Sami Steigmann survived Nazi medical experiments as a toddler, built a life in New York City over four decades, and now, at 86, says he cannot find a safe, affordable place to live. A scheduled meeting with Mayor Zohran Mamdani to discuss his housing crisis never happened, Steigmann told Fox News Digital, and the mayor's office did not respond to a request for comment.
Steigmann lives in a second-story apartment in Harlem on a fixed income of $1,649 per month. He faces a roughly $2,200 monthly shortfall and says one-bedroom apartments in New York now run about $6,000 a month. The man who endured years of captivity as a child now confronts the possibility of a nursing home, not because he needs medical care, but because the city he has called home since the 1980s has priced him out.
The contrast between Steigmann's situation and the promises of the city's 34-year-old mayor could not be sharper. Mamdani ran on a platform centered on lowering housing costs. Earlier this year, Steigmann requested a one-on-one meeting with the mayor to discuss affordable housing. The meeting was scheduled. Then, Steigmann says, Mamdani never showed.
Steigmann did not mince words about the no-show. He told Fox News Digital:
"Promises made, not kept."
He went further, calling out Mamdani's record on the very issue that defined his campaign. Steigmann said:
"His claim to fame was affordable housing. I'm not disappointed because I didn't expect him to keep his word. It is what it is."
That kind of weary resignation from an 86-year-old Holocaust survivor lands differently than a typical political complaint. Steigmann said he is no longer interested in meeting with Mamdani at all. As he put it: "It would have been nice, but you know politicians."
Mamdani's office offered no explanation. Fox News Digital reported that the office did not respond to its request for comment. The silence fits a pattern for an administration that has faced mounting criticism on multiple fronts. Mamdani recently retreated from a proposed property tax hike under heavy political pressure, pivoting instead to agency belt-tightening as the city stares down a record budget gap.
Steigmann was born in 1939 in Romania. At about age two, he was deported with his parents to a Nazi labor camp. For at least three years, he was subjected to medical experimentation before the camp was liberated. The pain from those experiments has never left him.
Steigmann told Fox News Digital:
"I was subjected to medical experiments, so I'm in pain every single second, but I learned to live with it. Now, because of my age, 86, I have difficulty walking and climbing stairs."
He still volunteers aboard the aircraft carrier Intrepid, docked in New York City's harbor, and speaks to school groups across the country about the Holocaust. That work, he said, is the reason he keeps going.
"This is my life. Without it, there's nothing for me, no reason to live."
But his Harlem apartment, a second-floor walk-up, has become a physical obstacle he can no longer safely manage. And the prospect of a nursing home fills him with dread. The broader affordability crisis that Mamdani campaigned on solving has only worsened for residents like Steigmann. The mayor floated a 9.5 percent property tax hike after campaigning on taxing only the rich, then backed away from that plan within weeks.
"If I'm going to a nursing home, which I may have to go to if I cannot find something, basically, it's the way to die because there is no life there."
Steigmann insisted he is not ready for that. He said he can still bathe himself, still stay active, and still function independently. "It's not for me. I'm still active. I don't need assisted living in the sense that I can take a bath by myself. I can still do a lot of things," he told Fox News Digital.
Steigmann acknowledged that other cities might be cheaper. But he said he has a network of agencies helping him in New York and does not have those connections elsewhere.
"I did not give it serious thought because here I have agencies that are helping me. I don't know what it would be like in other cities because I don't have those connections there."
He added simply: "I'm very safe here." Safe in his community, at least, if not in his apartment. The Mamdani administration's growing list of controversies, from criticism over his administration's leadership appointments to questions about his fiscal management, has done little to reassure New Yorkers that City Hall is focused on the basics.
With no help coming from the mayor's office, others have stepped in. The Chicago Jewish Alliance recently launched "Project Ahava," a fundraising initiative aimed at securing safe, stable housing for Steigmann. The initiative's goal is $132,000, enough to cover five years of housing support. So far, the group has raised about $18,000.
Susan Haggard, president of the Chicago Jewish Alliance, said Steigmann has never asked for money despite decades of giving back to others.
"Sami has never asked for a dime, and he has given back to so many people. That's just another reason why we wanted to give back to him and make sure that he has safe housing."
Haggard stressed that keeping Steigmann in Manhattan, close to public transportation, is essential to preserving the independence that defines his daily life. "And it's important for him to stay in Manhattan where he is close to public transportation and still have that independence that is so important to him," she said.
The fact that a Holocaust survivor's housing needs are being addressed by a nonprofit in Chicago rather than by the mayor of the city where he lives tells you most of what you need to know. Mamdani's quiet retreat from a $14.8 billion property tax hike after just five weeks in office already raised questions about whether his housing promises were serious. Steigmann's experience suggests they were not.
Key questions hang over this story. How was the meeting between Steigmann and Mamdani arranged, and through whom? Did anyone in the mayor's office explain the cancellation or offer to reschedule? What specific steps, if any, has the Mamdani administration taken to address affordable housing for elderly New Yorkers living on fixed incomes? The mayor's office has offered no answers.
Steigmann's $1,649 monthly income puts him in the same bind as thousands of elderly New Yorkers watching rents climb while their checks stay flat. The difference is that Steigmann carries the scars, literal ones, of a horror that New York's political class invokes at memorial ceremonies but apparently cannot be bothered to address in a single scheduled meeting.
A city that cannot keep an appointment with an 86-year-old Holocaust survivor struggling to stay in his home is a city whose leaders have lost the plot entirely.
