Transcript: Mayor Mamdani Highlights Housing Production Agenda in Block by Block as Support for Plan Grows
Zohran Mamdani on NYC Mayor's Office transcripts.
Passages
Good morning, Queens. It is a pleasure to be back home in Astoria here at Halletts North alongside those who have dedicated themselves to building the housing that New Yorkers need. And I wanna acknowledge our Council member, Tiffany Cabán, who is here with us; our Deputy Mayor for Housing and Planning Leila Bozorg; our city planning director, Sideya Sherman; our HPD deputy commissioner, Patrick Love; and NYSAFAH president and CEO, Carlina Rivera; as well as housing advocates and affordable housing developers who are joining us today. New York City is facing one of the most severe housing crises in American history. We are here today — elected officials, developers, and working New Yorkers alike — because we all share the same core belief that the only way to overcome this crisis is by building more affordable housing, and lots of it. And yet for decades. Government has made it harder to build affordable housing through bureaucracy and through red tape. My friends, we are bringing that era to an end. New York City will build and then New York city will build some more. Two days ago, I stood before a crowd of New Yorkers, tenants and homeowners and announced our housing plan, “Block by Block.” It is the most ambitious housing plan New York has seen for affordable housing in generations, and it will allow us to build at the scale this crisis requires by cutting red tape and providing the investment needed to break ground. We will invest $22 billion over five years to build 200,000 affordable homes [and] preserve 200,000 more, all while making it easier to build housing of all kinds across our city. To do so, we will partner with the private sector and use every tool at our disposal, including, but not limited to, direct subsidy, zoning changes and new financing tools. We will invest nearly $5 billion in the next two years into HPD's new construction capital budget to subsidize projects, including housing for seniors and 100 percent affordable housing for low-income New Yorkers. And we will pursue the meaningful zoning, regulatory and land use reforms that will unlock our building capacity. One standout example of these reforms is the Affordable Housing Fast Track, which was overwhelmingly approved by voters last November. It will shorten the review process to make it easier to build affordable housing in the neighborhoods with the fewest affordable homes. We will also advance zoning changes, the likes of which we have already begun along White Plains Road in the Bronx and along McDonald and Coney Island Avenues in Brooklyn. These key corridors already offer ready access to trains and busses, but their development has long been limited by restrictive zoning, making it harder to build and harder to afford a home. And we will pursue further zoning changes to develop more transit-oriented development city-wide. An affordable home does not mean much if you cannot get to the job that pays those bills. We will leverage city-owned land to build both 100 percent affordable and mixed-income housing, always utilizing the option that helps us build the most affordable housing possible. And we'll accelerate these projects with tools like ELURP and the Neighborhood Builders Fast Track, which can cut two years off the pre-development process. We are also exploring new strategies to help developers build as much as possible. One of these strategies will develop a revolving loan fund for shovel-ready developments that need a little extra help to find that financing. Finally, we will reduce operations costs for existing affordable housing providers by investing $100 million to back a new lower-cost insurance program in 2027. These are a lot of changes. But each of them matters. We are here just down the street from Halletts North, where both market-rate and affordable homes will soon rise. Four years ago, Council Member Cabán recognized the need for more housing, even at a time when many in our city did not. She made the necessary rezoning happen, fighting for deeper affordability and more family-sized apartments along the way. She laid that foundation, and now we build on it. We know from other cities the difference that thoughtful planning, careful zoning and direct municipal financing can make: Vienna, Austin, Minneapolis, Seattle and Auckland. Let the lessons other cities have learned guide our future. Let our size be our strength. Let us implement these policies at scale. Let the largest city in the nation deliver the largest housing transformation this country has ever seen. Thank you very much. And now with that is my great pleasure to introduce the New Yorker who will be at the head of these changes, our Deputy Mayor, Leila Bozorg.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI think I'll just first say broadly that we are looking at every measure that we can deliver on to ensure that it is easier to build in this city. And in conversations with developers across the five boroughs, one of the critiques that we have also heard is that of the timeline that it takes. And so, one of reasons that we've been so passionate in our support for SEQRA reform as well as in ensuring that the SPEED task force was not just one that was given the directive to make its assessments, but then also the financial backing and the executive budget to implement those recommendations, is that we could cut down what were two year processes into less than eight months. That we can cut down the 211 days it would take on average to move a tenant into a vacant unit and make that less than a hundred days. I will pass it over to my Deputy Mayor Bozorg to speak to a few additional details.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI'll say, one of the few things that the president and I agree on is not just that New York City is the greatest city in the world, but that we do want the Knicks to win the championship. And I can tell you in this city, the level of excitement across the five boroughs, it's like nothing many of us have seen for some time. And that's because of the fact that the last time we were in the finals, it was 1999, Ricky Martin's Livin’ La Vida Loca was number one in the charts. And we are so excited, you know, I'm hoping that Spurs and OKC just keep going to double OT and they take it to a Game 7, and they're exhausted by the end of this. When it comes to your question, what makes this plan remarkable is not its language, but frankly the commitments behind that language. We're talking about nearly $5 billion in investments over just the next two years alone. We're speaking about $22 billion over five years, $5.6 billion to NYCHA, to public housing residents. These are some of the largest commitments that we've seen either ever or in decades. And what's so critical to us is that we want to make clear that the choices that New Yorkers have been told they have to make, those are in fact not the choices we have to make any longer. It doesn't just have to be between whether you want to build more housing, or you want to preserve the housing that is affordable today. We can in fact have a debate over the fact of how quickly can we do both of these things. We want this to be a city where it's the easiest city to build in this country and the easiest city to organize as a tenant in this country. And so, the nature of that financial backing — that's what makes this distinct, as well as the fact that we are coupling this with regulatory procedural and positional reform within City government to start to unlock the question of how easy it is to build.