Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Hosts Town Hall Meeting with Brooklyn Residents to Discuss Affordable Housing

March 14, 2016

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Merci beaucoup.

[Laughter]

I have been a friend of Mathieu Eugene for many years, but I must admit he has not addressed you this evening in either Urdu or Yiddish. I thought you could do it all – I just thought you were going to complete the set. It is a joy to be with you all this evening, and I always find these events are an affirmation of democracy. They remind us, people care deeply about their community and they’re willing to do something about it. So every single one of you hear tonight, I thank you because I know you’re here because of your deep concern.

I want to say a few things up front, and then I want to take questions, comments, and get into a real dialogue.  And I want to focus on affordable housing but we have lots of Commissioners here, who I will introduce in a moment, who are here to handle any issue you may bring up.

First of all, Mathieu is right – we go back a long way together. And when I first met him, what was unmistakable was that he felt something that was personal, some sense of responsibility, which was much deeper than what I’d normally found in leaders in terms of his commitment to young people. He felt he had a responsibility to help young people move forward and to be a role model and to teach. It was not just words, it was obviously a calling for him. That has informed his work in the City Council. I’ve been honored to support him every step of the way in his career, and I think if – and I think he’s done many good things, and he’s been a friend many times along the way. We’ve worked together in partnership. But if there’s one thing you can say about a public servant, it should be that their heart actually was with the young people and Mathieu’s is. Let’s thank him for that.

[Applause]

I thank my elected colleagues. I thank Councilmember David Greenfield, who plays such an important as the chair of the Land Use Committee. It’s been a very busy few weeks, but we’ve gotten to a great place, and thank you for your leadership helping us create all that affordable housing.

[Applause]

And it’s not easy representing us in Albany. Albany is not a fun place, but Assemblymember Rodneyse Bichotte, you go to bat for us every time. You’re doing great work in Albany, I want to thank you, and particularly for standing up for minority and woman owned businesses and leading the way on that issue we thank you.

[Applause]

And I will be talking a lot in the coming weeks about legislation that Rodneyse is sponsoring in Albany to help the City of New York to provide a lot more contracts to women and minority owned businesses, so let’s make sure we all support her in that good work.

[Applause]

Principal Sharon Porter, thank you for all the good work here at P.S. 6

[Applause]

And here every child is told – if they choose, they have the opportunity to go to college, and that’s the goal. Every child – every child who wants to take that path is empowered to take that path, and that is such important for thank. Thank you for all you do.

Now, we have a phrase that some of us in political life here like to use. We say we remember who we came to the dance with. It’s a good thing to remember in romantic life too – remember who you came to the dance with. So I came to the dance with Yuna Clark and I want to thank her for all she has done along the pier. And the wonderful Leslie Clark – thank you for all you do. And we don’t have the honor of having the Congresswoman with us evening, I know she’s serving us in Washington – talk about Albany being a tough place, Washington’s a really tough place – but we thank Yvette Clark for her service. And Yuna, thank you for your service to the city now as my representative from Brooklyn on the CUNY board. Thank you very, very much for all you’re doing.

Now, this is a part of each town hall meeting that I especially enjoy, when I’m about to introduce these wonderful leaders of the administration. These are hard working Committee public servants, I’ve been in public life a long time. You are not going to find a harder working group than this. So much so – that at the conclusion of this town hall meeting, they will gratefully stay and long as you want them to talk about your individual issues. They love nothing more than talking about whatever issue you want to bring to them. They have nothing to do this evening – they’ll be here all night.

[Laughter]

Unknown: [inaudible]

Mayor: Please do. I would enjoy it if you would.

I’m going to introduce them all. You can clap for all of them at once as we go through. These are really people who do so much for us, and by the way the combined here in this few rows are the people who make New York City work, and if you have a problem they really are the right people to talk to because they do amazing things for this city.

Here we go –

The Sanitation Commissioner of NYC, Kathryn Garcia; the Commissioner of Finance Jacques Jiha; the General Manager of the New York City Housing Authority Michael Kelly; Commissioner for the Aging Donna Corrado; our Health Commissioner Dr. Mary Barrett; Commissioner –  who grew up just a few blocks from here – our Commissioner for Small Business Services, Gregg Bishop; the woman who has to create all that affordable housing, HPD Commissioner Vicki Been; Commissioner for the Human Resources Administration, Steve Banks; from the Department of Consumer Affairs, Acting Commissioner Alba Pico and Deputy Commissioner Amit Bagga; the president of the School Construction Authority Lorraine Grillo; the Brooklyn Borough Commissioner for Buildings, Department of Buildings, Ira Gluckman; Chief Development Officer at the Economic Development Corporation Carolee Fink; Deputy Chancellor for Department of Education Dorita Gibson; Brooklyn Borough Commissioner Department of Transportation Keith Bray; Assistant Commissioner for the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs Bitta Mostofi.

Now, from the NYPD the Patrol Brooklyn Borough South Executive officer, Deputy Chief Eric Rodriguez; from the 6-7 precinct Commanding Officer, Joseph Gulotta; 7-1 precinct Command off captain David Wahl; and I’m pleased this evening to make a new introduction to many of you. For all of you who live in the 7-0 precinct – raise your hand if you’re in the 7-0 precinct – it’s my pleasure to introduce to you your new Commanding Officer Captain James Palumbo, please stand up. Captain Palumbo wants to meet everyone from the 7-0 precinct. He has nowhere else to go tonight, so just come up and say hi after.

[Laughter]

And the Executive Officer for the 7-0 precinct captain James King. Borough Commissioner for Department of Parks Kevin Jeffrey; from the City Commission on Human Right, Deputy Commissioner for Law Enforcement Hollis Fitch; Deputy Commissioner for Community relations Pascal Bernard; from City Planning the Brooklyn Director Winston von Engel; from Department of Environmental Protection, Community Affairs Director, Ibrahim Abdul-Matin. Basically the entire government of New York City is in P.S. 6 this evening.

Anything happening anywhere else in the city this evening, they’re not paying attention. Everything is being paid attention to in Flatbush tonight.

We’re going to do this quick – quick statistics you should know, quick things you should know. I’m going to talk for a few minutes about things other than affordable, a few minutes on affordable housing, and then we’re opening up.

So to do everything in this city we have to be safe, and we said we could be more safe and more fair at the same time. Over the last two years, crime is down in New York City, major crime categories down 5.8 percent. This is a safer city, and let’s thank the men of the NYPD who are here – the men and women who are in the room from the NYPD, thank them all.

[Applause]

We will have 2,000 more cops on the beat by the end of the year – 2,000 additional cops on the beat by the end of this year. And I want to thank the City Council for their key initiative to make that happen. We have a 500 plus off Critical Response Command, the most sophisticated best-trained, best-armed counter terror force that any police department in the nation has to stop terror attacks here in New York City, to prevent them from ever coming here.

[Applause]

And I said safer and fairer, all those things are happening, all those improvement, all that progress against a backdrop where stop-and-frisk is down 93 percent. So we are safer and fairer at the same time. In the 6-7, 7-0, and 7-1, they’ve done extraordinary things reducing crime – and now, this is very exciting. Commissioner Bratton and Chief O’Neill have a vision for neighborhood policing, something that has been talked about but never really achieved in this city. True neighborhood policing, where officers actually get to know community leaders and community members, and the community gets to know the officers, and they work in common cause and they share information and they share a vision for how to make the community safer. This is now being played out with a new initiative, the neighborhood coordination officers – this is a whole new approach to organizing each precinct. This has been in effect in the 6-7 precinct since October, this new initiative the NCO initiative is coming to the 7-0 precinct next month, April, to the 7-1 precinct in June. And let me tell you, this idea going to revolutionize policing, this is going to be one of the things we should’ve done a long time ago and we’re going to get it right this time to really draw police and community together.

We know there are very tough issues in every community and we know some community have particular challenges that have been persistent. I’ll give you one example – unlicensed social clubs. It’s a real concern for a lot of people. It’s a thorny problem. It’s not an easy one. But if community and police work ever more closely, share more information, work constantly that kind of problem can be beaten – it can be overcome. And that’s what we intend to do.

We know at the same time, you need safety for everything else. But for our society to work, for our families to work, you need jobs. You know what’s happened in this city in the last two years is absolutely astounding – the last two years, 250,000 more jobs in New York City in just two years – 250,000 more jobs. That is the most jobs that have been created in this city in a two year period in our entire history – that is the all-time fastest amount of job growth in just two years, we’ve ever had.

Well you might say – wait a minute, are all those jobs in Manhattan. I’ve said from the beginning, that we needed a five borough economy. We’re a five borough city. Most of us live in the outer boroughs, we need a five borough economy, and we need opportunity for all. Listen to this – of all the five boroughs over the last two years, in Brooklyn jobs have grown 7.7 percent the highest of any borough. The most job growth has happened in Brooklyn, and we’re proud of that.

So these are the kinds of big things we have to do to change the lives of people all over the city. And we need affordable housing. I promised you this would be the main point. I have a couple other quick public service announcements I’ll make before I open up, but here’s my simple point. You heard a lot from Mathieu and David, so I’ll just wrap it together very nicely.

Once upon a time in this city, there was affordable housing. Once upon a time, it got created naturally by the free market, and then we all saw the prices go through the roof. And we saw the city get less and less affordable. And we saw it harder and harder for working people to make ends meet in this city. A city that had been historically for every kind of person, started to feel more exclusive, started to feel harder to live in, and New York City was always meant to be a place for every kind of person. That is our strength, that is our magic –  that is our secret formula that we’re a place for everyone.

When we started to lose that affordable housing, something started to change in us, and we couldn’t go about things the same old way. We couldn’t simply let the developers decide our fate. We couldn’t let the private real estate industry be the only player on the playing field. It was time for the government to stand up on behalf of the people. It was time for some new rules. It was time for us to say – that we must require affordable housing. Wherever there’s new major development in this city, we must require affordable housing. David went over it very powerfully.

The old rules are outdated. The new reality is that if we’re not requiring new developers to create affordable housing, we won’t be the same city anymore. I want to thank the City Council members who have been working so hard with us. They have a big vote next week, and I’ve been saying – and I believe it – people will look back at this month of March 2016 and recognize it as a watershed moment for this city. That this was the month in which we started to turn the tide, and save an affordable city and keep this a city for everyone because we made a new law, we made a new rule that said – from now on, affordable housing is literally – literally a pre-requisite, a condition – we’re saying to developers, if you want the right to build something new, if you get a rezoning, you cannot build anything unless it includes affordable housing. It’s as simple as that.

And we also recognize that there’s many, many people who need affordable housing. There’s people who are working who need affordable housing, there are people who are retired who need affordable housing, there are people who have very low income need affordable housing, and there are people who have middle incomes who need affordable housing. It cuts across the gamut. But I can say from my heart – you know who needs it the most? Our seniors. Our seniors, so many of whom are on fixed incomes.

I want you to dwell on that phrase – fixed incomes. Because the price of housing keeps going up and up and up, but the incomes are fixed, they’re not moving. And the number of seniors is growing – it’s a beautiful thing, it’s a blessing people are living longer. Families are having that blessing, but it doesn’t help you to live longer if you can’t afford a place to live. So we need more affordable housing for seniors and the legislation we have in, that the City Council will vote on is going to unlock a lot of parts of this city that previously we couldn’t build senior housing on we will now be able to. And it’s urgent – everything with affordable housing is urgent I bet everyone in this room is either struggling or knows some who is struggling to pay the rent, right?

