Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Appears on Inside City Hall

February 8, 2016

Errol Louis: Good evening. Welcome to a special edition of Inside City Hall for Monday, February 8th, 2016. I'm Errol Louis. Tonight my first and only guest is Mayor Bill de Blasio. We sat down in the Blue Room at City Hall this afternoon for an exclusive conversation about his State of the City address, the ongoing battle of the horse drawn carriages, the citywide efforts to fight homelessness, his thoughts on the presidential race, and much more. We began the interview discussing the events of last week, which included a major speech, the defeat of a controversial part of his agenda, and several tragic incidents.

Louis: Mr. Mayor, thank you for spending some time with us.

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Pleasure.

Louis: You had quite a day – or a couple of days just last week, and just on a personal level – and we can get into the specifics about crane safety and all of that stuff – but you had the horse carriage deal, which was sort of a political disappointment. Then you gave your State of the City speech, and then there was the tragic shooting of two officers while the speech was going on, and then the next morning when, perhaps, you actually thought it was all over the crane collapsed. This I suppose on some level you knew you had signed up for when you ran for Mayor, but it had to be one of your tougher days.

Mayor: Well I'll say a couple of things. First of all, thank god our officers are safe. To me – everything you summarized, the most important thing is we had two officers who were doing their jobs very bravely, and came very, very close to losing their lives, but thank God both are safe. And with the crane accident, we could have lost more people. When you see the video, it's very, very striking, and my heart goes out to the family of the good man we lost, but it could have been a lot worse. So look, I think that's the way to look at these things, in terms of what it means for human beings, what it means for our fellow New Yorkers.

From my point of view, yes, this is exactly what I signed up for. Anyone who understands New York City and understands the mayoralty knows there's not just going to be, you know, not just one crisis at a time, or one challenge at a time, they're all going to come together in all sorts of unpredictable ways. And I understand that that's my job. I understand that that's what I signed up for and I'm ready to deal with it. We had the snowstorm a few weeks before, it turned out to be this close to the largest snowstorm in City history. No one would have expected that, but expect the unexpected when you're Mayor of New York City.

Louis: In talking about what happens now after the crane collapsed, some have noted that while cranes are a spectacular example of building safety going awry, we also had 18 fatalities last year of people working at construction sites. Is there sort of a broad or overall attempt to sort of get our hands around that kind of situation?

Mayor: First, on the cranes I would say – in the previous administration there were a couple of very troubling accidents on sites that were monitored by the City and regulated by the City, and that led to some very important reforms. And I give the previous administration credit. You know, the last fatal accident we had involving a crane collapse on one of the City-monitored sites was 2008. So we went eight years, thank God, between having accidents.

Now, it seems to me that, you know, we can – with the reforms we're putting in place, really go farther to make sure with an abundance of caution that we're protecting people's lives. And we have task force that's going to look at the latest technology in cranes, the effects of this particular building boom – one of the biggest concentrations of building activity that we've had in a long, long time so, we want to get ahead of that. So, I think you're right to say there's another very important issue which is construction site safety in general. We've added a lot more inspectors at the Buildings Department. We're going to be very, very rigorous about making sure sites are safe. We'll have more to say on that in the coming days, on the details. But there's no question that we have some construction sites where the folks who stand to make money are not doing what they should be doing to protect their workers, and we're not going to tolerate it.

Louis: Do we or should we have sort of a death penalty at some point, so to speak, where repeat offenders are just barred from getting future permits?

Mayor: We should have very stringent standards and, again, we'll have more to say on that in the coming days, but I think there has to consequences anytime a site is not handled safely and workers are put in danger.

Louis: I wanted to talk about something you had announced during the State of the City speech that drew quite a lot of response from law enforcement which is the notion of some additional training that deals with something called implicit bias. And I'm – I don't know if it's the title that, sort of, struck people as something that they would be immediately opposed to because I imagine most people don't know what the training involves. But the title of it seems to rub them the wrong way. What's the idea here?

