Socialist NYC mayoral candidate Mamdani once called to ‘seize’ luxury homes to house homeless during COVID

Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Party’s candidate for New York City mayor and a self-proclaimed socialist, is once again garnering backlash for previous comments he has made espousing language steeped in radical socialist and communist ideology. 

Mamdani, this time, is getting blasted for calling on the government to “seize” luxury condos to house the homeless during the coronavirus pandemic. 

The unearthed remarks, stemming from a March 2020 social media post, followed news of separate rediscovered remarks from Mamdami touting the need to “de-commodify” housing through replacing luxury condos with communal-style living that would include things like shared laundry facilities and food co-ops.

“The oligarchs who want us to return to work to goose the stock market are the same ones with thousands of luxury condos as investment properties, sitting empty while NYers die on the streets & in shelters,” Mamdani wrote on social media in response to a news report claiming the first homeless person in New York City with the coronavirus had passed away amid the pandemic.

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“Seize these properties,” Mamdani demanded in his post, written while campaigning for the New York State Assembly. “House the homeless. Enact a #HomesGuarantee.”

Mamdani’s comments on housing were similarly scrutinized after a video of him published online by nonprofit advocacy group The Gravel Institute showed the NYC mayoral candidate discussing the need to turn housing from a private commodity to a public one. In part, during the video, Mamdani called for establishing “community land trusts to gradually buy up housing on the private market and convert it to community ownership.” In more simplistic terms, Mamdami explained his housing idea would essentially aim to replace luxury condos with communal-style living that would include things like shared laundry, kitchens, food co-ops, bathhouses, pharmacies, lecture halls, swimming pools and more. 

“If we want to end the housing crisis, the solution has to be moving toward the full de-commodification of housing,” Mamdani says. “In other words, moving away from the status quo in which most people access housing by purchasing it on the market and toward a future where we guarantee high quality housing to all as a human right.”

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Other comments rooted in radical socialist and communist ideology from Mamdani have surfaced in recent weeks as well.   

Critics have also pointed to comments that Mamdani made at a Young Democratic Socialists of America conference in 2021, during which the then-State Assembly member told attendees not to compromise on goals like “seizing the means of production.”

Meanwhile, current New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who left the Democratic Party to run as an Independent, slammed Mamdami this week for explicitly quoting communist revolutionary thinker Karl Marx. 

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The post Adams shared included nothing more than the following simple message shared by Mamdani: “Each according to their need, each according to their ability.”

To the less politically-inclined social media user, the message might seem innocuous, but, in reality, it is a direct quote from Karl Marx, a revolutionary socialist who penned the infamous “Communist Manifesto” with fellow socialist political philosopher Friedrich Engels during the late 19th-century.

President Donald Trump has referred to Mamdani as a “100% Communist Lunatic” and vowed to “save New York City” from Mamdani if he gets elected, suggesting a willingness to withhold federal funds from the city if Mamdani doesn’t “behave.”

However, Mamdani has rejected claims he is a “communist.” In response to Trump’s criticism of being a “communist,” Mamdani directly refuted the claim during an interview with NBC News.

“No, I am not,” Mamdani responded when asked point-blank by NBC’s Kristen Welker. “I have already had to start to get used to the fact that the president will talk about how I look, how I sound, where I’m from, who I am, ultimately, because he wants to distract from what I’m fighting for. And I’m fighting for the very working people that he ran a campaign to empower that he has since then betrayed.

“When we talk about my politics, you know, I call myself a Democratic socialist — in many ways, inspired by the words of Dr. [Martin Luther] King from decades ago, who said, ‘Call it democracy, call it Democratic-Socialism, there has to be a better distribution of wealth for all of God’s children in this country.”

Fox News Digital reached out to Mamdami and his campaign for comment on this article, but did not receive a response.