Billionaire investor Bill Ackman said on Wednesday that New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is right to focus on the city’s housing affordability crisis, though his proposed plan to address it is deeply misguided.
“I give Mamdani credit for identifying a very important issue, which is affordability. I give him big debits for his approach to solving the problem,” Ackman said during an exclusive interview on “Mornings with Maria.”
“The way to bring rents down is to increase supply, not to reduce supply,” Ackman said.
A progressive voice from Queens, Zohran Mamdani won the Nov. 4 election to lead the nation’s largest city on a platform centered around making New York more affordable.
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The Pershing Square chief argued that Mamdani’s proposal, which calls for a $100 billion, decade-long program to build deeply affordable housing and freeze rents on rent-stabilized units, would discourage development and ultimately worsen the city’s housing shortage.
“There’s a lot of empirical data that we see in cities around the country, in Austin, the Southeast and other places where there’s been a big boom in construction of apartments and the result is rents go down,” Ackman said.
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He pointed to evidence showing that even market-rate construction can lower costs across the housing market by easing pressure on older units.
“You could build a ton of market-rate apartments, brand-new apartments,” Ackman said, adding that new apartments “actually reduce rents on the older apartment stock, which creates more affordability.”
He said Mamdani’s proposal to freeze rents would deter construction and make it harder to expand the city’s housing stock.
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“When you send a message that you’re going to freeze rents, that’s not inspiring for real-estate developers. They’re not going to pull a shovel out and build anything in that environment.”
The comments also tied into Ackman’s broader push on housing issues. A day earlier, he outlined a three-part plan he said would help the Trump administration advance its goals for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The duo mortgage companies have been under federal conservatorship since the 2008 financial crisis.
Ackman’s announcement comes as the Trump administration explores new ways to make housing more affordable, including a proposed 50-year mortgage, even as critics warn such measures could saddle borrowers with more long-term debt.
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