“One might think that socialism and deregulation do not go together, but Mamdani’s campaign gave hints that he might be willing to take on some heretofore untouchable interest groups.”

Zohran Mamdani at an event in December. (Adi Talwar/City Limits)

As an economist and city planner inclined to let markets have free rein, I didn’t view democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani as my ideal mayoral candidate. However, now that he has won, I would prefer that his upcoming mayoralty improve the city, rather than accelerate its decline. In a new report for the Manhattan Institute, I have outlined some good actions his administration could take to mitigate the city’s housing supply crisis and jump-start its stagnating economy, without repudiating his principles.  

The potential actions Mamdani might support fall into three categories: deregulatory interventions, zoning changes to take advantage of the City Charter changes approved by voters last November concurrently with Mamdani’s election, and pragmatic policy changes to mitigate the adverse consequences of past left-leaning policies. One might think that socialism and deregulation do not go together, but Mamdani’s campaign gave hints that he might be willing to take on some heretofore untouchable interest groups.

One such group is car owners, a minority of New Yorkers but an important constituency to many City Council members. Under prior Mayor Eric Adams, the Council agreed to some reforms to the city’s outdated requirements for off-street parking in new housing developments, but didn’t go far enough. The city also retains decades-old requirements for off-street parking in new nonresidential buildings, such as offices and shopping centers. Requiring parking the developer thinks unnecessary raises costs and encourages new residents, commuters and shoppers to own and use cars, rather than public transit. Recent reform in Illinois—dubbed the “People Over Parking Act,” which prohibits requiring parking in areas well-served by transit—suggests a model for changes Mamdani could push through in New York City.

The City Charter changes create a shortened process for certain types of pro-housing zoning changes, cutting out review by the City Council, which in the past gave local members a de facto veto over new housing in their districts. Mamdani will need to use these new tools carefully, since he still needs a good working relationship with a Council majority. However, he should be comfortable with utilizing new Charter provisions allowing him to push through affordable housing projects in 12 designated community districts where the least amount of such housing was permitted in the past five years.  Moreover, he can also take steps to allow two-family homes and small apartment buildings in low-density neighborhoods where the demand for housing is strong and the potential for adverse effects is limited.

Lastly, and a bigger reach for Mamdani, are changes that require ideological flexibility and in some cases a willingness to allow investors to profit while providing housing the city desperately needs. It’s recognized at this point that the state legislature’s draconian 2019 rent stabilization amendments have created a financial crisis for at least two large groups of owners: private investors whose buildings are 100 percent rent-stabilized and never benefitted from onetime rules allowing deregulation of high-rent units; and non-profits who run low-income housing on behalf of the city and are just as squeezed between rising costs and tightly regulated rents as the for-profit owners.

That problem is too big to solve with public money alone. Mamdani should ask the state legislature to allow bigger rent increases upon vacancy, provided that for-profit landlords agree to maintain affordability standards like those that already bind the non-profit landlords.

Another potential target for pragmatic flexibility is Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH), a flagship achievement of former Mayor Bill de Blasio, and continued under Adams. MIH requires new apartment buildings in rezoned areas to include 25 to 30 percent permanently affordable units. Sold as seizing the windfall profits of greedy developers, MIH in fact depends on compensating developers with generous tax exemptions on the whole building, including the market-rate units. Unfortunately, that mechanism doesn’t always make construction financially feasible. This is particularly an issue with the latest version of the tax-exemption law, known as Section 485-x, to which the state legislature attached “prevailing (union) wage” requirements to buildings with more than 99 units. 

That’s asking for more than many developers can give and still make a profit. Like the rent regulation issue, that problem can’t be papered over with more public subsidies; the city needs far more housing than it can pay for. Private developers need to be permitted a decent return on investment. There is an existing MIH waiver provision, but it has never been used. Mamdani’s administration should clarify the circumstances where waivers might be granted because new housing investment is not otherwise possible.

In summary, Mamdani and his appointees should consider pragmatic actions that would help the city and do not contradict his core beliefs. If he does, the city can be better off at the end of his term than it is today.

Eric Kober is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He previously served as director of housing, economic and infrastructure planning at the NYC Department of City Planning.