Mayor: Well, I don't know who those critics are. I can tell you when I announced the idea at the State of the City speech in the Bronx, actually a lot of people in the room applauded because I think they instantly understood what it meant. We're all human beings. We all are – have built in biases or we're acculturated to have biases. And to really do the best we can do as public servants, we have to overcome those biases, and this is training that helps each and every officer to understand where a bias might be affecting their particular judgement in a given situation. It's all part of the larger effort to draw police and community closer together; to deescalate various moments of conflict. This is so much of what Commissioner Bratton has focused on – more training, treating our police officers like the professionals they are, which means constant opportunities for training and advancement and betterment. But look, we want to keep our officers safe, we want to keep our community residents safe, we don't want to go through the kind of tragedies we've seen all over the country lately. Part of that is helping officers to think deeply about how to confront each situation and I think implicit bias training is an enlightened approach. It just helps people to be more aware. Look, we're going to have body cameras, we're going to have other tools as well to create maximum care and accountability. I think this is an important part of the equation.

Louis: Don't New Yorkers generally get it? I mean, there's eight million of us living on top of each other, right?

Mayor: Eight-and-a-half, Errol.

Louis: Eight-and-a-half million of us living on top of each other. Everybody gets it. There are lots of languages, lots of cultures, lots of religions, and that you've got to figure out a way to do it. When you call it implicit bias, it almost makes you start out as assuming that you're going to get it wrong, that something about your perception is off or is biased.

Mayor: No. No. I see it the other way around. It's acknowledging something we can overcome. Again, I don't know any one of us that doesn't grapple with the biases we grew up with or are all through our culture. And that's what the Black Lives Matter movement has been about and that's what's being talked about on my son's college campus, and campuses all over America – it's trying to help people figure out how to overcome the residue of centuries of bias. And all forms of discrimination, misunderstanding, they still pervade our culture to this day. So, I think it's acknowledging that that's been a human reality and, in fact, the fact that we can say out loud that the implicit bias exists and we're going to actually go right at it is very hopeful. It says there's an antidote. There's a way to overcome it. And look, I think our officers are doing an amazing job in terms of deepening the bond between police and community – our new neighborhood policing program that's really becoming deeper in its approach to communities. It's reaching farther and farther in communities. You see the number of complaints against police going down very substantially. Something's beginning to work. We want to keep that going. We want to really create a partnership between police and community. So, I think this is actually a sign of the next step in our evolution.

Louis: Okay, the other part of that very difficult day that we were talking about – the horse carriage deal. There was an agreement between the Council, one of the Teamsters local that deals with some of the drivers, and City Hall to try and figure out some way to deal with this. At some point, doesn't it make sense to, sort of, say if we don't have the parties in line, if the public, by a majority, has expressed in the polls says that they want things to say more or less the same as they are, and if the votes aren't there in the Council, at some point, isn't it time to sort of just move on?

Mayor: Well, I would contest your facts. The votes were there in the Council. I think what we saw was the Teamsters go back on an agreement at the very last moment, which obviously affected the timeline for the vote. But, you know, I was confident that we would have the votes. It's something I committed to in my election campaign, very clearly. And I said why. And I believe it's the right thing to do. So, everyone knows what I believe. I'm not going to change my beliefs. I'm going to stick to them.

Louis: Isn't the – when the Council hearing on the legislation, or the proposal came up, there were lots of questions that were just unanswered about who the concessionaires would be –

Mayor: There were some questions. Look, I am certain that that hearing could have been handled more effectively. And the next time I spoke to the media, which was the following Monday, I answered a lot of those questions point blank. So, there's no, in my mind, there's no question that we have the answers for how to make that kind of plan work. We'll continue conversations with the Council. We'll look for a path forward. But what I believe is what I believe. And I've been very consistent about it.

Louis: Would you agree, though, that there are at least some other stake holders other than the three that we just discussed? I mean there's the Conservancy, there are people who care about the park, there are the pedicab drivers, who seem to have made quite an appearance on the scene politically for the first time.

