Zohran Mamdani was not yet the new mayor of New York City when the city council signaled that it would serve as willing accomplice in his assault on fundamental property rights.
In December, the city council passed legislation that had been hanging fire for several years, the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA), to further limit New Yorkers’ right to use and dispose of their own stuff.
COPA would give “give certain nonprofits … an early shot to bid on certain residential properties that go up for sale, before they hit the wider market.” The law pertains to buildings “with poor conditions or where an affordability provision is expiring.”
COPA’s advocates contend, as if this were a response to the objection about how the new law violates property rights, that it gives nonprofits an advantage in the housing market.
What happens if quite wealthy nonprofits with enough political pull make an offer that a property owner declines? Will the property owner have the right to say “I pass” and then make the property available for anybody to bid on?
If COPA is not dead on arrival, it will depress market prices as the city strongarms owners into making deals at lower-than-market prices. And I doubt that a Mamdani administration will simply playact at eroding and destroying property rights.
Mayor Mamdani took office yesterday, on January 1, 2026, dedicated to the idea of replacing “the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.” It doesn’t portend to be a very good year for New Yorkers opposed to the heat of the looters’ madness.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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4 replies on “Hot in New York City”
The financiers will simply relocate, but destroying the city that has been the financial center of the West will still be a very great morale-booster for many in the dire coalition seeking a displacement of Western Civilization.
The sloth of the US Supreme Court in dealing with the plainly unconstitutional tariffs of President Trump leads me to believe that they will not act with appropriate speed as challenges based upon the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments are brought against Mayor Mamdani’s expropriations.
“Nonprofits”, AKA: DemoSocialist slush funds.
During the 20s in New York, the heyday of organized crime, nothing got done by anyone who was outside of the system.
“Who sent you?”
“Nobody sent me.”
“We don’t want nobody that nobody sent.”
The only folks that got to play were those that had a connection in the system. The system was informal, as opposed to now where it is formal.
But if no connection, then no business, no economically viable way to make a living. A living was only for those with the right connections.
Now, the “wealthy” no longer have the automatic right connections. Or, rather, those that haven’t made the right political contributions. The ones that have will be allowed to stay and profit but not publicly. Everyone else, who hasn’t seen the writing, has already left, is scrambling to buy the right influence, or is about to go bankrupt.
Everything new(old) is old(new) again.
As a former upstate New Yorker (I left that hellhole many decades ago), I admit to having a long time antipathy towards NYC. I will take a perverse amusement in watching this jackass finish destroying the city. They will deserve everything that happens to them.