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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. As you probably know, Mayor Adams holds one off-topic press conference per week, off-topic being press lingo for when reporters can ask him questions on any subject. This week, Mayor Adams opened the off-topic press conference with what he called a "victory lap" on the city council approving the Bronx Metro-North rezoning plan. The plan will allow construction of roughly 7,000 new housing units around two of the new Metro-North stations in the East Bronx.

Now, that plan, passed by city council last Thursday, is a separate but similar part of the Adams administration proposal to change the zoning footprint citywide called City of Yes. You've heard of that City of Yes campaign from the mayor's office? The full title, "City of Yes for Housing Opportunity." That showdown will take place in the city council this fall. The mayor is attending the Democratic National Convention this week but has not been invited to speak. Some are considering that a snub.

Since this is the media's once-per-week off-topic news conference with the mayor, a lot of the questions were actually about why he's going to the DNC in the first place, especially since it seemed that he wasn't so in with the Biden-Harris group. We'll talk about all that and more with Michelle Bocanegra, WNYC and Gothamist political reporter, focused on campaigns and the New York City Council filling in today for the vacationing Elizabeth Kim, who joins us most Wednesdays after the mayor's Tuesday news conferences. Hey, Michelle, welcome to the show today.

Michelle Bocanegra: Hey, Brian. Good morning.

Brian Lehrer: Why was he heading to Chicago so late? He was still in New York doing this Tuesday news conference yesterday. You asked him that question, right?

Michelle Bocanegra: I did ask him that question. He started his answer with a joke suggesting that the New York press corps throws a stink whenever he leaves town and then they throw a stink when he doesn't leave soon enough. Then he sort of segued into his answer, which is that he said he was busy. He said he was busy with his duties as mayor. He listed off a couple of them. One of them included giving the key to the city to the rapper, Fat Joe, and, of course, his weekly off-topic press conference with reporters.

Brian Lehrer: Right. It's kind of fair. A lot of people go for part of the convention, not the whole convention. I was told that John Avlon, the Long Island candidate who was just on, was there last night but is coming back to New York today. A lot of people go for a few days, so I think no big crime there. A bigger deal about Mayor Adams and the convention was when a reporter asked if he felt slighted by the fact that all these New Yorkers were speaking. Schumer, Hochul, AOC, but he wasn't invited to speak. Let's listen to some of the mayor's answer to that.

Mayor Eric Adams: I have one mission and that is to elect VP Harris to be the president of the United States, period. I keep saying over and over again, I'm a soldier. When you're a soldier, you take your assignment and you carry it out. Doesn't matter. I'm not on an ego trip that I have to have this role or that role. I'm the mayor of the city of New York. [laughs] Think about that for a moment. This is the greatest city on the globe. That is the role.

Brian Lehrer: Well, no ambiguity there, Michelle. At least we could say no ambiguity, right, in terms of his vocal support of Kamala Harris?

Michelle Bocanegra: Right, yes, he has endorsed Harris. He didn't initially face some questions when the big news came a few-- I don't remember how long it was ago. A few weeks ago, it fell--

Brian Lehrer: July 21st. It's etched in my brain. Time has been moving so fast this summer, right?

Michelle Bocanegra: [chuckles] Yes, I can't tell when things are a year old or two weeks old anymore.

Brian Lehrer: That's the world we're living in. Go ahead.

Michelle Bocanegra: He waited a little bit to come out in support of Harris, but he did come out in support of her within a couple of days of that all happening. Yes, he's campaigning for her. He hasn't exactly spelled out what form that's going to take, but he has said that he would be part of that over a series of events in the city.

Brian Lehrer: Our listeners may remember that Adams for a while was a surrogate for Joe Biden. He would speak on behalf of or in support of Biden in various ways early in the Biden administration. Because the mayor wasn't getting what he wanted in terms of more financial support for immigration resettlement here or a quicker work authorization for people coming, seeking asylum, that he and Biden had a falling out. He got disinvited to be a spokesperson for Joe Biden. Is that why he didn't get a speaking role? Do we have any reporting on that?

Michelle Bocanegra: We do not have any reporting on that. He shied away from any suggestion or question asking whether it was a falling out or a slight by national Democrats. He just attributed his late arrival to, again, him being busy. He still insists that he has a lot to contribute to the party as somebody who's more middle of the road, who's focused on issues like public safety, affordability, and, of course, being at the forefront of Democrats around the country having to deal with an influx of migrants coming into their cities. That's where he sees things or how he talks about things yesterday when he was asked.

