The radiator in Zohra’s apartment doesn’t just hiss; it wheezes, a metallic cough that marks the rhythm of another winter night in Astoria. She sits at her kitchen table, the wood scarred by years of coffee mugs and late-night utility bills, watching the steam rise from a cup of tea. For Zohra, and thousands like her, politics isn’t a series of white papers or press conferences held on the sun-drenched steps of City Hall. Politics is the price of a subway swipe. It is the terrifying silence of an empty fridge. It is the weight of a promise made by a man who said he would change the very air she breathes.
That man is Zohran Mamdani. When he ran for office, he didn't just ask for a vote; he asked for a mandate to upend the status quo. He spoke of a city where the "rent is too damn high" wasn't just a meme, but a crisis to be dismantled. He laid out a roadmap—seven massive pillars of change—that promised to turn New York from a playground for the billionaire class into a sanctuary for the working soul.
But promises are ghosts. They haunt the halls of the legislature until they are either given flesh through law or exorcised by compromise. To understand where these seven promises stand, we have to look past the campaign posters and into the lives of the people who bet their futures on them.
The Great Thaw of the Utility Monopoly
Consider the monthly ritual of opening a Con Edison bill. For most, it is a moment of mild annoyance. For a family living on the edge, it is a heart-attack in an envelope. Mamdani’s primary battle cry was the "Build Public Renewables Act." He didn't want to just tweak the system; he wanted to break the grip of private utility companies that prioritize shareholder dividends over affordable heating.
The logic was simple: the state should build and own its own clean energy projects. Public power. No middleman. No profit margin extracted from a cold apartment.
The reality, however, moved with the agonizing slowness of a glacier. While the bill eventually passed—a monumental feat that saw New York become a leader in public power—the actual implementation remains a marathon. For the person sitting in that cold Astoria apartment, the victory feels academic. The law is there, the authority is granted, but the wind turbines haven't sprouted overnight. The promise is "kept" in a legal sense, yet the human experience of high energy costs remains a stubborn, daily ache. We are in the middle of the transition, a period of shivering hope where the law has changed, but the bill hasn't yet dropped.
The Fight for the Four-Minute Life
Time is the only currency the poor cannot save. If you are waiting forty minutes for a bus in the rain, you are losing more than just comfort; you are losing time with your children, time at a second job, time to simply exist without stress.
Mamdani’s "Fix the MTA" platform was built on the radical notion that public transit should be free and frequent. He envisioned a city where the turnstile wasn't a barrier to entry for the destitute. He pushed for "six-minute service" across the subway system.
But the MTA is a beast of ancient debt and crumbling signals.
The progress here has been a series of skirmishes rather than a total conquest. We saw the pilot program for free bus routes—five lines across the five boroughs where the fare boxes were covered in green sleeves. For a few months, riders on the B60 or the Q4 link felt the weight of the city lift. They boarded without fumbling for a MetroCard or a phone. They moved through their city as citizens, not customers.
When the pilot ended, the weight returned. The push for six-minute service has seen incremental increases in frequency on certain lines, but the systemic overhaul required to make "free and frequent" a permanent reality is locked in a cage match with budget deficits and shifting political priorities. The promise is alive, but it is breathing through a straw.
The Ghost of the Eviction Notice
Nothing defines the New York experience like the fear of the "Good Cause Eviction" notice. It is the sudden, sharp realization that your home is not actually yours; it belongs to a spreadsheet managed by an LLC.
Mamdani campaigned on the promise that no tenant should be evicted without a "good cause"—like non-payment of rent or damaging the property. This was meant to end the practice of "no-fault" evictions, where landlords can clear out a building simply to hike the rent for the next person.
The legislative battle for Good Cause was a bloodbath. When a version of it finally passed as part of a larger housing package, it arrived with caveats, exceptions, and "carve-outs" that left many advocates feeling like they had fought for a shield only to receive a buckler. Large swaths of the market were exempted. Small landlords were protected in ways that, while perhaps fair on paper, left tenants in those buildings just as vulnerable as before.
The promise was fulfilled in name, but the safety it provides is uneven. It is a safety net with holes large enough for entire families to fall through. If you live in a certain type of building, you are protected. If you live in another, you are still one landlord’s whim away from the sidewalk.