The post Opinion: How Mamdani Can Keep His Principles And Still Do Good For NYC’s Housing Market appeared first on City Limits.

With the possibility of freezing rain overnight and a slick commute Tuesday morning, the National Weather Service Twin Cities has issued a winter weather warning.

If the temperature dips below freezing when the rain hits overnight, it could cause freezing rain and icy roads with as much as 0.2 inches of ice in some parts of southern Minnesota, the weather service said on X.

“Icy & slick travel expected as it falls and afterwards,” the Monday post said. “Temps will be very close to freezing, and how much ice ends up accumulating will be closely tied to how warm we are.

Meteorologist Tyler Hasenstein agreed with that statement later in the day Monday, saying that if the temperatures remain around freezing or slightly above, the area might only see rain instead of freezing rain.

“The big concern is icing overnight,” he said.

The way the weather pattern was trending Monday afternoon, the icy rain was more likely to strike southern Minnesota, including Mankato and Rochester, than the Twin Cities metro area.

“It’s favoring that track,” he said. “It’s looking like the higher amounts (of rain) may stay to the south.”

And it will depend on how cold it gets overnight, particularly at midnight when the rain is most likely to fall.

Hasenstein said the warming trend will continue throughout the rest of the week, meaning that any ice on the roads won’t stick around long.

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By MORIAH BALINGIT, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is telling Head Start providers to avoid dozens of terms in federal grant applications, including “race,” “belonging” and “pregnant people” — a directive that could reshape the early education program.

A coalition of organizations representing Head Start providers and parents said in court filings last month that the Department of Health and Human Services told a Head Start director in Wisconsin to cut those and over a dozen other terms from her application. She later received a list with nearly 200 words the department discouraged her from using in her application, including “Black,” “Native American,” “disability” and “women.”

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President Donald Trump’s administration associates the terms with diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, which it has vowed to root out across the government.

The guidance could lead Head Start centers to preemptively drop anything that could be seen as fitting the administration’s definition of DEI, said Ruth Friedman, who led the Office of Child Care under President Joe Biden.

“Grantees are sort of self-selecting out of those activities beforehand because of fear and direction they’re getting from the Office of Head Start that they can’t do these important research-based activities anymore that are important for children’s learning and that are actually required by law,” Friedman said.

The filings came in a lawsuit filed in April by parent groups and Head Start associations in Washington, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin against Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other officials. They allege the Trump administration is illegally dismantling Head Start.

The plaintiffs say the administration is trying to force providers to change how they operate in violation of the Head Start Act, which requires directors to provide demographic information about their families, a task that becomes difficult if they are banned from using “Black,” “disability” and “socioeconomic.”

Health and Human Services officials said they do not comment on pending litigation.

Head Start centers receive the bulk of their funding from the federal government. The long-standing preschool and family support program serves babies, infants and toddlers who come from low-income households, foster care or homeless families.

Plaintiffs’ attorneys say the anti-DEI guidance has generated confusion for Head Start programs, which are operated by nonprofits, schools and government agencies. The grant application itself contains many of the banned words, asking directors to include demographic data about their community that includes estimates of the number of pregnant women and children with disabilities.

“This has put me in an impossible situation,” the unnamed Head Start director in Wisconsin wrote in the court filing. If she complies with the Head Start Act and includes the banned words in her application, she could end up losing her grant, she said. But if she follows the Trump administration’s guidance, she said she fears she’ll face penalties for violating the law down the line.

Another Head Start, located on a Native American reservation in Washington state, was told to cut “all Diversity and Inclusion-related activities,” leading it to drop staff training on how to support autistic children and children with trauma, according to the court filing. Officials there also told the director that she could no longer prioritize tribal members for enrollment — even though the Head Start Act expressly permits this. The word “Tribal” is among the disfavored terms.

For some, the new grant application rules are another attempt to undermine Head Start, a program with a history of bipartisan support that some conservatives have been attacking as problematic and ineffective.

“They don’t believe these public programs should actually be open to serving all communities,” said Jennesa Calvo-Friedman of the ACLU, an attorney for the plaintiffs. The effort to ban words from applications “is a way to gut the fundamentals of the program.”

