We are losing

[WSHazel]

63. I disagree with your framing

The two options are not 1) supporting extreme income inequality and 2) going along with Mamdani's litany of bad policies.

Also, lets focus on lifting people up rather than tearing people down. If a rich person is living in New York in 2025, odds are that they are pretty liberal. These are allies, not enemies. It is hard to deal with extreme inequality at the local level because it is so easy for the rich and mass affluent to relocate. Income inequality has to be dealt with at the federal level. Also, if you want to bring more revenue in, bring in more rich and mass affluent people. New York has a lot to offer.

As for those policies:

A) Publicly funded grocery stores competing with private grocery stores will put hundreds of mom and pops out of business and result in huge job and real estate losses, in addition to wrecking neighborhoods. It is a phenomenally stupid idea. One of the biggest problems in poor neighborhoods is the lack of access to food stores. Why would you do something that will put hundreds of them out of business?

B) If you want to use taxes to drive better behavior, then tax the people responsible for the bad behavior: The landlords. New York has an abundance of subsidies for landlords and real estate developers, and has for decades. It has also had rent control for decades. How have all those worked out? I know valuation for property taxes is very complicated, but I would start with: a building's value should be assessed as if a building is upgraded at least one class higher and all the units in the building are occupied. In other words, penalize owners for having vacant or poor quality buildings. If they can't afford to upgrade the building, then put the squeeze on them to sell it. It has been years since I saw a report on "unavailable" housing (i.e. units that have gone off line for whatever reason) in New York, but it is a pretty big number if memory serves.

C) Accelerate commercial to residential conversions as fast as possible. There is a lot of commercial real estate in NYC which will never be re-occupied by businesses. Get that converted quickly. I would use a combination of carrot and sticks. Tax reductions for a year or two, but then the building will be taxed as if fully occupied. Empty commercial buildings are an eyesore and undermine the vitality of a neighborhood. Let's make them residential as quickly as possible, which will bring down the price of all housing and strengthen neighborhoods.

D) Vouchers - cash or near cash are the most efficient way to help the poor and working class. Make the rental voucher process more efficient, and electronic. Technology can make this so much cheaper to administer.

Rents are slowly coming down. For home sales, the rest of the country has started what may be a long-term decline in property values, and the northeast is just behind everyone else, but will not be immune. Government messing with the real estate market could do serious long-term damage, as has happened in other urban areas over the years. It took a pandemic and nutso behavior by the Fed to return real estate prices to where they were in early 2007. I believe that 2024 is going to be the real estate market peak for a long time. The home is often the biggest component of middle class families' retirement, so let's not wipe out their value.

E) Leave Wall Street alone. It generates a mountain of economic activity and taxes for the city and the tri-state area, and everyone in that part of the country wins by New York City being the financial capital of the world. They already pay one of the highest tax rates in the country.

F) People will hate me for this, but I would cut the top city tax rate by 1 percentage point for 5 years for business entities that move a meaningful number of their staff to New York. I would like to target the wealthy and upper middle class returning from Texas and Florida, but the wording would need to be careful since it would be challenged in court if you were targeting specific states. Every hedge fund that that returns to New York from Miami is worth 3.9% of the total payroll, every year, to the city. That pays for a lot of free buses. Also, Fuck Florida and Texas.

G) Get the state of New York, and New Jersey and Connecticut, to continue to upgrade Metro-North, the LIRR, and New Jersey Transit. Make it easier to commute into New York from the suburbs and exurbs. Residents that live in the suburbs and work in NYC are paying city taxes, and not using a lot of city resources. Let's try to make more of them. Talk to the banks and other big companies in New York City about 3 or 4 days in the office rather than 5 days in the office. A 90 minute commute each way, 5 days a week, is impossible for someone to do. A 90 minute commute, 3 days a week, is difficult but not impossible. If the commuter train systems were better with more express trains, maybe that 90 minute commute gets knocked down to 75 or 80 minutes.

Pull 100,000 workers out of the city into the suburbs, and that is 30 to 40 thousand units that would open up.