Transcript: Mayor Mamdani Releases “Block by Block: The Housing Plan for a New Era”
Zohran Mamdani on NYC Mayor's Office transcripts.
Passages
Good morning, my fellow New Yorkers! Let's go, Knicks! What you may have heard as I walked on was Ricky Martin's “Livin' La Vida Loca,” which was the number one song in the country the last time the Knicks were in the finals. So, I began today with a walk through Gowanus, past towers that will soon offer hundreds of affordable homes, past buildings with tenants whose organizing has transformed their standard of living, past Wyckoff Gardens where NYCHA residents are starting to see the change that real investment can bring. It is a privilege to finish that walk here at Powerhouse Arts. You know, I want to acknowledge a number of leaders we have here with us. We have members of my administration, as you can see on stage and across the crowd. We also have our Council Member Shahana Hanif, whose district we are in. We have the former Council member, Brad Lander, who is here with us as well. We have Michelle de la Uz, the executive director of Fifth Avenue Committee. I want to give a special shout-out to the incredible coalition that's gathered here today from Housing Justice for All to labor unions, including Local 79 and 32BJ. To Open New York, to tenants' unions, to every single New Yorker that is coming here together today. Nearly a century ago, beneath the metro train tracks in East Harlem, 12 miles from where we stand today, James Baldwin was born. His family lived modestly. His father made a living as a factory worker and a Baptist preacher. His mother raised nine children. But still, they had enough to build a life in New York City. A city they sought out during the Great Migration, a city where opportunity was within reach. Life was not easy, but a better future felt possible, and in no small part because they had a home. That home allowed their eldest son to grow up on the same streets as the artists of the Harlem Renaissance, to learn and read in the 135th Street Library [and] to become one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. Echoes of this story have been heard countless times. In homes and apartments owned and rented across the five boroughs. When New Yorkers can afford a home, they can afford to dream. Yet the opportunities of the past have drifted out of the present's reach. It is nearly impossible today to find affordable housing in New York City. We face one of the most severe housing crises in American history. It is the single largest driver of the affordability crisis. All over Harlem now, there is felt the same bitter expectancy, Baldwin wrote in 1948. There is nothing anyone can do about it. Today, too many New Yorkers feel that same bitter expectancy, the sense that nothing will ever get better, as they watch the rent climb, as they stay up late trying to find a way to afford to stay in the city that they love. This crisis did not arrive all of a sudden. For centuries, New York City built enough housing to keep pace with our population growth until the 1960s. Over the past 60 years, however, government helped create the housing crisis we now face through a series of choices. Beginning in 1961, zoning reform reduced our housing capacity by 80 percent. Further, bureaucratic changes only exacerbated how difficult it became to build. In the 1980s, the Reagan administration implemented drastic cuts to our public housing system, leading to decades of NYCHA's decline. In the 1990s, new rent stabilization loopholes incentivized landlords to increase rents and push New Yorkers out of their apartments. These choices restricted growth and caused costs to balloon. They allowed bad landlords to neglect their tenants with impunity, and they turned a blind eye to crumbling public housing. These choices brought us to this moment. Today, we choose differently. If the absence of good government created the conditions we now face, the presence of good government can build the solutions we now need. I am proud to announce that New York City will propose, pursue and deliver solutions to this crisis through our historic housing plan, Block by Block, a plan that matches not only our city's size, but [also] the scale of our city’s ambition. Before I share the details, I want to speak directly to every New Yorker who may be skeptical, because I know there are many. Some may be skeptical that the city can build, or that building is even the right solution. Others have watched the housing crisis worsen year after year but have been left out of the conversation on how to fix it. And I know that there are many who doubt that change can ever come. I wanna speak to the skeptical New Yorkers because I was once the skeptical New Yorker. Before I was mayor, before I was an Assembly member, I worked as a housing counselor for New Yorkers facing foreclosure. Every day, at our offices in Jackson Heights and Richmond Hill, I spoke to homeowners reckoning with the pain and complexity of this crisis. Rising costs, a daily fear of displacement [and] living under a cloud of anxiety that one-off emergencies could lead to mortgage delinquency. And every day after work, I came home to buildings going up in my neighborhood and neighbors asking who they were for. The conversation around housing was framed as a simple binary, a question reduced only to yes or no, a side you had to take between structures and people: “Do you believe in building, or do you believe [in] fighting for tenants? Should we build our way out of this, or should we organize to preserve what we have?” For a long time, the two were framed as mutually exclusive. I wanted to