Right. This is not hard for anyone to understand because it’s happening all over the city. If that’s what’s happening to all of us, we need to do something different. And that’s why we are insisting that affordable housing creation be mandatory, and that we need a lot more senior affordable housing. That’s what I’m asking people to support. And Mathieu has been a good friend, he’s listened carefully to my arguments, and I’ve listened very carefully to the concerns he’s raised, and he’s brought forward many concerns on behalf of the community.

I believe the final product that the Council will vote on will reflect a lot of things community members have raised. I think it’s going to be a fair compromise. But most importantly it’s going to allow us to finally create the affordable housing we need.

I want to say one other thing about affordable housing. This plan – David talked about it, Mathieu talked about it – the plan I have is enough for half a million people. Affordable housing for half a million people whether its keeping them in the apartment they’re in right now and providing the support so they can stay there and have long term affordability, or whether its building new affordable housing. This plan over the course of the next eight years will reach half a million New Yorkers – but it’s not enough, so we have to do three other things.

One, we have to protect the 400,000 New Yorkers who live in public housing in this city, and that begins with a very clear message – over my dead body will we ever privatize our NYCHA buildings. We will protect them.

[Applause]

We will protect them, we will invest in them, we will strengthen NYCHA. We will put it on a firm footing. 400,000 people will have their affordable housing protected in the process – 500,000 in the new plan, 400,000 in NYCHA – what else?

There’s a million rent stabilized apartments and over two million people live in them. Well, it used to be that every year came around, and landlords would ask for a rent increase, and the rent increase would happen whether it was fully justified or not. Until we named a new rent guidelines board and said go ahead and look at the actual facts. Remember how in the past few years the price of oil has gone down? The price of gas has gone down? Well we looked at the actual facts, and it turned out that landlords expenses hadn’t gone up, so for the first time in history we said, if their expenses haven’t gone up then we are going to implement a rent freeze – a zero increase in rents for rent stabilized apartments.

[Applause] 

So that reached over two million people. Finally, all over this city we have seen people who have been forced out of their apartments illegally – illegally. People were told – and by the way, I’m going to say from the beginning, most landlords are law abiding, most landlords do what they’re supposed to. There are some who are unscrupulous. The ones who are unscrupulous have told people they have to leave even though they didn’t have to leave, have told people that the rent was this level up here, when in fact it was supposed to be down here – have forced people out illegally, have harassed tenants, have not given them heat, hot water. That’s not legal. It’s not legal to force someone out of an apartment if they have a proper lease. So, we realized that this had to stop, and the way it had to stop was to give everybody who needed a lawyer to protect them, a lawyer for free – for free. So, now it’s simple as this. Under my plan, we have by ten times increased the amount of money for legal aid and legal services – over $60 million – so anyone who is faced with illegal eviction or harassment by a landlord can pick up a phone, dial 3-1-1, and have access to a lawyer for free to defend their rights.  

[Applause]  

And I need everyone in this room to spread that word because if you know of anybody who feels they’re being harassed or being forced out, they need to know they can call 3-1-1, and get a lawyer.   

So, that is the larger vision for affordable housing, and we think it can make a huge difference with your help.  

Finally, I’m going to tell you that there’s some things you should know – it’s very quick. You should know whether we like it or not tax time is coming up, but a lot of people have a right to the Earned Income Tax Credit, which means you get money back. If you make $62,000 a year or less, you have a right to free tax preparation help from the City of New York – and you can dial 3-1-1. If you qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit, you could end up getting thousands of dollars back on your taxes. So, if you either need help with tax prep, or you think you might qualify for an income tax credit, call 3-1-1, ask our friends here from Consumer Affairs, they’ll help you. And there may be money owed to you. 

Second, we want people to know that the IDNYC – our municipal identification card – is something extraordinary that offers lots of benefits and makes it easier for so many people to go about their business in this city, and it’s free. So, if you know anyone who doesn’t have identification, or anyone who is struggling for lack of identification, they should get an IDNYC. 

Third, there are too many people who have been victims of immigration fraud. There are too many people who have seen bad actors in the community claim to help them, and then take their money. We are cracking down on immigration fraud, including in this community. Our Department of Consumer Affairs is sending undercover investigators out to look for any signs, and have been inspecting in this community, and they will issue fines anytime they find that immigrants are being treated illegally and inappropriately. So, if you know of any instance of someone being defrauded, you can also call 3-1-1, or you can tell our colleagues right here from the Department of Consumer Affairs.  

So, those are the big messages I wanted to give you this evening. I want you to know how much I appreciate this opportunity to share those ideas with you. I really want to ask everyone to spread this information, particularly letting people know how their rights can be defended, so we can protect them, protect their families, protect affordable housing.  

With that, it would be my honor now, Mr. Moderator, to take any questions from this wonderful audience. Thank you, everyone.  

[Applause]  

Councilmember Mathieu Eugene: Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor.  

Excuse me – you can do better than that. Give a big round of applause to Mr. Mayor, from the 48th District. 

[Applause] 

Thank you.  

So, please before you speak, state your name and the organization you belong to please, if you belong to an organization.  

Sir. 

Question: Thank you Mayor, for coming tonight – 

Mayor: You must not be a politician because no politician would turn down a microphone. 

[Laughter] 

Question: I just got a loud mouth.  

[Laughter] 

Thank you Councilmember, and thank you Rodneyse Bichotte.  

Mayor: Is it on though? Is that microphone on?  

Question: Yes. 

Mayor: There we go. 

Question: I believe so.  

Mayor: There we go. Good. 

Question: My question is a two-part question. Mr. Mayor, what zone does your plan cover? And how will it help people making $25,000 and less per year? 

Mayor: Thank you very much. So, the affordable housing plan covers the entire city. And I say, when you think about the different pieces of it, 500,000 people will benefit – that means, again, people right now living in apartments, as well as people who will get apartments in new buildings. And I want to explain this, it’s important. When we say we’re going to preserve affordable housing, that means we take a building that we realize needs help – maybe it needs some physical improvements, the tenants will need some support to keep it affordable – and we make a plan for that building, we invest in that building. And then we have a guarantee that the tenants in that building will have 30 years, or even more in some cases, of affordability, and they will pay no more than 30 percent of their income for housing – no more than 30 percent for housing. That’s actually a figure that people can afford. So, whatever their income is – 30 percent, that’s the preserved housing. The new housing again is for different – we have different types for seniors, for folks with disabilities, for working people, for people on fixed incomes – we have different types of housing available.  

But the other pieces I mentioned – what we’re doing with rent-stabilized tenants, that’s all over the city. What we’re doing with the Housing Authority, that’s all over the city. And stopping harassment and eviction, that’s all over the city. So, this will affect every neighborhood one way or another. 

Question: Thank you, sir. 

Mayor: Thank you. 

Councilmember Eugene: Yes, miss? 

Question: Thank you for coming Mr. Mayor.  

Mayor: Here you go, you get a microphone too. 

[Laughter] 

Question: Oh, I have such a big mouth that I think everybody could hear me. I’m well known to Councilmember Eugene Mathieu. And also to Assembly member Rodneyse Bichotte. And I am walking with your wife on the seventh of May for NAMI. 

Mayor: Oh, excellent. Thank you. Excellent.  

Question: I am from Flatbush Tenant’s Coalition. 

Mayor: Yes. 

Question: And we have 49 groups in our coalition, including Flatbush Gardens, which you know is thousands of people. Housing court – 14 rooms for landlords, one for tenants. Harassment – that’s right, that’s how it goes.    

Mayor: Get ready, Steve. 

[Laughter] 

This is our expert here. 

Question: Is that right? 

Mayor: Well, everything you said – Steve Banks is now running HRA, but for decades ran the Legal Aid Society. So, he’s a true expert on defending folks in housing court. So, she’s saying how many rooms for landlords? 

Question: 14 for landlords, one for tenants. 

Mayor: So, you’re going to respond in a moment. Get ready. Go ahead. 

[Laughter] 

Question: We were in Albany last year fighting for the rent laws. 

Mayor: Yes. 

Question: Then you said affordable housing – I’m very wary. I am wondering what this affordable housing really means. We have MCI’s – Major Capital Improvements. The rent is increased for something the landlord does. He gets paid for it for the rest of my life, his life – and everybody. It stays on. They didn’t take it off. Then they have the famous preferential rent, where they registered downtown – at a $1,000 they rent you for $800, you do not read the fine print, nobody explains it to you – to a new tenant. They don’t check their rent history. They get a one year lease. The next year “Ha, Ha, Ha,” preferential rent is over. [Inaudible] You got the $200 increase. You have to move. And where do you move to? The shelter – if there is shelter – or you take up space on the subway. That’s how it is. So, we need to get deregulation. It was $2,500, now it went up to – and we are really, really troubled in Flatbush. I have lived in Ditmas Park since 1977, and we had a meeting on Saturday. And people are coming there. They are dying. I have a tenant over there from 2010 Newkirk – you should see her building. When the roof collapsed, she thought her child – she took the child to Kings County, she thought it was mosquito bites, you know what – she thought it was measles, it was mosquito bites. There was water in the ceiling, and the landlord is still collecting rent. They had a fire in there, and it’s just now getting to the [inaudible]. So, it’s very bad over here, and we, from Flatbush Tenant’s Coalition, we’re working hard. We’re willing to work with you, but we need to get – we need to hear something good.  

Mayor: Sure. I appreciate what you’re doing. I really do. 

[Applause] 

I appreciate – thank you for your leadership. I appreciate everyone who’s in – 

Question: [Inaudible] 

Mayor: Again, thank you for going to Albany. That is the supreme sacrifice, going to Albany. So, thank you. Thank you. 

[Laughter]  

So, thank you for all you have done but thank you – look, tenants have had to stand up for themselves in a very hostile environment. And thank God they did because it would have been a lot worse. And I think all that I have heard tenants wanted was a government that was on their side. Because ultimately, they have felt the government was too often on the side of landlords – indiscriminately, blindly.  

And I have a very different view of what we have to do than what’s happened in the past. I don’t agree with the status quo that I received as mayor because I think tenants – as I said, this whole reality of this city as an affordable place has been endangered. And that is for many reasons.  

Now, I want you to hear in a moment from Steve Banks who will talk about what we are doing because you said right to council. I want you to hear about what we are doing right now, again when someone’s harassed or evicted illegally because it’s not like anything that’s ever been done before. And he has perfect memory on this point. I want him to describe the difference to you, and how easy it is now to get a lawyer compared to the past.  

I want you to hear from Vicki Been for a moment on the point about what we are doing to make affordable housing truly affordable for communities – and how we approach each community, trying to be sensitive to what it needs.  

But I also need to say, that we could use a lot more help in Albany. We really could. And the Assemblywoman is working very hard, but we need more change in Albany. I was fighting for much bigger protections for tenants than were ultimately achieved in the last session. We got something but it wasn’t enough. And, we have to go back and win that battle because so far out rent laws are not keeping up with our reality. They just aren’t. And I’m very committed to it.  

And bluntly, some of my predecessors just stood idly by while our rent laws were chipped away and chipped away. I think they need to be deeply strengthened because I think this is what is necessary in the affordability crisis, and I’m going to be going back time and again to do that. 

Let me let you hear from Steve and Vicki. 

Question: [Inaudible] 

Mayor: Please. 

