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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Staying on the mayoral primary, we will now focus specifically on the section from Thursday night's debate about housing. We didn't replay this section on Friday morning because we wanted to pull it out for a separate and bring on our housing reporter, David Brand. Obviously, I don't have to tell you, for many people, the number one issue facing them and the city this year is housing. We will replay the 12-minute housing section of the debate, then talk to our housing reporter, David Brand, about how they're actually running differently from each other since they're all saying they'll bring a lot more affordable housing. Here's the housing exchange from Thursday night's debate.

Katie: When New Yorkers are asked their top concerns, one of the biggest issues is always affordability, particularly the high cost of housing. Millions of New Yorkers in rent-stabilized apartments are currently awaiting a final ruling from the Rent Guidelines Board about how much they could pay more each month in rent. First, we'll get to a crucial question about the production of housing. We want you, the candidates, to address New Yorkers with your top proposal to ease the housing crunch. I'll start with you, Mr. Myrie. We know you've been vocal about a plan to build and preserve 1 million units of housing. You mentioned it earlier. Is that a realistic possibility given the current dynamics in the city?

Myrie: Let me tell you what's real, Katie. People are leaving the city because they can't afford to stay here. They can't afford the rent, can't afford to own a home. Like me and my wife, who were looking to put down roots in the same neighborhood we grew up in, people are struggling. We've had leaders of the past that have put their solutions forward, and things have only gotten worse. Yes, 1 million homes over the next 10 years because we can't keep nibbling around the edges. That is the only way we're actually going to bring down the cost of housing.

Listen, is it going to be challenging? Of course, it's going to be challenging. Anything worth anything is going to be hard to do. We built the Empire State Building in 13 months and we did it 100 years ago. Come on, already. Of course, we can do a million homes. I want to change our public land to be affordable housing. I want to convert our industrial areas to residential. We have commercial real estate space that is laying vacant, that can be converted as well. We have opportunities to revitalize NYCHA. We got to be bold in this moment, but we need the leadership and the courage to get it done, and that's what I'm going to do.

[applause]

Katie: Thank you, Mr. Stringer. Your housing plan is to model a highly successful plan from the 1950s. You call it Mitchell-Lama 2.0. It sounds ideal, but how would you pay for this expansive plan?

Mr. Stringer: Okay, this is where we just got to have an honest conversation. I get a million. I could easily say we could do 2.5 million given my experience. Put that aside for a second. People need affordable housing now. They need low-income housing now. The way we do it is we take the thousand vacant lots I audited as controller, and we give that land back to the people to not for profits, to limited profit developers. We don't ask the luxury developers to build the lower-than-affordable housing we need.

We get a generation of people to come in and build the tens of thousands of units of housing. See, it's not just about building housing. The second question, or the question that I care passionately about is who are we building housing for? We got to build more housing, two, three bedroom apartments for families so that after the second kid they don't leave, they stay here. We need to do what we did with Mitchell-Lama housing, a housing stock that is the best practice in the world.

We got to build more of that housing, integrated housing. The people who moved into those buildings, you know what they did, they didn't just exist in those apartments. They built communities, schools, and daycare centers. This is a promise I can keep while I'm alive, while I'm mayor, and we'll see what happens going forward. Let's do that immediately, on day one, when I'm mayor.

Katie: Thank you.

[applause]

Mr. Lander. As mayor, you declare a housing emergency, which could help you build half a million homes, including on city-owned golf courses. How do you get the citywide support for this plan?

Mr. Lander: The New York Times opinion panel today said I was the best choice for mayor because I combine clear and bold plans and a real track record of delivering. That is especially true on housing. In the neighborhood around the Gowanus Canal when I was councilmember, I organized the community to support redevelopment. More housing, more affordable housing is going up there than anywhere else in the city. The community's supporting it because it's coming with open space and affordable art studios, as well as 3,000 genuinely affordable homes.

We're even fixing up the NYCHA units nearby. As controller, I saved the 35,000 rent stabilized units that were put at risk when Signature Bank failed by investing to buy the mortgages on them. I know how to do this. I have a detailed plan for getting 500,000 units built. That's around the Interborough Express, where we've got new opportunities for transit-oriented development. We can build great new neighborhoods on four of the city's 12 golf courses because people will be excited about courtyards for families, about daycare centers, about new schools and libraries. Places they could own in neighborhoods they will love.