make a difference in the lives of New Yorkers who were facing this crisis. So, I began to work for candidates who championed the tenant movement, a movement that won stronger rent stabilization laws and a right to counsel for tenants in housing court. I eventually ran for office myself and joined that fight in Albany, fighting for better protections and helping to win good cause eviction, a policy that prevents sudden displacement and price gouging in our city. As we made it easier for New Yorkers to stay in their homes, one thing became increasingly clear. There was no way to drive down housing costs without also building more housing. I knew the lessons of Vienna were for nearly a century, [the] municipal government has built and financed housing directly. And data from other American cities told a clear story of what that building could lead to. Between 2015 and 2024, 120,000 homes were built in Austin. In December of 2021, Austin's median rent was $1,546. By this past January, it had fallen to $1,296, even as the city's population continued to grow. I saw these same patterns in Minneapolis and Seattle. It was clear, when it comes to housing, the binary we face is not between structures and people. It is not between building and organizing, nor is it between the tenants of today and the tenants of tomorrow. It is a far more basic one. It is between a government that debates and a government that delivers. We can keep people in their homes, and we can build the homes that they need to live in. We have spoken about this crisis long enough. It is now time to do something about it. Our housing plan meets this crisis with the scale and urgency it demands. It invests billions of dollars in new affordable housing production. And it continues the vital work of protecting tenants from bad landlords and displacement. So, let's get into it. The first plank of our plan is all about building. We have set two of the most ambitious housing targets in modern New York City history. First, we are delivering on a promise we made during the campaign. Over the next decade, [the] City government will build 200,000 new, affordable rent-stabilized homes. This historic production push will increase the number of homes for homeless New Yorkers by nearly 45 percent, helping us connect thousands of those in need with permanent housing. Second, I am proud to announce, for the first time in our administration, that we will preserve and stabilize an additional 200,000 homes. Together, these 400,000 homes will be affordable for working people, and they will be made possible by [a] historic $22 billion capital investment over five years. When it comes to affordable housing, no plan of this scale has ever been imagined by a past mayor, let alone proposed. We are the largest city in the nation. We have the resources, the talent and the will to achieve this. Expanding our housing supply will also kickstart our economy. As we build 200,000 new affordable homes, we will support an average of 30,000 good-paying jobs each year and generate 12,700 permanent jobs once these homes are completed. There is no path to meeting our 200,000 goals of building new homes without meaningful changes to our city's zoning code. Last year, New Yorkers overwhelmingly approved ballot measures making it easier to build across our city. Our housing plan embraces these changes and commits to pursuing further reforms that not only make it easier to build but [also] help New Yorkers move into these homes faster. Our plan will pursue a multi-pronged strategy to make it easy for New Yorkers to buy a home, including creating hundreds of new affordable co-ops and community land trusts. And we will also make it easier for homeowners to stay in their homes as we combat deed theft and relaunch the mortgage assistance program. Combined, these efforts will lead to growth beyond anything New Yorkers have seen in generations. For some, the dream of home ownership will finally be within reach. Others will be able to sleep easily in homes they no longer fear losing. The second plank of our housing plan includes some of the strongest and most expansive tenant protections anywhere in the United States of America. There is a reason why I put tenants front and center on my first day in office, when I visited a long-neglected rent-stabilized building and declared that we will not wait to deliver action. Nearly 70 percent of New Yorkers do not own their homes. And yet tenants helped to carry this movement to City Hall because they believed in a city that could actually fight for them, that could protect them. From bad landlords that could actually ensure that their struggles would shape the policies that impact their lives. This plan that we present today was guided by New Yorkers’ testimony during our Rental Ripoff Hearings, and it reflects their concerns and their needs. And as we empower tenants, we will place a special emphasis on those in the Bronx, who have so long been excluded from investments, who have been subjected to acute neglect and who have faced destructive fires at the highest rate in this city. I am proud to announce a legislative task force to overhaul our city's outdated housing maintenance code. When I say “housing,” you say, “maintenance code.” We will catch problems proactively and prevent them from becoming full-blown hazards, from day-to-day negligence to major breaches of fire code. We will also improve how 311 logs and investigates complaints. Starting on October 1 of this year, inspectors will investigate every single heat complaint the city receives. And we will support New Yorkers as they organize with their neighbors. If