Mayor: Look, I've talked to a lot of people about the core notion that horses don't belong on the streets of Midtown Manhattan. I found a lot of people who agree with that. I found a lot who agree that the park is a good alternative. I obviously believed in a ban but compromise is something we engage in in a democracy and I think this is the right way forward. We have to work on the details but this broad concept's the right approach.

Louis: On the same day – I know it didn't or it only now shifts to your desk, but the Council pay raises which affect all of government but really the kind of leading edge of it was the Council voting itself a raise. What do you make of that? I mean we had the commission that went through a fairly involved process and came up with a solution. The Council, sort of, overrode, or in some ways disregarded, what the commission's findings were.

Mayor: Well, I would see it differently. The commission did an outstanding job – Fred Schwartz, Jill Bright, and Paul Quintero put a lot of time and energy. And they're all quite eminent people and they really looked at these issues and they looked at the context of our economy, what's happening to working people, the history of how government has handled these matters – they came back, I thought, with a very thoughtful report. The most important thing was reforms that had eluded this city for decades, making the Council, truly, a full time job – very, very strenuous limits on outside employment and income, ending the practice of favoritism for certain members via granting them stipends for committee chairmanships. I mean, this were ideas that we talked about back when – in 1989, in the big charter commission of 1989, that was the year I first got involved in the local politics in government, working for the David Dinkins campaign – it was a topic of that commission. It took until now to get those reforms in place. So, I give the Council a lot of credit. They made fundamental reforms. There's a difference of how to weigh the end of outside income and what value to give it. It wasn't a huge difference – you know, in the final analysis, the number wasn't, in my view, that different than what the commission had proposed. I think what the Council did was heavy on reform. I think it's a workable plan. I think it gives us a good way to move forward.

Louis: Which of the ways that have now been changed presented most of a problem to you when you were in the Council?

Mayor: When you say which of the ways?

Louis: Well, in other words, the restrictions on outside income was something that wanted a change. You mentioned yourself the lulus – the payments in lieu of salary for chair and committees and so forth. Was that a system that troubled you when you were in the Council?

Mayor: Yes. I would say it's something that I, at that time, doubted there would be change on, honestly. And that's why it's very gratifying to see this moment. There's been a process of reform over the last 10 or 20 years – you've seen changes in how member items are approached at the Federal and State level. You've seen, here in the city, now, finally, a breakthrough on outside income and on defining the roles as full-time, and on ending the practice of granting those special stipends. But I, at the time, would have said it would take quite a while to convince people to make those changes that's why I give the Council credit. They voluntarily gave up a lot of privileges as part of this plan and I think that's commendable.

Louis: You weren't, at the time, it wasn't a huge amount of money like some other the lawyers had made, but you were out consulting and doing other work on the side.

Mayor: For a brief period of time, I did, absolutely.

Louis: Would it have made a difference to you to be told, like, look you can't go out and plie your trade. You can't do the work –

Mayor: I think it would have been fair if it came with the kind of approach that we're talking about here – that it was a policy determined in advance, so anyone who ran knew what they were getting into – that you know exactly what your salary would be and that your salary was taking into account the fact that you would no longer have the option of most outside income. In my time, that wasn't the case and there were some individuals who made hundreds of thousands a year, for example, through a law practice, and that's one of the areas that most needed to be changed because of potential conflict or the semblance of conflict. That's why I think it's really important to recognize, for some people in the future certainly, it might have meant an opportunity for a lot of money that no longer is there. I think the Council did something really smart. They said we don't want to go near that anymore. We don't want that to be something that someone might even think about. We want this to be on clear package. If you decide to be a public servant, here's exactly what you get – nothing more, full-time job. This is how it should go. And I would have welcomed that back then and I think it's a great reform.

Louis: No concerns that you'll chase some people away who might otherwise consider it? You know, Peter Koo, who's currently a member, who owns a bunch of stores, and said look, this wouldn't be possible for me. You've got Paul Vallone and others who have said, I would like to serve the public but not at the expense of ending, you know, my career.

