NYC Mayor Mamdani accused of ‘moving the goalposts’ on poverty by analyst
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New York City’s socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani is “moving the bullseye” against poverty in the nation’s largest city with his newly unveiled racial equity plan to justify a major expansion of government intervention, a leading city policy analyst warns.
Mamdani released the “Citywide Racial Equity Spotlight” earlier this month. received feedback quickly Santiago Vidal Calvo of President Donald Trump’s Justice Department and the Manhattan Institute told Fox News Digital that when the report uses the “real cost of living” to claim that 62% of New Yorkers can’t get by in the city, it’s a tactic to declare a crisis that requires more government.
“What he’s really doing is moving the goal posts,” Vidal Calvo said. “We’re actually moving the goalposts around what the federal government qualifies as someone below the poverty line — which is actually $34,000, $35,000 a year, these might be like the 2024 numbers, but it’s pretty close to that — so that no one with kids under $160,000 can live in New York.”
“In reality, those numbers don’t sound crazy, if you live in New York City, they don’t sound that high. But in reality, for any person anywhere in America, $160,000 is, you know, living expenses. That’s actually enough money to raise a family, have kids, and live a good life. So when we move the goalposts in that direction, without really understanding what the underlying problems are with the disease, what are the real risks? If there are problems that make New York City expensive, then it’s just a problem.” “We attribute it and throw an arrow at the board and say, ‘This is it.'”
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New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani outlines plans for city-run grocery stores aimed at lowering food prices during a press conference at La Marqueta in East Harlem on April 14, 2026. (New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks at a press conference announcing plans for a city-run grocery store in East Harlem.)
Vidal Calvo says the “reality” of the situation is that “you don’t make a place more affordable by making people earn more,” but rather the city needs to “ask the right questions” about the policies that drive wage growth and new housing development.
“So the point here is that we are focusing on an issue that the socialists at City Hall want to believe is that if you give people more money, they can actually have access to more things,” Vidal Calvo said. “But you don’t ask what it means to give people more money. And just saying that the ‘Real Cost of Living’ in New York City is $160,000 a year for people with children doesn’t mean that those people can, firstly, afford that life, or secondly, make those wages.”
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The high cost of living in New York City is due to several factors, including housing, which Vidal Calvo said City Hall should “encourage the construction of more housing around the city.”
“That’s how you lower housing prices,” he said. “This is not by freezing rent, not by stabilizing markets; normally that would lead to more and higher prices.”
Vidal Calvo explained that instead of a massive administrative effort to expand the government with more departments and staff, the city should pursue zoning reform to build faster, reduce permitting delays, make it easier to build child care facilities, reduce administrative hurdles, and create opportunities for employers to hire more people and recruit talent from across the United States.
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Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks during an event. (Getty Images)
Mamdani’s racial equity plan has faced intense scrutiny from conservatives for its race-related implications and efforts to base government action on addressing racial disparities, including DOJ Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon, who said she would “review” the issue.
Vidal Calvo, who recently published an article New York Post’s column “I think this is another way to put DEI on the table without calling for DEI,” he told Fox News Digital of Mamdani’s plan.
“And we’ve seen now in academia, in a lot of government programs, in a lot of existing social architectures, that DEI doesn’t work, and unfortunately this could be another case where it fails, and not for the good-intentioned reason of trying to make a living for everyone, because I think that’s a good intention that everyone can have,” Vidal Calvo explained. “But it’s actually about the solutions that they’re trying to approach. It’s actually about the methodology of how they’re trying to approach this. You can’t argue that making a living in New York has become insanely more unaffordable just because someone is of a different race. It doesn’t work that way“
Fox News Digital has reached out to Mamdani’s office for comment.
