Mayor Zohran Mamdani: Good morning, everyone. 52 years ago, on a hot summer night, a new sound emerged from the first-floor community room at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, where we stand today. New York is where greatness so often is born. And on that August evening, greatness was born in the Bronx. The hip-hop that millions of people around the world listen to all came from this Mitchell-Lama building, where DJ Kool Herc played a new kind of music at a party he organized, so his little sister would have money to buy new clothes for school.
That greatness was only possible because this was a city where working people could afford a home. And with it, the joy and creativity that a stable home can foster. When New Yorkers can afford a home, New Yorkers can afford to make great art. And when New Yorkers can afford a home, New Yorkers can afford to be themselves.
But as many working people know, it is increasingly impossible to find an affordable home in New York City. To build a dignified life without earning hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. And those same New Yorkers know that too often, if they can find a home that they can afford, there is likely a reason they can afford it. Roaches and rats, heat that never turns on, elevators that are always out of order, bad landlords who take their money and yet never respond to requests for repairs.
A dignified life does not just mean having a roof over your head. It means that you don't feel uncomfortable or unsafe in your own home. It means that your money buys you what you paid for. It means that a bad landlord is not allowed to rip you off with impunity.
Today, I am proud to appoint Dina Levy as my commissioner of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. My commissioner will lead with a very simple remit. Delivering affordable housing and dignity to New Yorkers. For anyone in the housing world, Dina's reputation precedes her. Her resume alone tells a story of both service and achievement. Senior vice president of Homeownership and Community Development at the Department of Homes and Community Renewal. Senior advisor to the New York Attorney General. Director of organizing at the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board.
But I am more interested, frankly, in the story that so many working people tell about her. For decades, Dina has been fighting on behalf of tenants. As an organizer, an advocate, in both government and outside of it. Dina is a true force. The kind of person you are so glad to have on your side. And the one that you're terrified if she's on the other side.
There are countless tenants in this building today who still call this building home, only thanks to Dina's advocacy. After all, the story of 1520 Sedgwick didn't end when DJ Kool Herc played his last track. For decades, this building was a triumph of affordable housing, so beautiful that its tenants described it like a hotel.
But when it exited Mitchell-Lama in the 2000s, its new landlord plunged it into decay and neglect, forcing immediate maintenance issues. The situation was getting worse and likely would have entered a terminal spiral, were it not for Dina. She organized the tenants, she advocated on their behalf, and when they bought the mortgage with the help of a $5.6 million loan from HPD, they reclaimed control over their own homes and their own futures.
Dina will no longer be petitioning HPD from the outside. She will now be leading it from the inside, delivering the kind of change that can transform lives. Her leadership is the kind that New Yorkers have not known for far too long. Leadership unafraid to confront those who have mistreated our neighbors for too long. Leadership that travels to every corner of our city to expose wrongdoing. And leadership that understands that no longer can the Bronx be a forgotten borough in this city of five.
And so, as I am so excited to announce Dina as our new commissioner, I also want to say thank you to the incredible elected officials who have joined us here today. Elected officials who have also embodied that kind of leadership in their work, whether it be in the state legislature or whether it be in leading the entirety of this borough.
And I am also proud to announce that I will be signing an executive order directing HPD to work alongside the Department of Buildings, the newly invigorated Mayor's Office to Protect Tenants, the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, and our newly created Office of Mass Engagement to hold Rental Ripoff hearings. We will hold these Rental Ripoff hearings across all five boroughs within the first hundred days of this administration.
New Yorkers will be invited to participate and to share the realities that animate their daily lives. I want these hearings to expose the ugly underbelly of our city. The rats that scurry through hallways. The children that shiver in their beds in the dead of winter because the heat is off. The fees imposed on pregnant mothers because of the fear that their babies may be too loud.
I want these hearings to draw attention to homes like the one I visited on my first day as mayor. Homes where you can peel flimsy tiles off the walls. Homes where the pipes drip and rust. Homes where roaches scuttle across the floor. Homes where when you ask the tenant who lives there, [and ask] “When did this issue begin?” They tell you it was when their oldest born was just a few years old. And when you ask them their age today, they say it's more than 20 years old.
