[QUOTE=ABC News]Now that state lawmakers have closed a budget deal to fund prekindergarten in New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio is ready to turn to the next items on his sweeping liberal agenda: massively expanding affordable housing, increasing wages for the working class and overhauling the city's recovery from Superstorm Sandy.
De Blasio's road ahead, confirmed by the mayor and his senior aides, is an attempt to tighten the focus around his campaign theme of combatting income inequality and to steady an administration that has seen its poll numbers shrink in the first 100 days, thanks to a series of unforced errors and grueling battles with Albany.
"We've got a very full plate," the Democratic mayor said this past week. "All of it comes back to the core emotion of helping people in need, of trying to help people get back on their feet and trying to address the inequalities of the city."
De Blasio can claim only partial victory on prekindergarten after his signature pledge to tax the city's rich to pay for it was thwarted by Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who made state funds available instead and seemed to make a sport of one-upping the mayor.
But advisers to de Blasio believe that the skirmishes will be forgotten once pre-K starts in the fall and that voters will be happy with the program and will have forgotten about the failed tax by the time he faces re-election in 2017. Moreover, the mayor's allies believe he has a growing sense of momentum on the heels of other successes, including expanding the city's paid sick law and ending litigation around stop and frisk.
Next up is de Blasio's attempt to push back on the soaring rents that are increasingly making New York City out of reach to all but the very wealthy. His goal, oft-repeated in the mayoral campaign, is to build or preserve 200,000 affordable units of housing over the next 10 years for lower-income New Yorkers, a staggering number that would house a population bigger than cities such as Atlanta or Minneapolis. The lofty goal would also exceed the output of a pair of New York mayors who served three terms: Ed Koch produced 190,000 units over 13 years while de Blasio's predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, created or saved 165,000 units over 12 years.
De Blasio's approach, which is expected to be fully unveiled in May, will be multi-faceted, according to his advisers. He has no plans to build stand-alone structures like public housing developments, but wants to find ways to cram more affordable housing units inside existing private buildings or ones that are on the drawing board.
He has no objection to super-sized developments, a concept that seemingly flies in the face of his image as a leftist who hails from a Brooklyn neighborhood known for low-rise buildings and liberal politics.
"I hope people hear me loud and clear that the only way I can achieve my goals is if we are building and building aggressively," de Blasio said last month, saying he possessed a "willingness to use height and density to the maximum feasible extent."
De Blasio has vowed to pursue a policy of largely mandatory inclusionary zoning, which would require developers to set aside a portion of a building's units for poor and middle-class New Yorkers in exchange for authorization to build bigger and taller structures. Bloomberg only encouraged, and did not require, such measures.[/QUOTE]
[url]http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/nyc-mayors-big-push-affordable-housing-23119208[/url]
Funny joke, but if there's increasingly more people in the same space, housing prices will always go up.
With how NYC is set up, I can't see there ever being 'affordable' housing in the city. Only the rich can afford to live there, or people who enjoy sharing a studio with 3-4 other people. The normal folks of NYC instead have to commute like an hour.
It would be nice to see if they were somehow able to cater to the middle class, but I doubt it
[QUOTE=lum1naire;44401755]With how NYC is set up, I can't see there ever being 'affordable' housing in the city. Only the rich can afford to live there, or people who enjoy sharing a studio with 3-4 other people. The normal folks of NYC instead have to commute like an hour.
It would be nice to see if they were somehow able to cater to the middle class, but I doubt it[/QUOTE]
They way it's set up causes there to literally be no space for expansion at the moment.
As long as theres a space that's not growing, but numbers are, prices on rent will always go up.
Nice to see NYC finally run by someone other than a billionaire plutocrat that buys elections with his own money.
[QUOTE=Paul McCartney;44401789]They way it's set up causes there to literally be no space for expansion at the moment.
As long as theres a space that's not growing, but numbers are, prices on rent will always go up.[/QUOTE]
that's because any extra space is needed to build more branch banks duh
The rent is too damn high?
[url]http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_Is_Too_Damn_High_Party[/url]
you cannot force low prices in a high demand market without rent controls etc... NYC has been doing it for years, and all it does is make sure that you get a lot of landlords that have a lot of properties that there is no incentive to maintain.
compact cities like New York need to build up, vertically, to afford more housing spacially, but of course building up to create housing is expensive and the people who need that housing probably couldn't afford that
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;44402721]compact cities like New York need to build up, vertically, to afford more housing spacially, but of course building up to create housing is expensive and the people who need that housing probably couldn't afford that[/QUOTE]
Who says we need to go [I]up?[/I]
Next stop: [B][I][U]Mole People.[/U][/I][/B]
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.
