

There’s another domino no one on the DSA left seems to be talking about: the insurance market.

If you start capping rents, banning evictions, and threatening to seize properties over code violations or “disrepair,” what do you think the insurers are going to do?

You guessed it:

• Rates will skyrocket for landlords—especially small ones—because now their asset is unprofitable and politically vulnerable.

• Or worse: major insurers may stop writing policies for New York rental properties altogether.

Why would they take on the risk? They already price in the possibility of fire, flood, and crime. But now you’re adding politically driven expropriation to the mix. That’s not something you can model—so the smart move is to get out of the market entirely.

And without insurance? You can’t get a mortgage. You can’t refinance. You can’t build. You can’t even operate.

The result: fewer properties insured, fewer landlords willing to own rental stock, fewer units built or maintained, and even fewer affordable apartments for working New Yorkers.

It’s not just that Mamdani’s platform would hurt housing. It would freeze the entire market. From Wall Street to Brooklyn walkups, every player in the ecosystem—developers, lenders, insurers, even contractors—would see New York real estate as toxic political risk.

🧭 A Final Warning to Voters

If you lived through the Bronx in the 1970s, you don’t need this reminder. But if you’re young, idealistic, and maybe thinking a $900 one-bedroom in Williamsburg sounds nice—please, read some history before you vote for Mamdani or anyone who sounds like him.

Because if we don’t remember, we’ll repeat. And next time, the city might not have the strength to crawl back.

This story should be circulated widely, especially among voters who think Mamdani’s brand of utopian housing reform is the answer. Because what they’re flirting with isn’t justice—it’s collapse.

Vote accordingly.