New York City mayor Bill de Blasio used his annual state of the city address to refocus his administration’s public agenda on affordable housing, scarcely mentioning law and order in an apparent attempt to put months of fraught relations with police union chiefs behind him.
The mayor announced an ambitious plan to build 80,000 new affordable homes, and preserve a further 120,000, in the next decade, effectively doubling the administration’s affordable-housing construction efforts.
“While the state of our city is strong, we face a profound challenge,” De Blasio said in his second such address since taking office last year. “If we fail to be a city for everyone, we risk losing what makes New York New York.”
“And nothing more clearly expresses the inequality gap – the opportunity gap – than the soaring cost of housing.”
De Blasio described the renewed focus on housing as “how we take on the tale of cities”, a reference to the progressive campaign slogan of his 2013 election, which saw the mayor secure an overwhelming 73% of the vote.
De Blasio began by returning to accomplishments over the past year, highlighting reform at the city’s jails, the expansion of free prekindergarten for over 50,000 city residents and the reduction of stop-and-frisk policing. But the mayor paid only a short tribute to the city’s police when speaking of the dramatic reduction in the city’s murder rate, describing the NYPD as “ always at the ready when New Yorkers need help”.
Over the weekend, De Blasio told the Associated Press that relations between police union chiefs and the city were “moving forward”.
Union leaders had held the mayor partly responsible for the fatal shooting of two NYPD officers, Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, in December, after he expressed sympathy for protesters in the wake of the decision not to return an indictment for the officer responsible for the death of Eric Garner, an unarmed African American who died after being placed in a chokehold by a white police officer. Thousands of NYPD officers turned their backs on the mayor during Liu’s and Ramos’s funerals.
“It was a perfect storm. It was based on two tragedies. The death of Eric Garner and the murder of these two officers. People felt pain all around,” De Blasio told the AP on Friday. “I do believe things are much better. I believe the dialogue is moving forward.”
The mayor received a warm reception on Tuesday from an audience made up of local officials and city residents. The national anthem was sung by the same newly graduated NYPD officer, Lauren Leggio, who performed during the annual police graduation ceremony in December when De Blasio was heckled.
Outside Baruch College in midtown Manhattan, a small group of protesters, calling for an end to the city’s hardline “broken windows” strategy of total policing, were kept away from proceedings by police.
During the address, De Blasio argued that if the city “did not act boldly” on housing reform it risked becoming a “gated community”.
The plan will require six neighbourhoods, one in every district of the city, to adopt a mandatory inclusionary policy, meaning any new developments in these areas would must include construction of some affordable housing.
The mayor’s strongest reference to law and order came through a hardline stance on predatory landlords across the city. De Blasio announced a new $36m free legal fund for any resident who claims to have been subjected to harassment, building neglect or unlawful eviction proceedings by predatory landlords in the newly rezoned neighborhoods. De Blasio said landlords found to be engaging in such practice were “lawbreakers” who “need to face the consequence of their actions”.
De Blasio also pledged to end homelessness among veterans in the city by the end of the year. Around 1,000 veterans in New York City are homeless, with newly released statistics putting the number at 59,068 people – the highest on record. It marks a 10% increase since De Blasio took office.
New York City councilman Jumaane Williams told the Guardian after the speech that De Blasio had “painted the broad strokes correctly”, but he added that the reform plans still lacked precise detail.
“I’m interested to see ... how much extra the units he spoke of are going to cost and how we are going to pay for them,” Williams said.
Asked if he thought the mayor should have referenced the community-police relations, Williams, a strong advocate for police reform, responded:
“To what benefit would it have been? If we were going to talk about some ways to move forward on community/police relations, then do I think it would have been beneficial, just to mention it to reopen some wounds we’re trying to heal? I don’t know if that would have been the best thing to do.”
