In a city that has long served as a stage for the tensions between idealism and power, a democratic socialist mayor and a Republican president met for the third time in a year — this time on the mayor's own ground — to discuss the enduring human need for shelter and belonging. Their conversation centered on 12,000 affordable homes proposed above a Queens rail yard that has waited half a century for resolution, a symbol of how long good intentions can stall without political will. The meeting between Zohran Mamdani and Donald Trump suggests that pragmatism, however uncomfortable, may sometimes