Mamdani pick for key NYC housing post faces pushback after ripping homeowner cartels

Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s pick for a key housing post once likened wealthy homeowners to “cartels” — prompting some City Council members to push back on the controversial nominee.John Mangin, the current Department of City Planning housing director, was tapped by Mamdani in June to chair the Board of Standards and Appeals, an independent agency that can grant exceptions to the Big Apple’s strict zoning rules for new construction projects.“Many council members are concerned about some of his prior statements,” Council Speaker Julie Menin said during an unrelated press conference Thursday. But, she insisted, “I want to be clear: we are a pro-housing council.”Mangin, in a 2014 Stanford Law and Policy Review article, ripped “wealthy homeowner cartels,” accusing them of needlessly blocking new housing developments in “high-demand, high-cost neighborhoods” because of anxiety over their own property values and taxes.“The housing advocacy community tends to argue for a ‘kludgy’ set of policies that can actually prevent new development and end up increasing housing prices,” the Yale University Law School grad wrote.Mangin specifically bashed commonplace “community benefit agreements” between developers and the neighborhoods they seek to build in.He also called out “downzoning,” in which changes to zoning rules are restricted for a variety of reasons, including maintaining an area’s historic look and preventing urban sprawl.

At least half of the council’s 51 members will need to approve Mangin’s appointment — but several of them have been voicing their opposition, saying his policies are in “direct conflict” to theirs, Politico first reported last week.“We represent these communities.We have to go back to these communities and we realize what our communities need,” said Bronx Councilman Kevin Riley, who also serves as Chair of the Land-Use Committee. “When you have such a high opposition to that, that’s going to...