In November, the suburbs of New York City will be the pivotal arena for whether the Democratic Socialists of America cement their takeover of the entire state from their New York City stronghold. The decisive issue is not crime, deteriorating quality of life, or high taxes, but one that is arousing significant suburban anxiety: the DSA’s vendetta against the American Dream of homeownership.
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Residents of Westchester and Nassau counties, which abut the northern Bronx and eastern Queens, and of whom 80% own their homes, are watching with increasing unease Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s mounting attacks on the city’s homeowners, and logically assuming that they are next.
Despite Westchester County’s nearly 3-1 Democrat voter registration advantage over Republicans and a 15% advantage in Nassau, the DSA’s Marxist belief that property ownership is evil may elect a Republican governor for the first time in more than 20 years. The electoral math is such that if Republican challenger Bruce Blakeman can earn a five-point swing in the metro area over Republican Lee Zeldin’s statewide 6% loss to Democrat Kathy Hochul in 2022, he clinches a Republican victory. Some political analysts believe that Zeldin lost because he failed to focus more on the threats to single-family housing.
Blakeman is the popular County Executive of Nassau, winning re-election in 2025 by 55%-45%; in contrast, Kathy Hochul’s favorability rating, according to the most recent Sienna poll, is 43%-44%, which is not good for an incumbent. Her support for the New York City mayor has contributed to her unpopularity.
The Mamdani administration is an avowed opponent of private property, excepting the Mamdani family’s residential assets here and in Uganda. Hochul and the Democrat-controlled legislature cravenly caved to his demand for a punitive surcharge on luxury second homes worth over $5 million under a new pied-a-terre tax. Not a peep was heard when the fine print revealed that the surcharge included every property worth $1 million or more, meaning more than 50% of the city’s homes. Crickets when he curated an easily searchable and doxable-friendly database of 960,000 of the city’s enemies of the people, previously known as property owners. Hochul informed the press that it was nothing “out of the ordinary.”
Democrats were silent when Mamdani’s Department of Finance followed up last week with letters to tens of thousands of homeowners whose primary residence is New York City, demanding payment by August 21, unless they prove a negative by coughing up massive amounts of documentation, including federal tax returns, driver’s licenses, voter ID cards, and more if the property is owned by an LLC. These are demands that prove the Democrats’ objections to the SAVE act ludicrous. Due to massive outrage by the targets of the Mamdani administration, by Saturday morning, the deadline was pushed to September 18. The mayor is also threatening a property tax increase to 9.5% for all homeowners.
Some of the progressives who voted for him and believe in redistribution of wealth feel betrayed. An NYU professor appearing on the podcast Pivot sputtered, “He’s taken a legitimate source of revenue and he’s turning it into a wanted poster.”
They should. Mamdani’s Marxist ambitions coincide with Hochul’s fixation on building 800,000 new affordable housing units, located mostly near train and bus stations on Long Island and in the northern suburbs.
To further understand the political dynamics, it’s worth recounting some history. The war on suburbia began decades ago, when the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development initiated policies to force affluent suburban communities to eliminate racial disparities by building affordable housing and populate those structures with low-income people of color.
In 2008 under President Barack Obama, HUD was emboldened to focus on Westchester, forcing the county to build 750 affordable units under a federal settlement. When HUD upped the ante and demanded 10,000 new units and an end to local zoning, opposition was so fierce and bipartisan that the county’s voters elected a Republican as County Executive, who stopped HUD’s efforts.
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Since her 2022 election, Hochul has been pushing her Housing Compact, which would override local zoning to allow accessory housing throughout the suburbs and high-density housing of 50 units per acre near transportation hubs. Costly infrastructure issues like schools, police, parking, sewers, and traffic are to be borne by the municipalities. The state’s Association of Towns and the New York Conference of Mayors were adamantly opposed to Hochul’s attempts to eliminate the state’s constitutionally protected Home Rule for local zoning.
With a Hochul victory in November, the state’s Democrats will accede to the DSA’s demands to decolonize private property and eliminate Home Rule, which has long been a protection against overbuilding.
Outside of Manhattan, homeownership levels in Staten Island and parts of Queens and Brooklyn reach levels similar to the suburbs. For example, in both white and black majority neighborhoods in eastern Queens along the Nassau County line, homeownership percentages are over 70%. The neighborhoods of Riverdale, Douglaston-Little Neck, and Cambria Heights are indistinguishable from their nearby Westchester or Nassau counterparts.
In late 2024, New York City’s Democrats enacted the City of Yes, a zoning law that enabled developers to erect high-density units without any local input. This happened over the near-unanimous objections of community groups in the single- and two-family areas of Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx. and Staten Island.
It is also worth noting that the DSA is 85% white and skews very young. Hispanic and black homeowners are not buying into their proletarian rhetoric. They’ve achieved or aspire to the American Dream. As one black minister in Westchester’s Mount Vernon put it, “Maybe we have to break the Democrat monopoly.”
Homeownership is not just a white demographic statistic. While white homeownership is 78% and 87% in Westchester and Nassau, according to the U.S. Census. Black homeownership is 39% in Westchester and 74% in Nassau. Hispanic is 69% and 60%, respectively.
Homeownership represents a lifetime of achievement and an invaluable way of creating intergenerational wealth. One’s home is not something to be taken away by elite white Marxists with little life experience. Property rights are worth fighting for because they are the key to America’s economic success and our societal strength.
Republicans statewide and particularly gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman need to loudly champion the values of homeownership and local control over land use as the foundation for making New York great again.
Linda R. Killian is a retired financial executive and a local Republican chairman in Westchester County.
Image: Famartin