Katie: Thank you.

[applause]

Errol: Okay, Mr. Cuomo, you were HUD secretary, you were governor for more than a decade. You managed a nonprofit housing organization. What would you say to voters who wonder if all that experience might end up being, in the end, the wrong experience since after decades of work, we've ended up in a housing emergency here in the city?

Mr. Cuomo: Errol, I would say look at the results, right? Everyone has a plan. I have a plan. I have a plan. Everyone has a plan. They had a plan to build LaGuardia Airport. Nobody did it until I did it. They had a plan to build a new Moynihan train station, but nobody could do it until I did it. They had a plan to finish the Second Avenue Subway, but nobody could do it until I could do it. Now we have plans to build affordable housing. We do need hundreds of thousands of units of affordable housing. There's no doubt. We're going to need a different model. The city HPD does not work to create this volume.

The state housing program does not work to create this volume. We're going to have to accelerate the ULURP program, and then we're going to have to open every option available. NYCHA units, office to residential conversion, every city-owned piece of property we have to look at air rights. How do we maximize it? We are going to have to have a full-on assault to build affordable housing. Yes, it's one thing to have a plan, it's another thing to have the ability to do it. That's where New York City has fallen down time and time again, not the managerial ability to complete a plan.

Errol: Ms. Adams, you mentioned the recent City of Yes rezoning that you were instrumental in helping to pass. It's supposed to create tens of thousands of units of housing. The experience of past rezonings like the one in Downtown Brooklyn suggests that it can take as long as 10 years or longer for rezonings to result in actual construction. If you're elected mayor, what would be your plan to get units built more quickly than that?

Ms. Adams: We're going to build it faster. Just to let Mr. Cuomo know, I've got a plan. It's already in the works. It is called the City for All, something that I have already ushered in. The work is already being done. We're hearing a lot of plans and policies, but this is something already-- I'm already doing this work. We have already begun the works for the city for all. In that proposal, it is the most aggressive rezoning proposal in a generation for this city to build upwards of 82,000 affordable units for New Yorkers. We want to keep people here. I want my children to stay here.

I'm an everyday New Yorker. I don't want them leaving because New York is not affordable for them. I have made sure that there is $5 billion that is put into the City for All proposal. Mr. Cuomo, we are going to take care of the HPD vacancies within that $5 billion. We're going to make sure that communities like mine in Southeast Queens are protected. Infrastructure is protected. We're going to make sure that we've got extended and expanded access to CityFHEPS vouchers.

We're going to make sure that there are repairs available for NYCHA residents and Mitchell-Lama residents, and we are going to make that homeowners also have access to funding to make sure that the homeowners have repairs. We won't have to look at foreclosure in the volume, and we don't have to look at deep theft in the volume. I'm already doing the work. I'm already there.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you.

[applause]

Still on housing, and to bring the last two of you into it. Mr. Tilson, you said in the last debate that your housing construction plan is the opposite of Mr. Mamdani's. More private sector, less public. Can you elaborate on that in your 60 seconds? Then we'll hear Mr. Mamdani argue for his approach.

Mr. Tilson: Sure. If I were to summarize my plan in four words, it'd be unleash the private sector. That is the only way to rapidly build anything like the scale that we're talking about. I said it's the opposite of his plan, because his plan is to spend 100 billion city dollars to build affordable housing. My plan, I don't think this should take 10 years if you truly do it, and it's not just zoning regs, it's all the whole bureaucracy going through the city government agencies. It's going through the whole ULURP process. This can be done. Austin, Texas, is a good example. Their rents went up 25% in the year 2021.

The city leaped into action, quickly changed its zoning rules. They increased supply by 15% in three years, and rents dropped by 20%. I don't just want to stabilize rent. I think we can drop rents in this city. That's the object. Right now, it's outrageous that businesses and real estate developers have to hire expediters to deal with the city bureaucracy. It's a much bigger problem. The mayor controls most or all of this.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. Mr. Mamdani.

