Billionaire investor Bill Ackman warned that New York City’s rent freeze, tax policies and limits on development could worsen the city’s affordability crisis by discouraging construction and investment.
In a wide-ranging interview with Fortune published Wednesday, the Pershing Square Capital Management founder argued that government policy is driving up housing and energy costs in New York.
“The answer isn’t socialism – socialism is a disaster,” Ackman said. “Watch what happens to New York City if [Mayor Zohran] Mamdani succeeds in implementing these plans.”
Ackman said New York’s housing shortage stems in part from rules that make it difficult and costly for developers to build.
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“It’s so high because left-wing mayors have made it very difficult for developers to build here, and Mamdani, by freezing rents, is just going to make the problem worse,” he said.
New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board voted in June to freeze rents on one- and two-year leases for rent-stabilized apartments.
Ackman argued that rent controls can shift more costs onto tenants in market-rate units. He also claimed roughly 60,000 apartments have been pulled from the market because landlords cannot recover renovation costs under current regulations.
“If you make it hard to build where people want to live, and you don’t let landlords recover renovation costs, they’ll pull units off the market,” Ackman said.
He pointed to Austin, Texas, as an example of a city where increased construction helped bring rents down.
Ackman also blamed New York’s energy policies for adding to residents’ cost of living.
“Why are energy costs so high in New York State? Because we’ve shut down nuclear power, it takes 15 years to get a pipeline approved, and we’ve banned fracking – so we’re importing natural gas from Pennsylvania,” he said. “That’s just bad policy, and we can fix a lot of it with better policy.”
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Ackman then turned to taxes, arguing that New York should encourage wealthy residents and businesses to invest in the city rather than risk driving them elsewhere.
“You want people like Ken Griffin locating Citadel here – spending $250 million on an apartment, because that purchase makes a building economically viable, which creates construction jobs and brings in wealthy residents who pay taxes,” Ackman said.
He added, “You don’t want to discourage people like Elon Musk from locating their businesses here.”
Ackman has previously been critical of New York City’s new pied-à-terre surcharge, which applies to certain high-value properties that are not used as an owner’s primary residence.
He also criticized California’s Proposition 40, which could impose a one-time tax equal to 5% of the net worth of billionaires who were California residents on Jan. 1, 2026.
“Look at what’s happening in California right now with the wealth tax – they say it’s ‘one time,’ but it’s never one time,” he said.
Ackman also said many Americans have not benefited directly from the wealth generated by the stock market.
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“One of our biggest challenges as a country is that almost half the country isn’t participating in the growth in value created by capitalism – the stock market,” he said.
He argued that workers without retirement accounts or stock investments may be less likely to believe that the economic system is working for them.
“Part of that is people feeling left behind – wages can’t compound as quickly as stocks, so everyone needs to participate in the market to believe in capitalism,” he said.
Mamdani could not immediately be reached by FOX Business for comment.
FOX Business’ Michael Dorgan and Alex Nitzberg contributed to this report.
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