Socialism and New York City's Housing Crisis

Young New Yorkers deserve affordable housing. But they'll never get there through policies that create even more scarcity.

Holly Jean Soto | August 28, 2026

Housing in New York City has become painfully unaffordable.

In June, renters paid an average of $5,408 for a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan, while even the average studio reached $4,014. It isn't difficult to understand why young New Yorkers are frustrated, or why socialism is starting to sound appealing.

Underneath that anger is a very real problem. Young New Yorkers aren't wrong for being frustrated. Housing has become unaffordable, and they are right to demand better solutions. But is socialism the answer?

The Marxist Lens: Tenant vs. Landlord

Before asking whether socialism can solve New York’s housing crisis, we first have to understand how socialists explain why housing became so unaffordable in the first place.

New York’s democratic socialist movement approaches housing through the same basic class-struggle lens Karl Marx used to understand society. Marx divided society into opposing economic classes, with one benefiting from the exploitation of the other. In today’s housing debate, this framework means: the landlord profits, the tenant struggles, and therefore the landlord is exploiting the tenant.

Mamdani says the “root cause” of neglect and disrepair in housing is “the relentless drive for profit.” His administration advocates taking housing out of the hands of exploitative landlords and putting more power into the hands of tenants.

But viewing housing through this framework creates a major blind spot. Tenants and landlords aren't opposing classes whose interests must always come at the expense of one another. They participate in the same housing market and........

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