The Decarceration of the Mind
There is a quiet violence in the way we treat the vulnerable. Mamdani’s fourth pillar involved a deep restructuring of how the state handles those caught in the cycles of poverty and the legal system. He promised to move away from the punitive and toward the restorative.
This meant pushing for the closure of Rikers Island and investing in communities instead of cages. It meant advocating for the "Treatment Not Jail" Act.
Progress here is often invisible. It isn't measured in new buildings, but in the absence of them. It is measured in the young man who is diverted to a mental health clinic instead of a cell. While the political climate has shifted toward a "tough on crime" rhetoric in recent years, making these promises harder to keep, the groundwork for a different kind of justice has been laid. However, for those still waiting for a bed in a treatment center that doesn't exist, or for those living in neighborhoods where the only visible investment is a police cruiser on the corner, the promise feels like a distant signal.
The Taxing of the Heavens
To pay for a new world, you have to find the money in the old one. Mamdani’s "Tax the Rich" slogans weren't just rhetoric; they were a specific fiscal strategy. The promise was to increase taxes on the highest earners—the people whose wealth grew during the pandemic while the city’s heart stopped beating.
This is where the narrative hits the wall of the executive branch. While Mamdani and his allies in the legislature have successfully pushed for some tax increases on the wealthy, they are constantly at odds with a Governor and a donor class that warns of "wealth flight."
The money has started to move, but not in the torrents required to fund a totally free transit system or a universal housing program. It is a drip-feed of revenue. We see the results in small wins—a few million more for CUNY, a slight increase in childcare subsidies. But the massive redistribution of wealth promised on the campaign trail remains a dream deferred by the realities of a state government that is still deeply tethered to traditional economic theories.
The Dignity of the Delivery Worker
If you walk the streets of New York, you see them: the ghosts on e-bikes, weaving through traffic in the freezing rain to deliver a lukewarm burrito. These delivery workers, or deliveristas, are the lifeblood of the city's modern economy, yet they were treated as independent contractors with no rights, no bathrooms, and no safety.
Mamdani promised to be their voice in the halls of power.
This is perhaps where the most tangible, human-centric victory lies. Through relentless advocacy and the threat of legislative action, the city saw the implementation of a minimum wage for app-based delivery workers. For the first time, a man on a bike has a floor beneath him. He knows that his time has a set value.
Is it enough? No. The apps are fighting back, changing their interfaces to discourage tipping or make it harder to book shifts. The struggle has moved from the legislature to the algorithm. But for the worker who now sees a slightly larger check at the end of a grueling week, the promise isn't a ghost anymore. It’s a bag of groceries.
The Sanctuary of the Healthcare Clinic
The final promise was the most ambitious: New York Health. A single-payer system that would eliminate the terror of the medical bill.
Imagine a New York where a cancer diagnosis doesn't mean bankruptcy. Where a trip to the ER doesn't result in a decade of debt.
This promise remains the furthest from the shore. The New York Health Act has been introduced, debated, and championed, but it has not passed. The opposition is a multi-billion dollar wall of insurance lobbyists and hospital conglomerates. Mamdani has kept his promise to fight for it, but the promise of achieving it is still locked away.
For the person with a toothache who can't afford a dentist, or the parent rationing insulin, this is the failure that hurts the most. It is the reminder that even the most passionate storyteller in the world can’t always rewrite the ending of a tragedy if the people holding the pen are the ones profiting from the plot.
Zohra finishes her tea. The radiator gives one last, shuddering gasp before going silent.
She doesn't know the names of all the bills. She doesn't track the committee votes or the legislative sessions in Albany. She only knows that her rent went up, her lights are still on, and the bus is still late.
The story of Zohran Mamdani’s promises isn't a checklist of wins and losses. It is a living, breathing struggle between the way things are and the way they could be. It is a reminder that in the city of New York, change is never given; it is extracted, piece by piece, from a system designed to resist it. The ledger is still open. The ink is still wet. And for the millions of people living in the gaps between the promises, the long walk to a better life continues, one cold Astoria night at a time.
