The policies of Zohran Mamdani, the mayor elect of New York City, will have a negative impact on the city. He was elected as mayor on November 4, 2025 and will take office on January 1, 2025.
First, his policies could lead to a large revenue loss for the city. One of his policy proposals is that he would like to raise taxes on New Yorkers making over 1 million dollars, and raise the corporate tax rate to the same rate as New Jersey.
The problem with these policies is that many wealthy individuals and corporations have already been leaving New York due to tax purposes, particularly to Florida which does not have a state income tax.
If Mamdani were to raise the tax rate, this could lead to more wealthy individuals and corporations to leave the city. Wealthy individuals and corporations make up the majority of the tax base; if they were to leave, the city would have massive losses in tax revenue.
This will also be made worse because Donald Trump has threatened to cut federal funding to NYC if Mamdani were to be elected. Trump has also already cut funding for NYC during the shutdown even though Mayor Eric Adams, the current mayor, is Trump’s ally.
Mamdani would have the most to lose in this because he needs a significant increase in revenue if he ever wants to be able to pay for his expensive policies, like free buses and free groceries.
Second, Mamdani has no clear plan to address NYC’s crime issues. The city has seen drops in crime, but crime is still 30% above 2019 levels.
Mamdani has stated that he would like to keep the New York City Police Department’s staff at the same number. The NYPD’s staff number is below 2019 levels. NYC needs more police officers because there are currently not enough police officers to combat the city’s crime highlighted by the fact that there was lower crime and more officers in 2019.
The city also has suffered from quality of life issues, which have created a perception of the city being unsafe. Mamdani has supported the idea of sending mental health workers into these situations. The problem with this plan is that mental health workers do not have the same resources as police officers do in potentially dangerous situations.
Mamdani also has the goal of making the city more affordable. One of his plans is to freeze the rent on rent stabilized units. This plan could actually make the city more unaffordable.
First, he only wants to freeze the rent on rent stabilized units, not every unit. Rent stabilized units are 44% of the city’s rental units. This would cause landlords to raise rents on market rate units, the majority of all units, to compensate for the loss from rent stabilized units.
Second, this would lead to a slowdown of housing construction. If people cannot make money from building more housing, then they simply will not build. The city needs more housing if they ever want to bring down housing costs.
Mamdani’s policies would have a negative impact on NYC because they would cause a loss of revenue for the city, there are no real solutions to the city’s issues with crime and no real solutions to make housing more affordable.
Image courtesy of Harris Wacaster ’28.