Mayor: I would say, first of all, there are some types of exempted income, for example, passive income if you own a property and someone rents from you. But no, that's why it was important to get to a decent salary figure. I think that what's been proposed is fair and it's certainly a good salary in the context of this city. There's no question it's a solid middle-class, upper-middle-class salary. So, I think it is fair. Look, public service is not for everyone. If you decide to be a public servant, I think, implicitly, you are saying you're going to make a lot less money than you might. It's an important and difficult choice but if we said we're going to pay public servants on the same scale as the private sector, given the responsibilities they have, we'd be talking about much, much bigger salaries and the public would not tolerate that. And I understand why and I think rightfully so. So, it's a choice. The commission report – the Quadrennial Commission – did a great job of getting to that point. Public service is a choice and you are accepting limitations. You're accepting all sorts of rules that average citizens doesn't have. You're accepting less income than you might be able to get in another endeavor. But it's a noble choice. Now the ground rules, finally, will be absolutely clear and consistent for anyone who thinks about running for City Council in 2017 and beyond.

Louis: We're going to take a short break now. Straight ahead, we'll bring you more of my exclusive interview with the mayor including his thoughts on a spate of violent incidents in the subway.

[…]

Louis: We're back at City Hall where we've been bringing you my exclusive sit down interview with Mayor de Blasio. In part two of our conversation we begin my discussing the recent concern over violent crimes in the subways.

Louis: Mr. Mayor, there's been a lot of concern about slashing and other crimes not just in the subway, but even just out on the street. One proposal has been that the city get more serious about involuntary commitments of people who are dangerously mentally ill. What is your take on that in the context of the new approach to mental health that you're talking about?

Mayor: A couple of different points – first of all, there has been a focal point around the subway. I want to just reassure my fellow New Yorkers, the NYPD has really reinforced the subways in the last week or two in addition to the officers we normally have there, both in uniform and undercover. A big commitment of our Strategic Response Group – so, a lot of additional officers to get ahead of the situation. But let's be clear – and Commissioner Bratton and Chief O'Neill have said this very, very squarely – there has not been a pattern here, these have been isolated incidents. And the bottom line about our subways is – almost 6 million riders per day, and six or seven crimes per day – most of them property crimes – electronics being stolen, etcetera. So, the subways are very safe – one in a million chance, almost, of being a victim of crime. On the larger question of mental health, I believe that there's been a really broken policy on many, many levels. Deinstitutionalization occurred in the 1970s – folks with serious mental health problems were left to fend for themselves. They ended up, in too many cases, on our streets – end up in Rikers Island. We depended on our shelter system and our jails to be a de facto mental health system. It doesn't work, it's not fair, and it was unfair to the people involved, it was unfair to the people of this city. We have been slowly trying to make a series – and when I saw slowly, I mean this is very sensitive, difficult stuff – slowly, but surely, making a series of changes, and one of them is to address the fact that there are some people with mental health challenges who also have had a history of violence. Before I took office, what was happening was many people with that combination – a mental health problem and a history of violence – went untreated. If they were not incarcerated, they theoretically might have been assigned to a treatment program, but here was no follow-up – there was literally that disciplined or policed that situation. We created something we called a hub that literally tracks each and every person that we identify between NYPD and Department of Health who has that combination – a clear and defined mental health history that requires treatment, and a history of documented violence. And now, there's a whole rigorous level of follow-up on each and every one of those cases. That's a different question than whether you can commit anyone who perpetrates an act of violence. There are still very clear rules, and there's constitutional guarantees in effect whereby a medical professional is the only person who can say that someone must be in a confined mental health institution. We've improved the ability to get that kind of determination up or down from a medical professional, and we're following through in a much more vigorous way than in the past. But this will take a period of time to literally identify each and every person who should be treated this way, and follow up on them. And then, bluntly, we have some people out there with mental health problems who have never been violent, and the first time they are violent is the first time we learn that they have any propensity to do so. But we're putting a lot of resources into mental health in general. I think this is a very important point, Errol – what my wife has been working on with ThriveNYC. Chirlane's vision has been that we have to entirely reconfigure our approach to mental health – that actually the way to get ahead of this is to reach people much earlier in life. So, a lot of the work we're doing in mental health is focused on our schools, particularly through the community schools effort. A lot of it is focused on getting people help the first time there's an indication of a problem. So, one of the elements of Chirlane's plan is NYC Support. It's not just a hotline – you call it for yourself or a loved one and you get connected to mental health services, and they stay involved with you to make sure you are continuing getting the help and getting navigation. 