Question: We are trying – we would love the [inaudible] because – 

Mayor: I agree. I agree. I agree.  

[Applause] 

You’re saying the Urstadt Law which is the law that makes these decisions about rent-regulated apartments – somehow, something that happens in Albany instead of something that happens here where it affects our own people. And I agree that should be repealed and the power should be here. 

[Applause] 

And I have been working for it. And I will keep working for it. I assure you. 

Steve Banks, then Vicki Been. 

Sorry you have one already. 

[Laughter] 

Commissioner Steven Banks, Human Resources Administration: Nice to see you. First of all, for your colleague over there on – where are you living? On Newkirk? Right?  

Question: [Inaudible] 

Commissioner Banks: Someone from – my colleague from HRA is right there, is going to take your information. We’re going to see if we can get some lawyers to that building to see what we can do to address those conditions. When I used to run the Legal Aid Society we would turn away eight people for every one we could represent because of lack of resources. And the difference that the mayor’s program is making is not we’ve increased the amount of money available for groups like Legal Services and Legal Aid – ten times what it used to be, from $6.5 million to next year’s $62 million. So, all around town the legal services and legal aid groups are able to serve many more people. And we’ll keep looking and seeing what more we can do. So, someone like your friend over there who you mentioned, we’re going to see if we can get some lawyers into that building but it’s not just HRA working to fund lawyers, we’re working as a team with HPD in terms of enforcing conditions. Obviously we know well that 400,000 affordable apartments were lost as a result of the rent-regulation issues that you raised. But what the mayor has given us the ability to do it to represent case-by-case tenants, building-by-building tenants to put a stop to the kinds of things that have gone on in the past.  

So, together, we’re going to work together and I know HPD is involved as well. 

Mayor: And let me pick up on this for a second. So, because we started giving more legal support to tenants, in the last two years evictions are down 24 percent – 24 percent reduction. 

[Applause] 

We have more to do because we do not want to see a single illegal eviction. Now, this is again – everyone in this room, I’ve said you need to spread the word to people, can call 3-1-1 but another thing that would help us for the Tenant’s Council, identify anyone you believe is in endangered, and let us know or let the Councilman know so we can do just what the Commissioner said and get a lawyer to them. We don’t want to be passive about this. If you know someone who’s threatened with illegal eviction, we want to get to them right away – and we need you to be our ally in that.  

Question: Well, we have fortunately – fortunately for us we have South Brooklyn Legal Services working with us but there are other people who do not belong to Flatbush Tenant’s Coalition. There are a lot of other tenants in Brooklyn that’s really hurting. They are really, really hurting.  

Unknown: And also, the Pubic Advocate went to this building as well. And we had a news conference there, and this was in the dead of winter, and mosquitoes flying around all in the hallway. And now I never – I’m from the South – And I’ve never seen mosquitoes in a building in the middle of winter, biting you. 

Mayor: Thank you.  

Question: [Inaudible]. 

Mayor: And that’s where we want to get lawyers to that building so it – wherever you find a case like that, the Councilman needs to know. We need to know. Commissioner. 

Commissioner Vicki Been, Department of Housing Preservations and Development: I also want to make the point that the legal services are available not just to tenants who belong to – not just through South Brooklyn Legal Services but all over the city. Right? So, people should call, and of course if there’s a condition in a building, people should always call 3-1-1, our inspectors – my inspection team is here. We will be out in that building trying to make sure it’s exterminated or whatever it is that’s required. Right?  

But you ask also about the levels of affordability, and one of the things in the past – we relied very heavily – the City relied very heavily on the low-income housing tax credit program. And that meant that most of the units were targeted towards people making $46,000 to $62,000. The Mayor is very committed to making sure that we serve a range of incomes – people below that, people above that because people of all levels of income are having trouble getting affordable housing, as you know. So, we’ve broadened our programs. We now have programs that serve people making $18,000, $23,000, $25,000 – up above the $60,000 to $70,000, $80,000 so that we’re serving a whole range of people from car wash attendants to nurses, etcetera. So, we’ve really broadened our program so that we’re aiming at different incomes all along the spectrum. 

Question: [Inaudible] voting on next week? 

Commissioner Been: That’s part of it.  

Mayor: That’s what they’ll be voting on next week. So, it is good. Alright. And I want to say Vicki mentioned the team that makes sure that people get repairs when they need, when you call 3-1-1, you don’t have heat and hot water, this is a very dedicated group of City employees that actually go and make sure people get their heat and hot water restores. And Deputy Commissioner Vito Mustaciuolo and his team – let’s give them a round of applause, and thank them for what they do.  

[Applause] 

Mayor: Okay. 

Councilmember Eugene: Who was first? Alright. 

Question: Is this on? Okay good. So, I’m going to try and keep it really short. I don’t want to hog the mic – I know we got a lot of questions tonight. I’m going to go really fast. So, I represent the National Alliance of HUD Tenants – DYCD Community Action Board Executive Committee for Community Service Block Grant Moneys. I also am the outgoing president for the League of Woman Voters for New York City, and I’m also the President of my tenant association – Project Based Section-8 Housing in Sunset Park. I say all of this because a lot of times Section-8 tenants are deemed as lazy, and I’m a full-time employee for New York State Weatherization Assistance Program in Sunset Park Redevelopment Committee.

My question – my housing development is in Sunset Park. It was founded in 1980, and we have 2,000 units of low-income affordable housing, project based Section-8. Since then, landlords have opted-out of the program and the gateway for low-income families has not shrunk to 408 apartments in my community. And my question to you is, can the city work with these landlords across the city for project based Section-8 preservation, and incentivize the tenants who pay market rent with no subsidies to give them first preference in HPD lotteries and Mitchell Lamas in order to stimulate turnover in low-income subsidized housing?  

Mayor: I’ll let Vicki Been get into the details. We are looking for anywhere and everywhere that we can find an opportunity to preserve or build affordable housing. So, project Setion-8 developments obviously are a really important part of that puzzle. Before Vicki talks about it, you obviously have a tremendous amount of knowledge, and Vicki will be able to speak your language. But before she does, I just want to remind everyone – I had the honor when I was in the City Council passing a law, to ensure that no one could ever be discriminated against because they had a Section-8 voucher – 

Question: [Inaudible] 

Mayor: I understand but I’m making the point because I want people to hear it. Anyone who has a Section-8 voucher, if a landlord turns you away and says I’m not taking a voucher, or if you see an ad that says no vouchers or no programs, that is illegal – illegal. So, where are our friends from the Human Rights Commission? Put up your hands – c’mon higher Human Rights Commission. There you go.  

[Laughter] 

So, if anybody knows of a situation where someone is discriminated against because of they have a Section-8 voucher, the Human Rights Commission wants to know about it, and they can take action and they can get that person money back. And you can call 3-1-1 is you have a situation like that as well. 

Vicki Been. 

Commissioner Been: So, on the project based voucher, we are working very hard to make sure that those stay in the program through a variety of different kinds of incentives including carrots-and-sticks. So we now put loans that where the interest accrues, and so that it’s all due in a balloon at the end of the period, which is a big incentive to stay in the program, and to re-up it. So, we are working very hard to do that. The specific question that you raised about the – whether or not some people could have a preference in the lotteries, that’s a – I’m afraid to say – a complicated question because we are being sued over those lotteries, unfortunately. And so, we are working to see how that lawsuit resolves itself. 

Mayor: So what you said the carrot is – the low-interest loan. What’s the stick? 

[Laughter] 

Commissioner Been: No, well the carrot is the low-interest loan, and the stick is the balloon payment that you owe at the end of that low-interest loan if you don’t stay in the program.  

Mayor: Oh, nicely said. Thank you. 

Councilmember Eugene: Alright, miss? No, she was first. 

Question: Good evening.

Mayor: Good evening.

Question: Mr. Mayor, good evening welcome to our community.

Mayor: Thank you.

Question: And good evening to all the officials here – all the elected officials; and, of course, as you said I didn’t go to the ball with her, but she is one of the loveliest ladies in this community and that is Ms. Una Clarke.

[Laughter]

Mayor: Yes, indeed.

Question: Thank you, good evening to you.

Mayor: You’re more elegant – I said the dance, you said the ball. You’re more elegant than me.

[Laughter]

Question: I am from Crown Heights Prospect Lefferts Garden, and I am so happy to be here this evening to be given the privilege to say a few words. I actually worked for you when you when you were running for City Council, and I’m so happy to be in the same room with you tonight for the very first time since you been in office. It’s a pleasure. And I hope that you will be in Crown Heights for the [inaudible]. So, to say that let me get right ahead with what I want to say because mine is a little painful. It’s painful that I hear everything about affordable housing, but we always ask the question affordable for who because we still don’t know who it’s affordable for. I have been living in a building since it was new – 1963. I’ve had two fires, been displaced – stayed homeless with my kids. I have run the street; I have organized; I have run drug dealers out of the community; president of the 71stprecinct community for 30 years. And I have been the president of my tenant association.

Mayor: Amen

[Applause]

Question: And I worked for the City for 20 years, got disabled from a job accident. And in 2007 the City HPD offered us a building at 265 Hawthorne Street where they took the building for over $11 million in taxes and they said if the tenants wanted you could do this do that – the [inaudible] program. And I went out and I run like I said [inaudible] from Albany. I run all over the City; to your office, to Una Clarke’s Office – to everybody’s office; and I run to Shawn Donavan’s Office before he went to the White House to give him the applications so we can get that building. And it has been 2007 – a building that was supposed to be done in two-and-a-half years where the tenants would own their apartment paying [inaudible] low-income co-op share [inaudible]. I have been handcuffed and dragged out of the building – a disabled woman – by a not-for-profit agency that we choose to work with us as our sponsor. That agency – very good friends of HPD I may say. Not calling any names tonight, but you will know later. But they are very good friends of HPD – just check my address and you’ll know who the sponsors are at 265 Hawthorne Street. They have had – my room came down on me. They have dumped stuff in my apartment. They are doing everything. And a project that was supposed to take two-and-a-half years is now going eight years. And we cannot still reach the step line. They brag about being friends of you, friends of the attorney general, friends of everybody – but we know they are really friends of HPD. And today we are now where we should be getting this building. We were put on several – we went to court with them and we won. The [inaudible] can tell you that. First, that it ever happened – and we won and after we won they warned us, tell you your tenants do this, do that, do this. But the thing is that these not-for-profit agencies are getting away with taking buildings, saying they are helping the tenants, and they are not. Right now, you have a hundred buildings in HPD that is sitting there for the last five years, not coming off the ground. And they are waiting now to use our building as a model to get buildings back to these not-for-profit agencies. I have been in the building – we were supposed to get 55 tenants eligible. We had 63. They are not satisfied. Now, we’re supposed to be at the threshold. Today, they called me to tell me all the tenants – one second Mr. Mayor, please.

Mayor: No, I want to answer you.

Question: I’m going to be quick.

Mayor: Okay.

Question: Today, they called me to say all 64 tenants who reached more than the 80 percent rent lease was renewed; mine was not because they want my income verification. Now, they have everybody’s income verification, but they want mine because why? I am the one that’s preventing them from getting the building. And I am saying to you Mr. Mayor, this is something that you have to look into. These not-for-profit agencies that pretend to be not-for-profit and they are undercover for profit. That is another area that you need to get to because they are criminals.

