“In the last few decades, it’s housing,” Chow said.

A progressive who campaigned on affordability issues in her 2023 mayoral campaign, Chow, 68, has a record that highlights the appeal and limitations of the cost-of-living politics Mamdani now champions in New York. Elected after a decade of right-leaning Toronto mayors, Chow vowed to take on her city’s housing crisis, improve public transportation and demand new financial support for Toronto from Canada’s federal government.

She made incremental progress on some fronts, pushing toward a significant overhaul of housing regulations to speed up construction, but has faced a thicket of conflicting interests within the city and Ontario provincial politics. These dynamics preview the opposition Mamdani’s agenda would face from New York City business interests, suburban political power centers and a decidedly non-socialist governor in Albany.

Speaking in Toronto’s hushed, space-age city hall — with a Trump-era “Elbows Up” sign in her office window — Chow warned the only satisfactory solution to the affordability crisis would involve vast new housing investments from national governments. The mayor, who could face a tough fight for reelection next year, said she has made that argument to Prime Minister Mark Carney directly and was waiting to see what kind of support he delivers in the upcoming federal budget.

“He wants to build housing. I want to build housing,” Chow said, adding: “In terms of how much money and where, I don’t know — we’ll see from the Nov.