Louis: What I hear around the edges of some of the discussion by Chirlane, is that there's a need for sort of a destigmatization of a lot of these questions because it's not so much the people who need the help that you have to get to in the first instance, but their support system – the family members and others who need to either report or learn more about the course of the illness and what they can do to help, right?

Mayor: That's exactly right. Some folks we see who end up on the street, certainly folks we see end up in Rikers – this could have been stopped years and years earlier – this is Chirlane's point. First of all, if someone has a mental health problem, why is that any different than a physical health problem, you know? She has a thing she says – it's very straightforward – if you had a broken leg, no one's going to think ill of you, no one's going to question that you need to go to a doctor or an emergency room, but if you have a mental health problem – just as organic, just as natural – somehow, it suddenly becomes impossible for a lot of people to talk about it, acknowledge it, talk about the next steps. We learned with our daughter Chiara, we – the minute we understood some of the challenges she was facing, we felt only love and embrace for her, but we also learned how hard it was to figure out the next steps because people don't talk about it, the information's not readily available. And we had a lot of advantages, but we still had to struggle to find where she could get the treatment she needed. We want to de-stigmatize, de-mystify, make the information very readily available. So then, someone's who's starting to have a problem, particularly if it's a young person – get them help early so they don't spiral downward into the situation that leads people, for example, to our streets, who then, in some cases, perpetrate the violence that's so upsetting to all of us. Let's actually go to the root of the problem, and that's what ThriveNYC is all about.

Louis: Okay. Tonight, you are doing the annual – or, the winter version of the annual count of the homeless. And the methodology always seemed a little strange to me – that you're sort of fanning out and trying to get a snapshot on one given night, but my understanding is that it's actually sort of required as a condition of getting some federal funding. What can you take away – other than satisfying the Feds – what do you hope to take away from it that will actually help with the issues of homelessness in New York?

Mayor: I think the HOPE Count – which it's called – always gives some insight. It always gives us a snapshot that can be helpful in seeing how we're doing year-to-year and how we're doing in terms of comparisons to other cities, but you're absolutely right – it's not the optimal approach. What we now are going to have with HOME-STAT is daily – New York City officials out in the streets, talking to the 3,000 to 4,000 New Yorkers who are on the streets as permanent homeless. And we believe that a whole new approach is needed. One, we believe we should be able to know literally each and every person, and where they are, and what they need to no longer be homeless. Everyone had a path to the streets, we want figure out their path back from the streets to a better and more normal life. So, literally, we want to know every name, their history, their needs, what is the sticking point? Is it mental health services? Is it substance abuse? Is it some benefits they had coming to them that they literally couldn't navigate, because we know people like that – who, if they got the benefits that they – veterans benefits or other benefits – they would be in a very different situation. Second, is to understand that if we're daily connecting with people, we're going to be able to have a count on a regular basis thats much more accurate than a single snapshot once a year – and a snapshot that's really a sample. The HOPE Count is not – it's a very good faith effort, but you can't go all around the city to find each and every person. We literally, through HOME-STAT, intend to find each and every person on a regular basis, and then give you and the people of this city a sense of what those real numbers are.

Louis: Will that include sort of some of the politically sensitive categories, like whether or not the people are citizens, whether or not they're New Yorkers, whether they got here in the last, you know, year or two years? Because we have an extensive sort of bureaucracy that's set up for them, but we don't really know very much about them, right?

