Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s controversial housing board nominee — who has dismissed local opposition to development as “wealthy homeowner cartels” — was easily confirmed by the City Council Thursday.
John Mangin, the city Planning Department’s housing director and a key architect of recent citywide zoning changes, was tapped to chair the Board of Standards and Appeals by the City Council in an overwhelming 40-6-4 vote.
The five-member independent BSA has the authority to grant zoning exceptions and can also override council objections to some affordable-housing projects — after recent changes to the city charter that voters OK’d.
Mangin was instrumental in writing those controversial charter changes that created the shortcut to bypass council review.
The council had viciously fought Mangin’s revisions in 2025, urging the Board of Elections to keep the charter changes off the ballot. After that effort failed, they rallied publicly against the plan and called on city residents to vote it down.
“I don’t see how we go from a campaign against those proposals to put one of the principal architects in charge of the BSA,” said Council Member Frank Morano (R-Staten Island), one of the few who voted against Mangin’s confirmation.
“We told New Yorkers that local input matters,” he added at the council’s stated meeting.
The other “no” votes came from council members Joann Ariola (R-Queens), David Carr (R-Staten Island/Brooklyn), Vickie Paladino (R-Queens), Inna Vernikov (R-Brooklyn) and Phil Wong (D-Queens), while Chris Banks (D-Brooklyn), Eric Dinowitz (D-Bronx), Linda Lee (D-Queens) and Christopher Marte (D-Manhattan) abstained from the vote.
The change of heart from the council came after Mangin convinced members to back him during one-on-one meetings, according to Speaker Julie Menin (D-Manhattan).
“We had concerns from a good number of members in the beginning,” Menin said Thursday after announcing she would vote in favor of his confirmation.
“He really assured me that he definitely valued community input.”
Mangin has also criticized the community benefit agreements that council members often negotiate with developers for local givebacks such as parks, school seats and jobs, arguing they are too cumbersome and make housing more expensive.
Council members at his Sept. 1 confirmation hearing questioned Mangin about his past positions they said favored steamrolling neighborhood concerns and stripping the council of its say.
Council Member Nantasha Williams specifically accused him of helping to “build a system that lets certain affordable housing projects move faster with less Council control” — and portraying homeowners as “part of an exclusionary problem.”
Still, Williams voted to confirm Mangin Thursday.
“One of the things that he was very clear about is the context in which he wrote those previous writings,” Williams explained. “He was talking about a completely different community, not New York City.”
At the hearing, Mangin said he had been referring to opposition to housing development in suburban communities.
Banks, chair of the council’s Public Housing Committee, pressed Mangin over his past “homeowner cartels” comment.
In a 2014 academic paper, Mangin slammed municipal zoning dominated by affluent homeowners as “homeowner cartels” — keeping housing scarce and reinforcing racial segregation.
“Normal folks would take that offensively, especially when they advocate for their community,” Banks told Mangin at the hearing.
More than a dozen members had expressed reservations about Mangin in a closed Democratic conference last month, according to a report in The Post Millennial.
Mangin still has to be sworn in before he takes over as chair of BSA.
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