Whether the topic is food, rent or utilities, the word “affordability” is crossing the lips of Democrats from New York City to Cleveland. 

Zohran Mamdani, New York’s mayor-elect, built his campaign around it. So did Tanmay Shah, the Ward 12 Cleveland City Council candidate who is holding on to a seven-vote lead over incumbent Danny Kelly. 

“This message is resonating with the voters,” Shah said in an interview on Election Night. “We’ve known this since the day when we first started knocking, and we heard people wanted affordable housing, affordable groceries and reliable city services.” 

Mayor Justin Bibb is talking about affordability, too. In a brief chat with Signal Cleveland after winning Tuesday’s election, he listed the cost of housing among his second-term priorities. 

“We’re living in an affordability crisis in Cleveland and across the country,” Bibb said, “so making sure we do a lot more investments around affordable and workforce housing are also very important.” 

Cleveland City Council has taken a stab at one byproduct of high costs: debt. Council has slated federal stimulus dollars for forgiving medical and utility debt. 

On the other side of the coin, customers of Cleveland’s city-owned water and electric utilities have seen their rates go up over the last couple of years. Meanwhile, Cuyahoga County has faced homeowners’ frustrations over the tax bump from the latest property value reappraisals. 

Is this talk about affordability just lip service? Time will tell, but here’s one data point. City Hall on Thursday said it wouldn’t shut off water and electric service for non-payment for 30 days because of delays in federal food assistance benefits.