cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/38974260

When the city becomes a “luxury product,” even the comfortable start to rebel.

https://t.co/hHgbUFXwRd
By Eliza Shapiro
Nov. 7, 2025

But she also wonders how long her children can reasonably share a single bedroom, with curtains surrounding each of their beds. And when she and her husband look for larger apartments nearby in Kensington, their relatively affordable neighborhood, everything is out of their price range.

“It doesn’t feel like there’s any next step that we could reasonably achieve,” Ms. Schutzengel said.

It’s a feeling that is shared by a constituency of young-ish, middle-class-ish New Yorkers who are disillusioned by a city of shimmering wealth that they can’t quite seem to access. Rather than seeing a New York of boundless possibility — or at least of apartments with in-unit washers and dryers — they see a mirage.

And now they have helped to make Zohran Mamdani the city’s next mayor.