[Applause]

Mayor: Thank you. Thank you. Well, first of all I want to say I appreciate all the work you’ve done for the community. And I am very sorry that that story had to be told because for me it is very hard to even believe that you have been put through so much after trying to help do something good. So, what I would ask – Vicki Been may have something she wants to say now. But I want to ask Vicki to personally look into this and I will tell you that I don’t know about the HPD of the past. I know of the HPD of today in terms of the leadership today. Just let me finish – wait a minute.

[Laughter]

Mayor: Yes.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Thank you for that. But the HPD of today led by this commissioner does not follow the rules of the past and doesn’t do everything the way it was done in the past. And I am going to ask Vicki to personally investigate. And by the way, I want to know what happened in this case, but I want to know about the other cases like it because if there is a pattern here we obviously want to deal with it. So, Vicki can you please – will you tell me your name again ma’am. Ma’am? Or you can tell me her name for you.

[Laughter]

Mayor: Evelyn Williams. Okay. Evelyn – Evelyn sorry. Evelyn – thank you Evelyn.

[Laughter]

So, Vicki will you have some – I’d like you personally to be involved obviously. I’d like a review; I’d like to hear exactly what’s happening; I’d like you to report back. Would you like to add anything about it?

Commissioner Been: 265 Hawthorne Street, right? I will look into it personally. And we will see what’s happening.

Mayor: Okay, Vicki is going to personally review this situation and personally report back to me. I guarantee it.

[Applause]

Councilmember Eugene: Jay, I will come back to you because we have a lady here. Ladies always first, please, please.

Question: Good evening, Mr. Mayor.

Mayor: Good evening.

Question: How are you there? What I would like to say – I know another housing question. And this is for affordable housing. Now, I am one of those people -- like you said fixed income and aging. And I would like to know that based on July 2013, now a lot of people from HPD – a lot of people in our area have been sent letters for downsizing. The houses – the apartments used to be affordable. They are no longer affordable. And not only are they not affordable to us – that we are being told that we have to downsize, and like pretty much relocate. They are saying two people to a bedroom – that I can sleep in the same bedroom with my 26-year-old son; that a teenager can sleep in the same bedroom as her eight-year-old sister. And so, I would like to know where is this affordable housing – and why is that now being implemented as rules and regulations as far as downsizing, overpricing, and the gender of two bedroom sleeping?

Mayor: Okay, thank you. Look, I want to -- Vicki you can go into details, but I want to first give you the real world answer because I think it is important to level with people always. If we are I the middle of an affordable housing crisis we can’t do anything the way we did it. So, I want people to understand the entire theory of what I am trying to do here. We have to go to Albany and change the laws related to rent-regulation. We have to here require the developers to build affordable housing. We have to protect the Housing Authority; we have to stop the illegal evictions; we have to charge people fair rents who are in rent stabilization based on actual objective numbers, not on the preference of landlords. These are all the kinds of changes we need to do. But we also have to make sure that every apartment that we’re putting taxpayer money into – to keep affordable – is being used to the maximum. Now, that may not mean that what you’re saying specifically in your case is being done right. Vicki will speak to it and she can look into it. I’m not saying every single thing the government suggest is a good idea is always a good idea, but the theory is important her. The idea that we need to know that every affordable apartment is being used by the right number of people. We have in the Housing Authority, as you may have heard – for example, we have some seniors who are in apartments that used to be for a larger family – say a two bedroom, and its one senior. I understand humanly and emotionally why that senior wouldn’t want to leave that and I have sympathy for that. On the other hand, I have so many people struggling for a place to live and so many families; I am looking for the most fair and judicious outcome. Can I get that senior a smaller apartment nearby and give a family the two bedroom? That’s the theory of what’s going on here. It has to be done the right way. So – go ahead.

Question: I have two bedroom and what they are doing is they are downsizing it. They’re downsizing to not only downsize it, but they are overpricing where as it is no longer affordable to me. It was affordable to me. Now, it’s no longer affordable to me if I don’t downsize [inaudible].

Mayor: I want you to hear what I am saying and then Vicki can go into detail. Again, we will review this specific situation to make sure it’s not wrong because you are raising a point – you’re saying, I think this is being done wrong. You have a right to be fully reviewed and make sure that we’re not doing something wrong. But I do want people to hear, if I am going to be urgent about affordable housing; if I am going to be looking under every stone, I have to do that consistently. And sometimes it’s not going to be the ideal situation for people, but I have to make sure that every opportunity is there to put as many people into affordable housing as possible. That’s the challenge. That’s where I have to be real with you about. Now, in your particular case Vicki what can you say about how we can review this situation?

Commissioner Been: So, I will take your name and we will review. We did win – two years ago during [inaudible] our Section 8 budget was cut dramatically. And the federal government gave us a choice; we can either take vouchers completely away from people – so that they have nothing, no voucher at all or we can reduce by asking people to downsize we can do that. It was a horrible, painful choice. We thought it was wrong to have people lose their vouchers entirely so that they would become homeless; they would not have anything at all. So, we asked people to downsize. We’ve cut back on that where we can, for example we know there are very few studios out there in the world. So, we don’t require people to move into studios even though that is what the federal government suggested that we do. We’ve given an enormous number of accommodations for senior citizens, for people with disabilities. So, let me review your case, but it does go back to – where were faced the choice, do we take a voucher away from somebody completely and not be able to provide anything to that person or do we ask people to make accommodations.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: No, we hear you. We hear you. And she will follow up, but beyond your case – okay she’s going to follow up. But again, because it is a town hall meeting for everyone beyond your very valid point I want people to hear what the Commissioner just said. The federal government used to actually be involved in helping us create more affordable housing. That doesn’t happen anymore. In fact, you heard what they just told we had to do – take away Section 8 vouchers from people who had them that’s how bad it is. I’m not here looking for excuses or trying to offer excuses. I’m saying lets be real, New York City is typically on its own when it comes to creating affordable housing. The federal government we used to know that was our friend that came to our rescue isn’t there anymore. The State government isn’t doing all it can do. We here in the city have to make do with what we have and that causes some tough choices, but we will look at your case.

Councilmember Eugene: Moe?

Question: Good evening, everyone. Good to see you Mayor in the house and up close. I want to address this concerning the real estate – hope one of the agencies might be able to answer this question. We are suffering and I think it works in concert with tenants, housing, and the rest. So, can you please ask an agency to address that for us please?

Mayor: Wait what’s the – say it a little more specifically.

Question: Real estate taxes.

Mayor: Taxes, yes. So, I can start by – and then Jacques Jiha, our Finance commissioner can add. So, I assume, sir, what you’re referring to as that you have seen the numbers go up, and you don’t like that which is normal. I am a homeowner here in Brooklyn myself, we all feel the pinch when our taxes go up. Here’s the problem: the taxes are going up because the values are going up. And everyone knows what’s happening all over the City and particularly in Brooklyn. The real estate value is going up. The things that people own are becoming more valuable and there is – when that happens an increase in the assessment and therefore an increase in taxes. Although it’s capped each year. It’s no more than six percent Jacques? Six percent increase each year. I understand how frustrating that is for people. What I have said – the one thing that I can say to you for sure right now is that I am avoiding a property tax rate increase meaning something we experienced twice in the last 15 years – property tax rates went up; not you’re personal assessment – the rate for everyone went up. And everyone paid for that. And I’ve said that I am adamantly against a property tax rate increase. And the way I am avoiding one is by being very careful about how I manage the City’s finances and keeping a reserve fund so that if we have a tough economy or something we have reserves – a rainy day fund that will allow us not to increase property tax rates. So, that’s the fundamental problem [inaudible]. What I am doing now we can avoid that certainly for anytime in the foreseeable future. But I’m not going to lie to you about the assessments. The assessment situation right now – by law, continues to – whenever the value goes up, the assessment goes up. What I am willing to do is a big, big, big undertaking and if Jacques Jiha had hair he would lose it because of what I am about to say.

[Laughter]

But the – we have to overhaul the entire system. It’s a huge undertaking because it’s not consistent; it’s not transparent. And we need to figure out a way to create a fairer system, but also one that will allow us to run the city government because those property taxes dollars pay for police, pay for schools, pay for everything. That is going to be a huge and difficult and long undertaking. I’m willing to go at it. But that’s not going to give a result anytime soon. I want to be real with you. But what I can tell you is I am protecting against a rate increase and that at least will keep some money in your pocket.

Unknown: Okay, Moe please?

Mayor: Wait – Jacques to add.

Unknown: Okay, I’m sorry. Go ahead Jacques.

Commissioner Jacques Jiha, Department of Finance: We also should tell people to take advantage of the exemption programs that we have. We have a senior exemption program and we also have disability exemption program for homeowners. And the filing deadline is tomorrow. So –

[Laughter]

Oh yeah. So, please call 3-1-1. You can get the application or you could go on our website, but – well, the senior exemption program is a program that is available for any person who is 62 years or older. So, you could basically apply for that program or if you’re disabled or if you’re a veteran because at the end of the day these are the only tools that we have as property taxes go up. The only tools that we have at our disposal is basically exemption programs that we have. So, please take advantage of these programs. They don’t have an income level for the senior – for the homeowner programs. For the renters, [Inaudible] and [inaudible] – it’s basically if you’re 62 years old and if you have a lease in your name and you make $50,000 or less and you pay more than a third of your income in rent. So, you qualify for – but you don’t have that many rent-regulated apartments here in this area.

Mayor: [Inaudible]

Commissioner Jiha: Call 3-1-1 or go to our website or go to any one of our business centers. We have five business centers throughout the City – and get your application.

Mayor: Say it quickly in Creole.

[Laughter]

[Jacques Jiha speaks in Creole]

Mayor: I want to just say for just a Haitian pride moment, Jacques, how much revenue are you responsible for each year?

Commissioner Jiha: About $39 billion.

Mayor: $39 billion. Okay this is one Haitian-American who is arrived. $39 billion he’s in charge of.

[Applause]

Councilmember Eugene: Excuse me, I’m going to take one person over here, one over here, and I’ll come back here. Moe please?

Question: So, this is the third time he called my name.

[Laughter]

My name is Moe. I am the executive director of the Council of the People’s Organization – COPO. First of all, Mr. Mayor, thank you so much and I am a firsthand person whose been working with many of your commissioners; from Commissioner Banks to Commissioner Marco Carrion; Commissioner Glickman and Commissioner Carrado. Because of Commissioner Carrado, for the first time we have a Muslim senior center because of the support that she’s been giving to us.

[Applause]

Mayor: Donna Carrado, you have to stand up because when we applause you we can’t see you unless you stand up.

Question: There she is.

Mayor: There she is.

[Applause]

Mayor: Thank you, well done. Well done. So, my thing is I want to meet the other commissioners and especially HPD.

[Laughter] 

Mayor: Moe, you are in luck because they will be here all night long.

[Laughter]

They literally don’t know where to go they’re just going to hang around in this room. It’s going to be great.   

Question: So one of the biggest issues or two issues that I really want to just— questions and you know focus on is, one the block that we are on it has a 20,000-square-foot community center. That’s our community center [inaudible]. And, it has a mosque, which has 10,000-square-foot space. Because the block is so long where you’ve been and you’ve been there every year, every now and then when we have that huge event, we want to try to put a traffic in the middle of that road so people can cross safely.   

7-0 Captain James is here— 

Mayor: You mean a traffic island kind of thing?  

