December 15, 2025 • 11 mins
Steve challenges the myth that NYC isn’t creating affordable apartments. Mark and Steve also discuss the vibrant nightlife in the city, with bars, restaurants, and nightclubs packed with patrons.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
In Mark on demand by setting a preset for his
podcast on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Now back to Mark Simon on wor Well.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Steve Cuzo is the great columnist for The New York
Post nobody better on real estate, on restaurants, on New York,
on What's going on? And all his columns are up
on the New York Post website. Steve Cuzo, how you doing?
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hey, good morning Mark. I always hope I can live
up to your great doing.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
And you always do.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Now, when it comes to apartments, rentals, sales, offices moving,
how is New York doing? It's not true that everybody's
leaving New York, is it?
Speaker 2 (00:44):
No? Sure isn't. The office market has strongest it's been
in about ten years. And you think about what that means.
They're recovered from the pandemic. People are back offices. It's
hardly any space available, that's how strong the market is.
And housing a very interesting story, you know, right. I
(01:07):
wrote a piece yesterday in the Post. It's up on
our website about the whole myth the fallacies around so
called affordable apartments. So you know you've got the incoming
mayor all on Magoni and many others complaining about we've
got to build affordable housing, you know, get people off
(01:28):
the streets into affordable housing. There's a number of issues here.
Number one, most of the people, many of them at least,
do not they'd rather be on the street because they
are not They're not normal people. They're psychos, they are
drug addicts, they are dangerous homeless people. They're not people
by and large, living on the street simply because they
can't afford to make ends meet despite working three jobs. Okay,
(01:52):
so let's get that straight. Number two, there's a myth
that the city doesn't have or doesn't create affordable apartment
You can look it up. This is not a matter
of opinion, but of objective truth. The City of New York,
through various meanings, rezonings, et cetera, has generated the creation
(02:14):
of over three hundred thousand new rental apartments in the
last weughly ten years. That's an extraordinary number. And of
those a significant percentage, a minority percentage, but still a
meaningful percentage. Twenty percent typically are earmarked for people with
(02:37):
incomes below average. They are intended for people who make
a certain percentage of the median area income. That is,
to say, by and large, people who are working class,
not middle not up, not affluent. They have families, some
(02:59):
of them were two to three jobs. And these are
apartments that are set aside for people with those lower
incomes and not set aside for people with no incomes,
which is of course what Mamdani and his fellow travelers
in what I call socialists the sophistry want. They're intended
(03:20):
for people who earn a living. They're tax paying citizens
of the city, and they deserve a place to live
that they can afford. And the city has delivered. Okay,
let's say three hundred thirty thousand new units altogether. Rentals
were talking about, not condos, twenty percent of that, so
(03:40):
sixty thousand, roughly, very roughly are affordable in a meaningful sense.
So you read all this propaganda and Bologne. It's propagated
by the activist organizations, the New York Times and other
left leaning media that the city has failed its homeless
(04:02):
population by not building or not creating affordable home to them.
It's malarkey, just not true.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Well, sometimes you don't have affordable housing because the place
is booming. You know, if you went to a garden
city long Island. It's very expensive. There's no affordable housing.
But the next town over, Hempstead, not so good, a
lot of affordable housing. But so is every place have
to have affordable housing, Just go to the next town.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
No, The truth is, I don't Mark, I don't really
know the Garden City situation. But one of the point
is that I mean, you can't have uniform You can't
have affordable housing by any definition, distributed uniformly. Of course,
the five boroughs hundreds of different neighborhoods. Obviously some areas,
(04:48):
some neighborhoods wind themselves more to higher income residents than others.
But what's remarkable is that you look at the city now.
The city has generated entire new skylines of mostly of
rental apartment buildings in the last fifteen years in places
(05:09):
like Gowanas in Brooklyn on the Canal, in the parts
of downtown Manhattan in the South Bronx, Long Island City,
and Hunter's Point in Queens. These are success stories. These
stories help explain why we're not seeing a massive exodus
(05:31):
of people from the city's Obviously, there will always be
some people who want to go. Let them go, and
they will quickly find the new York Times actually had
a terrific story about a week ago about how people
who think they're going to leave the city suddenly discovered
that it's not as easy as they thought. They thought
they could get the tax benefits of living in Texas
(05:51):
or Florida just by you know, pilling out a change
for transform or something, and it turns out this is
far from the case. So nine out of ten people
who say they're leading the city for good don't.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Hey, So these big, big, big real estate guys, they
know their stuff. These guys are brilliant. Now I noticed
they're building a ninety story skyscraper Madison in fifty eighth
Park Avenue. Fifty second they get one hundred story skyscraper going.