[applause]

Mr. Mamdani: I met a grandmother in a senior center in Brownsville, and she came up to me and told me that she'd been on a waiting list for seven years for senior housing. That she wasn't sure if she was going to be able to stay in this city any longer. The reason that my campaign is committing to building 200,000 truly affordable homes is because if we don't, we will lose the very New Yorkers who built this city. We will lose them unless we rapidly scale up the programs we already have. Programs in HPD like SARA, Senior Affordable Rental Apartments, ELLA, Extremely Low Level Affordability.

The very kind of programs that are built for the New Yorkers who are being priced out of the market. We do this while also ensuring that it is easier to build even for the private sector. We end the requirement to build parking. We end this piecemeal approach that we've taken, instead having a city-wide comprehensive planning approach. These are the kinds of ways in which we can actually ensure that we start to build more than four houses per 1,000 people. That we actually start to get up to Jersey City and Tokyo and build the housing that's necessary in this city.

Brian Lehrer: To finish this round, by a show of hands, I will translate for the radio audience. How many of you would support a rent-stabilized rent freeze this year? Hands up if you do. Okay. The ones whose hands are up are Stringer, Myrie, Mamdani, and Lander. Not up.

Mr. Cuomo: State the question, please.

Brian Lehrer: Would you support donors who gave you two and a half million dollars to freeze the rent?

Brian Lehrer: Rent freeze this year. Yes or no, Mr. Cuomo?

Mr. Cuomo: Would I vote for rent freeze this year?

Brian Lehrer: Yes.

Mr. Cuomo: I'd leave it to the Rent Guidelines Board.

Male 2: Now, who controls them?

Male 1: The Mayor.

Mr. Cuomo: We appoint them. The law controls them.

Male 3: You should read it.

Male 2: The law didn't control you, did it?

Male 3: You should read it.

Brian Lehrer: Ms. Adams, your hand was not up, was it? Why not?

Ms. Adams: It was raised.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, it was raised.

Male 2: There has to be a balance there between the homeowners as well--

Brian Lehrer: Only Mr. Tilson's hand was not up. That was a yes or no. Finally, also on a show of hands on rent freeze or no, a listener to my show asks, "Would you be open to tying rent increases to landlord rates of return, their profits, rather than simply on one year's costs?" Yes or no? If you're open to tying the increases to profits rather than one year's cost increase, who would say yes to that change or that proposal? I don't see any hands.

Eroll: Brian. It is part of the formula already.

Brian Lehrer: It's part of the formula.

Mr. Lander: It is part of the formula. Now. You look at a variety of factors, including net operating income relative to costs, as it should be.

Mr. Cuomo: Mr. Lander is right. That is a law. You look at the costs that the landlord is incurring, and that's how you set the rent increase, if you do.

Brian Lehrer: Also, the profits. The profit margins.

Mr. Cuomo: Yes, they do an economic analysis. That's what the Rent Guidelines Board does.

Brian Lehrer: With that, that section of the debate ended. We just replayed the housing section of Thursday Spectrum News NY1, WNYC, the city mayoral debate where the seven Democratic hopefuls who qualified based on the Campaign Finance Board's criteria for mayor of New York City weighed in on how they tackle one of the most urgent and politically fraught issues, according to everybody that's facing our city, and that is housing.

We'll talk for a couple of minutes here about what we just heard. If this is an issue for you that might make you pick a candidate or choose your rankings, we have David Brand, housing reporter for WNYC and Gothamist, with us, who looks at these issues full time. David, always great to have you on the show. Thanks for coming on for this.

David Brand: Thanks, Brian. Yes, this is great. This kind of shows the YIMBY movement, the "Yes In My Backyard" movement, is winning the culture war here when it comes to housing. All of these candidates talking about how many hundreds of thousands of units they want to produce if they were elected.

Brian Lehrer: Is the YIMBY movement really winning? Something we've discussed here many times is that there seem to be two main premises about affordable housing that most New Yorkers believe. Tell me if you think this is wrong. Number one, the city desperately needs more affordable housing. Number two, just don't build any near me.

David Brand: Yes, that's definitely happening. You also hear sometimes people who support or who oppose new housing development point to, "Well, we want housing development, but it has to be 100% affordable or more deeply affordable." That can be a good faith effort to build a more affordable housing. It can also be kind of a fig to say, "No, no, we don't oppose housing. We just need it to be more deeply affordable." That's like a more socially acceptable way of opposing a plan put forth.