Question: Not island kind of thing – I’m saying traffic light, or walkway. Our wonderful ex-CO’s are here – Eric and so is James. Now James is back with us again and Mike Smith. Where’s Mike Smith?  So they’re aware of the situation because of the safety that’s needed and most important thing – if it’s there they already did a study, DOT, and I think it would be wonderful for our community.

Second, HPD Commissioner – I will say it again 20,000 square foot space which actually we were trying to see if we could make affordable housing, 150 to 160 units affordable for senior we were assuming but we were told it’s not possible and we really want to try to revisit that if it is because our community really needs it and other community members really want that. Thank you.  

Mayor: All right Moe. Moe first of all on the traffic, on the crosswalk – so DOT, Keith’s going to look into that, and come back with a report on the affordable housing potential. Vicki, what do you say we have again Moe? How big a space?

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Okay Vicki— 

Commissioner Been: Well I am going to ask you where it is, and then I am going to look into it because we look for space for our affordable housing anywhere – and I do want to say that one of the barriers to creating for example senior housing in one of those spaces is exactly the reason why we have worked with the City Council to pass the Zoning for Quality and Affordability bill that will be voted on next week. Because it allows senior housing in a much broader range of places, and it makes it possible for us to get around many of the barriers, especially to senior housing, that were imposed by a zoning ordinance that’s literally 40 years old. So let’s revisit that. Hopefully the work that Councilmember Greenfield and others have done in the City Council to relieve some of those regulatory barriers will help us on that particular lot. But I will get the address and look into it. Okay.  

Councilmember Eugene: Thank you very much.

Question: [Inaudible]

Councilmember Eugene: -- a microphone.

Question: [Inaudible] My name is Jacob Gold, I am the distributor for the 44 to 70 District [inaudible].

Thank you Mr. Mayor for being here [inaudible]. Those of us who started as tenant organizers, way back if you remember [inaudible] and Marty Markowitz. [inaudible] I have more hair and am better looking than him.

[Laughter]

Anyway to my question, we have a wonderful ZQA zone for parking. It’s a wonderful idea as the care increased demands from one building from one facility to another. However, when you increase the bulk and the size of the floors, it also increases the traffic with the [inaudible] doctors, professionals, food deliveries, and sanitation. [Inaudible] since we have a lot of serious issue within the 44 -70th district, is there some way of finding the issue to get input from the community as an impact to the environment with the surrounding area? 

Mayor: That’s an excellent question, thank you Jake. Thank you very much. 

Jake, look, councilmembers have certainly been pushing this point very hard. And looking for the right balance but I do want to be a little hardlined on this point because it gets back to this conversation I was having with this women a moment ago. Tell me your first name – Agnes—Agnes’s question raised one challenge we have about having to use every kind of affordable housing we have to the maximum, and trying to be fair and trying with seniors. But I mentioned earlier, the reality with seniors – and I got to be very real about this. We are eight and a half million people in this city we have the largest population we have ever had in the history of this city – eight-and-a-half million is what the Department of City Planning thinks is the truth but it easily could be more. And we account for almost half-a-million undocumented people when we say that but it could be more. But everyone with eyes to see knows that this city is growing – and we also know the senior population is growing even more. So again I think public officials owe you straight talk. We are becoming more of a senior city. And we could say well let’s just sit on our hands and not do anything about it but I think we have an obligation. And I would believe it’s a moral obligation to create a lot more housing for seniors.  

Now seniors I talked to are much more interested in affordable apartment than they are a parking space. And if you say I’ve got an affordable apartment but I don’t have a parking space I know a lot of seniors that would take that in a heartbeat. And of course, I understand there is a challenge for communities, Jake. I spent plenty of time in my neighborhood in Brooklyn when I drove in a kindler gentler time – 

[Laughter]

I would spend 15minutes, 20 minutes a night easily looking for a parking space a lot of nights. I understand but we got to come to a decision in this city of what we value. If we don’t create a lot more affordable housing a lot of seniors will not be able to stay with their families, they’ll literally have to leave town, they will end up homeless. Certainly they are going to have to find a way to pay for something they can’t pay for. So this is a tough, tough decision and we are trying to strike a balance within it.  

And wherever we can fine-tune it for each neighborhood’s needs we will. But if this wasn’t a crisis— if this wasn’t a crisis, all the solutions would be easy, it really would be. If we didn’t have the combination of a growing population, growing senior population within it, and rents going through the roof – if we didn’t have all those things happening at once this would be a much nicer conversation. But that’s the truth. And that’s why we came up with policies that I think will actually give our seniors the maximum chance to find an affordable place to live.  

Councilmember Eugene:  Thank you, Mr. Mayor.  

Question: Good evening everyone. My name is Gale Smith, I’m the third vice chair of Community Board 14. It was actually just a point of clarification – I am actually here on the behalf of our Chair Alvin Burke and District Manager Shawn Campbell. We are actually having our own scheduled community board meeting tonight. Hence everyone is not here. But nonetheless I am thrilled to be here tonight.

Thank you Mayor de Blasio for coming to the 40th Council District and to community district 14. Special thank you to Mathieu Eugene, I’m also one of his constituents for letting and allowing community board 14 to be one of the co-sponsors. While I didn’t come to the ball either, I would be remised if I didn’t recognize the honorable, Una Clarke. We love you.

[Applause] 

Just quickly Community Board 14 strongly supports the stated goal of the mayor’s zoning initiatives to increase affordable housing. Community-14 hopes that the affordable income eligibility criteria in MIH can broaden to include a lower income bracket than currently identified. Community Board 14 also urges the mayor to ensure that city services and infrastructure such as roads, schools, and sanitation collection are expanded to meet the needs of the growing population.

In closing we hope that— as you know we did submit our proposals previously on this but we do  hope that you do consider our added changes when you make your final determination. Captain Polombo, welcome back to the 70th –  we will see you next month.

[Applause] 

Councilmember Eugene: Thank you very much.  

Unknown: Good evening everyone. My name is [inaudible] and I am part of 1199, Mayor de Blasio, Mr. Eugene – so I just want to be very clear on something. Our community – the housing situation is really deplorable, okay. Landlords are not taking their rents, they are evicting people. You cannot – because of re-gentrification, you cannot rent an apartment in Flatbush. Downtown Brooklyn, okay, everybody knows, you live in the area, what I am saying – I hope that the developers in these buildings that are going up – Downtown Brooklyn – you have right here on Hawthorne and Flatbush. You have them coming into the area, and not giving the opportunity for the community to rent. Be very clear about the process that you are going to have to go through to get this affordable housing in the State of New York, with competing with Albany and so forth. But Mayor de Blasio, our community really needs housing. Affordable housing and not allowing landlords to refuse rents to evict tenants just because they want a higher rent— $2,300 for a two-bedroom apartment, $2,600 on Ocean Avenue. None of us can rent an apartment. I been in this area since 1970, I know Flatbush when Flatbush was a business district. We kept our doors open on Hawthorne— all the houses. It’s really a crying shame to see that working class people cannot afford rents. So I hope that your commissioner, and yourself, and Eugene, and the community really come and fight to make sure that affordable housing is given to everyone. We all deserve it. Thank You.  

[Applause]  

Mayor: Thank you. Look, you are hearing the core of the matter here.  Let me try and take what I said before and add something.

The status quo that you described doesn’t work for this city, and we have to change it systematically. Now at this point people are so upset they feel in many cases hopeless.  They feel cynical about the situation, and I don’t blame anyone who feels cynical as they watch opportunity being taken away. If they have fought for their own neighborhood for years and decades, and believe it to be theirs for very good reason – and then they feel they can’t even live in their own neighborhood. I understand that frustration deeply. It’s happening all over the city. But, we have to recognize that the response before this administration came into office, the response of the city government was to do absolutely positively nothing. Let’s be very clear – gentrification is 15 or 20 years old as a phenomenon, and if you want to think about – if you want proof of my statement, look at Bushwick, or look at Bed-Stuy, there was no rezoning. For anyone who says, [inaudible] – I understand why people think rezoning is going to create a whole host of problems.

Let me give the opposite to prove my point. Go to the places where there was no rezoning and tell me how wonderful it is. Bushwick is in an entirely different reality that it was ten years ago. People have been displaced en mas. So I would argue the worst thing to do in the face of these intense market pressures, and this constant change – the worst thing to do is to do nothing because it’s happening, and we have to address it. So what addresses it?  

Well, we said very systematically, protect the affordable housing we have. First, protect what you have – that’s the 400,000 people who live in NYCHA, that’s the two million-plus people who live in stabilized housing who need protection in Albany but also need to ensure that they don’t get an unfair rent increase here which is why we decided a rent-freeze was actually justified this year. And that put money back in people’s pocket.

We said stop the illegal evictions. The best tool – I can’t send out a memo and say everybody stop being illegal. Right? I wish I could. But in fact, the reality is people will try to illegally evict. Landlords will try to evict in some cases. The best thing we can do to stop is give the tenant a free lawyer. And that’s what we are investing $62 million dollars in.

And then I said preserve in place affordable housing for hundreds of thousands of people right in their own apartment. Give them the subsidies and give them support to stay in their apartment, and build affordable housing where it has not existed before. And here is another thing that is a bit of a logical challenge – when I hear people say to me I’ m concerned about your plan, there is bigger problems, one thing or another. I say, I am putting affordable housing where it doesn’t exist. You are deeply concerned about new market rate luxury buildings whatever. I want to take land and build affordable housing on it – that is guaranteed affordable for long term with real standings that are determined by the government not the private sector. I want to take something that is not housing now and put housing on it. That’s adding to the equation.

So everything I’ve described is a response to the things you said. It is a response to gentrification, it’s a response to skyrocketing rents. It is not perfect. You know, perfect would look like if the federal government was actually willing to be our partner the way they once were – where they would pour money into New York City and other cities to create affordable housing, for public housing, for section-8 vouchers. That has been gone on for 20 years.

So we are on our own. We have to do everything we can do on our own to protect affordability in this city. That is our game plan. I am never going to tell you it’s perfect. But it is a hell of a lot better than what we had a few years ago. And we have to go farther and farther with it. That’s why this vote next week is so important.

Councilmember Eugene: Thank you very much [inaudible].

[Applause]  

Question: My name is [Inaudible]. Thank you very much, Mayor, for coming here. I salute you with all your team for the great work you are doing for New York City. As Assembly Member [inaudible] says, New York City is the capital of the world, everybody is looking at us. I am here on behalf of the Life of Hope Center, right there on Newkirk and Nostrand Avenue. At the Center, I have many people who come to me, and tell me they have about like four to five children. They are living in one-bedroom apartment. As Council Member Mathieu Eugene says affordable housing, that’s a really basic human right – and living with five children in one bedroom that’s outrageous. So I really would like to know what’s the plan for those kind of people. They have a roof but it’s like they didn’t have anything on their head.

The second problem, it’s much more [inaudible] it’s good that we have houses for people – they can afford it, they can pay for it. But we have people who come and talk to me and say they are almost one paycheck away from being on the street – really one paycheck. Those who are one paycheck  away – at least they have the house. But we have people who are on the street. They wish the sun would never set because they don’t know where to go at night. How do you plan to help these people on the street? And lastly mayor – 

Mayor: You can’t do a seven-part question hold on. Hold on let’s stop there because you asked very good questions. I will try and answer quickly.  

You are very right about the people living one paycheck away. It’s a lot of people in New York City it’s a lot of people in the United States of America by the way. So, the first thing I’ll say is -- everything I said – remind me of your first name –

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Laura?

