We are on the precipice of a historic election in New York City. As we head to the ballot box to deliver a likely democratic socialist victory, we will also face three ballot questions on housing. It is our opinion that you should vote YES on ballot proposals 2, 3 and 4.
We have, for the last few years, worked on and advocated for policies that transition our housing system from one based on profit and greed to one oriented around meeting peoples’ needs for housing. We will not reach our goals of housing justice for all without more housing, and that these ballot proposals make that more possible — as long as we pair it with all the other good work we have been doing as a movement.
And it is looking at what we actually need in the city that we are urging a YES vote. We need both sides of our strategy working together: strong tenant protections and more deeply affordable homes built with public purpose. New York City today has a real housing shortage that landlords exploit, but the last five years proved tenants can win. We need to keep on developing tenant power while we also scale up production, at cost and at pace.
Some argue that “community control” is the democratic answer. In practice, it “community control” hasn’t been neutral. Too often, affluent homeowner groups have used procedural choke points to block shelters, stall affordable developments in segregated neighborhoods, and even stop housing for elderly people returning from incarceration. What we have in place today is not actually democracy; it’s a complicated veto system preserving exclusion.
Real democracy means citywide, equity-driven planning with transparent rules and real mass governance, not endless veto points that reward those best positioned to say “no.” Currently, the approval gauntlet to get projects approved takes precious months at each step. Large, luxury developments can endure this process, but small, mission-driven and nonprofit builders struggle through it as costs increase. Streamlining aimed at deep affordability really matters.
These ballot proposals target exactly that. Proposal 2 fast-tracks publicly financed, deeply affordable projects and opens paths in exclusionary areas that have long blocked apartments. It cuts deliberation windows and lets reviews run in parallel rather than sequentially, cutting dead time without erasing transparency or community input.
Proposal 3 helps the city move quickly to acquire distressed or predatory portfolios and convert them to social/public use. Proposal 4 creates an affordable housing review board that allows Council members to still negotiate for local needs.
These ballot proposals will also help the next mayor deliver the housing platform the city has spoken in favor of: streamlining the public path to build, cut red tape that favors luxury over affordable housing, and finally add homes in high-opportunity neighborhoods that have blocked them. Yes, these tools were initiated under Mayor Adams, but tools are shaped by how we use them.
Put them in a pro-tenant, public-builder administration, and they become enablers for social housing and deeper affordability, not giveaways for luxury real estate. Taken together, these proposals grow the pie for labor.
We want to be explicit about three things in our argument. First, these reforms are not a silver bullet. Outcomes will, and must, depend on organizing, budget choices, and public stewardship over the long term. We are also not making a YIMBY, “abundance” argument. We are not claiming that market-rate supply alone will solve the crisis.
Our case continues to be for public or mission-driven production, non-market tenure, subsidy directed to the lowest incomes, and enforceable tenant protections. We do not see these operating to centralize power under the mayor. Under the new mayor we should work to centralize the capacity, but meaningfully decentralize the power. We support using central administrative tools while expanding decentralized, durable people power — tenant unions, district housing assemblies, participatory budgeting, and community stewardship institutions.
We don’t have to choose between a progressive building agenda and tenant power. Passing these proposals doesn’t replace the fights for universal rent stabilization, social housing, and major public investment, but it enables them by lowering per-unit costs and speeding public delivery so subsidy goes further.
In the end, no policy is perfect and so much will depend on the mobilization of movements. Vote YES on Proposals 2, 3 and 4 so a pro-tenant, pro-union administration can act like a public developer — faster, cheaper, fairer, while we keep building tenant power and winning the long-term investments that make housing a right.
Baiocchi is a professor of individualized studies and sociology and is the founding director of the Urban Democracy Lab. Carlson is an assistant professor of sociology at Kean University.
