Small businesses in New York City face mounting pressure and limited safeguards against soaring rents. And now newly elected mayor Zohran Mamdani has said that he is ready to protect them.
In a video message posted on X, Mamdani shared what he called the final version of his plan for small businesses.
“Soon small businesses won’t have to wait for Small Business Saturday to get attention from their Mayor,” he said on Saturday. “Some changes that they can look forward to:” he wrote, before laying out a list of reforms that were promised throughout his campaign.
“There's a lot of things that make New York city special. For me it is the delis and bodegas,” he said in the beginning of the video.
Then, seated at a counter, he turned to a waiter: “Habibi, could I get an egg and cheese on a roll with jalapenos?”
“One Zohran special coming up,” the waiter said.
Mamdani has argued that the city’s identity is inseparable from its small, immigrant-run businesses.
“Small businesses employ nearly half of all new yorkers in the private sector. They keep the city running,” he said in the video. “But the last four years have been hard. We've seen the dollar slice go extinct. Storefront after storefront closed and had a mayor in Eric Adams who has ignored the struggles of small businesses.”
“That's why as mayor I'm going to make small businesses faster, cheaper and easier for small businesses to get started and stay open”, he added.
His plan, released earlier this year and now refined into Saturday’s announcement, includes four steps. “First,we're going to cut fines and fees for small businesses by 50%.”
“Ensure faster permits and applications.”
“500% more funding for small business programs.”
“Invest 20$ million in our Business Express Service Teams.”
The emphasis on immigrant-run storefronts was not new.
In his victory speech earlier this month, Mamdani said: “I speak of Yemeni bodega owners and Mexican abuelas. Senegalese taxi drivers and Uzbek nurses. Trinidadian line cooks and Ethiopian aunties.”
Mamdani claimed the city’s recovery must begin with the workers and entrepreneurs who hold up its neighborhoods.
In May, he told the Daily News: “For small businesses, who are so much of what we associate with our city and what makes it special, city government has suffocated them instead of supporting them,” adding that “this plan is at the heart of making it easier to not just start a small business, but for it to thrive.”