City Limits, JEANMARIE EVELLY, BYPATRICK SPAUSTER, January 5, 2025

Housing was the first item on Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s checklist after he was sworn into office Thursday.

Standing in the lobby of a Brooklyn apartment building—where residents have been organizing for the city to intervene on their behalf, after their violation-riddled homes went up for bankruptcy auction—the new mayor pledged “to champion the cause of tenants too long ignored and homes too expensive.”

“On the day where so many rent payments are due, we will not wait to deliver action,” said Mamdani, speaking on Jan 1. “And we will stand up on behalf of the tenants of this city.”

It was a fitting first-day press conference for the new mayor, who campaigned for the last year on a promise to freeze rents for tenants in the city’s roughly 1 million rent stabilized apartments.

Here’s a rundown of what Mamdani did on housing during his first five days in office:

Revamping the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants

The new mayor signed an executive order to “revive” the office, which was launched by former Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2019 but was largely dormant during Mayor Eric Adams’ administration, according to reporting from the Real Deal.

Under his administration, the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants will serve as a coordinating body to defend tenants rights and ensure habitable building conditions, Mamdani said. He appointed tenant organizer Cea Weaver to lead the office.

“The affordability agenda starts with the rent,” said Weaver, who emphasized that 70 percent of New Yorkers are renters.

Weaver previously ran the nonprofit Housing Justice for All, and helped lead the fight to pass the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act in 2019, which strengthened New York’s rent regulation laws.

She gave City Limits some insight into how she might lead the office during an interview last month.

“We are going to hold you accountable to operating [affordable housing] alongside the housing maintenance code. If you can’t do that, we are going to offer you money so that you can do it, but you have to make the homes affordable,” Weaver said. “And if you still don’t do it, we’re going to take it away from you. Making that pipeline more clear is what I hope the Mayor’s Office of Tenant Protection can do.”

Task forces focused on housing production

Mamdani signed two other executive orders on his first day establishing new task forces to help speed up residential construction, as the city faces its worst housing shortage in several decades.

Newly-appointed Deputy Mayor for Housing and Planning Leila Bozorg will oversee both efforts. The first will spend the next six months reviewing all city-owned properties to identify those where new housing could go. This will be “a deeper dive into the entire city’s inventory,” than previous, similar efforts, Bozorg said.

“Especially for sites that aren’t clearly available for housing right now,” she said. “So they may already have other city facilities on them, other public facilities or even private facilities that we’re in contract for.”

The second task force will work to remove bureaucratic and permitting barriers that increase housing costs and slow construction, according to the mayor.

Read More: City Limits