Spencer Pratt and Zohran Mamdani should both follow this NY citys housing lead

Insurgent Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt and New York City socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani don’t agree on much.Pratt pledges to force homeless drug addicts into treatment; Mamdani aims to swell the “homeless services” budget to $4.2 billion.Pratt proposes a major increase in the LAPD’s ranks; Mamdani halted plans to hire thousands of new NYPD officers.But the Republican Angeleno and the Gracie Mansion DSA member do agree on one thing: Their cities take far too long to issue developers the legally required permits they need to start building new homes — and both have promised to speed up the process.Pratt vows “faster approvals, lower costs, measurable results” and says he’ll drop permit fees completely for single-family-home rebuilding if elected — a response to the glacial permitting that’s thwarted the restoration of LA’s fire-ravaged neighborhoods.Mamdani intends to make permitting “faster and fairer.”Both might be surprised to learn that a much smaller city in Westchester County has already figured out how to jump-start housing construction — and has managed to lower rents in the process. Since 2015 the City of New Rochelle, pop.85,000, has found a way to enable construction of 5,130 new apartments and approve 2,746 more, with another 3,100 likely on the way.All told, it will mean a 37% increase in its overall housing stock — a boon for the county and the entire region.  Mayor Yadira Ramos-Herbert says her town has no need for rent controls; the flood of new construction has held rent increases to just 1.6% above 2020 levels.Indeed, between 2020 and 2023, the average New Rochelle rent went down by 2% — even better than Mamdani’s rent-freeze campaign promise.

 Development Director Adam Salgado calls the “New Rochelle Model” a “supply-side solution” to the housing crisis.The key change is both simple and an ambitious challenge for any bureaucracy: Three linchpin city agencies — the Bureau of Build...