Once socialism is embedded in our laws and institutions, the march to communism begins.
Imagine you own an apartment building and need to sell it. The mortgage comes due, insurance premiums keep climbing, repairs cannot wait, and you have found a willing buyer. You have negotiated a price and are ready to close. Then New York City tells you to wait.
Your financial obligations do not wait. Your buyer may not wait. But under New York City’s Community Opportunity to Purchase Act, known as COPA, the government can insert a lengthy process between you and the sale of your own property. What should be a private transaction becomes subject to a timetable designed to give selected organizations an opportunity to purchase the building first.
This is the kind of incremental change worth examining. Socialism does not always announce its arrival with bullets and revolution. Sometimes it arrives as a statute that sounds reasonable, addresses a genuine concern, and changes the rules one transaction at a time.
On October 22, the New York City Council passed COPA by a vote of 38 to 9, with two members abstaining. Mayor Zohran Mamdani has championed the measure. The revised bill is narrower than earlier proposals and is expected to cover roughly 2,100 multifamily buildings meeting specified conditions involving serious housing violations, city enforcement programs, or affordability restrictions. Qualifying owner-occupied buildings with five or fewer units are exempt. The law is scheduled to take effect one year after enactment.
Under COPA, owners of covered properties are mandated by to inform the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development when they intend to sell. Qualified nonprofit organizations have 20 days to express interest and another 70 days to submit an initial offer. Additional procedures can give a qualified organization the right to match an outside buyer’s offer. A legal analysis by Cullen and Dykman estimates that the process can delay a transaction by approximately 130 days when the applicable stages are triggered. The final timetable depends on the transaction and the rights exercised. Owners may apply for an exemption based on undue financial hardship, but that exception does not eliminate the underlying process.
For an owner facing mounting expenses, those delays are not abstractions. Mortgage payments, taxes, insurance, utilities, and repairs continue regardless of what the city requires. A willing buyer may move on. A deal that could have helped an owner meet financial obligations may disappear while the government process runs its course. Ann Korchak, president of Small Property Owners of New York, has warned that COPA could contribute to the extinction of small property owners. Her concern deserves attention. A policy intended to preserve affordable housing can impose new costs and risks on the people responsible for maintaining the buildings in the first place.
The final bill is more limited than earlier versions, but its scope does not erase its significance. The government has established a special process that gives selected organizations a privileged opportunity to acquire privately owned property. That changes the relationship between ownership and control, even when the owner retains the deed.
COPA’s history also illustrates how incremental change works. An earlier version passed the City Council in December 2025 but was vetoed by Mayor Eric Adams. The Council failed to override the veto. Advocates revised the proposal, reduced the number of potentially covered buildings from roughly 10,000 to approximately 2,100, and returned with a narrower bill that passed in October 2026. The campaign was led by the NYC Community Land Initiative, alongside a coalition of more than 200 community, tenant, and affordable housing groups. The coalition included the Democratic Socialists of America’s Queens Housing Working Group.
The political connection matters. Mamdani championed COPA, and his administration includes Democratic Socialists of America members in influential positions, including Chief of Staff Elle Bisgaard-Church and Cea Weaver, whom he appointed to lead the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants. COPA will be administered by the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development under this administration. The connection is clear. A mayor who openly identifies with democratic socialism is advancing a housing policy that gives government-certified organizations a privileged opportunity to acquire private property, consistent with the broader direction of the socialist housing agenda.
The issue is not whether every nonprofit involved in COPA shares the same ideology. The issue is whether the policy advances a broader movement whose stated goals deserve to be taken seriously. The DSA’s own Housing Justice Commission advocates moving housing away from treatment as a market commodity and toward social housing, community control, and the redistribution of land. Its stated program discusses expropriation from capitalists and presents incremental reforms as steps toward a broader transformation.
COPA does not abolish private property. It establishes a statutory preference for selected organizations to acquire certain privately owned buildings. That is a meaningful connection between a specific law and an ideological project that seeks to transform how property is owned and controlled.
The relevant comparison is not to a revolutionary seizure of property, but to the gradual expansion of administrative control over private transactions. COPA does not confiscate buildings, and New York City is not a revolutionary state. But the law does establish a new principle: the government may give selected organizations priority in deciding who can purchase certain private property and when a sale may proceed. Each restriction can be defended as a limited response to a particular problem. Once accepted, it becomes the foundation on which the next restriction can be built.
That is how socialist and communists ideas can become embedded in ordinary administration. A law creates a new preference. Agencies write the procedures. Organizations learn to operate within the new system. Future officials inherit the authority and can argue that expanding it is simply the logical next step.
COPA’s immediate scope is limited, and future expansion is not inevitable. But the precedent is real. Government can influence who gets to buy, when a sale can proceed, and which organizations receive privileged access to private property. The definitions of eligibility, the administration of deadlines, and the use of hardship exemptions will help determine how much power the law places in the hands of city officials and favored organizations.
The question is not whether every nonprofit will abuse the system. It is whether government should create special rights for selected organizations in transactions involving property that belongs to someone else. A worthy objective does not settle that question, and a limited law today does not guarantee a limited law tomorrow.
And once socialism is embedded in our laws and institutions, the march to communism begins, and reversing it may require the very bullets and revolution its advocates never needed to achieve it.
Luis Gonzalez, American Thinker