Brian Lehrer: Here's some of the mayor doing exactly that at yesterday's news conference.

Mayor Eric Adams: We have some victories under the Biden administration. Murders are down nationwide. In order to continue that success, we have to make sure that we get the support of our criminal justice apparatus. I tell the party all the time, "We had a good plan." I don't know why. We don't want to be more vociferous about how well we do with public safety.

We support police. We support the banning of assault rifles. We support proactive programs to prevent crime, not only respond to crime. We need to be front and center and show that we are party of public safety. For some reason, we have not been doing that. I'm hoping with a former prosecutor now running for president that she would show that being pro-public safety does not mean you have to be anti-police reformer.

Brian Lehrer: Might be a very useful message with swing voters in various places around the country. I don't know, but I see also that the mayor referred to a number of events being planned in support of the Harris campaign. Did he get specific about that?

Michelle Bocanegra: He did not. He said that he would be taking part of those events and they would be-- Well, I should say he didn't go too much into detail, but he did say that they would be a series of events around the city. He would be zeroing in on outreach to Black male voters, who, of course, Harris has been trying to make inroads with, as have Republicans, ahead of the coming election. We don't know too much about what shape that's going to take over the next several months.

Brian Lehrer: It's a tricky question for politicians to try to project themselves as both pro-public safety in the way that Eric Adams was talking about it in that clip and pro-criminal justice reform in the way that a lot of Democrats feel is needed in a job that's not done. We're breaking down answers from Mayor Eric Adams' weekly Tuesday news conference as we usually do on Wednesdays here on the show usually with our reporter, Elizabeth Kim, who usually covers the mayor today with our reporter Michelle Bocanegra, with Elizabeth on vacation and with you, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Let's get to City of Yes. Let's get to this Bronx rezoning that passed city council yesterday. What's new here?

Michelle Bocanegra: Well, it actually didn't pass yesterday.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, Thursday. I meant to say Thursday.

Michelle Bocanegra: That's okay. Like we said, Brian, time is relative.

[laughter]

Brian Lehrer: Compressed.

Michelle Bocanegra: It passed last week. The mayor talked about it yesterday because, obviously, it's his pitch. It's part of his broader vision for increasing the housing supply in the city. It's a neighborhood-level rezoning in the East Bronx. The changes we would see under this would be around two planned Metro-North stations for the East Bronx. It would really be in the neighborhoods of Morris Park, Parkchester, and Van Nest. It would bring potentially 7,000 new housing units. A portion of those units would be affordable under the various definitions of that. It would just mean basically that the portion would be designated or limited to people who meet certain income requirements.

Brian Lehrer: Are they clear yet? Are they explicit yet on what portion of those 7,000 new units?

Michelle Bocanegra: Yes, so 1,700 of the 7,000 units would fall under that category. That's because of this policy that was born in the de Blasio era. It's a city policy called Mandatory Inclusionary Housing. Before I lose you, [chuckles] I'm going to try to boil it down as simple as I can. It essentially requires all developers who can build new units as a result of zoning changes in a particular area to reserve a share of that for people who meet certain income requirements as designated on the federal level. That's 1,700.

Brian Lehrer: You're not going to lose our listeners. The idea of Mandatory Inclusionary Housing is definitely in the wheelhouse of this show. We've talked about it a lot. It's a point of contention in the housing discussion in New York City. You told me 1,700 out of the 7,000 new units in the Bronx. I immediately thought, "That's it? That's not even 20%." Correct me if I'm wrong, or it's around 20%.

I'll redo that math. That means it's 80% market rate. That's the debate in so many neighborhoods, right? In order to get a rezoning that allows developers to build more densely, how much do they have to offer the neighborhood in terms of units that are below market rate? To a lot of activists, 1,700 out of 7,000 is going to sound piddling, but city council voted yes.

Michelle Bocanegra: Right, exactly. I know that there are progressives in the city council too who would like to see more housing, more affordable housing in particular, especially in areas where the representatives cover transit-rich areas where they have a lot of public transit options. Yes, 1,700, you did the math, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, it's about 25%. I just did it officially on a calculator, not in my uncalculator brain. Yes, it's about 25%, but still, that's pretty low in the scheme of things. I think that's a lot of open space there. I think there's not a lot of housing there in the particular plots that they're talking about. You tell me if you know more about that. In a lot of places, you put in 75% market rate, and it's going to gentrify the neighborhood rather than make it more affordable generally. I'm just saying, that's the debate.

