NYC mayor seeks largest federal housing investment since 1973 — with 12,000 homes and 30,000 union jobs
From Stalled Plan to Presidential Pitch: Sunnyside Yards Gets New Life
At the heart of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s February 26 White House meeting with President Donald Trump was a sweeping proposal that had languished for years in New York City planning documents: decking over the Sunnyside Yards rail complex in Queens and building one of the largest affordable housing developments the city has ever seen. Mamdani arrived at the Oval Office with a specific ask — more than $21 billion in federal grants — and a specific goal: 12,000 affordable homes, 30,000 union jobs, and a transformation of the busiest rail yard in North America into a livable neighborhood.
The Sunnyside Yards is a 180-acre facility owned primarily by Amtrak in western Queens. A master plan first unveiled in 2020 by the city’s Economic Development Corporation and Amtrak called for decking over approximately 115 acres of the site to create a platform on which housing, parks, schools, and health clinics could be constructed. The plan, developed after years of community workshops beginning in 2018, envisioned 12,000 affordable homes — including 6,000 Mitchell-Lama-style units designed to serve middle-income working families — as well as 60 acres of new open space. The initial cost estimate for the platform alone was $5.4 billion, with total infrastructure costs around $14.4 billion. By 2026, Mamdani’s office is seeking $21 billion in federal grants just to break ground.
Why It Stalled and Why It Is Back
The project was first floated by Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2015. It moved through planning phases under de Blasio and into the early Adams years, then stalled entirely. The reasons were the same as for most large-scale infrastructure projects: the scale of federal investment required, the complexity of coordinating with Amtrak as a federal agency and primary landowner, and the political difficulty of sustaining multi-decade commitments across administrations. Mamdani is betting that the combination of a friendly Trump relationship, a shared interest in building visible things, and a housing crisis that has genuinely become a middle-class political emergency creates a unique opening.
According to City Hall, the Trump administration agreed to “continue discussions in the weeks ahead.” That phrase covers a wide range of possibilities, from a serious federal financing commitment to a polite non-answer. No funding mechanism was identified, no legislative vehicle was named, and the White House did not respond to press requests for comment. What is clear is that Mamdani framed the ask as a win for Trump as much as for New York: 30,000 union jobs, historic scale, and the headline “Trump to City: Let’s Build” rather than the 1975 original that read “Ford to City: Drop Dead.”
What 12,000 Units Actually Means for the Housing Crisis
New York City’s housing crisis is not a slogan. The city is short approximately 500,000 units needed to house its population affordably, according to housing researchers. Rents have risen sharply since the pandemic. Median asking rents in Manhattan have exceeded $4,000 per month. Working families — teachers, nurses, transit workers, sanitation workers — are being priced out of neighborhoods they have lived in for generations. Mitchell-Lama housing, the state program that produced tens of thousands of affordable middle-income units from the 1950s through the 1970s, has seen most of its original stock exit affordability requirements over the past several decades. Mamdani’s proposal to build 6,000 new Mitchell-Lama-style units at Sunnyside would represent a meaningful start on rebuilding that middle tier of the housing market.
But 12,000 units, while significant, is not enough on its own to bend the curve of a 500,000-unit shortage. Housing advocates have praised the ambition of the Sunnyside proposal while noting that it must be part of a much larger and more comprehensive housing strategy — one that also includes tenant protections, preservation of existing affordable stock, zoning changes across the five boroughs, and sustained public investment over decades. The question of what happens to the project if the federal relationship with Mamdani sours — or if Trump simply moves on to the next priority — is a legitimate one that advocates are watching closely.
What Both Sides Are Saying
Mamdani’s press secretary Joe Calvello said Trump was “very enthusiastic” about the proposal. The mayor himself said: “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.” Neither the White House nor Amtrak has made any public commitment. Real estate industry observers note that the scale of federal investment Mamdani is seeking would require congressional action — a detail that introduces significant political uncertainty regardless of presidential enthusiasm.
For the full Sunnyside Yard Master Plan, visit NYC EDC’s project page. For the Mitchell-Lama program history, see NYC HPD Mitchell-Lama info. For housing shortage research, see the National Low Income Housing Coalition. For federal infrastructure funding mechanisms, see USDOT Build America Bureau.