Mayor: I think that information would be helpful to both glean more specifically, and to make public, absolutely. Now, I can tell you from years of working on this issue – the vast, vast majority of people being served are New Yorkers, and, more and more, there are people who economically have found life untenable. There are people who 10 years ago would never have imagined being homeless, who have been working, who have been doing everything that they should be doing, but have seen the cost of housing skyrocket. Even as we dealt with the backdrop of the Great Recession, the cost of housing in this town kept going up, and they've seen wages and benefits stagnate. So, what we see more and more is families going to shelter – working families. People literally – as I said in the State of the City – they leave shelter, they go to work, and they shelter at night. That wasn't as true a decade ago. So, we're going to look at all of the dynamics and who makes up the population of folks that we need to serve, but, I'll tell you this much, overwhelmingly – New Yorkers, more and more families, and more and more homeless for economic reasons, not because of mental health or substance abuse. 

Louis: Is one of the possible solutions sort of reviving the whole notion of single-room occupancy dwellings? I mean, I know they don't necessarily get built, and a lot of them actually sort of get converted, but the days when you could, you know, get a room for, you know, $50 or $75 bucks a week – I mean, you've got a hotplate and a bathroom at the end of the hall – that, for some very low income people, was what we needed. That almost doesn't exist anymore. 

Mayor: It doesn't for – partially because of what's happened with housing in this town because of so many buildings that might have gone to a use like that, that now have been converted to a private use. But it's also the standards we hold – I don't want people in SROs, I want people in good, decent housing. We've gotten 22,000 people out of shelter and into quality permanent housing over the last two years. We ended chronic veteran's homelessness, following President's Obama's vision. We've shown that we can do some really big things – 91,000 folks we helped stop from ending up in homelessness; 15,000 supportive apartments that we'll be creating. The answer is – whenever possible, permanent affordable housing, whether supportive or general affordable housing – because [inaudible] – I say a lot of the folks in shelter right now don't actually need supportive housing, they just need affordable housing. So, our plan for 200,000 apartments is going to make a big difference for a lot of them. I think where we are today is just that we have to relentlessly create affordable housing and we have to stop people from becoming homeless to begin with – that's anti-eviction legal services, which we're doing on a much greater level than ever before, and that's rental subsidies to help a family that's struggling get it together long enough that they can strengthen themselves rather than falling out of a decent apartment and into shelter.

Louis: We'll talk some more about housing in part three of our interview when I ask the mayor about the City Council hearings on his rezoning plan. You'll also hear the mayor's thoughts on tomorrow's New Hampshire presidential primary. We'll be back in a minute.

[…]

Louis: We are back in City Hall with more of my exclusive sit down interview with Mayor de Blasio. In part three of our conversation I begin by asking the mayor about his ambitious and controversial rezoning plans, which will be heard in the City Council later this week.

Louis: Well, that brings us to mandatory inclusionary housing in the Z-Q-A – the Zoning for Quality and Affordability- it's going before the City Council, it's been talked about for quite a while and there's been quite a lot of discussion. And, the phrase that keeps coming up is, the administration is trying to do a one size fits all solution.  And, some of that I think is understandable as far as scale and the ambition and the pace –

Mayor: It's called – it's called policy.

[Laughter]   

Louis: Well the pace at which you are trying to operate, but what people are also, though saying is that- what will work in the mid-Bronx is not necessarily going to work in East New York.

Mayor: But I don't understand that interpretation. Mandatory inclusionary zoning says that we are going to demand more of developers than we ever have before. That they are going to have to provide affordable housing, a certain set of criteria and circumstances where they simply must provide affordable housing or they won't be able to build. That seems to me fair and certainly what the people of this city want. The zoning for Z-Q-A, Zoning for Quality and Affordability – is about maximizing our ability to create affordable housing where we couldn't before. There are particular parcels of land and particular requirements that stopped us from creating affordable housing, particularly for our seniors. Part of why AARP is one of the strongest backers of these two initiatives, is they want to see more and more affordable housing for seniors. And, you – being a student of government – know that the federal government used to do this.

Mayor: And you, being a student of government, know that the federal government used to do this. They used to have a very robust senior affordable housing program, no more. The City of New York has to pick up that slack and has to make something happen for us.

Louis: HUD 202 doesn't exist anymore?

Mayor: On a very limited scale.

Louis: Uh huh.

