Tipsheet

A DSA Co-Chair Just Said the Quiet Part Out Loud About Private Property

Dmitri Bolt
Dmitri Bolt  |  July 02, 2026 10:00 AM

The co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Ashik Siddique, said the quiet part out loud Wednesday as Fox News’ Will Cain pressed him on whether one of the group’s ultimate goas is to confiscate private property.

"Right now we have a system where the richest people in the country are the ones making that decision," Siddique said. "They're the ones making decisions about foreclosures where millions of people have lost their homes over the years. We want more Americans to be able to afford their own homes, to afford the cost of rent, to afford the ability to own their own home if they can afford it, but wages are not keeping up with inflation. So the wealthiest people right now in Manhattan, in the island of Manhattan right now, one out of three apartments are vacant right now. They're just owned by rich people. Nobody lives there."

"So take them away from the property owner and give them to the people?" Cain pressed.

"In New York City, they just passed a pied-à-terre tax, a tax on people who have multiple properties, multiple apartments, and they should pay that," the DSA co-chair replied. "They should help fund affordable housing for everybody. Mondani just passed a rent freeze that's very popular, that's going to help keep costs down for millions of New Yorkers."

Now, Siddique may not have directly said that the aim is to confiscate property, but as I covered yesterday, a tax is the primary way government discourages a behavior. In this case, it is actively discouraging the wealthy from owning a second home, apartment, or condo, by forcing them to pay a steeper tax on it. 

The average New Yorker obviously couldn't afford the second homes of the wealthy currently on the market, so as those properties are priced out of private ownership, the only realistic paths forward are to convert them into some form of public housing, or, as the DSA co-chair himself said, to use the resulting tax revenue to fund government-subsidized housing. Either way, the outcome is the same: private property redistributed by government design.

Socialists are not only on the rise in America, they're telling us exactly where this ends. All you have to do is listen.