Three New York City mayoral candidates discussed their plans to increase affordability and combat the city’s housing crisis at the Kimmel Center for University Life on Thursday.
The candidates in attendance — City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, Comptroller Brad Lander and former Comptroller Scott Stringer — answered questions from political journalist Errol Louis about addressing homelessness and responding to the current mayoral administration’s initiatives. The forum was hosted by NYU’s Furman Center, which conducts research on urban policy and housing, in tandem with the nonprofit New York Housing Conference.
Rachel Fee, executive director of the New York Housing Conference, and Matthew Murphy, executive director of the Furman Center, opened the event by encouraging attendees to look for concrete initiatives candidates offer should they win the election after people begin casting their votes next month. After that, Louis asked candidates to detail their plans to close the gap between rent prices and income levels, citing that about 67% of households in the city rent their property.
Lander spoke first, telling the audience that he has been pushing for more affordable housing over the past three decades as a city politician since 2009 and nonprofit leader in the years prior. He said that he aims to modernize the New York City Housing Authority, which connects residents with affordable housing, with improved staffing practices and technology to increase its efficiency — especially in preparation for potential federal funding cuts.
“My plan is to build a half million homes over the next decade across the range of incomes — focus like a laser on making housing as genuinely affordable as we can,” Lander said. “Make sure every tenant who’s facing eviction in a housing court has a lawyer that they need, so this gap doesn’t wind up pushing them out into the streets.”
Later in the forum, Lander spoke about his plan to build more cooperative housing paved over four of the 12 city-owned golf courses. He also emphasized the importance of addressing the racial wealth gap in the co-op market and creating opportunities for families of color to become homeowners.
Adrienne Adams spoke about her current initiatives, including the New York City Council’s City For All plan, which she spearheaded to create more affordable and sustainable housing throughout the city and stronger protections for tenants. Announced in November, the plan came in response to Mayor Eric Adams’ City of Yes proposal to amend zoning rules to allow for increased development across all neighborhoods.
“I have delivered the most aggressive housing plan in a generation, and I’m very, very proud of that,” Adrienne Adams said at the forum. “I have already done the work — already doing the work — so my intention is, as the first woman mayor, to expand on the work that I’m already doing as speaker of the City Council.”
Stringer also referred to his work as comptroller, particularly his identification of over 1,000 city-owned vacant lots that the Department of Housing Preservation and Development could use to build affordable housing on. He said that in hindsight, the city should have allocated the lots to nonprofit organizations to ensure that the new homes would serve citizens who needed it the most.
“We’re becoming a city of the very, very wealthy and the city — it enclaves communities to the very, very poor, and we’re not building the housing in the middle that we need,” Stringer said. “We can go back into the housing business, but we have to remember — it’s about who we’re building for, as well as what we’re building.”
Louis also asked candidates how they would address Eric Adams’ public safety initiative to vacate the streets of homeless encampments and persuade unhoused individuals to go to shelters — which has seen backlash from homeless advocates as a waste of resources and unnecessary use of police presence. Lander was staunchly opposed to the current administration’s policy and said that it’s highly ineffective at connecting citizens with housing. Meanwhile, Stringer said that he is in favor of the initiative, but emphasized the importance that the police are not employing hostility. Adrienne Adams remained neutral on the initiative as a method to combat homelessness.
Toward the end of the forum, Louis rapidly asked the speakers questions about their personal housing experiences as New York City residents, including if they are homeowners or renters and if they have ever lived in rent-subsizied housing. Stringer shared that he currently rents his property and has never lived in a rent-subsidized home, while both Lander and Adrienne Adams explained that after owning homes for over 20 years, they each have little personal experience searching for housing in the city recently.
NYU Law professor Vicki Been, the faculty director at NYU Furman and former deputy mayor for housing development, gave a concluding statement to the forum. She thanked Adreinne Adams, Stringer and Lander for their participation, particularly after the event organizers had also invited five other mayoral candidates who were not in attendance on Thursday.
“We are here for you, we will question you, we will call you out but we are here to help,” Been said. “We all share the goal of making New York City the greatest city in the world — an affordable city that provides equity and affordability and opportunity for all New Yorkers.”
Contact Eva Mundo at [email protected].
