De Blasio team supports Council incumbent in race defined by his development agenda
For de Blasio, the campaign is both a test of his controversial development strategy as well as his political cachet.
“A defeat for Laurie would be a defeat for the kind of strategy that underlies the armory project, which is essentially to leverage private-sector development to squeeze affordable units and other public benefits,” said one Council member supporting Cumbo.
Rep. Jeffries Endorses Council Member Cumbo for Reelection
The Congressman said he plans to actively campaign for Cumbo in local churches, block parties, senior centers, subway stations, and “whatever else it takes to make sure she wins decisively” in the September 12 primary and the November 7 general. Jeffries is extremely popular among his constituents and was reelected last year with 93.3 percent of the vote in the general election after being unopposed in the primary.
Rowdy Bedford Union Armory Meeting Decries De Blasio, Cumbo
An impassioned, emotional and oftentimes angry crowd gathered Wednesday at MS 61, 400 Empire Boulevard in Crown Heights to protest the contentious Bedford-Union Armory development project. Residents and lawmakers alike argued that the project will exacerbate displacement by putting luxury housing above affordable units. “Why should we have luxury condominiums,” said Beverly Newsome, President of the Ebbets Field Tenants Association and co-moderator of the night. “In an environment that screams a need for affordable housing?”
Activists invited DeBlasio to this evening’s 6:30 pm town hall at Crown Heights’ Dr. Gladstone H. Atwell Middle School in response to comments reported last month by Crain’s, in which he suggested the city needs to do a better job of explaining the project’s benefits to the community.
Hizzoner’s remarks implied that locals are not smart enough to understand his grand plan, according to event hosts, who said that the mayor’s problem is not one of communication but of values in the written invitation they sent to city hall on July 25.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/08/17/tenants-under-siege-inside-new-york-city-housing-crisis/
New York City is in the throes of a humanitarian emergency, a term defined by the Humanitarian Coalition of large international aid organizations as “an event or series of events that represents a critical threat to the health, safety, security or wellbeing of a community or other large group of people.” New York’s is what aid groups would characterize as a “complex emergency”: man-made and shaped by a combination of forces that have led to a large-scale “displacement of populations” from their homes. What makes the crisis especially startling is that New York has the most progressive housing laws in the country and a mayor who has made tenants’ rights and affordable housing a central focus of his administration.