Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is hitting the ground running in New York City, making a splash this week with two big announcements.
First, he has announced that he will keep the current police commissioner in place.
Second, Mamdani wants to use a garden that has long been cherished by legions of New Yorkers to create a low-income housing complex.
When Mamdani won his race in November, there was a lot of speculation about whether he would keep NYPD commissioner Jessica Tisch in her role once his administration began.
These two are worlds apart on how they see the role of the police department within communities, but Mamdani has now decided to keep her on board.
His office stated, "Today, Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani announced the appointment of Commissioner Jessica S. Tisch to serve as the New York City Police Commissioner in his incoming administration.”
Mamdani's team then stated that the mayor and Tisch would work together to "advance a coordinated approach to public safety built on partnership and shared purpose. That includes ensuring police officers remain focused on serious and violent crime, while strengthening the city’s response to issues like homelessness and mental health. A new Department of Community Safety will support this work while collaborating closely with the NYPD.”
The Elizabeth Street Garden is like a little oasis in the middle of Lower Manhattan, and it has been a popular gathering spot for many years.
The garden had been slated for demolition when current Mayor Eric Adams took office, but he backed off the plan, wisely and much to the delight of local residents. Mamdani, however, is looking to demolish the garden to drop in some low-income housing instead.
When the garden's demolition was first proposed, Mamdani was a city council member leading the way on the project. Now that he is mayor, he can resume the initiative and override Adams' move to protect the garden space from development.
The irony is that residents love this garden, and though Mamdani won more than 70% in some of the districts that have supported its continued existence, he is thumbing his nose at supporters after they gave him their votes.
Billionaire investor Bill Ackman believes that Mamdani has identified the problems facing New Yorkers properly, but his solution on how to deal with them is just flat-out wrong.
He stated, "I give Mamdani credit for identifying a very important issue, which is affordability. I give him big debits for his approach to solving the problem. The way to bring rents down is to increase supply, not to reduce supply.”
Mamdani’s plan calls for building rent-stabilized, affordable housing and also freezing rents throughout the city, which Ackman believes would thwart developers. He added, "There’s a lot of empirical data that we see in cities around the country, in Austin, the Southeast and other places where there’s been a big boom in construction of apartments and the result is rents go down.”
This, my friends, is going to be a disaster. New York City is already a hot mess, and I think Mamdani’s plan will turn the city into one big slum. I just hope all the disgruntled, liberal New Yorkers go somewhere other than Texas when they flee the Big Apple in disgust.
