Exclusive | Mamdani sparks tenant complaint crisis to squeeze landlords and seize private property: critics

Tenant complaints have surged 25% this year compared to last year in New York City, as critics warned socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s twisted war to squeeze landlords — and seize private property — is escalating.There have been a staggering 573,656 complaints from renters logged with 311 so far this year, compared to 459,519 filed at the same time in 2025, a Post analysis of service requests across the five boroughs found.The surge comes after the Mamdani administration has repeatedly encouraged “ripped off” tenants to file grievances for the tiniest things.Landlords told The Post that complaints are now being made before even asking them to fix a problem.“The city put us in a situation where they’re just slowly beating us to death and blaming us,” said Lincoln Eccles, who owns a 15-unit building in Crown Heights.

“The apparatus of the government is geared to squeeze us.”In the past week alone, Mamdani’s 311 army flooded Housing Preservation and Development, the city agency that fields all tenant complaints, with 67 calls for clogged toilets — a 500% increase from the same time last year.“All of this tenant organizing is part of a long term project to take wealth away from people and redistribute it,” said Stu Smith, an investigative analyst with the Manhattan Institute.“They’re figuring out what pressure points they can act on to get their way.”Complaints in Brooklyn — home to the “Commie Corridor,” a stretch of heavily Mamdani-supporting neighborhoods such as Bed-Stuy, Bushwick, Williamsburg and Greenpoint — are rising at the quickest pace.So far this year, Brooklynites logged 169,675 complaints compared to 128,337 at the same time last year — 32% more than the same span in 2025, data show.

Queens, where the corridor extends into places such as “The People’s Republic of Astoria,” also saw complaints rise faster than the city-wide average, ticking up 29% year-over-year, the numbers show.The corridor has been...