I want New Yorkers who have long been ignored by their landlords to finally be heard by our city government. These are not just listening sessions. These will be the rooms where the scope of the problem is understood, where it is addressed, where a report is drafted from which policy will be devised and crafted. And where New Yorkers have the opportunity to shape their democracy and its outcomes.
And this is only the beginning of our work to transform the housing landscape and the lives of tenants across New York. We revitalized the Mayor's Office to Protect Tenants for this very reason. For too long, New Yorkers have felt alone in their city. With nowhere to turn to when they're ripped off or neglected. That legacy of abandonment ends today.
Let this moment be evidence of what our new future will look like. A city where New Yorkers can turn to their leaders and see that they now have champions who care about them, listen to them, and wake up every morning honored to work for them. And I want to just say thank you to Assemblymember Dais, to State Senator Robert Jackson, and to our Borough President Vanessa Gibson. Because for too long, it has only been local officials who have sounded the alarm. And today, we announce a city government that is ready to be there in the same. Thank you.
Commissioner Dina Levy, Department of Housing Preservation and Development: So, I am very happy to be here, and specifically to be here. I want to start by saying what an honor it is to be asked to become a part of Mayor Mamdani’s new administration. And specifically, to play a role in advancing his vision to make sure that New York City is an affordable place to live.
I also want to give my deep gratitude to Commissioner Ahmed, who has been an amazing steward at HPD, and whose partnership in leading the Department of Buildings will be absolutely critical to our collective success. I started in affordable housing about 15 years [ago] as a community organizer, standing alongside tenants like the leaders here today at 1520 Sedgwick.
Often, we were fighting for basic rights. A crumbling ceiling to get repaired or heat or hot water to get turned on. But we were also engaged in an epic, years-long battle to stop a predatory landlord from acquiring and demolishing their homes. I am happy to say we won that battle. I have used those experiences to guide me as I've entered public service. And I have leaned on them in my last decade in [the] New York State government. I will also look to those experiences to inspire me as we tackle the hard work that lies ahead.
And I do know that the work ahead will be hard. We will need to increase the resources to build more affordable housing. We will need to try new innovative and sometimes scary innovations in order to overcome this crisis. And in many respects, we will need to embrace a willingness to rethink how we do business.
Those are ambitious goals, but they are an imperative for the citizens of this city. And I know that we will not overcome this crisis by setting a low bar. So, it is my great honor to accept this opportunity and to join forces with thousands of tenants, homeowners and dedicated public servants across the City of New York to stand together in the struggle to bring forward truly affordable housing for all.
Thank you so much for this opportunity. And now it is my delight to introduce Ms. Gloria Robinson, the tenant leader here at 1520 Sedgwick, who, along with her neighbors, is responsible for saving the birthplace of hip-hop.
Gloria Robinson, Tenant Leader, 1520 Sedgwick Avenue: Good morning, all. I would like to welcome all of you here to 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, the birthplace of hip-hop. And we are glad to have the mayor here, Mamdani, and for you to have such a friend as Dina Levy that she has been to us, to be on your team.
I met Dina in 2008 when we noticed our building was leaving the Mitchell-Lama program and being sold to some out-of-state big company. We fought like [] from that day on, and Dina was our backbone to this building. If we did not save this building, we would have been nowhere. We would have had nowhere to go. We would have been homeless. But thanks to Dina and her group from UHAB, they really tremendously helped us out, and we appreciate that.
We are so happy that the mayor has made preserving affordable housing his biggest priority, so other tenants don't have to struggle like we did. And if Dina had our back, we know she has your back. And we appreciate you so much for having this beautiful person on your team. And we welcome you. And now I'd like to introduce Fitzroy Christian, the tenant with CASA.
Fitzroy Christian: I don't think my blush is showing up very well. But thank you for such a response and welcome to the Bronx again. My name is Fitzroy Christian and I'm one of the leaders from CASA here in the Southwest Bronx. As a matter of fact, CASA is an acronym for Community Action for Safe Apartments, which we think is the only way human beings are supposed to live in places that they're paying rent for, that are clean, healthy, affordable, and places where they can say, “I can live here, I can bring my children up here, and my grandchildren can still be here, because this is our home.”
