Look, I get it. On paper, Zohran Mamdani seems like our guy. He talks about socialism, waves around tenant rights like a red flag, and tweets the right slogans. He’s charming, he bikes, he quotes Marx when convenient. But if you scratch just a little beneath the performative veneer, you’ll find that Mamdani’s housing policies are not only toothless — they’re actually counterproductive for the working class. Which brings me to the point none of us really want to make out loud in Park Slope: communists should seriously consider backing Eric Adams. 

Let’s not pretend Adams is a socialist. He isn’t. He’s a cop. He pals around with real estate donors. His public persona is often a trainwreck of self-mythology and crypto wellness. But beneath the spectacle lies a basic truth: Eric Adams is actually building housing. Lots of it. And in a city where the rent burden is crushing working people into oblivion, supply isn’t just a neoliberal buzzword — it’s a material necessity.

Adams is pushing through rezonings and upzonings in areas that desperately need it. Is it imperfect? Of course. But the real-estate market under capitalism is never going to be clean. What Adams gets — and what the left pretends not to understand — is that housing scarcity is the landlord’s best friend. When you block supply, you hand leverage back to the very people we claim to be fighting. The working class doesn’t care if their unit came from a socialist blueprint or a YIMBY rezoning. They care if it has a lock on the door and doesn’t cost 70% of their income.