Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York kept his focus on housing during his first days in office, naming his housing commissioner on Sunday and signing an executive order that directed the city to hold hearings where renters could share concerns about poor living conditions.
At a news conference at an apartment building in the Bronx, Mr. Mamdani named Dina Levy, a former state official and longtime advocate for affordable housing and tenants’ rights, to lead the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development.
The building where he made the announcement, on Sedgwick Avenue in the Morris Heights neighborhood, is credited with being the birthplace of hip-hop after DJ Kool Herc experimented with the music there in the 1970s. Ms. Levy helped organize a coalition of tenants who worked to sell the 102-unit building in 2011 to new owners who rehabilitated it.
In her new role, “Dina will no longer be petitioning H.P.D. from the outside,” Mr. Mamdani said. “She will now be leading it from the inside, delivering the kind of change that can transform lives.”
The mayor also announced that he would organize a series of public “rental rip-off” hearings in his first 100 days for tenants to share their grievances about dilapidated buildings, rodent infestations and excess fees. He said the hearings would provide the initial research for a report that would shape his administration’s housing policies.
“I want these hearings to expose the ugly underbelly of our city,” Mr. Mamdani said. “The rats that scurry through hallways; the children that shiver in their beds in the dead of winter because the heat is off.”
Mr. Mamdani, a democratic socialist, ran for mayor vowing to address the city’s high cost of living and build more housing. In December, he named Leila Bozorg, a development advocate and the executive director of housing under Mayor Eric Adams, as his deputy mayor for housing and planning.
Ms. Levy will help oversee a key Mamdani campaign pledge to build 200,000 affordable housing units over the next decade. A former assistant to the state attorney general, she was most recently senior vice president at New York’s Division of Homes and Community Renewal, the state’s housing agency, where she oversaw development of single-family and manufactured homes and ran the state’s mortgage agency.
Since he was sworn in to office last Thursday, Mr. Mamdani has begun taking steps to try to improve conditions for renters. He signed several executive orders aimed at boosting housing construction and tenant protection and said the city would intervene in the bankruptcy case of a major landlord.
The building in the Bronx where he held the Sunday news conference had participated for decades in the state’s Mitchell-Lama program for middle-income housing. In 2008, it was purchased by private landlords who defaulted on the mortgage and allowed it to fall into disrepair. Together with its tenants and a $5.6 million loan from the same city agency she now will lead, Ms. Levy and her nonprofit, the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, helped stabilize its finances.
“I consider her to be a friend,” Gloria Robinson, leader of the building’s tenant association, said.
Mr. Mamdani ran on three major affordability proposals: freezing the rent on the city’s nearly one million rent-stabilized apartments, creating universal child care and making buses free.
When he was asked on Sunday about how long it might take for buses to be free, especially after a fare increase just took effect, Mr. Mamdani did not indicate that the change was imminent. It would require support from state lawmakers and could cost roughly $800 million per year.
Mr. Mamdani said that many New Yorkers could not afford the fare, which is now $3, and reiterated that he would enact all three of his main policy proposals.
“I have said that by the time I’m done being mayor, those will have been delivered,” he said.
Emma G. Fitzsimmons is the City Hall bureau chief for The Times, covering Mayor Eric Adams and his administration.
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