They got all these skyscrapers going to this one on
fifty seventh coming. They wouldn't be doing this if they
didn't believe in the future of New York.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Would they. They? Of course, they believe. They're not infallible.
They often make a lot of them make big mistakes
and go, you know, if not broke a minimum, they
lose their umpires. They'll look back to the case of
William Zeckendorf, one of the famous developers of all time.
He ended up living in a I think I'm like
(06:44):
a furnished room or something in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
A lot of these characters that too much, you know,
they're intoxicated by easy money. The banks are too willing
to lend. Sometimes interest rates are very low. Interest rates
obviously fluctuate, but when they're very low, everybody sees they
don't see any possible downside. And yet there are buildings,
(07:08):
rental apartment buildings and condo buildings that did not do
well and had to be taken over by someone else.
By and large, I agree with you that generally speaking,
real estate developers have a greater you know, they're more
attached to the reality the pulse of the city's economy
than journalists are, and they wouldn't be making taking the
(07:31):
kinds of gambles that they take if they weren't confident.
So the buildings you mentioned Madison Avenue, there are two
of them. One is being developed by related companies at
fifty eighth Street and Extel I think, two blocks north.
They're both putting up giant you know, the buildings, not
even certain exactly what the mix will be of apartments
(07:52):
or offices, perhaps a hotel. But yeah, of course they
have confidence and they those buildings are going to do fun.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Also, the big new restaurant's opening all over the place, right,
You've covered a lot of big restaurants that opened recently.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Yeah, Well, the one I wrote about last week is
called Palladinos and it's in Grand Central Terminal. It's on
the you know, the plant, the mezzanie, the balcony's overlooking
the main concourse. I never heard of this guy, Joe Palladino.
He's from New York, but he made a career in
Texas opening steakhouses. Now he's come to New York and
(08:30):
it's magnificent. It's absolutely beautiful. It's a great place to
sit even if you didn't eat or drink anything. Not that,
not that they're promoting asking people to come and not
spend any money, because the setting is so magnificent over
the you know, the main floor of the terminal, and
the food's great. And I had a story in my
(08:51):
real estate column today that there's another steakhouse coming and
it's called something like Jay. I'm sorry, I just can't
remember the gent Jack D's.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Jack D's.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Yeah, and it's going to be on in the building
known as seventy five Rockefeller Plaza. Now it's really the
restaurant will actually be on the West fifty second Street side. Ye,
the space is currently vacant. That's another big one. So
over two hundred seats and the two guys doing it
are professionals. One of them is the son of Jack Dorian,
(09:24):
who is creative Dorian's red hand on the on the
east side. And uh, it's the New York City has
an unlimited appetite, it seems for steakhouses. I often think
there are too damn many of them. But there you go.
That's what that's what the public wants. They don't want,
(09:45):
you know, eight seat counters where you just need you know,
vegan weird stuff.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
All right. So bottom line, New York is booming, right,
it's doing very well.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Yeah, I mean there is nothing is permanent. Uh and
uh in terms of the real estate aspect of it.
People forget that it's a cyclical industry. It goes up,
it goes down. Everybody nobody knows what's really coming. Everybody
is old saying fighting the last war. Yeah, and uh,
so god knows where we're had it. But a couple
(10:19):
of weeks ago. You know, I sat down with the
uh Mark Holliday, who's the CEO of sl Green, the
city's largest commercial landlord, and he's very optimistic. I said
to him, Mark, this, you know, vacancy writes her down
and prints are up and blah blah blah. You know,
am I missing something? Is there is there a weak
link here in this picture? And he said, well, basically
(10:42):
not all right?
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Good good news.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Now for now.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Excellent news everybody. If you want to read Steve Cuzo's columns,
they're all up on the New York Post website. You
can find all his columns there and make sure you
read them regularly in the New York Post. Steve Cuzo,
thanks for being with us.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Thanks Mark, always fun takes.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Hey, don't forget Buck and Clay. We'll be here at
noon today with a great show for you. And then
you got the most listened to radio show in America
Sean Hannity at three, Jesse Kelly at six. And you
love our new Jimmy Faylor Show, Jimmy Taylor, great talk show.
