It’s a brand new day in New York Metropolis, with a brand new yr and new mayor. There’s rather a lot to cowl, from housing to public security. Listed below are a few of looming points, issues and controversies that the reporters in our newsroom can see making headlines over 2026.
One massive theme, after all, is how Mayor Zohran Mamdani will govern, and enact his many marketing campaign guarantees. However the metropolis is far greater than who’s in Metropolis Corridor, and we’ll be maintaining our eye on way more throughout the boroughs.
Pals (or Foes) of the Mayor
In 2026, I’ll be focusing rather a lot on relationships. Not my very own, however the ones Mamdani has with everybody he’ll must enact his affordability agenda.
Let’s begin with the Metropolis Council, which shares Metropolis Corridor with the mayor’s workplace (with the reporters within the center). The brand new speaker, Julie Menin, is aligned with Mamdani on little one care however is extra average, and I anticipate some clashes.
Up the Thruway in Albany, Gov. Kathy Hochul is operating for re-election and shall be conscious of her relationship to the mayor and his further-left followers as she fights off Republican challengers. And Mamdani will want her assist to pay for little one care and his promised fare-free buses, for which he’s in search of tax hikes.
And naturally there’s Mamdani’s relationship to Trump, who might dole out or claw again cash to maintain town protected, residents fed and infrastructure constructed. — Katie Honan
Common Baby Care
Mamdani’s hottest signature marketing campaign problem, enacting little one care for each little one in New York Metropolis over the age of six months, can also be his costliest — and, mockingly, the one with the best probability of success.
Gov. Kathy Hochul and incoming council Speaker Julie Menin, each average Democrats, again Mamdani’s plan, as do the leaders of each branches of the state legislature. In truth, Hochul mentioned the problem is a precedence for 2026 that she needs to enact it statewide. All of the governor and the mayor must do is agree on the right way to fund it.
The plan is estimated to price about $6 billion per yr within the 5 boroughs, and $15 billion statewide. To make it occur, Mamdani proposes elevating taxes on New Yorkers throughout the state incomes greater than $1 million per yr. Although Hochul has mentioned she is adamantly against elevating earnings taxes for anyone, she has expressed openness to different tax hikes.
Many households pay upwards of $20,000 a yr on day care — their largest expense moreover housing. Common little one care would generate $900 million in private earnings by serving to 14,000 girls return to the workforce, in response to a report final yr from town comptroller’s workplace. — Claudia Irizarry Aponte
Mamdani, the Boss
The brand new mayor enters workplace having made bold guarantees for town’s working class and one necessary story is how the democratic socialist will deal with the work of being the boss of town’s 300,000 civil servants. That may inevitably contain robust selections and compromises as town faces a rocky fiscal outlook.
His administration must settle new contracts with town’s two largest unions, District Council 37 and the United Federation of Academics, which expire in 2026. Then there’s the query of how his administration will deal with a monetary disaster in metropolis worker well being care funding, following a devastating audit from town comptroller’s workplace.
In the meantime his promise to enact common little one care, which brings the potential for hundreds of latest union jobs, is backed by Gov. Kathy Hochul although questions stay about how will probably be funded.
Metropolis Corridor’s labor relations shall be key to maintaining taxpayers, and his base of low-income staff, blissful. Mamdani might earn some early goodwill by working with the Metropolis Council to cross wage boosts for paraprofessionals, or by constructing on Mayor Eric Adams’ pilot providing distant work for some civil servants. — Claudia Irizarry Aponte
Constructing on Adams’ Housing Agenda
In simply 4 years, the Adams administration made modifications to the zoning legal guidelines that might produce about 130,000 new housing items amid town’s housing disaster. However these items will solely be constructed if Mandani continues efforts to spur growth, particularly within the neighborhoods which were most proof against new housing, particularly people who usher in below-market reasonably priced items.
Mamdani has been clear that he believes extra housing is required and even voted on his poll for 3 Metropolis Constitution amendments designed to ease the approval course of — although he didn’t announce his help of these measures, which handed simply, till Election Day. And Mamdani’s appointment of Leila Bozorg as deputy mayor for housing who labored within the Adams Administration received plaudits from pro-housing teams.
However those self same teams say that payments handed by the Metropolis Council on the finish of the yr will imply much less housing by mandating greater wages and imposing different expensive necessities. Adams vetoed all them besides one which imposes a $40 minimal wage requirement on reasonably priced initiatives financed by town, leaving it as much as the subsequent Council — influenced by Mamdani — to determine whether or not they turn out to be regulation. — Greg David
An Precise ‘Bus Mayor’?
Mamdani rode to workplace, partially, on his marketing campaign pledge to hurry town’s notoriously sluggish buses — and to make them free.
His predecessor at Metropolis Corridor famously flopped on his personal promise to be the “Bus Mayor,” repeatedly failing to satisfy a mandate to construct 150 new miles of bus lanes designed to hurry service alongside among the slowest routes anyplace in America. Mamdani needs to shift into ahead gear whereas eliminating the newly elevated $3 fare for buses, a proposal that may require slicing a cope with Gov. Kathy Hochul.
However the fare-free proposal, which Mamdani started floating three years in the past as a Queens Meeting member, faces resistance from the MTA, which operates the service. Within the final three months of 2025, fares on greater than 44% of all bus journeys went unpaid, in response to the authority’s personal knowledge. Janno Lieber, MTA chairperson and chief government, has forged doubt on the annual price-tag of no less than $700 million to make the buses free to experience. — Jose Martinez
The State of Immigration Enforcement
Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests surged in New York Metropolis in 2025, as President Donald Trump returned to workplace. A concentrate on detaining folks at immigration courthouses and at ICE check-ins has shifted extra not too long ago to seemingly random avenue arrests.
