The Single Issue Housing Voter
An Interview with Laeo Crnkovic-Rubsamen on Housing Guide to the 2025 NYC Primaries
Whether or not Zohran Mamdani pulls off a historic upset next week, he’s already accomplished a major narrative victory. Conventional wisdom holds that New York City mayoral elections end up focusing on one central issue, and that the candidate with the best message to address that issue will win the election. In 2013, Bill de Blasio’s “Tale of Two Cities” narrative proved the correct formula for an election focused on inequality. In 2021, Eric Adams surged to victory by correctly predicting that it would be a law-and-order election, and that his record as a former cop with tough-on-crime messaging and a (dubious) history reforming the police department from within would play well during a rising crime wave.
Four months ago, Politico reporter Sally Goldenberg told Ben Max that while she had no idea who would win, she was confident that the election would come down to one of two narrative issues: “restoring order and competence to City Hall,” and “standing up to Trump.” This was a reasonable guess. At the time of recording, Mayor Eric Adams had just left the party and allied himself with Trump in exchange for the dismissal of his corruption indictment, a key, salient example of Trump’s interference with city affairs that made the local government more disordered and incompetent. But four months later, no one is talking much about order or competence of government, or of Eric Adams at all. The incumbent has been an eerie, almost ghostly, absence in the Democratic primary that will most likely anoint his successor. The Trump administration and the question of who is best to stand up to it has certainly been discussed a bunch in the last few weeks. But even after the record-breaking No Kings March this weekend, there’s another issue elbowing its way onto the main stage, one that Zohran is desperate to talk about: affordability. “I believe the most pressing crisis we’re facing here is one of affordability, and that is something that my campaign is laser focused on,” he said in last week’s debate. And there’s no more pressing affordability issue in this city than housing.
But housing is complicated and confusing, and it seems like everyone is saying the right things, at least perfunctorily. It can be hard to tell who the single-issue housing voter should vote for. That’s why policy researcher Laeo Crnkovic-Rubsamen made “Laeo’s NYC 2025 Primary Voting Guide,” a handy guide to not just the mayoral race but lots of down ballot ones two, like the Borough Presidents, the Comptroller, and a whole bunch of city council races.
Laeo put his cell phone number at the top of the guide, instructing readers to text him “with ANY QUESTIONS.” I had some questions, so I texted him, and we spoke on a video call on Sunday.
A few disclaimers. First, Laeo and I went to high school together. Second, Laeo is currently working on the policy team of Zellnor Myrie’s campaign, so take his #1 ranking of Myrie with a grain of salt (although I agree with it so maybe it’s a fine grain rather than a coarse one). Third, Laeo wanted to make clear that this is something he did on his own time, and that everything he’s written is his own opinion, not Myrie’s or the campaign’s. And fourth, our conversation is transcribed below, lightly edited for clarity.
Eli: I wonder if you could start by introducing yourself, telling us a little bit about your background, and what led you to decide to make a voting guide that was focused on housing?
Laeo: I was born and raised in New York. I love New York with all my heart. I worked on the Harris campaign in 2024 in Pennsylvania, and after that epic loss, I realized that I wanted to focus more locally. One of the things I realized while working on that campaign was that it’s tough to have these very liberal cities like San Francisco and New York and LA, and not be able to point to them and be like, these are cities on a hill, with epic Democratic leadership that does great things. They’re really not. Eric Adams is a travesty. There are some things I like that he’s done, but in general, he’s an embarassment. So I wanted to come back to New York and try to make it something we could be proud of, and show the country what Democrat leadership can do. Like, we can do big things, we can have these progressive values, and be a place where businesses thrive. We can do everything.
And as for housing specifically, it’s always kind of been on my mind, my family talks about it at dinner pretty often. But then, moving back to New York after college, I realized like, okay, homelessness is significantly worse than it was when I was growing up. People talk about it a lot more, it’s definitely in the conversation a lot more. So I started looking into New York housing policy. Why is it that we have such a large unhoused population? So that’s where I started, and then with the guide specifically, I have a lot of friends who aren’t from New York who moved here after college and I wanted to make a guide that would help them, and anyone else who had similar values, so they could just be like, these people want to build more housing, that’s a good thing, I’ll use this guide.
Eli: Could you tell us about your process making this guide? Did you go to each campaign website and do a keyword search for “parking minimums” or some other phrase like that? Did you go through interview transcripts? Did you talk to local organizers and community members in each district? How deep did you go?
Laeo: I wish I had gone that deep. Well, with the mayoral stuff, yeah I went very deep because that’s what I work very closely with on a day-to-day basis. For the Borough Presidents, I did very little research on the Brooklyn BP race because Antonio Reynoso is basically running unopposed. Correct me if I’m wrong about that. (Ed. Note: he’s not wrong, there are other people on the ballot but Reynoso is going to win easily). And I like Reynoso, I think he’s a phenomenal BP, big City of Yes advocate.
For Comptroller, I did a good amount of research into Justin Brannan because I hadn’t really known much about him before. But Levine’s been Borough President, he’s very strong on housing. BP’s don’t have a huge amount of power, but they do have power over who gets onto community boards, and he’s wielded that soft power to get people that are pro-housing onto those boards, so I really appreciate that. And I appreciate anyone that will put in their campaign literature and on their website, a pledge for affordable housing that acknowledges the private sector’s role in building housing. And Levine did that.
And then I’m just not a fan of Justin Brannan. He was so slimy with City of Yes negotiations, he voted yes on it and then got this big carve out for his district where he basically was like, yes for everyone else but not for me. And he’s also gone back and forth on congestion pricing, which makes sense because his district is a little bit of a transit desert and it probably does have a good amount of people that drive into lower Manhattan. So I have some sympathy for that, but I think people should be very very rah-rah congestion pricing to make it onto my voter guide.