It's very funny. It's every night at nine
In Mark on demand by setting a preset for his
podcast on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Now back to Mark Simon on wor Well.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Steve Cuzo is the great columnist for The New York
Post nobody better on real estate, on restaurants, on New York,
on What's going on? And all his columns are up
on the New York Post website. Steve Cuzo, how you doing?
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hey, good morning Mark. I always hope I can live
up to your great doing.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
And you always do.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Now, when it comes to apartments, rentals, sales, offices moving,
how is New York doing? It's not true that everybody's
leaving New York, is it?
Speaker 2 (00:44):
No? Sure isn't. The office market has strongest it's been
in about ten years. And you think about what that means.
They're recovered from the pandemic. People are back offices. It's
hardly any space available, that's how strong the market is.
And housing a very interesting story, you know, right. I
(01:07):
wrote a piece yesterday in the Post. It's up on
our website about the whole myth the fallacies around so
called affordable apartments. So you know you've got the incoming
mayor all on Magoni and many others complaining about we've
got to build affordable housing, you know, get people off
(01:28):
the streets into affordable housing. There's a number of issues here.
Number one, most of the people, many of them at least,
do not they'd rather be on the street because they
are not They're not normal people. They're psychos, they are
drug addicts, they are dangerous homeless people. They're not people
by and large, living on the street simply because they
can't afford to make ends meet despite working three jobs. Okay,
(01:52):
so let's get that straight. Number two, there's a myth
that the city doesn't have or doesn't create affordable apartment
You can look it up. This is not a matter
of opinion, but of objective truth. The City of New York,
through various meanings, rezonings, et cetera, has generated the creation
(02:14):
of over three hundred thousand new rental apartments in the
last weughly ten years. That's an extraordinary number. And of
those a significant percentage, a minority percentage, but still a
meaningful percentage. Twenty percent typically are earmarked for people with
(02:37):
incomes below average. They are intended for people who make
a certain percentage of the median area income. That is,
to say, by and large, people who are working class,
not middle not up, not affluent. They have families, some
(02:59):
of them were two to three jobs. And these are
apartments that are set aside for people with those lower
incomes and not set aside for people with no incomes,
which is of course what Mamdani and his fellow travelers
in what I call socialists the sophistry want. They're intended
(03:20):
for people who earn a living. They're tax paying citizens
of the city, and they deserve a place to live
that they can afford. And the city has delivered. Okay,
let's say three hundred thirty thousand new units altogether. Rentals
were talking about, not condos, twenty percent of that, so
(03:40):
sixty thousand, roughly, very roughly are affordable in a meaningful sense.
So you read all this propaganda and Bologne. It's propagated
by the activist organizations, the New York Times and other
left leaning media that the city has failed its homeless
(04:02):
population by not building or not creating affordable home to them.
It's malarkey, just not true.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Well, sometimes you don't have affordable housing because the place
is booming. You know, if you went to a garden
city long Island. It's very expensive. There's no affordable housing.
But the next town over, Hempstead, not so good, a
lot of affordable housing. But so is every place have
to have affordable housing, Just go to the next town.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
No, The truth is, I don't Mark, I don't really
know the Garden City situation. But one of the point
is that I mean, you can't have uniform You can't
have affordable housing by any definition, distributed uniformly. Of course,
the five boroughs hundreds of different neighborhoods. Obviously some areas,
(04:48):
some neighborhoods wind themselves more to higher income residents than others.
But what's remarkable is that you look at the city now.
The city has generated entire new skylines of mostly of
rental apartment buildings in the last fifteen years in places
(05:09):
like Gowanas in Brooklyn on the Canal, in the parts
of downtown Manhattan in the South Bronx, Long Island City,
and Hunter's Point in Queens. These are success stories. These
stories help explain why we're not seeing a massive exodus
(05:31):
of people from the city's Obviously, there will always be
some people who want to go. Let them go, and
they will quickly find the new York Times actually had
a terrific story about a week ago about how people
who think they're going to leave the city suddenly discovered
that it's not as easy as they thought. They thought
they could get the tax benefits of living in Texas
(05:51):
or Florida just by you know, pilling out a change
for transform or something, and it turns out this is
far from the case. So nine out of ten people
who say they're leading the city for good don't.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Hey, So these big, big, big real estate guys, they
know their stuff. These guys are brilliant. Now I noticed
they're building a ninety story skyscraper Madison in fifty eighth
Park Avenue. Fifty second they get one hundred story skyscraper going.