There's definitely pockets of nimbyism of opposition all throughout the city. You see it to some extent in some of these housing plans. For example, former Governor Cuomo, his housing plan, he talks a lot about juicing housing production, but his plan specifically says were not going to develop in low-density neighborhoods. Those are the areas of the city where residents are most likely to oppose new development.

Brian Lehrer: Low density, meaning a lot of single-family or low-rise private homes, right?

David Brand: More suburban style parts in New York City, Northeast Queens, Southern Brooklyn, lots of Staten Island.

Brian Lehrer: Let's just go down the list there because they all seem to be saying, "I will build more affordable housing," or, "We all want to build more affordable housing, but I'm the one who can really get it done." You just gave us one particular distinction. How would you compare, for example, since they're the two leading candidates, Cuomo and Mamdani, on how they would approach affordable housing construction?

David Brand: Well, that's a great question. I think a lot of focus is on these numbers and these huge numbers that people are putting forth. I am not treating those as promises. I don't think we should say, "Okay, he's saying 500,000. This is the campaign." People campaign in poetry, govern in prose, as they say." Not sure what's quite realistic. What I'm looking at is there are approaches. When I look at Cuomo's plan and what he's saying, I think he's kind of staying the course to some extent, doing the things that the Adams administration is already pursuing.

Then also listening to developers who are contributing a lot to his campaign, or at least to the super PACs that are backing his campaign, and to landlords. You hear him in these debates talking about overhauling the city's housing agency, Department of Housing Preservation and Development, to either make it more efficient or oriented around just subsidizing projects that are getting state tax breaks so that they'll be able to cover labor costs. I think a lot of what his reliance is on the private market and also on things that are already happening, and maybe just accelerating those.

Mamdani, in contrast, has a big focus on the public sector and subsidizing more affordable housing at the city level. He specifically wants to quadruple the amount of housing that the city finances. The amount of affordable housing that the city finances. Right now, it's about $2 or $3 billion a year. He wants to increase that to $8 billion a year. One of the ways he would do that is by trying to get the federal government and also the state government to lift a cap on the number of bonds or the amount of bonds that New York City could issue to finance affordable housing.

That would be a lift because it would require state approval and perhaps federal approval, which might not be forthcoming. It kind of demonstrates more of his approach. He looks back at maybe the heyday of major housing construction, which was NYCHA, the federal government building hundreds of thousands of apartments. Or the Mitchell-Lama program at the state level, when the city, state, and federal government were all working together to subsidize and build affordable housing for low and middle-income renters and trying to hearken back to those days.

Brian Lehrer: That would also mean more debt, I presume.

David Brand: Yes, exactly. That's the knock on that. If people who are critical of his approach and his housing plan say that would mean the city increasing the amount of debt, and their payments on debt alone would increase significantly. That could also violate state law. Just how much debts-- what portion of the budget is going to debt servicing, paying the interest on these loans?

Brian Lehrer: How about Brad Lander? He and Mamdani have crossed, endorsed each other. Now, is Lander's plan significantly different from Mamdani?

David Brand: Lander's plan is very detailed and maybe the most detailed of all of the candidates. I think it's a combination. He wants to also increase the amount of city subsidy going to affordable housing. He's also being very specific on some of the ways to increase both privately built and publicly subsidized housing through comprehensive planning and speeding up land use review processes.

For example, if a project meets this comprehensive plan, which rather than kind of piecemeal rezonings, one neighborhood here, one neighborhood there. The goal of that rezoning resulting in a certain number of new units built, actually spelling out how many units would be built at each part of the city and how we're going to get there.

Brian Lehrer: How about Adrienne Adams? She highlighted her work crafting and implementing City of Yes. As city council speaker, certainly she worked with Mayor Adams, no relation, and got this through city council. There were certainly debates in city council about aspects of it. She's got experience there. How do you see her approaching housing as mayor differently from what we already know about her record?

Uh-oh, I think we're having a little phone glitch here with David. David, you there? Let's try this again. We'll take a break if we have to. Okay, we're going to get you on another line. In the meantime, I'll tell everybody that if you're interested, you can sign up for free for The Brian Lehrer Show newsletter. It includes a weekly column from me. I have been writing mostly about the mayor's race in recent newsletter. Probably do so again this week.

