I was born and grew up in New York City. I rode the subway to school way, way downtown. School buses were for sissies. I was a typical New York City tough kid. For years I lived with my mother in run-down old hotels owned by my father who was clawing his way up from a modest life on the Lower East Side.

The idea of ‘affordable housing,’ a shibboleth now popular with the general public, barely existed. On those distant days, save on the wilder shores of leftwing unionism, you worked hard as hell to pay your rent or slept on the roof or in the park.

In 1991, Zohran Mamdani appeared in the big city out of nowhere. Mamdani had won an election as an assemblyman in New York’s 36th District. He had been born in Uganda and, like many ethnic Indians, fled the rampages of despot Idi Amin. Uganda’s Asians have produced a large number of highly talented people, among them the young Mamdani. Astoundingly, he is a proud Muslim in a city dominated by pro-Israel, wealthy Jewish residents, Latin Americans and Haitians.

Affordable housing has been on many lips in New York since I can recall. It’s a dream like defeating cancer or clean streets, held by many but expected by only a few. There is nothing new about this mirage. In 1945, New York City enacted its first rounds of rent controls to provide modestly priced housing for returning veterans of World War II. These rent-controlled apartments still exist today – if you can find them. They are passed down by families as precious treasures. Rent-control did not end New York’s sky-high rents. They were a function of supply and demand, scarcity, crazy high taxes and, as always with real estate, location.

Politicians could do little to bring down the city’s expensive housing. If you wanted an affordable rental apartment, one had to move out to the remote burbs. This is also the case in Tokyo, where workers often have to commute two to three hours by subway to work and then the same back to their tiny, squalid apartments.

It's the same all over much of Europe or the former socialist paradise at Moscow where unmarried workers had to live in penitentiary-style hostels.

Decades of experience have shown that the notion of government-subsidized housing almost always turned into a corrupt boondoggle run by local politicians, slum lords, and the parasites that infest all big city bureaucracies.

Rent-subsidized apartments became a big payoff for loyal party supporters, whether in New York city, Moscow or Beijing. Being naughty could result in your apartment being whisked away. The Chinese Communist party kept tabs on everyone and determined who got apartments, and who did not.

In my native New York – always a beehive of corruption – plum housing jobs always went to party faithful. Building inspectors were generously paid off. In my father’s magnificent New York restaurant, Café Chambord, New York’s leading French restaurant, electricity inspectors, health dept inspectors, building inspectors, parking enforcement, and other city officials all had to be paid off when all inspections were passed with flying colors.

Transpose all this corruption into housing and you see how dire New York’s problem is. The well-meaning Mr. Mamdani will not find a simple cure for this housing problem, and he will be lucky to escape being tarred by New York’s all pervasive, virulent corruption.

The cost of everything in New York is rising sharply. $10 taxis rides have doubled. Breakfast at my beloved Viand Coffee Shop has gone from $18 to $27. My apartment’s monthly maintenance cost just rose $1,800 overnight – on top of the normal $6,000.

Mr. Mamdani! We need big, big African juju to solve this problem. Let’s hope you have some up your sleeve.

Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2025