you form a tenant union, the city will stand with you. We will deliver the accountability you deserve from your landlord by doing a roof-to-basement inspection of your building. Finally, through our new citywide campaign, “Fix the City,” we will focus on the worst landlords in New York City. When necessary, we will take aggressive legal action to remove negligent owners and property managers. And for buildings that have suffered chronic neglect, we will work to transfer ownership to responsible stewards. Stewards that include community land trusts, nonprofits or even the tenants themselves. The third core plank of our plan is years overdue. We will deliver the transformative investments that public housing has long needed but not received. Our public housing system, the largest of its kind in the country, was born from Mayor Fiorello La Guardia's conviction that government owed its people decent, dignified homes. NYCHA began as a testament to something great: that government can not only imagine a better life for those it serves, but that it can fulfill that vision. And yet that conviction has become a relic of the past. After decades of disinvestment, NYCHA tenants have come to expect that no matter who is in office, they will be overlooked. Their concerns will be ignored. That ends today. City Hall will rewrite a legacy of neglect with the largest city capital commitment to NYCHA in decades. $5.6 billion over five years. And we will do all of this while ensuring that NYCHA remains publicly owned and publicly operated. This is about putting city government in the driver's seat. This is about delivering the changes that New Yorkers have been demanding with little avail for decades. These funds will go towards comprehensive renovations guided by resident input. We will build on the success of the existing leak and mold call center and expand the model to other repairs. No longer will it take more than 400 days to fix an elevator in this city. When NYCHA residents call for help, they will be able to expect immediate improvements. Longevity is the goal. This plan will reboot NYCHA as a public developer for the first time in generations. In doing so, it will equip our public housing system with a stream of revenue to sustain it well into the future. Each plank of this plan builds on the work that we have already advanced over the past six months. Since taking office, we have launched the Mayor's Office to Protect Tenants and the Office of Deed Theft Prevention. We have cut red tape blocking affordable housing development. We have held bad landlords accountable to the tune of $65 million. And we have broken ground on thousands of affordable homes. Today, we make it official. We will finish the work we have started. We will prove that government can deliver on the solutions to the toughest problems, not just debate them. I will close with this. So often when confronted with intractable challenges, the world has looked to New York City to show the way. We have built great things before. Skyscrapers that rise into the clouds; grand bridges, libraries and museums; the most ambitious public housing developments in the nation; a team that can come back from 22 points with a little more than six minutes left in the first game. Block by block, we will build once again. And we will prove that the belief we hold, that every person deserves a dignified home, is more than an ideal. It is a responsibility that government can and that government will fulfill. Beginning today, we will no longer speak in the language of promise. We will speak in the language of present. We will build more homes. We will protect tenants. We will deliver record funding to NYCHA. Let the largest city in the nation deliver the largest municipal housing transformation this country has ever seen. With a history like the one that we have in this city, it is tempting to believe that New York City's best days are behind us. But we know that that is not the case. They are waiting to be built. So let us build them together, block by block. [Crowd chants “block by block.”] In the words of Milwaukee mayor, Emil Seidel, a sewer socialist himself, let's go after it and get it. Thank you everyone.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceSo, I'm glad you brought this up. That headline is inaccurate. This does not exempt any landlord from the decision of the Rent Guidelines Board. What is being described is a long-standing HPD tool that applies to a select number of units every year. Under this tool, no tenant would see their rent increase beyond that which the RGB determines. And over the course of the campaign, as I was running to become the mayor, I was asked often about city programs, distressed properties [and] what the response would be. And I would say time and again that the city has a number of programs to deal with exactly those kinds of incidents. This is one of those programs.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceSo, you are correct, this is a long-standing HPD program, one that would have no impact on any tenant's rent beyond that which the rent guidelines board would determine. I'll pass it to my deputy mayor for Housing and Planning to add any additional details.