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: [Inaudible] I’m sorry. My apology. Everything I’ve said to Devorah – remember that what is different also on top of all that is the mandate, if City Council votes this way – the mandate that affordable housing must be created as a condition of any rezoning, any new development that involves rezoning, whether it’s a neighborhood being rezoned, whether it’s an individual building being rezoned – for the first time in history, the private owner will be told, “if you want to build that building, it must have affordable housing in it.”

That, for many thousands of families, will be a game changer. So, we’re trying to change the rules fundamentally.

Now, to your question about what do we do for people who are one paycheck away? We have to keep raising their wages. We have to keep improving their benefits. That’s how you do something for people.

[Applause]

In this city, we have a living wage executive order to get money to people who are working for businesses that do business with the City.

In this city, we provided paid sick leave to a million more people in the last few years by City law. We provide free pre-k for families – that would have cost them $10,000 to pay for it themselves. We provide free afterschool for middle school families. We’ve tried step by step to take some of the burden off. What we need to do now is raise the minimum wage, and it needs to go to $15 an hour, and that can only happen in Albany. It should happen in Washington too, in my opinion, but, right now, it can only happen in Albany, and I’m fighting very hard, and a lot of people in this room are too I know – and our brothers and sisters in 1199 are. So, if you want people – and I know you do – to not be one paycheck away, let’s go to the heart of the matter. They need to earn more. They need to have the kind of benefits that will actually make them economically secure. 

Finally, for people on the street, we are instituting the strongest, biggest homeless outreach effort in the history of this city, or any city, starting this month. It’s called HOME-STAT. You’ll see all over the City, if someone’s homeless they’re going to be approached by trained Department of Homeless Services workers, by police officers who are part of a specially trained detail to work with the homeless, and we’re going to try to help get homeless people into shelter, into whatever kind of shelter will work for them to get them off the street, and we’re putting more resources into housing that can actually be a permanent solution that will be lasting for folks who are homeless. 15,000 apartments for folks who need supportive housing, which means maybe they have some other challenges that need to be addressed, and that’s going to be part of the housing. And we’ve committed to that.

All of it is going to take time. None of this is easy. We’re all feeling the pressure of a crisis here, but we’re not going to leave our brothers and sisters on the street. We’re going to engage them and try and get them to a safer place.

[Applause] 

Councilmember Eugene: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Please?

Question: Hello. Hi, I’m Nicole Joel, president of the Community Education Council for School District 17. I would like to say, I didn’t come to board, but [inaudible] of the kids that watched it as the parents got ready. Alright? Welcome. I would like for all my parent leaders for District 17 to stand – Community School District 17 staff. I’m joined here today – our Superintendent Ellis – Superintendent Clarence Ellis [inaudible] This is my daughter’s school and also my son’s school. I don’t want to hold you up. I want to thank you for everything that you have promised and given, but I want to talk to you about our universal lunch for all. We’re here talking about senior citizens – my mom is here [inaudible] – but I want to talk to you about the temporary housing situation in our neighborhood. A lot of our students are here, dealing with temporary housing. They cannot function, okay? Because they’re wondering they’re going to sleep tomorrow or a month ahead. So, I need some answers not only for me – I grew up here, I still live here. They speak about gentrification – I still see it – we welcome it. Right down the block – Tilden, right? We have a lot of temporary housing. We’re addressing it. We’ve met Borough Hall – Eric Adams. I forgot to mention [inaudible]. We’re talking about temporary housing and I haven’t heard about it. Our children are suffering – it’s not their fault. What is going to happen? What is in place so that temporary is not permanent? Did I leave anything out? 

Mayor: So, first of all, thank you to everyone on the CEC at District 17. I’m a former school board member from District 15, so I thank everyone who’s a member of the CEC and everyone’s who’s involved in their children’s education. I want to be straightforward with you though – when you say that phrase, I want to hear your definition because I want to give an honest answer. But the phrase temporary housing can mean more than one thing – I want to hear your definition. 

Question: Well, as I see it, temporary housing is supposed to be temporary.

Mayor: Literally describe what you mean. If you’re saying shelter, say shelter. 

Question: Right, so we’re talking about shelters, we’re talking about [inaudible], and we’re talking about temporary housing. But I’m talking about what our children [inaudible]. 

Mayor: Thank you. Thank you very much.

[Applause]

So, I’m going to start, and we have our Deputy Chancellor Dorita Gibson here. And, obviously, Steve Banks can also speak about the dynamics with shelter. Look, this is – the question you ask raises a bunch of things simultaneously, so I’m going to try and break it down. The first is, there’s an affordable housing crisis, right? One piece of this [inaudible] doubled up and all is because of an affordable housing crisis. Now, I believe everyone in this room has been listening carefully tonight, so I don’t think I have to repeat to you all the things I’m trying to do to address that. But I have to be real with you – long road. We have – we’re talking about we’re trying to create housing for half-a-million people. We’ve said would give ourselves eight years. Some of it will happen this year, some of it will happen next year, and so on, and so on. But to undo what has been an affordable housing crisis, growing over decades, is going to take us time and I’m not convinced we’re going to reach everywhere we need to reach – I’m going to be real with people – but I know a lot with the things I’ve just described. A lot – we can reach hundreds and thousands of people. So, that’s what we’re doing right this minute. When you talk about the shelter reality – this pains me very deeply as a parent, because I immediately could say, if you have a stable home and you’re raising a child in New York City, that’s hard enough. That’s hard enough, and there’s so many challenges here, and parents especially who are working and dealing with whatever other life challenges. Even if you have a perfect, stable environment it’s still tough. But if you have that instability you describe, it gets much, much tougher. Our job is to get people out of shelter. So, the part of temporary housing that is shelter – our job is to get people out of shelter. 

Now, there’s 91,000 people who we helped to avoid shelter. We got to them and we did things that would help them stabilize their situation so they didn’t end up in shelter. There’s 22,000 people who were in shelter in the last two years that we got out of shelter and to permanent housing. Now, if I told you, we reached 91,000 people before they fell into shelter, and we got 22,000 people out of shelter, you’d say – well, everything must be great in New York City. Guess what? After all that, there’s still 58,000 people in shelter, and, more and more, it is families. So, over 40,000 of the people in shelter are parents and children. And they are people who are working, which is not what is was yesterday. Yesterday, what we first understood as homelessness in the 70s, the 80s was a single male, unfortunately, who had a drug or mental health issue – that’s the reality. It wasn’t working people. It wasn’t families. Why has it changed? Because of the Great Recession; because of what we’ve seen with – all over this country – people’s wages and all have been stuck for years; because the price of housing shot up. So, this is an economic problem now. And so, we now have 58,000 people in shelter, and a lot of them go to work each day, or they have been working recently and they want to work again. To get to the bottom of that problem – it is build as much as affordable housing as we can do, save as much affordable housing, stop as many evictions as we can, and raise wages and benefits, and get more people jobs. That’s how we actually can create the stability for those families so those kids don’t have to go through that. But that is going to be a really powerful endeavor, but an endeavor that will take us years to build up and reach all the people we’re intending to reach. 

Now, to the lunches – so, right now, we’ve started with breakfast, and Dorita can talk about that. With lunches, I absolutely appreciate everything you said about the stigma question, and I believe there really are instances like that, and that pains me. I don’t want to see that happen. We’ve started with middle schools and we’ve tried to implement universal lunch –

Question: [inaudible] 

Mayor: Well – and we – bluntly, I’m going to tell you, year one was a mixed bag. The numbers didn’t change much. I want to – again, my job is to come here with my host and provide honest information. And people sometimes who believe in something will fight for what they believe in, but my job is to also tell you what we’re seeing. The first year with the middle schools, we didn’t see much change even though it was universal access. But now, we’re acting at the elementary school else with breakfast, and we think this is an important part of the equation because, as you said, you want kids to not have to wait until lunch to be well-fed. So, the jury is honestly still out on how far we’re going to go next on universal lunch, but we’re looking at it very carefully because we want to see more results in middle school. But let me tell you what we’re doing with breakfast – Dorita? 

Deputy Chancellor Dorita Gibson: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, it was nice seeing you again. You have a great superintendent in Superintendent Allison. We want to make sure that children are not hungry. You know, children can’t learn if they’re hungry – that’s the first thing that we know. But breakfast in the classroom we’ve expanded – we have about 600 children that are getting breakfast in the classroom. But we’ve also tweaked it a little bit, meaning that if you come to school early, because we don’t want children in the street – children need to be in a school, they need to be in the classrooms, they need to be in the lunchroom waiting before school starts – they can also have breakfast. All children should have lunch. I think that we’ve done a lot more work with the middle schools and the afterschool programs – you know, they’re there. We want our children to be really in school or in a structured environment. I’m concerned when you say they can’t go into the shelters, and they have no place to go, and they shouldn’t be in the street. You need to let me know and let the superintendent know where they are because we have schools that have afterschool programs, we have Community Schools in District 17. Children need be someplace – they don’t need to be waiting. So, we want to make sure that happens, and we’ll continue to make sure that children are having lunch. 

Question: [inaudible]

Mayor: Now, look, we’ll happily share with you because we – again, we implemented in the standalone middle schools. Honestly, advocates have said very emphatically, when you do this, all sorts of more kids will be taking up lunch and it just didn’t happen. And we’re trying to figure out why and we’re trying to figure out what it means. So, that’s still – we did it the first year as a pilot to test it. We said we’re going to do it a second year now to try and figure it out. But I want to make the point about breakfast – we’ve got to make sure that every parents knows that breakfast is available for their children. And more and more, that’s going to be not only before school, but we’re working to try and get that in the first – you know the first school period as well. But I want – on the question – I appreciate Dorita’s point – if there’s kids who don’t have a place to go after school, we can help them, but let’s – come up here, Steve Banks. Are you saying it is a shelter that will not allow the children in afterschool? And, if so, we need to know what it is.

Question: Let me first say that I am a member of your Community School Planning Committee, so I was there when the [inaudible] rolled out of the 100 Community School, for which I still go to the meetings and so forth. And, I thank you, because we do have at least three Community Schools in our district. What I’m saying to you is that because of the time frames – even when it comes to parents attending PTA meetings and so forth, and they complain parents aren’t coming out, there’s a time limit that they have to get back in. So, what we’ve done is implemented ways where we can give letters to say – well, they were at the PTA meeting, let them come. The piece with the student, there’s an example – the student is waiting in the cold every so often outside of a school, people see this child. One day, it’s so cold, that he came inside. They asked him, why are you here? What’s going on? And that’s when he explained that he cannot go home until his mom comes back from work because he’s not allowed without a parent. 

Mayor: Where? Where? Because we need to – where can’t he go home?

Question: One of the neighborhood shelters.

Mayor: Which one? 

Question: One of the neighborhood shelters. [inaudible] at Tilden. Tilden – is that better? Tilden, right? So, the person in charge helped the child with food and so forth –

Mayor: We – we want to fix – listen to me one second – we want to fix the problem, and he’s in charge of the shelters, and we know where the problem is. We can make sure that child doesn’t have that experience. 

