Zohran Mamdani will get new mayoral powers to build housing thanks to Adams-backed ballot measures — but will he use them?

He’s inheriting a solid foundation for housing — if he builds with it.

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is poised to reap the benefits of housing-related ballot measures approved by voters on Election Day — but the socialist pol has given few concrete signs about whether he’ll actually use them.

The proposals crafted at outgoing Mayor Eric Adams’ behest — and over the objections of angry City Council members — aim to turbocharge the Big Apple’s notoriously slow process for approving new housing by offering up more power to the mayor’s office. 

“You need an ambitious mayor who uses it because if you just sit back, then the measures don’t facilitate ambitious regulatory reform,” said Alex Armlovich, senior housing policy analyst at Niskanen Center.

“But you have to actually use them.”

Mamdani, however, has largely stayed quiet over the potentially game-changing new mayoral powers, even as he promises 200,000 new, union-built units of affordable housing.

The affordability focused Mamdani positioned himself as a pro-housing YIMBY — “Yes In My Backyard” — during the mayoral campaign, promising bold action to juice the city’s dwindling affordable housing supply and bring sky-high rents back to earth.

But the smooth-talking socialist pointedly stayed silent on whether he supported the housing-related ballot measures until Election Day itself, when he revealed he voted for them.

Mamdani also mostly kept quiet on “City of Yes” pro-housing rezonings pursued by Adams — a conspicuous silence that extended into Wednesday when he said nothing about the City Council approving the administration’s plan to bring 15,000 new homes to Long Island City.

Adams’ deputy mayor for housing Adolfo Carrion crowed Wednesday that Mamdani can run with what the soon-to-end administration left him — including 50,000 expected units from rezonings in LIC, Midtown South, Brooklyn’s Atlantic Avenue corridor, Jamaica and the East Bronx.

“I think we’ve set up the next mayor for success here,” Carrion said during an unrelated press conference.

“We had so much affordable housing in the pipeline. If he does it right, he’s going to be able to deliver for New Yorkers.”

Mamdani, separately on Wednesday, attended an event celebrating the new National Urban League Empowerment Center in Harlem — which brings 170 affordable new homes alongside a museum, a Trader Joe’s and Target.

“It represents affordable housing, the support for those New Yorkers who have long been overlooked at best, retail spaces for this very community and is black-owned in a time when we are being taught as if the words DEI are that of a slur,” he said. 

“When, in fact, what they are is a representation of the fulfillment of the ideals that make so many proud.”

Mamdani’s camp didn’t respond to a request for comment about the new mayoral powers.

Under the measures, the mayor’s office could take aim at the city’s near-universally loathed Universal Land Use Review Process, or ULURP, to cut red tape around affordable housing and rezoning approval — shortening the process from seven months or more to as little as 90 days.

The proposals took away some of the final voting power from the City Council, placing more responsibility on the city planning commission and on mayoral approval.

Many City Council members bitterly opposed the proposals, viewing them as a mayoral power grab by the outgoing Hizzoner that would crumble their say in housing battles.

“These misleading ballot proposals permanently change the City’s constitution to weaken democracy, lasting beyond the next mayor when we inevitably have a mayor who is bad on housing, equity, and justice for communities,” said Benjamin Fang-Estrada, the City Council’s spokesman, in a statement after the proposals passed.

“This will leave our city without the checks and balances of democracy to protect New Yorkers and ensure outcomes that prioritize them, not simply profits.”

Mamdani’s relationship with the City Council is in its infancy, and he has shown signs his views on how to build housing are evolving.

His campaign platform pledged to pour $100 billion over 10 years toward new affordable homes, largely through municipal bonds.

The 200,000 units of housing would be publicly subsidized, permanently affordable, union-built and rent-stabilized, Mamdani’s campaign states.

He also called to increase zoning capacity in a bid to buoy housing supply, including those cut out of the sweeping “City of Yes” — the ambitious plan pushed by Adams to build 80,000 units through a $5 billion investment and changes to restrictive rules.

Experts noted that Mamdani largely changed his tune on private development over the campaign, gradually adopting a more-supportive stance.

But Kenny Burgos, CEO of the New York Apartment Association representing rent-stabilized landlords, argued Mamdani’s key promise of a rent freeze could undercut private development.

Developers largely build housing with property tax credits that foster rent-stabilized units, Burgos noted.

“I think it’ll be very difficult to attract private capital that will be required to probably take a property tax abatement in order to build that housing, and then on the opposite be threatened with four years of rent freeze from Mamdani,” he said. 

“So, in essence, he’s kind of speaking out of both sides of his mouth and runs the risk of detracting capital investment that is definitely needed right now in New York City.”