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceSo, that continues to be something that we are incredibly excited about and that we know that the president expressed interest in. It's the subject of an active conversation, not just between the president and myself but also between our teams. And the reason that it is of importance to our city is that it would create the largest number of homes in a single housing project since the early 1970s. I think actually — I think it would be 1973, which is also when the Knicks last won the championship. So, it would be a great time to marry both of those two things together. But it continues to be of incredible importance to us because this has the opportunity to build more — you know, 12,000 homes, 30,000 jobs — and in a city where land is such a limited resource, to have an area that we could create more of it, to then create more housing. It is an opportunity that we are looking to unlock.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceThank you for that question. You know, we've said this today and you've heard it from a number of speakers that working people in this city deserve affordable homes and they deserve safe and good-paying jobs with strong labor standards. We are proud to be an administration that is moving us closer to both of those goals when it comes to labor standards by implementing the Construction Justice Act, which as you heard, this raises the minimum wage and benefit package to $40 an hour. On city-funded affordable housing, it raises the floor for workers across the city. And I think we just heard from Eli about what that actually means in a New Yorker's life. Because so often we bifurcate this conversation as if tenants are not also workers or workers are not also tenants. We want to ensure that all of them can afford to live in the city. Beyond that, we have also made clear that we will have inter-agency working groups to explore project labor agreements for affordable housing projects. [Crosstalk.]
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceYou know, I think for too long, City government has looked at the scale of NYCHA's capital needs and used it as a justification to do nothing. The argument being, they need more than $80 billion, anything we do is inconsequential. We cannot afford to wait any longer. This $5.6 billion capital commitment is a significant investment that will both unlock the kinds of conditions that too many NYCHA residents have been denied and also serves as an invitation to every other party to start to come to the table to deliver on these kinds of investments for NYCHA. And I want to be very clear. The Reagan administration's decision that precipitated these cuts for public housing — that is a decision that has been maintained across both Republican and Democratic administrations. NYCHA residents have come to this feeling of being overlooked because of government at every single level. And we are excited now to start to walk on a path where we will tell every single level of government that the city is here and ready to finally be a partner in this kind of investment. We look forward to seeing additional investments at every additional level. And now, we can say we're putting our money where our mouth is, we want the federal government to do the same. [Crosstalk.] And on the union question, just to be very clear, that we are implementing the Construction Justice Act. And in that, it is going to unlock, frankly, the opportunities that we've heard from today. But beyond that, this interagency working group — looking at PLAs, that is also something that we're incredibly excited about.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceA lot of this has come from this budget process that we have been a part of. When we came into office, one of the first directives I gave to my team was to actually find the costs of longstanding capital projects that had ballooned over time. If you look, for example, at the cost of meeting the class size mandate, when we come into office, I think that was at about — it was almost close to $20 billion — we have shaved off five, $6billion from what that cost is. And that's just by drilling down on the exact specifics. We've also increased our capital capacity over the last few months, and a lot of that increase has then been allocated to these kinds of investments. I'll pass it to our deputy mayor to add additional.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI think you heard it from Sumathy herself, which is that there are a number of landlords for whom their entire business model has been predicated on harassment and displacement. That is something that this city stands firmly against. We are looking forward to working with every actor across the city to build more housing and also to make it clear that when we do so, we not only expect, but we will ensure that every developer and every property manager will follow housing law in this city. For far too long, these laws have been treated as if they are suggestions as opposed to requirements. And so, in addition to building more housing at a rate that we have not seen when it comes to affordable housing in the city for a long time — frankly, if ever — we are also letting tenants know that we are investing in the very kind of code enforcement that they have long been denied. It is critical that we do both of these things at the same time, so it's not simply a, you know — build more housing, rents will come down, that's all we have to offer. It's an entire, all of the above comprehensive plan.