They got all these skyscrapers going to this one on
fifty seventh coming. They wouldn't be doing this if they
didn't believe in the future of New York.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Would they. They? Of course, they believe. They're not infallible.
They often make a lot of them make big mistakes
and go, you know, if not broke a minimum, they
lose their umpires. They'll look back to the case of
William Zeckendorf, one of the famous developers of all time.
He ended up living in a I think I'm like
(06:44):
a furnished room or something in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
A lot of these characters that too much, you know,
they're intoxicated by easy money. The banks are too willing
to lend. Sometimes interest rates are very low. Interest rates
obviously fluctuate, but when they're very low, everybody sees they
don't see any possible downside. And yet there are buildings,
(07:08):
rental apartment buildings and condo buildings that did not do
well and had to be taken over by someone else.
By and large, I agree with you that generally speaking,
real estate developers have a greater you know, they're more
attached to the reality the pulse of the city's economy
than journalists are, and they wouldn't be making taking the
(07:31):
kinds of gambles that they take if they weren't confident.
So the buildings you mentioned Madison Avenue, there are two
of them. One is being developed by related companies at
fifty eighth Street and Extel I think, two blocks north.
They're both putting up giant you know, the buildings, not
even certain exactly what the mix will be of apartments
(07:52):
or offices, perhaps a hotel. But yeah, of course they
have confidence and they those buildings are going to do fun.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Also, the big new restaurant's opening all over the place, right,
You've covered a lot of big restaurants that opened recently.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Yeah, Well, the one I wrote about last week is
called Palladinos and it's in Grand Central Terminal. It's on
the you know, the plant, the mezzanie, the balcony's overlooking
the main concourse. I never heard of this guy, Joe Palladino.
He's from New York, but he made a career in
Texas opening steakhouses. Now he's come to New York and
(08:30):
it's magnificent. It's absolutely beautiful. It's a great place to
sit even if you didn't eat or drink anything. Not that,
not that they're promoting asking people to come and not
spend any money, because the setting is so magnificent over
the you know, the main floor of the terminal, and
the food's great. And I had a story in my
(08:51):
real estate column today that there's another steakhouse coming and
it's called something like Jay. I'm sorry, I just can't
remember the gent Jack D's.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Jack D's.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Yeah, and it's going to be on in the building
known as seventy five Rockefeller Plaza. Now it's really the
restaurant will actually be on the West fifty second Street side. Ye,
the space is currently vacant. That's another big one. So
over two hundred seats and the two guys doing it
are professionals. One of them is the son of Jack Dorian,
(09:24):
who is creative Dorian's red hand on the on the
east side. And uh, it's the New York City has
an unlimited appetite, it seems for steakhouses. I often think
there are too damn many of them. But there you go.
That's what that's what the public wants. They don't want,
(09:45):
you know, eight seat counters where you just need you know,
vegan weird stuff.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
All right. So bottom line, New York is booming, right,
it's doing very well.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Yeah, I mean there is nothing is permanent. Uh and
uh in terms of the real estate aspect of it.
People forget that it's a cyclical industry. It goes up,
it goes down. Everybody nobody knows what's really coming. Everybody
is old saying fighting the last war. Yeah, and uh,
so god knows where we're had it. But a couple
(10:19):
of weeks ago. You know, I sat down with the
uh Mark Holliday, who's the CEO of sl Green, the
city's largest commercial landlord, and he's very optimistic. I said
to him, Mark, this, you know, vacancy writes her down
and prints are up and blah blah blah. You know,
am I missing something? Is there is there a weak
link here in this picture? And he said, well, basically
(10:42):
not all right?
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Good good news.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Now for now.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Excellent news everybody. If you want to read Steve Cuzo's columns,
they're all up on the New York Post website. You
can find all his columns there and make sure you
read them regularly in the New York Post. Steve Cuzo,
thanks for being with us.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Thanks Mark, always fun takes.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Hey, don't forget Buck and Clay. We'll be here at
noon today with a great show for you. And then
you got the most listened to radio show in America
Sean Hannity at three, Jesse Kelly at six. And you
love our new Jimmy Faylor Show, Jimmy Taylor, great talk show.
It's very funny. It's every night at nine
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