The residents of Manhattan’s East Village — a neighborhood so progressive they make Bernie Sanders look like Ted Cruz — just filed a lawsuit to block a homeless shelter from opening on their block. The same people who put “In This House We Believe” signs in their windows and voted 70% for Mayor Zohran Mamdani are now racing to the courthouse because compassion for the unhoused apparently has a zip code limit.

Socialism is fantastic until it moves in next door. Then it’s time to lawyer up.

Mamdani — the former state assemblyman and proud democratic socialist who rode a wave of progressive enthusiasm straight into Gracie Mansion — announced he’s shutting down the Bellevue men’s homeless shelter by the end of April and relocating operations to a new citywide intake center at 8 East 3rd Street. Right in the heart of the East Village. The facility is set to open May 1st.

The neighborhood lost its collective mind approximately fifteen seconds later.

Residents filed suit Monday demanding an emergency restraining order, arguing the city “failed to follow any of the legal requirements” before making the decision. They called the process “hastily made and legally invalid.” These are — and we need to stress this — the exact same voters who spent years demanding that the city do MORE for the homeless. More shelters. More services. More funding. More compassion.

Just not HERE. Never here. Here is where they keep their artisanal coffee shops and their $4,000-a-month studio apartments.

This is the progressive NIMBY paradox in its purest, most beautiful form. They want every policy that sounds good on a protest sign. Universal housing? Absolutely. Shelter the unhoused? Of course. Defund the police and redirect money to social services? Sign us up! But the second any of those policies show up on THEIR block, affecting THEIR property values, changing the vibe of THEIR neighborhood — suddenly they sound exactly like the conservatives they’ve spent years mocking.

“Not in my backyard” hits different when your backyard voted 70% for the guy holding the shovel.

And the lawsuit language is chef’s kiss. They’re very careful to say they’re challenging the “process,” not the shelter itself. Oh, of course not! They LOVE homeless shelters. They just think this particular one was… procedurally insufficient. Sure. That’s definitely what this is about. It’s about paperwork. Not about the men’s homeless intake center opening three doors down from the yoga studio.

(For the record, “we support the concept but oppose this specific implementation” is the official motto of every progressive who encounters the consequences of their own voting record.)

This is the story of modern progressivism in one lawsuit. They voted for the socialist. They cheered when he promised to house the homeless. They put the signs in the windows and the hashtags in the bios. And then when the socialist actually tried to do the socialist thing — redistribute social burden across the city, including into wealthy progressive neighborhoods — they hired attorneys faster than you can say “gentrification.”

Mamdani must be stunned. His own base — the people who knocked on doors for him, who donated to his campaign, who posted his rally photos on Instagram — just took him to court. Seventy percent of them voted for this guy. SEVENTY. And he can’t even open a shelter without getting sued by his own fan club.

This is what happens when ideology meets reality. Progressives love big government programs in theory. They love them in speeches and on bumper stickers and in op-eds in the New York Times. But the moment government actually shows up to DO something in their neighborhood, they become the most aggressive defenders of local control and procedural rights you’ve ever seen. They become — dare we say it — conservatives.

Except conservatives are at least honest about it. We never pretended we wanted a homeless intake center on our street. We never marched for it, campaigned for it, or voted for the guy promising to build it. These East Village residents did all of those things and STILL sued when the bill came due.

Seventy percent. That number is going to follow this neighborhood around for a long, long time. Because there’s no better summary of progressive politics in America than this: vote for the socialist, then sue the socialist when socialism actually happens to you.