We have been here in the Southwest Bronx for 20 years, and we have been a part of many many struggles on behalf of my neighbor's tenants, because I'm a renter, also in a rent-stabilized building. Some of the things that we have managed to accomplish for all of us, [is] having lawyers in housing court when we get there, for the right to counsel.
We were able to push back against a rezoning of Jerome Avenue, the block in which I live, because the landlords were asking for my children, my right arm, my wife's left arm, my grandchildren, and we had nowhere to go if they were to have their way.
[We] reorganized CASA and our coalition partners, [so we] were able to get enough so that we can stay here, and today I can say, if I live another 20 years, 25 years, I'm still going to be in Jerome Avenue in the Southwest Bronx, because this is now my permanent home. This is the work that we do at CASA.
But CASA is just a project with New Settlement, which is a neighborhood community organization, and a community developer. And apart from the homes that they are providing, very affordable for Bronx sites, they provide things for our grandparents. So, you could go to 1501 Jerome Avenue, and have grandma and grandpa learn to swim, and get their exercises, and stay stronger, and live healthier, because New Settlement is providing that resource and that service to them.
New Settlement has services for our high schoolers, and we will prepare them to get to colleges, because too long have our children not been able to get proper access to the colleges and universities, which would bring them to be very productive adults after they finish with school. But I'm not going to be talking about New Settlement and CASA much longer. We're going to be speaking about what we're hoping for from this new administration.
But before I do that, I want to do something kind of personal, and I hope you don't take it too badly. I am a fan and a believer of our mayor's parents. And I'll tell you why. I grew up in the 1960s, that's when my teeth began to grow. I began to feel as if I'm somebody, I'm not a baby anymore. My parents were part of the anti-colonial struggles in the Caribbean, and I have relatives on the other islands who were also fighting for independence against colonialism from Britain and France.
The mayor's parents teach us what we didn't know, and what we forget here at the university level. Who is not teaching at a podium like I am speaking to you now? I'm doing it with cameras and other media so that we do not forget where we came from, what we accomplished, and what we can accomplish going forward.
So, I want to say that with that kind of pedigree, I have very high hopes for our mayor. No pressure. CASA and our colleagues and our coalition partners, two of which are here. We are going to hold our new mayor's feet to the fire, because for too long have we not enjoyed our homes.
He has come with a promise that we have been waiting for from our city leaders for a long long time. We are not going to let him get away with empty promises. We are going to be fighting for him, and if he does not show up, we are going to be fighting against him. Because we want to live in dignity, and we want people to learn that when they make promises to tenants, they [have] to keep them. If you don't keep them, you are going to face the consequences. Housing is a human right.
One of the many campaigns that we have waged and won to some extent, is the right for tenants to begin to live in dignity in their homes. But the landlords have been and still are trying to find new ways, most of them illegal, to displace tenants. And one of the methods they have been using is to impose financial hardship on tenants through the use of non-rent fees and charges that can double a tenant's rent.
CASA, with one of our legal services partners, the Urban Justice Center Community Development Project, published a report not too long ago titled, “The Burden of Fees, How Affordable Housing is Made Unaffordable.” And in it, we highlighted the prevalence of this strategy by landlords.
Here are some of the data and some of the fees and charges that we found on tenants' rent bills. Damage fees, because when I want to clean under my bed, and I want to clean under my couch, and I want to clean behind my dressers, I have to pull them away. When they scratch the floors, the landlord says I damaged the floors, and I get billed for damages to his building. And that becomes a permanent part of my rent.
Air conditioner fees, the landlord does not provide coolers in the summer the way they are supposed to be providing heat in the winter. And when I got it, I got to pay him, even though I'm paying my own electrical bills. So, I have to pay air conditioner fees, legal fees. He takes me to court with a lot of favorless charges, and supposedly, if he wins, I'm supposed to be paying him his legal fees.
So here are the fees. Damage fees, air conditioning fees, legal fees, washing machine fees, major capital improvement fees, individual apartment improvement fees, miscellaneous fees. They don't even have anything to charge us with, so they say miscellaneous fees.
Keys fees, when our children misplace their keys, we [have] to pay to get them replaced. Painting fees, even though they're supposed to paint their apartments every three years, when they do, they bill me for it.