It’s nonetheless unclear how the Trump administration will deal with a extra adversarial mayor, with the 2 having an oddly cordial assembly on the White Home after Mamdani’s historic win in November. In a metropolis of immigrants, the place about one in each 9 of residents lives in a mixed-status family, THE CITY will proceed to trace ICE’s enforcement efforts and the broader affect of the Trump administration’s insurance policies on New Yorkers. — Gwynne Hogan
Rikers Reform
Town’s troubled Division of Correction will quickly be run, partially, by a so-called remediation supervisor overseen by a federal decide. The potential candidates have been underneath evaluate since Could. Town’s jails will even have a yet-to-be-named new commissioner. How will that individual work with the remediation supervisor? Who could have remaining say? That each one stays to be seen.
One other main problem dealing with Mamdani shall be how he tackles a regulation designed to strictly restrict using solitary confinement. Former Mayor Eric Adams has repeatedly signed emergency government orders declaring that the brand new guidelines should be placed on maintain.
Mamdani will even inherit a jail inhabitants that has steadily gone up over the previous 5 years, to six,896 as of Dec. 22 from a pandemic-era low of roughly 3,800. By regulation, Rikers Island should shut subsequent yr, and the jails underneath development to interchange it is going to collectively maintain fewer than 5,000 as soon as accomplished. — Reuven Blau
Division of Neighborhood Security
Mamdani’s most vital proposal to reform policing is the creation of a Division of Neighborhood Security, which he has described as a civilian- and community-led response to points comparable to psychological well being and homelessness — work that has prior to now been led by the NYPD. Key among the many applications the $1 billion DCS would fund is a social employee and peer response to nonviolent psychological well being crises, very like the B-HEARD program examined in some precincts underneath the prior two mayors. How Mamdani constructions the brand new division, the way it performs early on, and the way the administration frames the discount — or elimination — of NYPD officers from the equation will decide whether or not there’s buy-in from each the division and the general public. — Greg B. Smith
Mandates for Greener Buildings
Buildings are town’s largest supply of planet-warning greenhouse gasoline emissions. There’s numerous strain on Mamdani to verify property homeowners adjust to Native Regulation 97, which limits how a lot carbon giant buildings can spew (and imposes fines for going over). Taking actions to adjust to the regulation might be costly and complex for homeowners, and the Adams administration has given the homeowners some leeway.
The feasibility of complying additionally will get more durable and additional out of attain as a result of the state’s progress on decarbonizing the electrical grid has been way more slowly than projected. Mamdani has pledged to supply homeowners extra help whereas additionally implementing the regulation, nevertheless it’s not clear what precisely that appears like. Whether or not Metropolis Corridor grants homeowners extra time, shifts requirements or assumes a brand new posture is one thing we’ll be . — Samantha Maldonado
Future Resiliency
Town can anticipate extra flooding within the coming years from heavy rainstorms, excessive tides and probably coastal surges. Mamdani might want to advance the massive infrastructure initiatives — like Bluebelts — and flood-protection initiatives which have already began, together with town’s first proactive buyout program for the neighborhood on the border of Brooklyn and Queens generally known as The Gap. Mamdani will get to chop the ribbon on a serious flood safety undertaking, East Facet Coastal Resiliency, however he’ll proceed to face the problem of funding different initiatives, together with these which were within the planning phases for years just like the FiDi-Seaport resilience undertaking.
And talking of water brings us to water payments. A part of attaining Mamdani’s affordability agenda might come within the type of water payments, which pay for the consuming water and sewer techniques. The Adams administration imposed a “rental cost” as a part of leasing the sewer and water system to the Water Board. The payment will get handed alongside to property homeowners, and is a part of what drives water fee hikes. Whether or not Mamdani will proceed to impose the rental cost as a income driver or finish it is going to have an effect on future water charges. Ending rental funds could permit for larger investments within the system and managing stormwater to mitigate flooding. — Samantha Maldonado
Avenue Merchandising’s Future
In certainly one of his earliest marketing campaign movies, Mamdani promised to seek out methods to sluggish “Halal-flation” — a time period he used to explain the rising costs of avenue meals he attributed to an outdated merchandising system. He touted a package deal of payments as options, together with one that may considerably enhance the variety of merchandising licenses. However now that Eric Adams has vetoed most of these payments after they handed within the Metropolis Council in December, how will Mamdani and the brand new Metropolis Council truly see them via?
The police and sanitation departments are gearing up for changes in merchandising enforcement within the meantime, as licensed distributors will not obtain felony tickets for minor violations underneath a brand new regulation that goes into impact in March. Will these departments strategy avenue vendor enforcement in another way underneath Mamdani, particularly at a time when the results have turn out to be extra dire for a principally immigrant workforce fearing collateral penalties underneath Trump’s mass deportation agenda? We’ll discover out. — Haidee Chu
Casinos Take Form
The state simply permitted three full-fledged playing facility licenses for builders to create giant gaming complexes within the metropolis, two in Queens and one in The Bronx. It was the top of an extended and winding street wherein many corporations vied to nab one of many coveted and profitable licenses.
Now, we’ll see precisely how the three developments take form, and the way forceful the state shall be in implementing all the guarantees every builder has made for neighborhood advantages to supply new neighborhood infrastructure and facilities. It should take years for all three to open their doorways, however Resorts World in Queens says the primary section of its enlargement shall be full in 2026. — Rachel Holliday Smith