Also, have a reader question for you to answer if you choose, and some other features to sign up, just go to wnyc.org/blnewsletter. wnyc.org/blnewsletter and The Brian Lehrer Show newsletter will come to your inbox every Thursday afternoon. David, I think I killed enough time. Go back to that answer from the beginning about Adrienne Adams, how she might be different as mayor from what she's already worked on as speaker.

David Brand: That's why you're a pro, Brian. Sorry about that. Adrienne Adams was instrumental in that City of Yes plan getting across the finish line. For listeners who maybe don't recall exactly, that was the plan put forth by Mayor Adams and Department of City Planning to change the zoning rules throughout the city to, as they said, add a little more housing in every neighborhood. It did depend on city council approval and there was a lot of reluctance or opposition in a lot of parts of the city, especially as we said before, in those lower-density, more suburban-style communities.

She kind of marshaled the city council to approve that plan with some concessions. In that debate, she called it the City for All plan as well. That was the council rebranding to say we will support this package of changes, but we also want to extract a lot of money from the city for affordable housing development specifically. Also, some neighborhood-level infrastructure improvements. They also managed to get a billion dollars from the state to add to some of that to build more affordable housing and to make those neighborhood improvements.

I think she would continue on that. She's talked about her-- she had legislation for fair housing framework where they would set targets for every neighborhood or every community district in the city to hit as it relates to affordable housing. There's nothing like binding about that, but it presents a roadmap. Maybe as mayor, potentially she would put more teeth to that and come up with some ways to force these communities to add that housing that is recommended.

Brian Lehrer: We're going to leave it there. On going down the list of candidates to compare the four who are considered to have with obviously Cuomo and Mamdani leading, but with Lander and Adams and third and fourth, who are considered to have really any realistic chance of coming out as the Democratic nominee. Because we're running over time, not get to the others for this particular comparison. Obviously, candidates, if you want to look further, we encourage you to go to any candidate's website and look what they're saying about housing or do other searches on them.

I just want you to do one other thing before you go, David. I want to acknowledge that I guess I had a little research fail before the final question that I asked in that segment of the debate, which originally came from a listener. It's up to me to make sure that the question is based on an accurate premise. I tried hard, folks, I really did, to include as many as I could of questions that you submitted. After we invited you to submit questions, I used three of your questions. I used one in the Trump section, I used one in the street safety section, and I used one there in the housing section.

The listener question, David, assumed that for the rent stabilization increases every year, it's only based on basically inflation for tenants compared to inflation for landlords. The listener wanted to know, "Hey, why don't they take into account the landlord's profits, even if their costs went up, if they're still making a lot of money, maybe there should be a rent freeze if the tenants are under a lot of pressure. Several of the candidates there, Brad Lander in particular, and then Cuomo, who stated a little bit differently, but he was in there too, saying, "No, they already take profits into account." What's real?

David Brand: Well, no, I thought it was a totally fair question, so I wouldn't beat yourself up too much about that, Brian. I think what's so confusing about the Rent Guidelines Board process is that-- so the board has a staff that puts together these reports on landlord finances, landlord profits, operating expenses, the cost of labor, the cost of materials, the cost of fuel, and then also tenant affordability. What's the economic situation for renters in New York City? These are all various reports. The board takes these into account.

They also get feedback, which is going on right now at public hearings that are ongoing ahead of the final vote, from members of the public, from tenants, also from landlords. Then there's political pressure. We can't deny that. There's the numbers, there's the math, but then there's also who's the mayor that appointed these candidates. What is in the best interest of the mayor, quite honestly? That's all factored into this decision.

I think what maybe gets confusing is that even in Lander's answer, he says that's part of the formula. That's the thing. There's no formula. There's nothing that's like landlords made X, tenants were earning an average of Y. Let's put that into a calculator. The rent increase is going to be Z. Doesn't work like that. It's more ambiguous and up to the discretion of the board members.

Brian Lehrer: David Brand, WNYC and Gothamist housing reporter. Keep it up, David. Thanks for a few minutes today.

David Brand: Thanks a lot, Brian.

 

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