Neither Marxism nor Investment Bans Will Make Housing Great Again

As bone-chilling winds lash Manhattan, Gotham Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s vaunted “warmth of collectivism” sounds almost appealing. 

Almost. 

The lightest breeze of socialism shows why this worldview frosts normal people. Too bad related ideas have drifted into the Trump administration, as it seeks “affordability” in housing.

Mamdani’s Tenant Tsarina Cea Weaver, 37, took office on New Year’s Day and instantly sank into scandal.

The Democrat Socialists of America member and pro-Communist housing activist has been highly outspoken on social media and in internet videos. She tried unsuccessfully to cover her Marxist-Leninist tracks by deleting revolutionary tirades that she posted, not as a freshman at Bryn Mawr, her alma mater, but as an allegedly grown woman.

Cea Weaver speaks on Jan. 1, as Mayor Zohran Mamdani looks on. (NYC Mayor’s Office – via Wikimedia Commons.)

Fortunately, enterprising journalists excavated dozens of Weaver’s outbursts and shared them with increasingly shocked New Yorkers.

As Michelle Tandler reported, Weaver declared that home ownership is “a weapon of white supremacy” and government should “impoverish the *white* middle class.” 

UnHerd’s Sohrab Ahmari learned that Weaver expressed on Jan. 9, 2017 via Facebook: “If you don’t believe in the government’s sacred right to seize private property IT’S OVER.” That Nov. 12, Weaver explained that “Moving to a gentrifying neighborhood is structural racism,” “Moving to the suburbs is structural racism,” and “The inner city/suburb distinction is itself the dark heart of structural racism in the US today and there is no escape.” For good measure, Weaver noted: “Property is theft.”

Weaver’s 2021 interview with Reason TV bobbed to the surface. 

“I believe that anybody who needs housing should get it,” Weaver chirped. “It just means that if you can’t afford it, you should be able to get it anyway.” This would be “financed by the government.” 

Reason TV’s host wondered, “Whenever anyone’s not paying their rent, the government will pay it?”

Weaver replied: “Something like that.”

Reason TV also asked: “The debt-to-GDP ratio right now is the highest since World War II. So, how can the federal government also afford to start subsidizing rental housing costs?”

Weaver: “The federal government prints money.”

Even more disturbing, The Washington Free Beacon’s Jon Levine discovered that Weaver opposes buoyant home values, a cornerstone of upward mobility. 

“Our goal is to have the housing actually be worth less,” she announced on the Bad Faith podcast in 2021. “We don’t need people to become millionaires off their homes.” 

Weaver also said that she favors “transitional models, mutual housing associations, community land trusts, community opportunity to purchase, like, mechanisms to municipalize more and more of the housing stock.”

Translation: “Municipalize” is the City Hall equivalent of “nationalize.” 

On the same podcast about “socialist urbanism,” then-State Rep. Mamdani proudly stated: “I get most of my knowledge on housing from Cea.”

The good news is that the Trump administration’s housing policies are not in this Democratic-Socialist ballpark. The bad news is that they are slumming in an adjacent neighborhood rather than speeding clear across town.

The White House observed on Jan. 20 that, “People live in homes, not corporations.” President Donald Trump signed an executive order to establish “policies so that large institutional investors do not acquire single-family homes.” These include multi-agency investigations, disclosure requirements, law-enforcement actions, and forthcoming spools of red tape. This goes exactly opposite Trump’s highly admirable and otherwise momentous deregulatory leadership. 

Sizewise, let’s call this situation: “Objects in mirror are smaller than they appear.”

According to CNBC’s Diana Olick, “The largest investors, those with 1,000 or more properties, make up just 2% of all investor-owned homes.”

Olick wrote in October that “institutional investors are now selling more homes than they buy and have been for six consecutive quarters.”

If major investors are increasing the housing supply, is this bad?

Prohibiting Wall Street from buying single-family homes is a two-way thoroughfare. Some folks might savor a class-warfare headrush from denying Louis Winthorpe IV his next yacht by barring him from residential real estate. But such government mandates also prevent Lamont Washington and Maria Gomez from selling their homes to Winthorpe & Valentine LLC, with its fabulously deep pockets and bounce-proof checks. 

Homeowners, individuals and otherwise, should be free to sell their private property to the highest bidder and fastest payer, even if it’s a hedge fund choked with money managers.

Critics attack major investors for buying homes and then renting them out— essentially turning homeowners with independence into tenants with landlords.

While ownership tends to increase social stability, renting offers this advantage: Those who cannot afford to purchase homes in affluent neighborhoods can live in them as renters. This could be especially valuable for parents trying to send their kids to quality public schools in upscale communities.

Trump should promote more affordable housing through more market-friendly means.

First, he should select a new Federal Reserve Board chairman who will maintain a stable price level rather than clobber the economy with higher interest rates every time prosperity rears its beautiful head.

Maddeningly, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell worships at the altar of the Phillips Curve. This outdated, false god equates low unemployment (and, lately, robust growth) with high inflation. So, if Americans find jobs, make money, pay off credit cards, and buy nice things, Powell zaps them with higher interest rates, lest “inflation” explode. 

But growth does not unleash inflation. Massive government spending does that. Supply-side economist and Trump adviser Kevin Hasset understands this. He would allow the economy to boom, keep prices and the dollar stable, and holster Powell’s high-interest-rate nightstick. This, in turn, would tame mortgage rates, which will empower people to buy homes more affordably.

Trump should study Kristina Zagame’s fine article in Today’s Homeowner. She reported last April that “The average cost of building a 2,100-square-foot home in the U.S. is $332,376, or $158 per square foot.” These expenses were above average and especially high in Big Government/Democrat-dominated states: 

•Massachusetts: Ranked No. 49 with a Total Price to Build of $402,709 and Per Square Foot at $192 

•New York: (No. 45) $371,875/$177

•California: (43) $363,314/$173

However, these outlays were below average and far cheaper in free-market/ Republican-rich states:

•Texas: (14) $309,334/$147

•Tennessee: (10) $302,204/$144

•Florida: (6) $297,228/$142

Trump should use his bully pulpit to explain how Democrat-Left busybodies make new homes more expensive while Republican-Right liberators make new homes more affordable.

Finally, and generally, the quest for affordability too often deploys government to bludgeon prices downward, usually unleashing unintended and even counterproductive consequences.

Why not focus, instead, on how to leave more money in people’s pockets and help them boost their incomes via robust economic growth? Affordability that springs from naturally fattened wallets is healthier than price tags pounded lower by the heavy hand of the state.

In the housing market and beyond, Team Trump should heed this free advice: From keeping Wall Street out of residential real estate to seizing private property, the White House should give the warmth of collectivism the cold shoulder.

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