New York City has gone YIMBY.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced his new housing plan on May 26, with an agenda to build 200,000 new affordable homes, convert existing hotels and office buildings into low-cost apartments, and support the city’s tenants against “bad landlords.” He has endeared himself to the pro-housing, “yes in my backyard” cohort.

The scale of the mayor’s affordable housing plans is ambitious, especially for a city as populous and expensive as New York. But City Hall has some tangible inspiration. As Mamdani repeated in a series of press conferences this week, NYC needs to be more like Austin and Minneapolis. Seattle, Vienna, and Auckland also got honorable mentions.

What these cities have in common is fewer zoning regulations and more housing investment from local governments. One of the biggest drivers of skyrocketing housing costs in New York and cities across the country is simple supply and demand: There isn’t enough housing for everyone who wants it, allowing home sellers and landlords to hike prices for scarce goods. Some cities that built big have seen rent and home price growth slow or even reverse. Mamdani and pro-building advocates hope that the same can happen in the Big Apple.

“Let the lessons other cities have learned guide our future,” the mayor said to a crowd in Astoria, Queens. “Let our size be our strength. Let us implement these policies at scale. Let the largest city in the nation deliver the largest housing transformation this country has ever seen.”

Other cities show that increased housing supply lowers cost

Other big cities — both in the US and internationally — have tried similar strategies to boost housing access. Mamdani has pointed to the success of Minneapolis’ “2040 plan,” which focused on growing housing supply with new, denser builds and increased options for low- and middle-income residents. A paper by researchers at Middlebury College estimated that rents and home prices in the Twin City were 17% to 34% lower than they would have been without the reforms.

Austin successfully lowered median rents by 18.2% between their 2022 peak and 2026 — a difference of $302 per month, a Realtor.com report found. The key reason was an increase in supply coupled with slowing demand: The city invested in building more homes, and migration to Austin dipped compared to COVID-era highs.

Seattle, meanwhile, made zoning reforms to encourage affordable housing and protect tenants. Vienna heavily subsidizes more than half of the city’s housing supply, keeping rents low. And Auckland passed legislation to make it easier to build homes and invest in urban infrastructure.

Nikolai Fedak, president and founder of the organization New York YIMBY, told Business Insider that Mamdani’s plan is “an excellent first step” to address the housing crisis, and he would like to see the mayor push more market-rate development in neighborhoods with easy access to train and bus lines.

“It is fantastic to see a Mayor begin to embrace the reality of supply and demand curves but we have much farther to go,” he said. “And the best and easiest step to make this happen would be razing and replacing neighborhoods of single-family mansions sitting on some of the most valuable and transit-accessible real estate in the entire country.”

Mamdani has committed billions of dollars to increase NYC’s housing supply, which may help meet demand and encourage more affordable rents. His plan to freeze the rent on the 44% of the city’s apartments that are stabilized, however, risks pushing up prices for unstabilized units. St. Paul tried something similar, and one study found that the policy largely cut costs more for higher-income renters, and the rent control was eventually walked back in favor of building new homes.

Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy at the nonprofit Groundwork Collaborative, told Business Insider that Mamdani’s plan “centers around one goal: growth,” and the success of these housing projects depends on buy-in from the public and private sectors. Cutting outdated regulations is a good start, he said.

Realtor.com Senior Economist Jake Krimmel — a NYC resident himself — added that he appreciates Mamdani’s “yes, and” approach to housing, and said that the mayor has done a solid job with policies that both incentivize developers to build more affordably and appeal to the YIMBY contingent: “To thread that needle is difficult,” he said.

Building large-scale affordable housing is a heavy lift. There are funding hurdles at both the City Council and state level, alongside longstanding zoning restrictions that can prevent new construction or the conversion of existing commercial buildings. In NYC, where half of renters spend more than 30% of their income on housing, it’s also challenging to make that housing accessible.

The recent overturning of a longtime state cap on home construction in NYC will allow more homes to be built, City Hall has said, and the mayor is working with the state and federal government to ensure future funding for housing projects. The administration also plans to build dense housing on property the city already owns, reducing some cost and regulatory barriers.

“New York City will build,” Mamdani said. “And then New York City will build some more.”

A United Airlines flight bound for Minneapolis from Chicago was reportedly diverted after an “unruly passenger” tried to breach the cockpit late on Friday.

The FBI and police responded to reports of a security concern with the passenger, who was detained by police at the Dane county regional airport in Madison, Wisconsin.

The flight continued its journey to Minneapolis, landing early on Saturday morning, according to FlightAware data. There were no reported injuries among the 147 passengers and six crew members onboard the flight.

A United spokesperson said flight 2005 “landed safely in Madison … to address a security concern with an unruly passenger”.

The FBI in Milwaukee said the agency was notified of the flight’s diversion, and its agents, along with local law enforcement, responded to the airport.

“A subject was detained by the [local] sheriff’s office, and afterwards passengers resumed their flight,” an FBI spokesperson said.

In air traffic communications reported by NBC News, personnel onboard the plane could be heard discussing the attempted cockpit breach with ground control.

“I do not believe they ever cuffed him, but they were able to finally get control of him after multiple attempts to try to breach the cockpit,” a member of the crew said. “I believe at this point he is seated in a seat and flanked with law enforcement officers on either side.”

Aircraft hijackings are almost unheard of in the US since the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, when four aircraft were taken over by Islamic extremists, including two that crashed into and destroyed New York’s World Trade Center.

But between 1968 and 1972, known as hijacking’s so-called golden age, more than 130 US planes were hijacked. Many of those hijackers demanded to be flown to Cuba.