In The News
New York Daily News: Fix N.Y.C's Affordability Crisis
by Errol Lewis
Voters won't choose New York City's next mayor until November of next year, but the debate has already begun about the No.1 issue of the 2009 race: reversing the soaring cost of living and faltering outerborough job growth that are driving middle class residents out of the city.
Far too many of the 300,000 or so New Yorkers who pack up each year to relocate elsewhere in America are only going as far as the suburbs, many of them heartbroken that the city of their youth and dreams has become a place where housing costs too much, taxes and fees are too high, the schools don't work and there aren't enough good jobs to go around.
In the past, street crime and disorder were reason enough to flee New York: many a family threw in the towel after the riots of 1977 or 1991 or the murder rates that soared during the Koch and Dinkins administrations. Crime is at 40-year lows now - but middle-class families are still heading for the exits at a furious clip.
At this rate, the greatest city in the world will become a hollowed-out city full of millionaires, celebrities and poorly paid immigrants - with not much in between.
Rep. Anthony Weiner recently treated a cross-section of Brooklyn's civic and business leaders to a preview of the issues at stake during a forum at Kingsborough Community College, setting a high bar that other candidates will have to clear.
"We need to think big thoughts if we're going to get anything done in terms of solving our near-term problems and preserving the middle class," he said. "We constantly have to be at a place where we're re-creating government and rethinking how we do it."
He's right on both counts.
Life in the big city has always been a challenge, and New Yorkers take special pride in surviving tough times. But what convinces many to throw in the towel is the feeling that municipal government, full of overpaid bureaucrats and clownish elected officials, is too slow, inefficient and uncaring to halt the exodus.
Mayor Bloomberg might not want to admit it, but his administration will have its hands full trying to complete its own ambitious reform agenda in the 669 days before the next mayor takes his or her oath of office.
Weiner, who wants to be the man getting sworn in, has renewed a call from his unsuccessful 2005 bid for Gracie Mansion - a 10% income tax cut for households making less than $150,000 a year, financed by a 5% tax increase on those making more than $1 million a year. He's also promising to compete with New Jersey and other job-poaching states to keep New York companies from leaving the five boroughs.
"You wanna go visit the jobs that should be coming to Brooklyn? Go to Jersey City," he told the Kingsborough audience. "Take a look at a community that grew up in the last eight years - 30,000 or so jobs," mostly back-office operations of New York firms.
Weiner's also reviving a call from 2005 to have city agencies identify the bottom 5% of government-funded programs every year and chop them.
Judging by the enthusiastic response Weiner got at Kingsborough, the issues from 2005 have risen to the top of the urban agenda, putting him in the enviable position of being the candidate who sounded a loud, clear warning about the economic storm bearing down on the city's middle class before it arrived.
That will count for a lot as the campaign unfolds.
