Democrats put housing front and center in NYC mayoral debate

With the next race for the mayor of America’s largest city in full swing — and as a city that has consistently elected Democrats for the position for much of the past century — the first Democratic primary debate for the 2025 election was rife with attacks and sweeping policy promises.

Nine candidates were on stage Wednesday night during the Democratic New York City mayoral debate, which was televised on a local NBC News affiliate. Housing took the spotlight immediately out of the gate, with the very first question centered on the affordability of living in the city.

The question also set a common tone for the rest of the night, since eight of the candidates sought to square off against the one running with the most name recognition and institutional backing. The state’s former governor, Andrew Cuomo, is vying for the Democratic nomination to replace incumbent Mayor Eric Adams.

But candidates only had about 30 seconds to submit their answers to the first question posed by one of the moderators: What is their “one big idea” to transform affordability in New York City? Most of the candidates chose to focus on the cost of housing.

New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said she is the only candidate to actually embark on affordable housing work. She noted that the city has a housing plan in place and that she has “built 120,000 units of housing,” with 80,000 more on the way.

New York City Controller Brad Lander described himself as a “lifelong affordable housing activist” but was light on plans. He instead said he wanted to “sweep away the corruption” by naming Adams and Cuomo specifically, adding his “proven management experience” has delivered 50,000 housing units. He said he will “get 500,000 homes built over the next 10 years.”

State Sen. Jessica Ramos focused raising wages, while her Senate colleague Zellnor Myrie said he wants to “deliver 1 million homes over the next 10 years.”

From there, Cuomo chimed in, saying the city was “in real trouble” fiscally and that he wanted to provide for more child care and education opportunities.

He briefly mentioned his time serving as U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) secretary under President Bill Clinton as evidence that he “knows how” to build more affordable housing because of this experience.

Investor and hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson zeroed in on the need for affordable housing in his response. Rather than freezing rents, Tilson said he would seek to drop rents in the city by 20% through “unleashing the private sector to build a lot more housing.”

He dismissed potential criticisms of such a goal as “pie in the sky,” saying that the city did exactly that a century ago and that other cities — including Austin — have done it more recently. Changes to zoning restrictions will be key to accomplish such a goal, he added.

According to Apartments.com, the average rent in Austin is roughly 12% lower than the national average. A local resident who spoke with HousingWire said there has been an abundance of building activity there for the past several years.

State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani — who recently picked up the endorsement of U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — stated that “one in four New Yorkers are living in poverty.” Mamdani called New York the “most expensive city in America.”

He proposed rent freezes for “more than 2 million rent-stabilized tenants,” increasing the speed of transit buses and taxing the wealthiest 1% of residents to pay for them.

Former State Assemblyman Michael Blake said that “the way we actually address affordability is by ending credit scores and increasing income limits for housing applications,” which could be funded by a vacant apartment tax for nonresidents who own units within city limits. He also proposed levying taxes on Madison Square Garden.

Former New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer used his time to take a shot at Cuomo, saying his affordability plan would be centered on taking “city-owned vacant land, a thousand properties, and transform[ing] that land into affordable housing.

“That property should go to not-for-profits, [not] to limited profit developers, not the luxury developers that fund Andrew Cuomo’s campaign, but the developers that can actually build the Mitchell-Lama 2.0 that we need.”

That was a reference to the affordable rental and cooperative housing program from the 1950s.