Eli: I was going to ask about this. Congestion Pricing is one example of a proxy issue where it’s not explicitly about housing, but whether it’s that, or bike lanes, or street safety, there are these things that I feel can align with someone’s general vision of New York. Like, do you see New York as a dense, urbanist, growing city that we want to be walkable and transit-oriented and generally want more people, or do we see it as a driver-centric place that already has bad traffic and is sort of full in some ways, or has hard space constraints. In an election where everyone at least says that we need more housing, or we need to do something about housing affordability, how much weight did you give these kinds of proxy issues?
Laeo: Yeah, definitely Congestion Pricing is one of them. If you were for Congestion Pricing before it was cool, that’s a good sign that they’re like, okay they’ve actually thought through this issue, they’re not just looking at it through a short-term, political lens. Another one that’s a little more niche, but good for city council races is universal daylighting. Busways also, really any of those street safety things. And then specifically, I find it’s very helpful if they were for the Arrow Linen rezoning.
But also, when looking at the different mayoral candidates, if they’re like “we’re only going to build on public land.” Not to pick on Scott Stringer, but I guess I will pick on Scott Stringer, his housing plan is roughly like, okay there’s a bunch of public land plots. We’re going to build on all of those, and that’s about it. And then maybe give some money to NYCHA. Like, I can’t really take that seriously, building on public land is not a new idea. If someone wanted to get it done, it would have happened. I need to see engagement with the rezoning process in some meaningful way, making it easier for the private sector to build by large scale upzonings, something along the lines of what the charter revision commission is suggesting.
My number five place was a bit of a toss-up until a couple of weeks ago. We’re pretty confident the final round is going to be Mamdani vs Cuomo. I really didn’t know who I was going to put on my ballot, I really didn’t want it to be Cuomo, and I like the energy that Mamdani has, it would feel like a bit of a betrayal of my generation if he wasn’t on my ballot, but in good faith I couldn’t say that he was good on housing.
Eli (chiding): But he’s trying to freeze the rent, Laeo, what are you talking about?
Laeo: Yeah we can get into freezing the rent. I think it’s reasonable on a year by year basis. I think it’s a tool that should be used. It should be used carefully but I buy that. But I think if we freeze the rent just indeterminately, then it leads to a decrease in private sector investment in building affordable housing. If they know their rent’s not going to go up, they’re not going to build affordable housing, and so it doesn’t address the supply issue. It’s one of those short-term band-aid solutions for a very real problem, which is that there’s a housing affordability crisis. For these people, we can say their rent won’t go up. But everyone else’s rent’s going to keep going up, and we’re not going to build more housing if we make it a bad financial investment to build affordable housing.
Eli: Zohran’s had this pivot to Abundance talking points recently, he mentioned single stair regulations in an interview with Jon Lovett, he’s now talking about parking minimums a lot. Is it just too little too late? Or is part of this that there’s something irritating about the insistence that you can just have at all? We can just freeze the rent and magically solve this? As opposed to acknowledging that you have to actually piss people off and get into a lot of fights with community boards and stuff like that?
Laeo: I think that’s very legit. I think there’s something important about the fact that big progressive changes that have happened in America’s history have come with massive sacrifices. Every large scale plan that has improved people’s lives has come with massive political battles and excellent politicians doing what they do and making compromises left and right that make a lot of people unhappy. But in the long run, great things happen. So yeah, I think it’s tough to have a politician who doesn’t seem to acknowledge the need for that. Maybe Zohran will be an excellent wheeling and dealing politician if he gets into Gracie Mansion, but having a vision of trying to make everyone happy with a magic rent freeze wand is admirable, but not realistic. Like I’m sorry, the Upper West Side is going to have to start building. The West Village is going to have to start building. Everyone’s gonna have to build some houses. I have some thoughts on historic districts and landmarks, but stuff’s gonna have to get built. People are going to be upset about it.
Eli: But despite your reservations, and some of the everything bagel liberalism spirit of Zohran’s housing platform, or at least the parts of it he emphasizes, despite that you still ultimately ranked him over Cuomo. Why is Cuomo worse?
Laeo: I think Cuomo just doesn’t really give a shit about housing.
Eli (chiding again, but even more sarcastic this time): Former HUD Secretary, Laguardia Airport, Penn Station, he’s done it before, he’ll do it again…
Laeo: Yeah but not well. Like, Laguardia is beautiful but it doesn’t have transit access, you have to take a bus. And the Second Avenue subway, he loves talking about that, but let’s not forget that it was only phase one of four that has been completed, and it was horribly over budget. So I don’t think he’s this great builder that he makes him out to be. And hearing him talk about housing, he’s like, yes we’re not going to build any housing in low density areas. Like, okay, good luck, boss. You’re not going to build any housing then. The high density areas are firmly entrenched and also not building housing. You’re just left with Midtown, because no one lives there currently, so you can do some upzoning there, but yeah, I just don’t buy it. And I don’t see any will behind what he’s saying. He’s running a public safety, anti-Semitism focused campaign, which sure, addresses a lot of people’s concerns, but it’s not the housing concerns.
Eli: There’s sort of a mismatch between housing liberalization and the outer borough homeowners that are his core base. Those are the last people that are going to get on board when a rezoning needs to happen.
Laeo: Exactly. And to be honest, if he had literally exactly the same housing platform as Mamdani, he’s such a scumbag, it would take a lot to vote for him.