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceYou know, and when I was in the Assembly, one of the concerns that I had was around the place of NYCHA residents and being able to inform and steward the decisions that we would take. And now that I stand here as the mayor, I'm incredibly excited about putting forward a plan where those residents — their input — is a critical part of how we move forward. Just earlier, I was taking a tour with Council Member Hanif [and] former Council Member Lander, and we were there with the Fifth Avenue Committee, meeting with NYCHA residents and learning that the specifics of the investments that the city was making was being guided by the details of tenant preference. Whether you had a shower head that was actually manually moveable or one that was fixed — that is something that was informed by the tenant's preference. Whether you have an actual hookup in the apartment for a washing machine — that is that something that NYCHA tenants would have to maneuver themselves. Now, the city is making it easier to do so. This to me is an example of what it looks like to deliver on funding for NYCHA and to do so in a manner that also listens to those same residents. And what makes this plan distinct is not the language of this plan, the words that are used, because New Yorkers have seen politicians come and go promising everything that they can find in the city. What makes it different, frankly, is the level of commitment behind those words. When we are talking about $22 billion for housing and a five-year capital plan [and] $5.6 billion for NYCHA. When we're talking about more than $2 billion for preservation — this is what actually unlocks these words and makes them into actions that we will deliver. That's what New Yorkers are waiting for, because for far too long, they've seen one-off commitments, one-year commitments [and] language come and go. It is time that New Yorkers see a sustained investment in the very kind of housing that they have often asked themselves if they'll only get to read about in history books.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceThe Rental Ripoff Hearings were critical in both underscoring the urgency of this work — we all understand this, and yet, in New York City, the longer you deal with a problem that remains unsolved, the more intellectual it starts to feel. It is as if it is a part of life. But when you sit across the table from a tenant who shows you a video of a mother with a young child who's disabled and how that mother has to carry that child in her bare hands every day from the school bus up the steps of the apartment building because that elevator is broken, you leave that room with an understanding of just how quickly this city needs to move — to ensure that we're following up on code violations. And when you look at the specificity of our commitment, whether it's actually investigating every heat complaint [or] whether it is ensuring, as you heard from Sumathy earlier about the ability to reschedule inspections. For too long, the way this city has approached these things is you just hope, you just pray that somebody will come at a time when you're home. And now we're starting to take the steps to ensure the city is delivering a level of service that it hasn't in the past.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceYou know first, if we could just play Livin' la Vida Loca one more time, if that's available, just so we can skip back to that moment in time. 1999. 1999. It has been a long time, and I know that Knicks fans are incredibly excited, as we all should be. This is an incredible moment for this city. And so, I first want to begin with a congratulations to the team. Because what they have done for this city, you really can't put into words the excitement that you see on people's faces. You know, people whisper to me in every kind of event you can imagine, “Knicks in four.” And I have to just keep a straight face as we're going through that event. But when it comes to your question, we're gonna have watch parties across the city. We're incredibly excited about those watch parties. We saw, just last night, I think, we saw watch parties at Radio City, where we even had the t-shirt cannon out there. And we also saw a watch party at Brooklyn Bowl. And then we saw New Yorkers celebrate everywhere that they could find. And I think Henry Rosoff, I'm not sure if he's here. But we also saw videos from everybody everywhere that they could find. So, we're very excited about that. We're excited about making it easier for New Yorkers to celebrate.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceYou know, we're looking forward to making sure that it is a time for New Yorkers to celebrate. It's a time where they're all so safe. And we're going to have a number of different kinds of watch parties. And we'll get back to you as we keep going through those plans.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceIsn't this the landlord who had a beehive in his building?
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI really appreciate the question, because I think it gets to the heart of what Block by Block is about. It's about delivering a new kind of future for working-class New Yorkers. And the landlord that you're referring to is also a landlord who had an active beehive found in his building. [He] is also, a landlord, as you said, who was imprisoned due to the housing code violations. I'm going to pass it over to my deputy mayor for Housing and Planning on the specifics — actually, I’ll pass it to Cea Weaver.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceAnd just before we close, I do just want to acknowledge our Council Member, Pierina Sanchez, who has been a partner in this work. And earlier, I was speaking about a focus on the Bronx, and we're really looking forward to working together on that. Thank you all so much. ###
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the source
Every passage above is taken from this recording: NYC Mayor's Office transcripts, Transcript: Mayor Mamdani Releases “Block by Block: The Housing Plan for a New Era”.