The Mamdani administration has made landlords enemy number one. Stu Smith at City Journal wrote, “Whether it’s his legally dubious rent freeze, his attempts to seize buildings through legal wrangling, his Office of Mass Engagement’s plan to send volunteers to support tenant organizing efforts, or his appointment of DSA member and radical activist Cea Weaver as “tenant advocate,” the mayor has made anti-rent politics central to his agenda.”
The new 13-minute video released by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and which you can watch below, backs the idea that property should be controlled by people who occupy it, not those who own it.
“In the end, a home is not defined by a deed or a lease but by those who live in it,” the narrator says at the conclusion of the video.
In other words, even squatters’ rights are promoted.
Consider reading the City Journal article explaining the tenant-organizing movement to abolish rent. It comes from the following manifesto:
Abolish Rent: How Tenants Can End the Housing Crisis, by Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis. The authors argue that tenants should become “the architects of a long-term project of expropriation through which that hoarded wealth becomes shared by us all,” by means of militant organizing, strategic litigation, and coordinated pressure campaigns.
So, for example, they will punish a landlord by crashing his daughter’s wedding, turning a once-in-a-lifetime family celebration into a site of political confrontation and a “social sanction.” Rosenthal later described the action as “really fun.”
Communism needs common enemies and hopes of free stuff the bottom feeders who wallow in envy and greed can’t or won’t earn on their own.
Mamdani released the video, a tenant agitator documentary, to demonize one landlord in particular:
It shows hero tenants organizing against an evil landlord. Mamdani is trying to stir an uprising.
The Office of the Ugandan Mayor (powerful communist propaganda and typical):
“The Union of Pinnacle Tenants has shown what becomes possible when neighbors organize. Across nearly 100 buildings, tenants came together and won important victories that made real, material impacts in New Yorkers’ lives. I’m proud to stand with them as they continue the fight for affordable, dignified housing across the city,” said Mayor Mamdani.
“This film tells the story of that organizing, but I hope it also reminds New York City tenants that the power to change their living conditions begins with one another. The most protected tenant is an organized tenant.”
Let us not forget Mamdani has a comprehensive housing plan, Block by Block, and the Rental Ripoff Report, to strengthen tenant organizing, including legally recognizing tenant unions. The problem with strictly rent-controlled properties is landlords no longer have the funds for repairs. The ownership group behind the apartment at issue in the film filed for bankruptcy. Clearly, Mamdani is not stupid, and knows this. It gives him the opportunity to seize properties.
The documentary features radical communist Cea Weaver: “The Union of Pinnacle Tenants: A Short History of NYC Housing.”
The real reason Mamdani is taxing pieds-a-terre and other properties is to force people to sell. I didn’t listen to the full video yet, but I do believe he hopes to take these properties over. Mamdani doesn’t believe in private property ownership unless it’s people like his parents.
Ira Stoll of the Free Beacon writes:
The video demonizes one landlord, Joel Wiener of Pinnacle, while praising tenant organizers: “everyone should feel so proud of the work that they did advocating for themselves and their neighbors.”
They doxed him with lies and had the wrong photo of him.
The 2026 City Journal article noted a legal brief that said, as City Journal summarized it:
“Pinnacle’s properties had fewer violations than the citywide average; that none of its buildings came close to meeting the city’s threshold for ‘unsatisfactory’ housing (three or more violations per unit); and that, had one tenant not vandalized an elevator and barred Pinnacle from entering her apartment to make repairs, the number of violations would have been even lower.”
They are inventing “bad landlords.””
The real goal:
Victor Davis Hanson: The Real Goal Behind NYC’s Property Tax Hike
Mamdani’s New York City property tax surcharge isn’t just about raising revenue, it’s about forcing owners to sell their properties.
Mamdani is a redistributionist. He believes that people got money through… pic.twitter.com/aWJXPSAmB4
— Daily Signal (@DailySignal) August 4, 2026
Communists never have to change their tactics. They first keep people ignorant, then people fall for it. It never fails.