The Trump administration, reviving a cruel idea from its first-term playbook, has proposed banning families with undocumented members from subsidized public housing.
The proposed rule could upend the lives of millions of people nationwide and place a bullseye on thousands of New Yorkers in mixed-immigration status households. At risk is nothing short of casting into homelessness low-income citizens, legal residents and many children born on U.S soil.
The chaos could complicate Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s campaign pledge to invest heavily in repairs to the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) as part of his housing affordability strategy. He should also speak out against the looming Trump assault guaranteed to spike homelessness among New Yorkers who desperately depend on public housing.
The mayor, who has not said much publicly about NYCHA since taking office, has an obligation to articulate his plans for public housing as soon as possible. More than one million renters in New York State rely on vouchers to pay at least part of their rent. In New York City, 520,808 people live in HUD-assisted buildings, including public housing, project-based subsidies, and dwellings for the elderly and disabled persons.
Already, the long-neglected NYCHA was among thousands of agencies warned in recent weeks that they must verify the legal status of residents or face sanctions. In a test drive of the policy, which was proposed in the Heritage Foundation’s poisonous Project 2025 policy roadmap, San Francisco’s housing authority has already begun checks after it was given a 30-day deadline.
Things will get ugly fast if families, through no fault of their own, are evicted from NYCHA apartments costing on average $548 a month. In the face of New York City’s affordable housing emergency, where will they go? Forcing households into homelessness is a likely outcome – in fact, it may be the point – of this heartless policy.
Mamdani went to the White House recently to ask President Donald Trump behind closed doors for $21 billion to develop an old Queens rail yard into the city’s biggest affordable housing project in a half century. It would take years to complete and require an extraordinary political feat to make the enormous 12,000 housing units, parks, hospitals and other amenities reality.
Meanwhile, there is an imminent risk to NYCHA’s signature construction project, the creation of 2,500 market-rate units by demolishing the Fulton and Chelsea-Elliot Houses. A state appeals court judge last month temporarily halted construction after a group of tenants successfully appealed to stop the project, which calls for roughly 3,500 mixed-income apartments – including about 1,000 permanently affordable units – stores and other amenities.
Mamdani built his campaign around his promise to freeze rent in rent-stabilized apartments, which the candidate’s constellation of friends and allies repeated far and wide to successfully appeal to young voters. He’s moving to fulfill the pledge. The rent-freeze illustrates the way Mamdani reads the room, getting everyone on board with an issue that magnifies his charisma and youthful energy.
His more muted campaign website promised to “double” the city’s capital investment in major renovations of NYCHA housing and build new, affordable publicly controlled housing on NYCHA’s city-owned land. As well as use his political capital to increase city subsidies to housing repairs and push Albany to support his commitment to NYCHA’s capital needs on an annual basis.
The new mayor’s first preliminary five-year capital plan included $662 million in FY 2027 for upkeep of 3,200 NYCHA units and $30 million for heat pumps in the Rockaways. That’s a good start as he is poised to propose his first budget. He has promised to pay for his ambitious agenda with higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy, municipal bonds and other steps, most of which must be approved by Albany. There are signs Mamdani’s impassioned followers are pressuring Gov. Kathy Hochul and state lawmakers to support taxing the richest New Yorkers to pay for the mayor’s stated goal of leveling the economic playing field.
Mamdani’s stance on public housing should be informed by the cautionary tale of former Mayor Eric Adams’ trail of broken campaign promises. His political base experienced vertigo as he abandoned his north star pledges, tipping his political support off its axis with double-speak about NYCHA, police brutality and his public embrace of Trump.
Here’s the lesson: The challenges at NYCHA won’t magically disappear, even if we don’t mention them aloud. City Hall must take the lead in rallying the state legislature, builders, investors, banks and advocates for the poor to solve the problem of housing affordability. We all have skin in the game, whether we want to or not.
But the mayor should remind everyone involved that NYCHA is the linchpin in any solution to New York City’s affordable housing crisis.
David R. Jones, Esq., is President and CEO of the Community Service Society of New York (CSS), the leading voice on behalf of low-income New Yorkers for more than 175 years. The views expressed in this column are solely those of the writer. The Urban Agenda is available on CSS’s website: www.cssny.org.