NYC mayoral candidate Mamdani wants to replace private housing with communes | Fox News
By: Alec Schemmel (Fox News)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
closeVideo
Major NY Dems seem hesitant to endorse Zohran Mamdani for mayor
Fox News national correspondent Bryan Llenas reports on the friction between Zohran Mamdani and high-ranking NYC Democrats and President Donald Trump's attacks on the mayoral candidate on 'Special Report.'
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist candidate for New York City mayor, has come under fire from critics who label him a "communist" - a charge he dismisses as a distraction.
However, the criticisms may not be as unfounded as Mamdani claims. Videos show the NYC mayoral candidate espousing language and theories rooted in communist revolutionary language.
In one 2021 video, Mamdani urges fellow socialists at a conference to not compromise on goals like "seizing the means of production." In a second video, released on YouTube by progressive advocacy group The Gravel Institute that same year, Mamdani discusses the need to turn housing from a private commodity to a public one, calling for luxury condos to be replaced with communal style living that would include things like shared laundry facilities and food co-ops.
POLITIFACT DECLARES ZOHRAN MAMDANI IS NOT A COMMUNIST IN FACT-CHECK OF TRUMP
NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani promotes a socialized housing proposal that includes a push towards communal living, such as shared laundry facilities, in a resurfaced video from 2021.(Getty Images; iStock)
"Why do so many people end up homeless?" Mamdani asks in the video. "It's not because there aren't enough homes to go around, there are plenty of empty homes. No. It's because housing people is not a primary goal of developers or landlords. Their goal, simply put, is to make a profit."
According to Mamdani, this is a problem. He lamented in the video that housing is "a consumer product, just like clothes or cars" that private businesses sell on the market to make a profit. As a result, Mamdani complains, there is plenty of housing for "the rich" but not nearly enough opportunities for poor and working-class people.
"[It's] not efficient or beneficial for the rest of society," Mamdani says. "Housing doesn't have to be seen as a market at all."
FMR. OBAMA TREASURY SEC. CONCERNED ZOHRAN MAMDANI WILL HURT NEW YORK CITY IF ELECTED MAYOR
Homes for sale in the West Seattle neighborhood of Seattle on Tuesday, June 18, 2024.(Photographer: David Ryder/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
In the video, Mamdani points to post-war communist Vienna as an example of how removing privatization from the housing market can be good for society. However, he does concede that currently in Vienna, "residents still pay part of their earnings in rent to cover operational costs and a sizable chunk of the population lives in private housing."
After describing the so-called Vienna model, during which he puts forth a vision of communal living with shared laundry, kitchens, food co-ops, bathhouses, pharmacies, lecture halls, swimming pools and more, he suggests a way forward that includes establishing "community land trusts to gradually buy up housing on the private market and convert it to community ownership."
"If we want to end the housing crisis, the solution has to be moving toward the full de-commodification of housing," Mamdani says. "In other words, moving away from the status quo in which most people access housing by purchasing it on the market and toward a future where we guarantee high quality housing to all as a human right."
JONATHAN TURLEY: WHY NYC'S ZOHRAN MAMDANI LOOKS MORE AND MORE LIKE A HARDCORE MARXIST
Zohran Mamdani speaks at his election victory party on June 25, 2025 in Queens, New York.( Barry Williams/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
President Donald Trump has referred to Mamdani as a "100% Communist Lunatic" and vowed to "save New York City" from Mamdani if he gets elected. He has suggested a willingness to withhold federal funds from the city if Mamdani doesn't "behave."
"As President of the United States, I'm not going to let this Communist Lunatic destroy New York," Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social Wednesday. "Rest assured, I hold all the levers, and have all the cards. I'll save New York City, and make it 'Hot' and 'Great' again, just like I did with the Good Ol' USA!"
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
Fox News Digital reached out to Mamdani's campaign for comment but did not receive a response.
Trolling, taunting, spamming, and off-topic comments may be removed at the discretion of group mods. NT members that vote up their own comments, repeat comments, respond to themselves, or continue to disrupt the conversation risk having all their comments deleted. Please remember to quote the person(s) you are replying to preserve the continuity of this seed.
Tags
Who is online
123 visitors
Please, Please, I'm begging you to the NY voters, the same stupid fuckers that gave us Jeffries and AOC, please make this guy your mayor, if for nothing else but for the entertainment value that he will provide for the rest of us.
Great idea - Make NYC a big Kibbutz, and solve the housing problem by having people living in Buckminster Fuller geodesic domes, like the American draft dodgers and hippies did in their communes in rural Ontario. I was in one back then when I visited some of my friends in their commune. It looked a little like this.
He better watch his step. If he harbors illegals, he may find himself in jail.
Odd.
The single most successful method for ending a housing crisis in the last 30 years is clearly not the "Vienna" method but the "Buenos Aires" method. Deregulation caused supply to double within 12 months and inflation adjusted rents are down 40%.
amdani urges fellow socialists at a conference to not compromise on goals like "seizing the means of production"
Not a communist though. Lol.
He is old school, the modern-day communist democrats know that if they are too lazy to work, so seizing production is pointless, they just steal what the producers produce without investing any labor, redistribution is the term they use the most.
It may have been best said by Joshua Muravchik:
“It’s hard to think of another idea that has been tried and failed as many times in as many ways or at a steeper price in human suffering.”
Mamdani lied about being african american to try and get into columbia (still failed). Makes perfect sense why this race hustler is so beloved by modern day racists.
Warren, Mamdani... lying about their race seems to be a pattern among socialists who can't win honestly.
Psst ... Elon Musk is an African-American.
MAGA should be cheering, they hate New York. Let him have at it right?
If you back him and he does it only to fail, isn't that a way to turn New York into a red state?
Yes, it is true that for over one hundred years millions of New Yorkers, including myself, live in socialist inspired cooperative apartments. This is where tennants do not own their own apartments individually, but Instead they hold endless leases to individual apartments and own shares in the entire property proportional to their unit sizes. These type properties are managed by boards of directors who are elected from and by the building shareholders. Yes, these living arrangements are based upon socialist principles whereby the tenants or the end users are also the owners. This kind of social agreement is similar to rural electrical cooperatives and farmer's co-ops which are common in rural areas. Zohran Mandani supports building cooperatives where those who live there havd individual stakes instead of landlord owned rental properties. BIG WOO! Do get your MAGA panties in a wad over it. Please! Be very afraid. The future is coming regardless.