An example of one rent bill that I'm going to use, and then I'm going to round it up. The tenant's rent was $1,002.35. Air conditioning fees, $71.04. Washing machine fees, $201.21. Miscellaneous fees, $291.92. Legal fees, $1,056.58. The fees were more than the rent itself. And that tenant's bill was for over $2,623.10. From $1,002 to $2,600 plus in fees that they should not be paying.
So, we welcome the new administration's commitment to bring this burden of fees issues to the forefront and to change the horrible conditions that tenants are forced to live in. We also are happy that he says he's going to be enforcing the laws that are already in place to hold landlords accountable for the violations of all the housing laws and building codes that they have been violating for so long.
We and our coalition partners are looking forward to working with this new administration, something we weren't able to do in the last one. And we want to make radical changes so that we can live comfortably and with dignity. We do this because housing is a human right, as you have been hearing us shouting. And we as tenants really deserve to live with dignity in our homes and communities. So, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Keep our seats at the table warm because we are on our way.
Question: So, can you tell us about these hearings? Is it the purpose to publicly shame landlords? Could there be repercussions and fines afterwards?
Mayor Mamdani: These are hearings that will give New Yorkers an opportunity to testify in person as to the struggles that they have had to deal with, oftentimes in isolation. And what we want is a first-of-its-kind cross-agency effort such that tenants are not only able to testify as to the ways in which they are being ripped off, but also that this be used as an opportunity to craft policy recommendations that we will then implement and deliver across the city.
Question: And have you spoken to Trump again about Maduro or what's happening in Venezuela?
Mayor Mamdani: No, the conversation that we had was the one before yesterday's press conference.
Question: On the issue of being briefed, you said it was your staff that briefed you, just to be correct, you don't have federal security clearance yet, and has anyone from a federal agency reached out to you or members of your team to begin the vetting to get federal security clearance?
Mayor Mamdani: That briefing, yes, was conducted by my team. And the question of federal security clearance is one that's ongoing.
Question: So, do you have it right now?
Mayor Mamdani: No, not as of yet.
Question: Your predecessor recently vetoed several housing-related bills passed by the City Council that would add more requirements for city-funded developments. Those are the ones that would impose a higher percentage of family units and then make more units available for low-income New Yorkers.
The Adams Administration’s big argument against them has been that they would worsen the affordable housing crisis, by adding low [inaudible] and stuff like that. What's your position on the bills, and do you think the City Council should override the vetoes?
Mayor Mamdani: I have made clear my concerns around the term sheet legislation. Those are concerns that I've shared prior and shared in public. And what it comes back to is also what drives today's announcement and the excitement around it. Is that we have an opportunity in front of us to not only deliver on the promises that we have made over the course of this campaign, but also to tackle the housing crisis.
And in order to do so, we have to be able to build at scale across the five boroughs. And I'm so excited to have with me the commissioner of HPD, the head of DOB, the head of DCWP, my deputy mayor for Housing and Planning, elected officials, so many who will be a key part of delivering on this.
Question: I've got two quick questions. The first one is about Maduro. You called the invasion and the arrest, you said it was a violation of federal and international law. Do you plan to use any of the city's resources to interfere with the prosecution or anything like that?
Mayor Mamdani: This is a federal action on a federal timeline, and I owe it to New Yorkers to deliver for them across the five boroughs and also to be honest and straightforward about my own thoughts on this.
Question: And the second thing, real quick. The fare rises tomorrow, when are those free buses coming?
Mayor Mamdani: Look, when the fare was $2.90, one in five New Yorkers were being priced out of it. We know that for so many New Yorkers, public transit is increasingly becoming out of reach. That is why at the heart of our campaign was a commitment to make the slowest buses in America fast and to make them free.
And that will continue to animate our work. It will continue to be one of the central commitments of our administration. And that is work that we will be doing in tandem with Albany and our state partners there.
I have said when we ran this campaign, I'm freezing the rent for rent-stabilized tenants, I’m making buses fast and free, I'm delivering universal childcare. I have said that by the time I am done being mayor, those will have been delivered.
[Signs Executive Order.]