As Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani prepares to enter City Hall, he will need to transition from the work of campaigning to governing. The problems confronting the city—and Mamdani—are far bigger than his supporters have wanted to admit.
Any new mayor must face hard questions. We spoke with several Manhattan Institute scholars about which ones they are especially keen to hear him answer.
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Mayor-elect Mamdani has committed to building 200,000 new units of affordable housing over the next decade. That commitment, like many of his efforts, faces major tensions. The city has a limited ability to subsidize 100 percent affordable buildings. Therefore, most of the new units will need to be in privately financed buildings with a mix of market-rate and below-market units mandated by zoning.
On the one hand, such housing will require use of the Section 485-x real-estate tax exemption, which developers will rely on to offset the costs of affordable units. On the other hand, 485-x triggers prevailing-wage mandates—which also exist within other laws that Mamdani and the city council want to expand.
How will Mamdani balance the need to induce private developers to build mixed-income housing, the desire to meet union wage demands, and his promise to expand affordable housing supply?
Eric Kober is a former New York City planner and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
New York City government is, in many respects, behind the times. Agencies have been slow to adopt technology that can make service delivery faster, more reliable, and less costly. Public-employee unions often defend this inefficient status quo, reflexively opposing automation or any other change that might eliminate union jobs.
The city can use upcoming union contract talks to make important changes to work rules and win better outcomes for residents. Which efficiencies will Mamdani, at the risk of upsetting the unions, make the public case for?
Ken Girardin is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
New York City has the nation’s most expensive public schools, with projected spending of more than $42,000 per pupil. Yet our academic results are mediocre, and enrollment is declining—the city has lost nearly 118,000 students since 2019. At least 112 Gotham district schools enrolled fewer than 150 students in the 2025–26 school year.
What is Mayor-elect Mamdani’s strategy to improve educational outcomes and curb out-of-control spending? How will he deal with the large number of schools that are too small to be financially viable or that record dismal outcomes?
Mayor-elect Mamdani has promised to begin phasing out gifted and talented programs in New York City public schools. That move will likely alienate the many parents who rely on these programs, while doing nothing for children stuck in underperforming schools. He has also raised concerns about the city’s charter schools, prized by many black and Hispanic families for their academic rigor and superior academic performance.
What will be the driving forces of Mamdani’s education agenda—ideology, or the wisdom and experience of the city’s poor and minority families? Who comes first—the school system’s employees, or the children?
Ray Domanico is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
Arguing that “[d]iversion helps make communities safer,” the Mamdani campaign’s community safety plan calls for reducing the number of mentally ill inmates confined to city jails. Yet it makes almost no mention of psychiatric hospitalization. New York’s jail census is overwhelmingly composed of inmates held on violent and felony charges. Correctional Health Services classifies about 1,600 individuals—one in five inmates—as seriously mentally ill.
If Mamdani is to fulfill his campaign promise to implement the borough-based jails plan, reducing the number of these inmates facing serious charges will be necessary. But how does he intend to do that without increasing the use of psychiatric hospitalization?
Stephen Eide is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal.
On the campaign trail, Mamdani expressed unambiguous support for pending city council legislation that would abolish the NYPD’s gang database. NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch has argued that the database is an essential part of the department’s strategy, which prioritizes combatting violent street gangs. Former chief of department John Chell noted that “about 65 percent of our shootings in New York City, historically, have a gang nexus.” The ability to identify and track criminal organizations are prerequisites to conducting “gang takedowns,” in which multiple members of these organizations get arrested in a single sweep and face prosecution.
Through the first eight months of this year, the NYPD has conducted 55 such takedowns, leading to the arrest of 396 gang members. A rigorous econometric study, published in 2021, of New York City gang takedowns conducted around public housing communities found that “gun violence declines by approximately one third in the aftermath” of these operations.
How does Mayor-elect Mamdani justify abolishing the core tool in a strategy that has led to substantial declines in gun violence—especially given that those declines have disproportionately benefited the city’s most vulnerable neighborhoods?
Rafael A. Mangual is the Nick Ohnell Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal.
By law, the jail complex on Rikers Island must close by August 2027. Yet, the promised borough-based replacements won’t be in operation yet; they are slated to come online between 2029 and 2032, according to current projections. When they do open, the system will be able to house roughly 4,000 inmates—less than 60 percent of the system’s current population.
Mamdani has repeatedly committed to closing Rikers, including in the final mayoral debate just days before the election. What is his plan for doing so in time to meet the August 2027 deadline? Will he support extending that deadline if it can’t be met? And, recognizing that prison overcrowding is unsafe and potentially illegal, what is his plan to provide adequate space for all pretrial detainees?
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