https://nypost.com/2025/11/29/us-news/nyc-councils-affordable-housing-bill-would-give-nonprofits-first-shot-to-buy-multifamily-buildings/City Council pushing NYC into ‘Communist dystopia’ with affordable-housing bill dictating property sales — or else11/29/2025
Rich Calder
The City Council’s far-left majority is pushing the Big Apple into a “communist dystopia” with Stalinesque legislation designed to control how private property is sold — and penalizing owners $30,000 if they resist.
The “Community Opportunity for Purchase Act,” or COPA, forces sellers to let “community land trusts” and other nonprofits providing affordable housing make first offers to buy residential buildings with at least three units once they’re on the market – and then match competing private-sector offers.
The bill, sponsored by Brooklyn Councilwoman Sandy Nurse, was introduced in May 2024 and has gained steam in recent months after Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani won the June Democratic primary before cruising to victory on Nov. 4.
As of Friday, 32 of the 51 Council members had signed on as sponsors, more than the 26 votes needed to pass, and just shy of the 34 needed to override a mayoral veto.
“COPA is yet another attack on private real-estate ownership in this city,” said Council Minority Leader Joann Ariola (R-Queens).
“We’re sliding headfirst into a communist dystopia where the government and their apparatchik developers own all the property, and the rest of us get forced into perpetual rentorship, and this legislation is helping to get us there even quicker.”
Nurse told The Post she has “high hopes” the bill will get to the floor for a vote before the legislative session expires at year’s end “given the growing support” for it “with the rising cost of rent and the dream of homeownership further out of reach.”
“COPA is another tool to grow affordable housing and keep families here,” she said.
The bill would install new bureaucratic hurdles for already beseiged property owners. It is modeled after similar programs already in place in other left-wing cities like Washington, D.C., and San Francisco.
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