Building Blocks of a Progressive Building Agenda for New York City

Abstract

This working paper argues that New York City can no longer outsource housing policy to private real estate markets that absorb public subsidy while failing to deliver deep affordability. It situates the Mamdani Administration’s early housing executive orders, including the SPEED Task Force, the LIFT Task Force, and the revitalized Office to Protect Tenants, as a mandate to treat housing as a social good and to rebuild public capacity in planning, finance, and development. The paper outlines a first-year municipal building agenda centered on four moves: re-empowering NYCHA as a public developer, launching a city-run Revolving Construction Loan Fund, activating a public land bank, and expanding the NYC Public Housing Preservation Trust as a vehicle for large-scale preservation and green retrofits (with state approval where needed). Together, these measures would establish the institutional architecture of a city-led social housing system, create revenue streams that can be recaptured for affordability, and reduce the role of rent hikes and evictions in project underwriting. The core claim is political as well as technical: durable public ownership and investment can center dignity and the human right to housing, shifting power toward tenants and unhoused New Yorkers and reshaping the city’s broader political terrain.