$60 million NYC housing-seizure debacle doesn’t deter Mamdani’s geniuses

Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s housing agenda doubles down on a practice that just cost the city $60 million in damages.

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The city this week paid that much to settle a lawsuit over the illegal seizure of residential units in 2018, yet Mamdani aims to amp up that de Blasio-era practice of grabbing private property from “bad actors” to turn it over to “responsible” nonprofits.

Mamdani wants to “reinvent” at scale the old “Third Party Transfer” program, which let the city take control of housing mired in back taxes or serious disrepair, transfer it to a city-sponsored nonprofit and then find a “third party” developer to rehab and manage the building.

The de Blasio outrage was snapping up whole blocks of buildings just because one was in serious trouble: Homeowners who owned their property free and clear, but had an open violation or owed some back taxes, found themselves suddenly stripped of their assets as the city gobbled it all up without fair — or any — compensation.

Yet the mayor’s “Block by Block” housing plan aims to follow the same failed course: Mamdani says he wants to “expand the definition of distressed properties,” letting the city seize more buildings more easily.

From his first day in office, he’s touted his intention to remove “bad landlords” via what he calls “empowering tenants and strengthening enforcement.”

That translates to sending out teams from his Orwellian Office of Mass Engagement to encourage tenants to form unions and register complaints every time a tenant sees a roach or a hallway bulb flickers.

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With rents frozen, maintenance will lag at the city’s older rent-controlled buildings, further juicing complaints; rent strikes — an open goal of the tenant union drive — will bankrupt landlords even more quickly.

Then the city can seize the buildings and hand them over to friendly “third party” nonprofits — who still won’t have the rental income to do any better.

Mamdani even wants a new law to give “qualified” nonprofits the right to step in and grab any residential building put up for sale, a scheme that will make it far harder to sell to anyone else and so make it cheaper for these politically connected groups to snatch up real estate.

City Hall waves off any suggestion that $60 million in damages for a past, less ambitious execution of this scheme is cause for second thoughts.

This crew just loves their theories, reality be damned: Trusting them with the city’s housing market is like giving car keys to a blind alcoholic — New York will be lucky if they crash quickly, before they can do too much damage.

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