Opinion: How Mayor-elect Mamdani Can Achieve a Human Right to Housing

"New Yorkers, and Mayor-Elect Mamdani in particular, have an open window of opportunity to fundamentally shift the city from maintaining the status quo between the haves and have-nots to actively pursuing housing justice. With housing affordability as the linchpin of his platform-and half of all New York City renters rent-burdened-Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has an opportunity to make right what decades of leaders could not."

"The Mayor-elect's ambitious agenda has the potential to provide more than verbal affirmations to freeze rent and foreshadows a political will to enter a trailblazing era of human rights enforcement, with the fights for housing justice and homelessness decriminalization as gateways to other rights-based reforms."

"Widening the view, it is clear as day that our global order is splintered when it comes to human rights and justice issues. The United States' repressive conduct and enhanced surveillance of its own poor, working class, people of color have made us stand out in a lackluster way on the world stage, while also signaling a dangerous message that our country's leadership may proceed business-as-usual, with impunity."

"In November, the United States federal government did not appear for its own review before the United Nations Human Rights Council, an opportunity afforded to each nation just once every five years. Despite the federal absence, a strong cross-section of state and local officials, and agency representatives-including our own deputy commissioner of the New York City Human Rights Commission-and a delegation of zealous human rights advocates briefed U.N. representatives both in Geneva and here in New York."

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani campaigned on housing affordability with half of New York City renters rent-burdened. His platform centers freeze rent proposals and a broader agenda to pursue housing justice and homelessness decriminalization. The agenda aims to move beyond verbal commitments toward enforceable human-rights approaches and could catalyze rights-based reforms across city policy. The United States faces a fractured international human-rights reputation due to repressive conduct and enhanced surveillance targeting poor, working-class people of color. The federal government’s absence from its U.N. Human Rights Council review underscored gaps in accountability. State and local officials, agency representatives, and advocates briefed U.N. representatives in place of the federal delegation.

Read at City Limits