Trump, NYC mayor talk $21B affordable housing plan

President Donald Trump and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani met at the White House Thursday to discuss a multibillion-dollar affordable housing plan.

Mamdani is seeking $21 billion in federal grants for a construction project at Sunnyside Yard, which would allow the city to build 12,000 new affordable homes, create 30,000 union jobs and deliver new parks, schools and health care clinics, according to a press release from the mayor's office. Of the 12,000 homes, 6,000 would be Mitchell-Lama style.

"New York City is facing a generational affordability challenge," Mamdani said in the release. "Working families are being priced out of the neighborhoods they built. To meet this moment, we need a true federal partner prepared to invest boldly and act urgently. I appreciated the opportunity to speak directly with President Trump about building more housing in any single project than our city has seen since 1973."

The mayor said in an X post the meeting, the second since Mamdani was elected in November, was productive and he looks forward to building more housing in New York. 

The post featured a photo of Mamdani and Trump in the Oval Office, with the president holding two copies of the New York Daily News. One is a 1975 issue with President Gerald Ford and the headline "Ford to City: Drop Dead," while the other is a recreated version of that issue with the headline "Trump to City: Let's Build."

Mamdani's press secretary, Joe Calvello, confirmed with multiple news outlets the mayor's team mocked up the front page and brought it as a gift for Trump. Calvello also said the team crafted the project after the president told Mamdani to "come back with big ideas to build big things together in New York City," according to NBC News.

"NYC's housing shortage math is our version of the bond market — and as Shakira wisely reminds us, the numbers don't lie. Let's build," Lamartiniere Auguste, chief financial officer at DTH Capital, wrote in a LinkedIn post in reaction to the meeting. "Cities don't become unaffordable overnight — they become unaffordable one unbuilt and unconverted building at a time."

Mamdani won the November election with affordability as a focal point of his campaign, with plans to freeze rent for more than 2 million rent-stabilized apartments and advocate for larger affordable housing bond financing.

Affordable housing has been a primary focus of Trump's recently as well, calling on Congress to pass a law that includes his executive order banning large, institutional investors from purchasing single family homes in his State of the Union speech Tuesday.