Why Trump Must Veto the ROAD to Housing Act

In my last column I warned that the Democratic Socialists of America have a coherent, long-term strategy for American housing: aggressive rent controls paired with tenant “protections” and subsidized “social housing” models designed to gradually displace private property owners and decommodify shelter. That Trojan horse has now breached the gates. In New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani just delivered on a signature campaign promise: a rent freeze on roughly one million rent-stabilized apartments. And Congress has handed him, and every other DSA-aligned operator across the country, the federal fuel to make the strategy viable.

This is the so-called 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act. Marketed as a bipartisan supply fix, it is instead a cash cow for sanctuary cities, fraudsters, nonprofits, and the machinery that turns rent freezes into permanent ownership shifts. President Trump should say “¡Afuera!” and veto it.

Argentina Shows the Playbook in Real Time

Argentina offers the clearest recent before-and-after lesson. In 2020 lawmakers imposed strict rent controls: three-year minimum leases, payments in a collapsing peso, and caps on annual increases. The political intent was tenant protection. The economic result was predictable. Landlords withdrew properties from the long-term rental market. Listings plunged. By late 2023 roughly one in seven homes in Buenos Aires sat effectively vacant, judged by near-zero energy usage. Shortages worsened, black-market deals proliferated, and real (inflation-adjusted) rents rose sharply despite the controls.

Then came Javier Milei. Shortly after taking office in December 2023, he repealed the rental law as part of his broader deregulation drive. Supply responded almost immediately. Rental listings in Buenos Aires surged 170–195 percent within months. Real rents fell by around 40 percent. Units that had been mothballed or shifted to short-term dollar rentals returned to the formal long-term market. Tenants gained real choices and better prices. The market began to heal once the artificial barriers were removed.

This is not ideology. It is observable economics. Price ceilings below market levels reduce quantity and quality of supply. Removing the ceilings restores incentives. Argentina proved the point in real time.

New York City Is Living the Pre-Milei Chapter

New York is repeating the same failed experiment on a massive scale. The city’s rent-stabilization system already covers roughly one million apartments—about 40 percent of its rental stock, concentrated in older buildings. Decades of regulation have produced chronic warehousing: landlords keep tens of thousands of stabilized units vacant (recent estimates range from 26,000 to over 50,000) because controlled rents cannot cover rising maintenance, insurance, taxes, and code compliance costs. Vacancy rates citywide are painfully low, yet many regulated units sit empty or under-maintained.

On Friday, Mamdani’s administration secured a 7-1 Rent Guidelines Board vote for a two-year rent freeze on both one- and two-year leases. This intensifies the squeeze. Operating costs keep climbing while revenue is frozen.

And this is the whole point right here.

Landlords will not have the money to do legally required maintenance.

What happens next?

Building code violations, bankruptcy, and seizure by the city.

Then the property gets turned over to a politically-connected nonprofit, where it… https://t.co/FLVcbjZL0P

— Hon. Vickie Paladino (@VickieforNYC) June 27, 2026

Then the property gets turned over to a politically-connected nonprofit, where it can be leveraged as an asset for progressive activism.

Do not think for one minute these people are ‘economically illiterate’.

They know exactly what they’re doing.

The logical progression follows exactly what Councilwoman Vickie Paladino described: deferred maintenance, code violations, financial distress, bankruptcy, and eventual seizure or transfer to politically connected nonprofits. Those nonprofits then leverage the properties as assets for progressive activism and social housing expansion—the explicit DSA goal of decommodified, publicly or collectively controlled shelter.

The Federal Bill Supplies the Fuel

The ROAD to Housing Act provides the national backstop that makes this strategy sustainable. Key provisions include indefinite reauthorization and expanded uses for the HOME Investment Partnerships Program, higher caps and eased rules for Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) conversions, restructured Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery funds, and new or expanded repair grants and pilots—including whole-home repair assistance to owners and nonprofits.

In a city pursuing freezes and social housing priorities, these tools act as direct subsidies. Federal dollars can cover maintenance shortfalls in rent-stabilized buildings, fund conversions that lock units into permanent affordability covenants, and position nonprofits to acquire distressed private properties. The bill’s glaring lack of guardrails (no citizenship verification, no sanctuary jurisdiction exclusions, weak performance metrics) ensures the money flows to the preferred ecosystem. It does not force a market correction. It subsidizes the controlled sector and accelerates the ownership shift.

This is precisely the template I warned about. DSA activists do not need immediate nationalization. They need sustained pressure on private landlords plus federal and local subsidies to transfer assets into nonprofit and public hands. The bill supplies both at scale.

Reagan Warned Us: The Big Dig Precedent

We have seen this federal-urban spending pattern before. Ronald Reagan vetoed the Big Dig, the Boston infrastructure project sold as a targeted, manageable fix. Congress overrode him. Costs exploded, delays mounted, graft proliferated, and federal taxpayers bore the disproportionate burden. The override proved Reagan correct.

The housing bill repeats the error on a national stage. Modest supply-side language (NEPA streamlining, manufactured housing updates, zoning guidelines) serves as window dressing. The real payload is expanded, indefinite demand-side pipelines delivered into political machines with weak national oversight. Concentrated benefits for connected operators and blue-city interests, diffused costs for national taxpayers, and entrenchment of the wrong model.

Trump’s Own Words Demand Consistency

President Trump has already described the broader threat in blunt terms. He has warned against the “Election of Communists” promising free rent, free houses, and free everything—an ideology that leads to national failure, squalor, and loss of freedom. Signing this bill would hand those very forces the federal resources to make their promises temporarily functional while eroding the private housing market that actually delivers supply.

A veto is the consistent stand. It denies the buckets of money that sustain rent-control machines and DSA-style transformation. It aligns with the evidence from Argentina and the hard lessons of the Big Dig. It puts citizens first.

Texas families—including those of us in east Plano watching rapid neighborhood change—already bear secondary costs from federal policies that subsidize dysfunction elsewhere. We do not need more of the same. Americans deserve real relief through deregulation that unleashes building, strict eligibility that protects citizens, and fiscal discipline that learns from history rather than repeating it.

The choice is clear. Trump should find his inner Milei.

¡Afuera!