Brad Landers pave over NYC golf courses for affordable housing plan is a double bogey

Progressive mayoral wannabe Brad Lander’s latest policy spitball — paving over four of Gotham’s public golf courses to build 50,000 affordable housing units — epitomizes the left’s denial of its role in deepening the city’s housing crisis.Never mind losing 2,500 acres of “green space” to asphalt, concrete, steel and rebar; this wouldn’t do a whit to ease the city’s housing disaster.The crisis is rooted in the rent laws, especially the 2019 state “reform” that’s made it near-impossible for small owners to maintain and preserve rent-stabilized units.The innocent-sounding Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act has forced over 45,000 units off the market because property owners can’t afford to bring them up to code after a long-term tenant leaves, because it doesn’t let them raise the rent to cover those costs.Indeed, it undermines all building maintenance, as apartments you can’t rent are just a dead loss.

Lander and his ilk (like Assemblyman Zohran “Zero Rent Hikes” Mamdani) don’t care; they even oppose laws to give developers reasonable incentive to build affordable housing.Treating all landlords as the enemy only worsens the housing crunch; anyone pretending that the city and/or state can simply build enough on their own should just look at the rolling disaster of the New York City Public Housing Authority.“I’m no pro golfer, but this is a hole-in-one,” smarms Lander in a campaign video about his idea.No: Pretending that privileged villains are behind all our problems is a double bogey, Brad....