Commissioner Banks: Great. And I have my colleague here with me and we’re going to take down the information. First of all, the problem of homeless, as the Mayor said, didn’t happen overnight – it’s built up over many years. Some of you may remember when I was at Legal Aid, we sued the City to provide shelter. So, now, part of the overhaul that the Mayor directed 90 days ago is for us to look at every aspect of the system that’s not working the way it should work. The problem you’re raising – I’ve heard it all over 30-plus years – the problem you’re raising is somewhat of a new one, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t solve it. We’re going to take down your information in terms of exactly what the location is. We’ll follow up with the shelter and see what the situation is because parents should not be barred from going to PTA meetings because of shelter rules. Kids should not be left bouncing between the school and the shelter.

Question: Am I making sense? 

Commissioner Banks: I’m not disputing you, I just need to know more of the facts so I could actually try to solve it.

Question: I will definitely share that with you. Thank you.

Commissioner Banks: Okay, terrific, and my colleague right there is going to follow up with you to get your information. Thank you.

Mayor: Let me affirm that town hall meetings are where we fix problems. So, that’s why I want – no, this is why I will press people – if you know something, we need to know. Literally, you’ve got everyone who’s going to fix the problem sitting in the room right now. That’s why – and if it’s something that you want to tell them more individually, that’s fine. But the problem-solvers are right here. We don’t want to leave this room tonight not solving problems. 

Councilmember Eugene: Yes, good. Please.

Question: First of all, I would like to apologize – my president would like to apologize for omitting to welcome our [inaudible]. My name is Rosemary [inaudible]. I’m from Lefferts Gardens. [inaudible]. I see, Mr. Mayor, where you have our Finest – members of our Finest and our Strongest, so I want to tell you gentlemen that we appreciate your community spirit and [inaudible] community leaders. But, at the same time, I’d like to address – ask you two questions when it comes to mental health and homelessness. Where are we there? Because I have a family member who has that problem and I know the challenges that security officers have when they come if that somebody is going off. You know, what are the pointers that you’re giving, you know, to help us with our problems. And also, to the Commissioner, we have this disease that we hear about now. What is it? Zika?

Mayor: Zika.

Question: So, could you please address this for me?

Mayor: I’ll start on mental health and Dr. Bassett will talk about Zika. Okay? So, very quickly – my wife, Chirlane, has started an initiative and it’s called ThriveNYC, and this is going to be an entirely different approach to mental health in this city, and it is in the best of hands because my wife is running it.

[Laughter]

We recognize that this city has really not had a mental health policy – we haven’t had a mental health system. We’ve had a huge number of problems caused by mental health challenges. Guess what happened? Police had to deal with them; teachers had to deal with them; shelter had to deal with them; Rikers Island. But the problem at the core was not addressed. This is, if you think about it, so illogical, so immoral, that people had a problem that is no different from a physical problem, right? We all are born with our bodies and we have physical problems either we’re born with or we get over time, and no one says – oh, you broke your leg, there’s something wrong with you. Right? Or, no one says – you’re five-foot-five, there’s something wrong with you. Your physical reality is accepted more than your mental health reality. But there is one in five – the figure’s amazing – one in five New Yorkers are afflicted by some type of mental health need. So, instead of having a policy, instead of having a strategy, we just swept it under the rug. And then, on top of that, this community – not this community, the whole society – the whole society has stigmatized, which takes a problem and makes it worse. So, my wife has said, we’re going to consciously and energetically de-stigmatize with everything we’ve got. We’re going to go at the problem when it is at its root, particularly when children are young. And that’s why Community Schools are so important, because they have mental health in the schools – mental health services. We’re going to train people, as you said, to identify the problem. 250,000 people – a quarter-million people will be given Mental Health First Aid. And I want to encourage – when it’s available, I want to encourage everyone in this room – take advantage of it. Again, physical – you know, you go to the Red Cross, you get a first aid class if someone is having a physical problem. There is a version of that for mental health to teach people how to see the signs and get help. We’re going to start something called NYC Support, which is literally a phone number you can call, an instead of it just being a place that gives you a referral, this is a place where you get a human being who says – okay, this is what you need, here’s where you go, and then they stay with you – they stay in touch with you to make sure you’re actually getting the treatment. This is going to take time, but, as we do it, we’re going to get to a lot of these problems early and better, and help avoid much worse problems. So, that’s the mental health piece. Over to Dr. Bassett to tell us about Zika –

Commissioner Bassett: Alright, thanks. What people need –

Mayor: Let me just say, Dr. Bassett – she just made Ebola look easy. So, she’s going to tell you now about Zika.

Commissioner Bassett: Zika is a virus, but it doesn’t spread from person to person the way Ebola did. So, what people in New York need to know about Zika now is that there are many countries in Latin American and the Caribbean where Zika is being transmitted. It’s transmitted by mosquito bites and – overwhelmingly by mosquito bites. So, if you’re a woman who’s pregnant or thinking about getting pregnant, you should not travel to those areas that have ongoing Zika transmission right now. We recommend against it. If you come back from those areas and you want to be tested, that testing is available to you for free, and we’ll do it at our Health Department. There’s no risk of Zika right now in New York City because it’s not mosquito season. But mosquito season is coming and we’re going to get prepared. We’re very hopeful, but we want to be sure that we’re ready – chikungunya never came here, dengue never came here – even though they spread in other places. So the main message right now is for pregnant women who travel to areas where Zika transmission is ongoing.

Mayor: And let me – one other piece on Zika. Doctor, stay here because I want you to be my doctor.

Commissioner Bassett: Anytime.

Mayor: We’ve many times had to explain things, and I learn to be the amateur doctor and she’s the real doctor. So right now the actual mosquito – that the specific type of mosquito that spreads Zika is not present in New York City. And we hope it stays that way. There’s been no recorded evidence of that particular type of mosquito here. There is another mosquito that’s like a cousin that is here, but has not been shown to spread Zika. But we are keeping a very close eye to make sure it stays that way. So as the doctor said, mosquito season’s going to begin soon. We’re going to be monitoring closely. We’re going to be looking for anything that looks like it may be Zika. If we found anything, we do have methods to go at it and try and eradicate. But the good news – and again, I want you to tell me if this is right –

Commissioner Bassett: Yes.

Mayor: Is that the specific mosquito that spreads it is not present here right now.

Commissioner Bassett: That is correct. That is correct. And the other thing to tell people is this is a mild disease. People who get it may have very few symptoms or no symptoms and they get better from it. It’s not pleasant, but they recover from it rapidly. The reason we’re so worried about it is because it seems to affect the babies. So that’s why we have this recommendation. The vector as we call it – the mosquito that’s here in New York City. We have had no signs that it’s had chikungunya, that it’s had dengue, or that it’s had Zika. So we’re – we don’t have the mosquito in New York City that’s been spreading it all over Latin America and the Caribbean.

Mayor: And we’re not giving it a visa either.

Commissioner Bassett: We’re not giving it a visa.

[Laughter]

Councilmember Eugene: All right. Sir, please.

Question: Good evening. Mayor de Blasio, thank you for coming to our community. Councilman, thank you for inviting me. My name is Benjamin Gaspard. I want to change the topic a little bit. I’m a [inaudible] contractor in the Flatbush area. I’ve been in business since 1980. I was one of the very first contractors that went to the HPD program – [inaudible] contractor – to make sure that he was qualified to [inaudible] an HPD project. Over the years, we have done a lot – a quite a bit of work – big and small, we tried to the best we could. What I find out in the market now as we went to – when the market crashed up to now when the market start coming back – is a lack of opportunity for the minority contractors. Several of my friends have been in the industry for years – good contractors, good track record – are blocked out of the market – look like more cronies are going onto the market. Some of the jobs that we have gotten as recently as this summer – there was a Build it Back New York program I was invited to participate in. And I went in there and the contractor tells me: “Oh I have this $20,000 to put this building up. I want to see if you could do it.” And we did it. By the end of the day, we wound up not doing it. Some of the commissioners there probably recognize me from that site. It was a guy with some [inaudible] – one of them was glad to the project because one of the persons they were doing it for was a firefighter. That was –

Mayor: Okay, let me here the question. What are you asking?

Question: The question is – what is it exactly that HPD plans to do for minority contractors – to really participate on all these projects that are going on in this city?

Mayor: Yep.

Question: Because one of the biggest questions I realize is that they are putting block after block – insurance issue in front of small contractors – to give us opportunity—

Mayor: No, I’ve got the question. Look, we’re very adamant and I thank you for the question – we’re very adamant that we want more and more opportunity for minority and women-owned business. Gregg Bishop is responsible – SBS for certifying  – and SBS is certifying more businesses than ever before. HPD and many agencies have opportunity, so Gregg and Vicki speak to how we can maximize opportunity and specifically with HPD.

Question: I do get an invite. It is easy to get my name on a directory – MWBE – my wife is part of the company. [Inaudible] invite and we bid on this job and the fact of the matter – when we bid on those job – we never heard back from anybody. They take our numbers and use our numbers for other purpose. But we do get an invite. But it’s just like the playing field – why all of a sudden now we’re to a point where we get to say why are we bidding on this job for?

Mayor: Okay, let me have both of them speak to it.

Commissioner Gregg Bishop, Department of Small Business Services: So I’ll speak on the overall MW program and I’ll make sure I’ll get your card and follow up with you directly. So at SBS we help minority and women-owned businesses compete for City contracts. So in your specific cases where if you’re competing with other agencies, you’re not hearing back, or you are having issues with bidding, we have a set of services to help you with that. We advocate for you – as an MW contractor. So we’ll sit down with you. It sounds like you have a lot of experience, so we’ll check your capacity and connect you to other opportunities. HPD, I think, has a number of programs that Vicki will talk about. But there’s a program that we actually started where MWBE contractors can bid exclusively on [inaudible] work, so there’s other opportunities outside of HPD that I think I should connect you to and make you aware of. So I’ll get your information after this.

Commissioner Been: So, thank you for the question – I’m proud to say that HPD contracts – you know the contracts that you’re talking about – we have about 45 percent of them are now going to MWBEs. We want to get that number up even higher. We’re doing a variety of things across the agency to make sure that people are trained, to make sure that people are getting feed-back if they’re bidding and not winning – that they get feedback about what’s going on and what they could do to improve their bids – what they could do to be more competitive. So I’m happy to talk with you – happy to work with you directly and get your advice about anything that we’re not doing but we’re really trying to both make sure that there are capacity-building opportunities available to help people be successful in those buildings.

Mayor: And Gregg will set up a personal meeting with you to follow up.

Councilman Eugene: Okay, thank you very much. We are running out of time. We’re going to take three more questions and after that we’re going to do wrap up. All right? So there’s a lady, she has been asking – she has been asking for a long time. Could you please, miss?

Question: Good evening everyone.

Mayor: Who’s that with you?

Question: This is Niambi.

Mayor: Is Niambi going to answer – ask a question too?

Question: She will – later on. Thank you for having this town hall. I am – my name is Aura. I’m an employee of CAMBA. So thank you Caitlin – can you raise your hand? I’ve never seen her before.

Mayor: Caitlin?

Question: She invited us. Oh, okay. I’m coming over there to say thank you in person. But I am an employee of CAMBA. I’m originally from Harlem – I’m in Brooklyn now, I love it here. Thank you. But I am here also because I feel like the forgotten population. So there’s talk about low-income. There’s talk about seniors. There’s talk about people who are mentally ill. There’s talk about people who have a – the politically correct term – is a substance use disorder. There’s talk about persons that make below $46,000. I concur with the sister that talked about the children in shelter. I have a lot of experience. I’ve worked in several shelters. I’ve been a special-ed teacher. And two questions I have. The first question is what about those persons who have no disabilities—

Mayor: Right, I got it.