Not long after Trump took office, his budget chief unsuccessfully tried to halt all federal grants, saying they needed to be reviewed to root out any DEI efforts. Head Start was not supposed to be part of the freeze, which was quickly reversed, but in the months afterward, grantees reported problems drawing down their funding. Some had to briefly close.

The Government Accountability Office later said the delays violated the Impoundment Control Act, which limits when the president can halt the flow of government funds.

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Head coach Niko Medved knows the tradition might be considered a little corny, perhaps something out of an elementary school, but he has kept it alive with the Gophers men’s basketball team this season.

After his team produces a road win, it’s snack time.

On the way home after a victory, the team’s coach bus will pull off the road at a gas station or convenience store and everybody on board gets to pick two items to munch on during the rest of the trip. While current players are, of course, fed a postgame meal, the U foots the bill for snack time, even if players can now afford it in the revenue-sharing era.

The Gophers’ first snack time experience this season came after an 84-78 win over Northwestern in Evanston, Ill. on Saturday. The cashier at Graham’s MarketPlace in Skokie, Ill., must have been surprised when roughly 40 people descended on the store at the same time that evening.

“It was … different,” said senior guard Langston Reynolds, a first-year transfer from Northern Colorado. “I didn’t know what to get. I was kind of stunned at first.”

Freshman guard Kia Shinholster recorded the scene on a phone and commentated on his teammates’ choices for subsequent social media posts. Even athletics director Mark Coyle got in on the grub, although his choices weren’t critiqued.

Medved started the snack time tradition when he was coaching at Furman roughly a decade ago, but it really became a routine pastime during his tenure at Colorado State after the pandemic. The Rams community in Fort Collins bought in, too. Fans traveling to road games would try to suss out where snack time would be, while supporters back home in Colorado would record videos of their own snack time and send them to the team.

“It turned into a huge deal,” Medved said Monday ahead of the Gophers’ home game against No. 19 Iowa at Williams Arena on Tuesday night. “The players love it. It’s one of those things that they will remember. The fans really got into it. It kind of became a thing.”

The Rams’ most memorable snack time last year came after Colorado State won the Mountain West Conference tournament title in Las Vegas. The Rams flew back home, and while the tradition is reserved for road games and not neutral sites, they made an exception after three straight victories.

“We were like, ‘We’ve got to do it,’ ” Medved recalled. “We had the (school) president with us, so we went to Buc-ee’s up the road (in Fort Collins and) brought the trophy in there. It’s kind of like holding the Stanley Cup.”

Medved’s old team also might have blown past the two-snack limit during that late-night visit. “I don’t know how many we got that day; whatever they wanted,” Medved said. “Brisket sandwiches all the way around.”

Gophers forward Jaylen Crocker-Johnson played for Colorado State last year and said his favorite snack time was either that one or after an 83-73 win at Boise State’s ExtraMile Arena to close out the regular season.

It’s also a snack time tradition to take photo of the group outside the convenience store. That particular snapshot in Idaho had the logo of the ExtraMile in it — a coincidence, not a troll job of the arena where they’d just won.

It appears any good snack time comes with friendly ribbing of other people’s choices. Medved raised his own hand. He got an ice cream sandwich, a go-to, but also cheese curds, which he said he later regretted.

Forward Grayson Grove, who had a career-high 12 points against the Wildcats, raised eyebrows with a small jug of chocolate milk.

“Are you serious?” Medved joked in the video. Grove reportedly didn’t finish it.

Before the players disembarked in Illinois on Saturday, they were told to not follow the lead of one Colorado State player who used one of his snacks on a bottle of water. The buses are always stocked with plenty of that.

But freshman commentator Shinholster was giving senior Reynolds guff for picking Chex Mix in 2026.

“He’s always calling me old,” said Reynolds, who had a career-high 13 assists against the Wildcats. “It’s a little weird because we are not that far apart in age. But it’s alright. It’s fine. I can take the hit.”

Snack time veteran Crocker-Johnson went with an Arizona ice tea and an ice-cream sandwich, just like his head coach.

“Some questionable options by my teammates,” he critiqued. “But it was definitely a fun experience for us to get that first road win and enjoy that snack time.”

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