Michelle Bocanegra: Yes, no, you're correct in that.

Brian Lehrer: That was in Councilmember Kristy Marmorato's district in the East Bronx. People may remember that Marmorato was a Republican, one of the very few Republicans in city council elected last year because the former councilmember Democrat, Velázquez, had voted for a zoning change that the neighborhood didn't want, and yet Marmorato voted for this. She must have been required to articulate what the difference was between the two plans, yes?

Michelle Bocanegra: Yes, she definitely was. She chalked it up to the eleventh-hour, if I can call it that, changes to the plan as it was making its way through council review. It's actually not just Marmorato's district. Many of the zoning changes are in her district, but it does stretch into Councilmember Amanda Farias' district as well as Rafael Salamanca's district. Those three districts are getting nearly $500 million in infrastructure upgrades with it, which Councilmember Marmorato talks about.

She also talks about them being able to keep the mandate for developers that would require them essentially to build a minimum number of parking spaces. That's what she chalked it up to. Because if folks remember her in the lead up to her election fight with Marjorie Velázquez, they were a contrast there. Marmorato was not in support of a development in Throggs Neck that would have been partially affordable. There were questions about how or when she would come to support something like this as one of the councilmembers that represents--

Brian Lehrer: Her objection and her constituents in Throggs Neck, objection is kind of the opposite of what I was describing before. A lot of activists don't like when a small percentage of units come in below market rate because it can gentrify a place. As I think was the case in the Velázquez-Marmorato race, other people don't want any affordable housing built in their neighborhoods because they think it's going to bring in a poorer and sometimes that reads darker-skinned set of neighbors who they don't want there.

Affordable housing developments get squeezed from both sides of the political spectrum. We've said on the show, Michelle, that there are two main tenants to the affordable housing crisis in New York. One is the city desperately needs more affordable housing. The second one is, "Just don't build any near me." I guess we've seen an exception to that, at least in this case.

[crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead.

Michelle Bocanegra: Oh no, go ahead. I don't know if I feel like it sums up very well.

Brian Lehrer: It's all right. Let me get one caller in here. George in Manhattan on City of Yes. Hi, George. You're on WNYC.

George: Good morning, Brian. I'm glad that your guest made the distinction and the clarification that whatever's happening in the Bronx is a result of MIH, Mandatory Inclusionary Housing, which does require-- if you want to do something, you build bigger. You have to build affordable units. I appreciate the distinction because the City of Yes is not about affordable housing. It's part of a multi-pronged real estate offensive to deregulate development in New York City using the empty, disingenuous promise of affordable housing.

The thousands of pages of City of Yes do not require or even prioritize affordable housing. Rather, they argue that we need more units, period, including market rate and luxury units on Billionaires' Row, despite the fact that there are many empty market rate and luxury units, not to mention thousands of units that are sitting empty because rents are too low due to rent regulations.

Brian Lehrer: George, I'm going to leave it there because we're running out of time in the segment. Do you hear that in your reporting, Michelle? That's a pretty cynical take on what City of Yes is all about. Just kind of defensive strategy by developers who want to build, build, build with just a nod to affordability.

Michelle Bocanegra: Right, and I have to confess that our brilliant colleague, David Brand, has actually been at the forefront of all our City of Yes reporting so far. I'm just coming into the fold here. Yes, absolutely, that's definitely something that has been echoed by those in opposition to City of Yes among a wide range of things, right? They don't like the scrapping of the parking mandates that I think that a lot of people too in the outer boroughs where there are higher rates of homeownership are very protective of this thing that they feel that they've built for themselves, that they have invested money in a home in a specific part of the city. They feel that a plan like City of Yes would fundamentally alter all of these things.

Brian Lehrer: Well, the big City of Yes votes coming this fall, a little preview, perhaps, in the East Bronx rezoning that did pass city council last Thursday and that Mayor Adams started his weekly Tuesday news conference off with yesterday by taking what he calls a victory lap. We leave it there for today. My guest has been Michelle Bocanegra, WNYC and Gothamist political reporter focused on campaigns and the New York City Council. Thanks so much for coming on today and filling in for Elizabeth Kim, who usually does this slot on Wednesdays after the mayor's Tuesday news conference. Great job, Michelle. Thanks so much.

Michelle Bocanegra: Thanks so much. I appreciate it.

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