Question: They are working.

Mayor: Working people.

Question: I am a young family. I cannot afford to live in Harlem. That’s why I’m in Brooklyn. But I’m glad that it’s nice here. There are several buildings going up in my neighborhood. I live in Bushwick. And the only reason I’m there is because I’m affiliated a church. I got a hook-up basically. And I asked about a building and it’s $3,000 for a studio. So I want to know when you say affordable – I’m going back to that because I didn’t hear my demographic mentioned. I didn’t hear my income mentioned. I don’t make $100,000. But I do – between me and my husband – we make more than 46. But I don’t see that in any of the housing lotteries. I don’t see that income range in HOP, in LAMP. Because I’m doing this every day for my clients.

Mayor: Okay, I gotcha. I gotcha.

Question: The next question I have is I have clients who are in shelter. They’re getting vouchers, but landlords are not accepting them. So what is the City going to do or is there something that the City – can they mandate that a percentage be accepted because they’re not accepting?

Mayor: I understand. That’s why – so both these points we spent a little bit of time on, but we should say it more clearly. First of all, Niambi is amazing. Niambi is like the mellowest child. Niambi has been here the whole time?

Question: Yes.

Mayor: That’s like a super baby.

[Laughter]

Niambi went to her first town hall meeting at the age of –

Question: Nine months.

Mayor: Nine months. All right – there you go. That’s a good citizen. That’s a good citizen.

Okay, on the first point. Yes, there is affordable housing in our plan for people who make between 46,000 and say 80, 90, 100,000. Yes. And we said it earlier – for nurses, for custodians, for people that work for the City, or for fire fighters, for teachers. Yes, that is part of our plan. We announced the plan in May of 2014 and we showed literally all the different pieces of the plan. And there is a big piece of it that is also for working people who don’t qualify for lower-income housing but can’t afford what’s on the market. So the answer’s yes. But it’s still lottery and all that, but it does exist. It is being built and it is some of the units we’re preserving as well.

On the question of section-8 – it’s illegal. I’m going to say it again. It is illegal for a landlord to reject someone on the basis of the income they have. So if what if they have is a Section 8 voucher. And a landlord says, I’m not going to give you this apartment because of the Section 8 voucher, that’s illegal.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Say again.

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: Any kind of – any kind of income – thank you – subsidized income – you have a right to use that. And it is illegal in New York City – it’s not true in other places – but here it is illegal to turn someone away. That’s why I said if you see an ad that says no programs, no Section 8 – that’s illegal right there. And they can be fined for it and the specific tenant can be given restitution. So our friends from Human Rights Commission – put up your hands again. Okay, good. Pascal’s going to come over and talk to your directly because if we know anyone who’s in that situation, we want to help them get what they deserve, which is that apartment and/or money back.

Councilmember Eugene: All right. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Miss? She has been waiting for a long time. Would you please?

Question: Good evening, Mayor. My name is Adele Bennett. I’m a member of Community Board 17. I am a committee member with Housing, Transportation, and Public Safety. My question is in regard to Department of Buildings. In my area, there’s a luxury building going up  – that means it’s not affordable for anybody in this room. Nobody. They came to our board last month and asked for a waiver to work on Sundays. We all voted no. But we caught them working anyway. I went there personally and even videotaped it. So how do we correct this situation?

Mayor: Where is Ira? Stand up Ira.

Mayor: Okay, in terms of what is allowed on Sundays and what does it mean that the Community Board voted against it?

Brooklyn Borough Commissioner Ira Gluckman, Department of Buildings: Okay on Sundays, you’re allowed to get an after-hours work variance permit.

Mayor: Speak English please.

[Laughter]

Question: Yes, I know what it is. They came to the Board—

Mayor: You may know, but the rest of us want to know.

Commissioner Gluckman: I’m going to explain to everybody. When you get a work permit, you can work Monday through Friday from seven in the morning to six at night. And if you want to work after those hours we give you what’s called an AHV – after hour variance. So those variances  – if somebody is working within 200 feet of a residential area, we do not give you the permit.

Question: It is within 200 feet.

Mayor: And the Community Board – and what does it mean – I’m sorry one second. And what does it mean also when a Community Board votes against something like that? What does that mean in the process?

Commissioner Gluckman: Well we take special action.

Mayor: So you’re saying it’s near a residential site?

Question: Yes, it’s right across the street from it.

Commissioner Gluckman: I will meet you after this meeting. You’ll give me the address. And we will make sure they get no more after-hours variances.

Mayor: I want to do even better, Ira.

Question: What?

Mayor: I want Ira to go to the address with you and see for himself.

Commissioner Gluckman: I will be there.

Question: Perfect. Perfect.

[Applause]

Question: That would be absolutely wonderful.

Commissioner Gluckman: I do also want to explain that even if a construction project is within 200 feet, there are certain times when we have to give you an after-hours variance.

Mayor: Yes, okay.

Commissioner Gluckman: If they are erecting a crane, you don’t want them to erect a crane on –

Mayor: But whatever the case, no I appreciate it.

Question: Well we called them and –

Mayor: Just let me make clear. Ira is the head of the Brooklyn office.

Question: Yes.

Mayor: He’s the law. He’s going to go to the site with you – see with his own eyes. And if it’s wrong, if it’s illegal, he will throw the book at them.

Question: They need something thrown at them.

Councilmember Eugene: Thank you, now the last question. All right.

Mayor: It’s the moment of decision. You’ve got to decide.

Councilmember Eugene: All right – one over here. Ms. Evelyn, would you please? And after that I come to you.

Mayor: Wait she had one already. She had a question already.

Councilmember Eugene: Really?

Mayor: Yes. That long question before. Give it to someone else – politely – because she had a question already.

Councilmember Eugene: All right.

Question: I’m going to be very –

Councilmember Eugene: Wait. We’ve got to get to questions over here.

Question: I’m going to be very, very quick. I just want to say to the mayor. I just want to have the mayor recognize 7-1 precinct – the community affairs officer there and we work in the community very well with the precinct.

[Applause]

We want to also recognize Brooklyn Borough South—[inaudible] – who we work with. And as you said earlier about the community policing, I want you to know that there are community affairs officers that are really working with the community – 7-1 and Borough South is one of them.

Mayor: Thank you. Thank you very much.

Question: And thank you our Councilmember Mathieu Eugene. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Councilmember Eugene: All right, now, this is truly the last question. Can we vote on that? Yes?

Mayor: Don’t offer a vote.

Councilmember Eugene: All right, all right, all right.

Mayor: Wait a minute let me say something. Eugene, Eugene. I just want to make this clear to everyone. This is like you’re at the party but because all the commissioners are staying, there’s going to be an after party. So if you’re cool, you go to the after party. I love my running joke. I just love it. [Laughter]

Councilmember Eugene: Please. Could you state your name please?

Question: Good evening, good evening. Good evening, okay my name is Valerie Hollingsworth.

Mayor: Wait a minute something’s not working there.

Question: I don’t think it’s —

Mayor: There you go. Yes.

Question: Good evening, my name is Valerie Hollingsworth and I am the land use chair from Community Board 17. So I want to first of all thank you Mr. Mayor for coming out because you’re very, very busy so we appreciate you coming out and talking to the community. My concern is – it’s just an observation really more so than a question – that under your initiative wanting to have affordable housing in those areas where there may be open spaces that builders are going to put up structures and a lot – some of those units to affordable housing. My observation is that in some of these areas, I’m seeing within a span of maybe two blocks, these big, large, storage facilities that are coming up. And those storage facilities – one of those units could possibly be the price of an apartment for someone. So I guess my concern is that – I mean I know you – it’s not something that can be stopped now because of course you see these facilities already up. But in my neighborhood I observed that there were two within maybe a block-and-a-half. These big, safe storage, huge facilities that take up a lot of space that could possibility – a unit or a building that could service people you know – especially people that are displaced or people that can’t afford to live where they are now could possibly go somewhere else where it may be a little bit cheaper.

Mayor: All right, let me speak to that. I appreciate it. It’s a good observation. So let me speak to this question and I’ll wrap up while I’m doing it. First of all, again, thank you to everyone for caring so much about the community – you spend all this time here and all the passion of the questions and the concerns. I got to tell you. I know you could talk about a lot of issues. And I know that we’ve just had a sampling of the issues in the community tonight. But it is also a very good indication that there are not concerns being raised first and foremost on safety. And I know there’s always challenges and there’s always more work to do. But it is a great tribute to the NYPD that we’re focused on a lot of other issues besides safety. A few years ago, we probably would have been talking more about safety. But the NYPD has made us a lot safer. So let’s give them all a round of applause to thank them.

[Applause]

And wherever I go I say they aren’t finished. They aren’t finished. There’s going to be 2,000 more officers. There’s better training, better technology than ever. You’re going to see an even safer city because of the great work they’re doing.

On the question here – so we’ve talked a lot this evening about every tool we’re going to use to create affordable housing. Now, I wish I had a magic wand. I don’t mean that to be coy. I’m saying I wish when you say something like look at that storage facility, I wish I could say something like, “Nope, you can’t build that. You have to build housing.” The free market comes with its joys and sorrows. And I think sometimes the frustration people feel is because the private sector has under our laws many, many things they get to do that the government doesn’t have any role in whatsoever. And that frustrates me, to be very honest with you, because I see a lot of irrational stuff happening.

There are so many people who need housing. I wished we had a system that actually addressed human needs rather than so often the profit needs of a few people. But that’s our reality right now. In the City of New York, we have the power compared to many other places – we at least have some power to rebalance that equation – to create more fairness. We have some of the resources to invest in creating affordable housing and subsidizing affordable housing. And we have the power under the law and this is why what the City Council is talking about right now is so powerful – to do something that’s never been done in any major city in the country – and literally say we’re going to require the creation of affordable housing when a developer’s building a big building. That’s going to really change the playing field.

But we are not at the point where we can say anything that’s being built, we get to dictate what it is. That’s not real. What we can do is where we have land that has not yet been used is do the things – intervene in the ways we can – to try and greatly increase the chance it will turn into housing as opposed to some other use – and turn it into affordable housing especially. You see all over the city, there are vacant lots, even to this day. And there are places that could be housing. There are abandoned buildings even to this day that could be housing. And the folks at HPD and the other agencies are constantly working to figure out where’s the next place that they can turn into housing. There is that urgency – doesn’t allow us to reach everywhere but we’re going to find a lot of places and unlock them and turn them into housing. And by the way, there are people all over the city who can help us do it. I’ve talked to a lot of ministers lately who say they have a church parking lot they want to turn into housing or an unused building they want to turn into housing. And we say come on down to City Hall because we want to figure out how to do that with you. So that’s where we’re trying to go.

But let me thank everyone – look, all the work we’re trying to do here, it’s not going to be easy but I can tell you one thing – I’m committed and everyone sitting in these rows in committed to a more livable city, a safer city, a more affordable city and we will stick with it.

Thank you and thank you for being our partners in that.

[Applause]

Councilmember Eugene: Before you go, before you go, I want one more time to express my thanks to each one and all of you – all the partners. And also, I want you to put your hands together one more time for our Mayor – the Honorable Mayor de Blasio for every wonderful thing – all the efforts he’s making to make New York City a better place for all of us, where we can live with our families, raise our children, and create a legacy for generations to come. Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. May God bless you.

[Applause]