How the Democratic candidates for mayor would fix NYC’s housing crisis

The 2025 New York City mayoral election will have huge impacts on housing in the city, including where it gets built and how to make it affordable for everyday New Yorkers.

In just two weeks, registered voters will rank their choices for mayor in the Democratic primary election on June 24th (early voting begins June 14th). As that pivotal date approaches, renters and owners alike have a chance to evaluate which candidate’s housing plan best serves the city.

All the candidates want to accelerate the speed of housing production in NYC, to build thousands—even hundreds of thousands—more apartments than the less than 30,000 housing units NYC developers built in 2023. But how they intend to build these apartments differs widely between the mayoral hopefuls.

Read on for an overview of the housing plans for all of the nine major Democratic candidates for mayor. 

[Editor’s note: The candidates included in this article are those running in the Democratic primary. They are listed in alphabetical order by last name. This list does not include two independent candidates—current Mayor Eric Adams and attorney Jim Walden—and Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, who are not a part of the Democratic primary.]

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Council speaker Adrienne Adams entered the mayor’s race in May.

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Photo courtesy John McCarten/NYC Council Media Unit

Adrienne Adams 

Council speaker Adrienne Adams has touted her record in the City Council in the mayor’s race. As speaker, she helped pass the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, a landmark series of zoning reforms that will pave the way for 80,000 new housing units over the next 15 years. She told the New York City Housing Conference that she plans to use the City of Yes to build more affordable housing throughout NYC. 

As mayor, she says she will expand eligibility for the CityFHEPS housing voucher program—something the City Council passed in 2023, but Mayor Adams stonewalled. She also intends to dedicate more city funding to fix dilapidated New York City Housing Authority units, incentivize repairs at rent-stabilized apartments, and increase staffing at the city’s housing agencies. 

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Michael Blake previously served as a New York Assemblyman and vice chair of the Democratic National Committee.

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Photo courtesy Joe Mabel/Wikimedia Commons

Michael Blake

Michael Blake, a former New York State Assembly member and perennial candidate, wants to change how NYC determines who qualifies for affordable housing.

Currently, eligibility is determined by the area median income—the median income for households of different sizes. That metric is based on income data for the five boroughs, plus Putnam, Rockland, and Westchester counties, which doesn’t represent the true cost of living for city-dwellers, Blake said. He wants to determine a local median income that would replace AMI in affordable housing applications.

Blake also wants to build more Mitchell-Lama housing, eliminate credit checks for rental and mortgage applications, work with the state government to reform NYC’s property tax system, and said he would tax pieds-à-terre to help fund upgrades at NYCHA.

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Former Governor Andrew Cuomo will run on an independent ballot line regardless of whether he wins the June 24th Democratic primary, according to CBS.

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Photo courtesy Marc A. Hermann/MTA NYC Transit/Wikimedia Commons

Andrew Cuomo

Former Governor Andrew Cuomo’s housing plan includes increasing city and state subsidies for affordable housing, using NYC’s pension funds to invest in new housing developments, and supporting office to residential conversion projects.

He also wants to study why landlords may be keeping rent-stabilized apartments vacant—a practice known as warehousing—and develop a subsidy program to renovate vacant units. But during the mayoral debate on Thursday, June 13th, he declined to commit to a rent freeze, and instead said he’d leave it up to the Rent Guidelines Board, the panel of mayoral appointees that sets rents for rent-stabilized apartments.

Cuomo’s housing plan got a lot of attention when it was released in April, though probably not for the reason his team had hoped: The Cuomo campaign caught significant flak for using ChatGPT to provide research for the candidate’s housing plan, as well as the inclusion of a number of spelling and grammatical errors. 

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Brad Lander announced a plan in March to build housing on some of the city’s municipal golf courses.

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Photo courtesy Lander for Mayor

Brad Lander

Former NYC Comptroller Brad Lander plans to declare the housing crisis in NYC an emergency, allowing him to fast track his plan of building 500,000 new housing units over the next 10 years. (That includes a plan to build housing on four of the city’s 12 municipal golf courses.) 

He also wants to use city funds to purchase and rehabilitate distressed buildings, help city workers buy property through co-ownership with the city, and make co-living legal in NYC. For NYCHA residents, Lander plans to create a system for tenants to review and score contractors that repair—or fail to fix up—their apartments. 

He also called in April for a one-year rent freeze for the city’s rent-stabilized apartments, though he initially told Brick Underground that he’d support a rent freeze based on data presented to the Rent Guidelines Board.

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorsed Zohran Mamdani as her first choice in a ranked choice ballot in June, followed by Adrienne Adams, Brad Lander, former Comptroller Scott Stringer, and State Senator Zellnor Myrie. 

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Photo courtesy Kara McCurdy

Zohran Mamdani

State Assembly member Zohran Mamdani of Queens was the first mayoral candidate to call for a rent freeze for the city’s rent-stabilized apartments in October, and that promise has been a central part of his campaign.

If elected, Mamdani also plans to have the city directly finance the construction of 200,000 new rent-stabilized apartments, and he told Brick Underground that he would push for the expansion of rent stabilization to all new housing production in the city—something state legislators would have to pass.

Mamdani also announced a plan to bolster the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants, and to ramp up code enforcement against negligent landlords by hiring more staff at the city’s housing agencies.  

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Zellnor Myrie currently represents central Brooklyn in the New York state senate.

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Photo courtesy NY Senate Photo

Zellnor Myrie

State Senator Zellnor Myrie wants to build around one million housing units over the next decade, through a combination of increasing how densely developers can build, speeding development approvals by hiring more city staffers, and redeveloping public buildings.

Myrie told Brick Underground that close to half of those million units will be affordable for New Yorkers through existing city programs, such as mandatory inclusionary housing, which requires developers to include rent-stabilized apartments in exchange for building denser developments.

Myrie also plans to fully fund and expand NYC’s right to counsel program, which currently gives income-eligible New Yorkers a right to an attorney in housing court. Myrie would give victims of deed theft a right to an attorney as well.

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Jessica Ramos represents parts of Queens in the New York state senate.

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Photo courtesy NY Senate Media Services

Jessica Ramos

State Assembly member Jessica Ramos recently endorsed Andrew Cuomo for mayor, but she has not dropped out of the race, CBS reported.

She has also called for a rent freeze, and her housing policy positions include promoting modular housing in NYC, converting office buildings to housing, and allowing more New Yorkers to qualify for the CityFHEPS housing voucher program, Ramos told the New York Housing Conference. 

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Scott Stringer has served in the New York state assembly, as Manhattan borough president, and NYC comptroller.

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Photo courtesy Scott Stringer for Mayor

Scott Stringer

Former NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer is running for mayor on a promise to build more Mitchell-Lama housing on city-owned land to create affordable co-op and rental units for New Yorkers.

If elected, he also intends to use eminent domain to seize properties from negligent landlords and transfer them to developers who can build more affordable housing. Those new developments—and others created under his housing plan—will prioritize apartments with two bedrooms or more to accommodate NYC families.  

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Whitney Tilson also told Brick Underground that he would not support a rent freeze.

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Photo courtesy Eaglebrook School/Wikimedia Commons

Whitney Tilson

Long-time Democrat and former hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson wants to work with the real estate industry to spur development in NYC.

Tilson told Brick Underground that he would appoint pro-development city staffers to encourage large-scale projects, and that the city should be able to quickly approve developments from good operators. He also said he wanted to make it easier for small landlords to evict non-paying tenants.