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI think at the core of it, it is a belief from City government that if you are not maintaining your responsibilities as a landlord, the city will step in. We are talking about programs, many of which have existed before, but frankly that have not been invested in. And we are committed to empowering our housing enforcement teams, whether HPD or the law department, to protect tenants. You know, the other day on Tuesday when I was asked about a specific landlord — this happens to also be a landlord of a building where there was an active beehive within the building. That's the level of disrepair that New Yorkers have been forced to live with. And when nonprofits or tenants are in a position to take over those responsibilities, we're going to make sure that they are equipped to do a better job than the current landlord who is violating housing law.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceYou know, if the president comes to watch the Knicks, I'll leave the president to watch the Knicks as he wants to watch the Knicks. You know, I've been lucky enough to go to a few games this season. Recently, I was at a game with the public advocate. It was lovely to be in the nosebleeds, and we'll see where I end up in the future. But I'll be sure to let you know once I know.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceSo, this continues to be a priority for us. And we've been in conversations with partners in organized labor as well as those in Albany, all of whom had been leaders on the class size mandate. And we are an administration that is distinct in the fact that we actually want to fulfill this and ensure that the spirit of the law is one that we are delivering on, where we have students who have an easier time in learning in our classrooms and teachers who have a easier time teaching in our classroom because of those ratios that it will deliver. We're confident of the fact these conversations will continue, and we'll be able to deliver an actual timeline that New Yorkers can hold us accountable to on this.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceYou know, I'm not going to do any analysis of the president's fandom. I will say that anyone who wants to come and watch the Knicks and pray that Landry keeps making those threes and we see Captain Clutch out there on the court, I think everybody should be welcome there. I can tell you that it feels like the thing that's on everybody's minds across the five boroughs. And we're incredibly excited for, you know — we hope to run 1999 back with a different result. Let's see how it goes with the Spurs and OKC. You've got me lost thinking about the Knicks. Can you remind me what your first question was? COGE, COGE, yes. Look, I think last fall New Yorkers made it abundantly clear that they wanted to move on from the prior administration, from its priorities and its pursuits. And in taking this decision, we are bringing what was an extension of that prior administration to an end. And we are instead delivering on something that we know many New Yorkers and frankly many Americans care about, which is government efficiency. Now, Elon Musk manipulated the fact that so many people across this country want to see a government that is more efficient. He used that as a justification to simply slash and burn so much of the services that Americans rely on. What we are speaking about is a sincere fulfillment a vision that ensures that City government is operating with the same level of focus that a working-class New Yorker is when they're trying to balance their bills. And that means looking at the processes we have, that means look at the procedures of City government, and that means anything we can do to deliver a more efficient and more excellent government.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceYou know, I think that in New York City, you can always expect some kind of a legal response to a decision that you make, but I'm confident in both the decision that we've made as well as the legal team that we have around us.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceIt's just the name and what it should have been. You know, I think government efficiency — these are words that somehow have been understood as if they are Republican priorities, when in fact, they're the priorities of anyone who believes in the public sector. Any yet, Elon Musk took that language and used it to cut as many jobs that were as critical as possible for so many of the neediest people across the country and across the world. Ours is going to be a focus on actually delivering efficiency. Not as a byword for cutting services, but actually a sincere commitment to efficiency. And we firmly believe not only in closing the last chapter of City government, but in starting the new one. The proposals that COGE will be looking at will be ones that we view as critical to unlocking the full potential of City government. We've seen today that we're discussing a number of our plans that are only possible thanks to the votes that New Yorkers cast this last fall, and we're looking forward to continuing to ensure that any tool at our disposal that we could use to build more housing, that we could use to be more efficient in our operations, those are the tools that we want to unlock. [Crosstalk.]
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceWe're looking to make it easier for New Yorkers to demand excellence from City government. And at the same time as we look through that, if there are any examples that are clear that could help to unlock potential of the private sector in delivering those same kinds of results — you know, I offer to you as an example, you look at the SPEED task force, a lot of their findings, yes they have to do with the public sector, some of them also have to do with how to make easier for the private-sector to develop and build housing here in the city. So, I would say that the overarching directive here is efficiency and ensuring that New Yorkers can come to expect the most excellent City government and the most excellence city that they could find in the country. ###
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the source
Every passage above is taken from this recording: NYC Mayor's Office transcripts, Transcript: Mayor Mamdani Highlights Housing Production Agenda in Block by Block as Support for Plan Grows.