Mayor de Blasio sounded a dark note in the second-to-last State of the City speech of his administration, saying his efforts to make the city affordable haven’t quite worked and that the problem is like an antibiotic-resistant disease.
While he shied away from the kind of big-ticket proposals that typically characterize such speeches, he called for scattered measures to keep kids safe, help small businesses and tackle climate change.
“There is a particular fear out there, a particular anxiety,” de Blasio declared to a room full of supporters and fellow electeds at the American Museum of Natural History. “People are afraid that New York City won’t be New York City anymore.
“You can talk about an affordability crisis, but that doesn’t even capture the depth of it,” he continued. “We thought the tools we would apply would work … They’ve had an effect, but more and more, this feels like one of those diseases that becomes resistant to antibiotics.
“We’re at a point where we have to be saved.”
In an effort to keep small businesses in place, he called for a “vacancy tax” on landlords who keep storefronts off the market. But as with other proposals he made Thursday, he appeared to be looking to Albany to do the heavy lifting, acknowledging that such a tax could only come with state pols’ blessing.
“We have to save them,” de Blasio said of mom-and-pop shops, maintaining the speech’s tone of crisis. “We have to devote ourselves to doing things we haven’t done before.”
Hizzoner said the city will continue to reduce fines on small businesses, explaining that levies have already been cut by 40% and will reach 50% by the 2021 end of his administration. Also on the real estate front, de Blasio said the city will help finance 2,000 homes for low-income New Yorkers and make it legal to rent basement apartments.
In some areas, de Blasio seemed to look to the City Council. He called for renters to get alternatives to pricey security deposits, piggybacking on proposed legislation to limit such fees from Council members Keith Powers and Carlina Rivera, both Manhattan Dems.
De Blasio also promised to create a “blue ribbon” panel to evaluate rent control for commercial tenants — an effort Councilman Steve Levin (D-Brooklyn) is pushing in the legislature. But the mayor left open the possibility he’ll undermine the councilman’s proposed legislation, saying he long thought commercial rent control was illegal.
“Is there a legal way we can have commercial rent control in New York City?” de Blasio said. “If it’s a yes, we should go to Albany and get it done in 2021.”
Hizzoner called on Albany once again when talking clean energy. He said the state will help the city set up a hub for wind power at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal in Sunset Park. But on its own, the city will help set up solar panels on 50,000 residences and create 5,000 “green jobs” in the process, de Blasio promised.
“Those of use who are scared in our hearts, in their souls, are our children,” he said. “If we don’t get away from gas, there wont be a world for our children and grandchildren.”
De Blasio promised to set up 1,000 new traffic lights, stop signs and speed bumps around schools. He also said the NYPD is creating a “Vision Zero Unit” with more than 100 personnel who will crack down on speeding, red light running and failure to yield to pedestrians.
A number of his initiatives had target dates after the end of his term.
He promised a new agreement to use more hydropower by 2025, an 86% high school graduation rate by 2026 and an all-electric fleet of city vehicles by 2040. De Blasio set the same target date for ending the use of fossil fuels and natural gas in large buildings in the city, starting with government sites.
For a mayor who once thought he had a chance at becoming president, and has struggled to be a leading national voice of progressivism, the speech was noteworthy for lack of mention of hot-button issues like immigration. President Trump, who was acquitted in the Senate impeachment trial a day before, was also left out of the picture.
“Our challenge, our enemy in this struggle is an economic one,” de Blasio said, using some of the populist rhetoric that characterized his previous campaigns. “It’s not that we have to fear street thugs; it’s that we have to fear bad landlords. That’s the reality.”