Mayor: So, it used to be an really program, but now it's very, very limited. So – although I admire your wonky knowledge – but we have to do something different. And we have the intense support of AARP because these two initiatives – the MIH and the ZQA – actually are going to allow us to create more affordable housing for seniors faster. That's the name of the game. So, that's not one size fits all. That's tools we can use to maximize in each situation. But we're always going to be working with communities and with the elected officials. And we're going to be working with the Council. The Council has asked for some changes, we're going to be very receptive to see if we can find a good balance. And if history is any indicator, we do find that typically.

Louis: So, what do you say in a place like say East Harlem – I know just because I hear from them very often – if the formula that's going to bring affordable housing, and let's say its at what you or I would consider a very reasonable level – you know, $40,000 a year, $50,000 a year a family will be able to live there;. If that is higher than the average income in that area people raise a [inaudible] and they say its gentrification, it's not for us.

Mayor: I understand why people do because there's such frustration about how many people have been displaced by gentrification, because I think the previous administration did not follow through on some of the agreements around affordable housing, you know, because we didn't see a policy response to the bigger problem of gentrification over the last 20 years. In my previous State of the City, I said we were going to go right at this issue head on. The gentrification is a double-edged sword, but the part of it that is not working for neighborhood people needs a policy response. That is the largest affordable housing plan of any city in the history of the country. It's much more legal services to help avoid illegal harassment and eviction. These tools are, to me, the right kind of tools to address what has become a growing problem. But what has been missing in this discussion is the approach we take says, one, we're going to – most of the affordable housing plan is preserving in place affordable units, not letting them slip out of affordability into the private market. In many cases the exact same families being confirmed and guaranteed that they'll have affordable housing for decades to come. That's clearly a net gain for people who live in the neighborhood right now. Second, when we're building new affordable housing we're literally building something that doesn't exist, and there's a preference, obviously, first and foremost, for folks who live in the community board. That's clearly a net gain. Take a plot of land where there is no housing, create housing and guarantee affordability within it. That's good for everyone. So, then the argument is, well. If you do a rezoning, for example, is that going to somehow increase property values etcetera. I say go to Bushwick, go to Bed-Stuy – I don't remember that rezoning, it didn't happen. The property values went up, the development came, people were swept away and nothing balanced it. It was no compensation policy from the city to actually create fairness and balance and help people stay in the neighborhood. Development is going to happen. We are more popular as a place – right – we had 220,000 more jobs created in the last two years, and I'm very proud of that, the most in any two-year period in our history. Our property values have gone through the roof. People want to be here from all over the world, we're going to be at nine million people soon. Those are good things. The problem is we have to protect what neighborhood people deserve, which is the right to be in their own neighborhood. The answer is a very aggressive affordable housing plan. And that's what we have.

Louis: Okay. In our last minute, it is primary time in New Hampshire. You didn't make it there as you did to Iowa. Although I suppose you can maybe take credit for the two-tenths of a percent by which Hillary Clinton won.

Mayor: I don't take credit, but I'm very proud to say my team and I knocked – and Chirlane – we knocked on over 2,500 doors and hopefully that helped.

Louis: Wow. Do you have any plans to hit the trail anytime soon.

Mayor: I've said, you know, whatever the campaign wants. I'm happy to do whatever they need, and we'll follow their lead.

Louis: What's your take on why it's so close with Bernie Sanders the progressive sort of [inaudible] only two points behind her in the national polls?

Mayor: I think Hillary Clinton, the progressive, and Bernie Sanders, the progressive – and by the way, before Martin O'Malley was too. We're all talking about income inequality and how to restore the middle class, and how to tax the wealthy more, and raise wages and benefits. I think this actually an amazing moment for the Democratic Party. We're talking about what matters. The Republican Party is quite in a different place, and very negative and divisive. The first two states, everyone knows, have their own very particular character. This race is now going to open up to more and bigger and different states, and then Super Tuesday – I think Hillary Clinton is going to do very, very well.

Louis: Okay. We'll leave it there for now. Thanks a whole lot.

Mayor: Thank you.

Louis: Thanks for spending some time with us.