Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Happy day before Valentine's Day. Happy tri-state snow day. Later in the show, we'll invite calls from parents whose kids are home today, but not for an old-fashioned snow day off from school, rather another indignity visited upon childhood by the legacy of the pandemic, a remote learning day instead of a snow day. Why? Because they can, and we will invite you to say if they're doing that in your local school district.

We know New York City public schools are. What about your local schools? If you're anywhere else in the area, you'll be invited to call too. One other thing, parents, to get your little remote learners ready for, if you and they would like, we'll invite students of any age, the students, not just you parents, to call in on that segment and give us one opinion about anything in the news. You can groom a little editorialist before we do that segment later in the show. You have to be a high school student or younger for that one.

If you call, you can tell your teacher that Brian Lehrer said, "You should get extra credit in social studies for doing it." Gather up a cogent opinion on something, anything in the news, kids, and call it in for extra credit, all right? That'll be the last segment in the show today around 11:40 on this first snow day in two years. This is also a day when the January inflation numbers were just released about an hour and a half ago and the news is mixed.

As The Wall Street Journal website tells it, the report shows consumer prices rose 3.1% in January from a year earlier. That was a cooldown from last month, but more than the 2.9% increase economists polled by The Wall Street Journal expected. I'll add here that it's still very, very close. They were expecting 2.9%. Instead, it was 3.1%. It says core prices, which exclude food and energy items, rose 3.9%. That inflation category and it says that was also above the 3.7% increase economists expected.

Investors, they remind us, have been awaiting the latest inflation reading for clues on how soon the Federal Reserve might start cutting interest rates. We'll get it taken in just a minute on how that might be affecting our local area, but another report coming out today also deals with the top affordability issue. The number one affordability issue facing so many people around here, and you can guess what that is. The report is from New York City Comptroller Brad Lander and it's called New York City's Housing Supply Challenge.

It's a very timely report, not just because of the inflation numbers coming out today, but also because Lander just testified before the state legislature about housing and other city financial issues, including the real economic costs and benefits of the recent asylum seekers as he sees them, state budget cuts to CUNY but not to SUNY, and more. With us now, the New York City Comptroller, Brad Lander. Comptroller, always good to have you on. Welcome back to WNYC.

Comptroller Brad Lander: Good morning, Brian. Great to be with you on this snow day.

Brian Lehrer: First things first on this snow day, where are you and how much of a winter wonderland is it out your window?

Comptroller Brad Lander: I am in the municipal building and the snow looks great falling from here. I didn't have any trouble getting into work this morning, but I do want to share with you. I just got a text from a third-grade parent who said the third-grade teacher on Zoom said, "Would everyone please stop sending the emojis, especially the poop emojis? Imagine if you were in class, would you be throwing poop?" I don't know if the remote learning is going as well as one might hope.

Brian Lehrer: Problem is the answer to that question might be yes.

Comptroller Brad Lander: [laughs] I think what they'd like to be throwing is snowballs.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. In fact, they will probably be out soon. Have you tested it? I haven't. Does it pack? Because the last little snowfall we had a few weeks ago, less than this, but it didn't even pack.

Comptroller Brad Lander: Yes, it's pretty wet and melting. I'm afraid by the time kids get to the park, we'll see. That's going to be too wet to sled.

Brian Lehrer: In all seriousness though, do you have an opinion as a citywide elected official about this new system, because this is the first time they're doing it, of having this be a remote-learning day rather than a snow day totally off in the old-fashioned way?

Comptroller Brad Lander: This is me speaking as a parent more than as a comptroller. I think a snow day is like that some of my best memories of my kid are sledding in Prospect Park. Yes, I'm in favor of snow days and not remote-learning days, which I think do pretty little to help kids learn.

Brian Lehrer: You're on the record. There's the headline. That's the quote. No matter what we say now about housing or education or anything else, that's the one our news department is going to use in the newscast all day.

Comptroller Brad Lander: Fair enough.

Brian Lehrer: Still on this topic though, one other thing, as comptroller who watches the books, tell me if my memory is accurate or inaccurate on this. Isn't the state aid formula for the city schools dependent on having a certain number of actual school days? I think it's 180 days a year. If they call a total snow day, they have to make it up by shortening Easter week or something. Is that the actual alternative here?

Comptroller Brad Lander: Yes, you do have to either build those days into the calendar. We now are giving Diwali and Lunar New Year important for communities to get those holidays. Yes, we'd either have to have a slightly shorter spring break. If you want to build having a snow day into the year, you've got to have it in the calendar.

Brian Lehrer: It's not just the Department of Education being party poopers here. Oh, there's that word again. There is actually a reason maybe, right? Because if they didn't have the pain today of remote learning, which might be an hour and a half of emojis and then wink-wink, school day is over, early dismissal, they'd have to make it up and go another day, or is that wrong?

Comptroller Brad Lander: Well, if you had built an extra day or two in and you actually got it, then great. I get an extra day or two of learning in the classroom. This just seems, to me, silly. This nominal remote-learning day isn't really helping kids learn. It may be required by state law in the funding formula, but it's not actually helping produce educational outcomes. Maybe it's not the job of the school system to deliver those great memories of sledding with the kids. I think there's got to be a way to get it done.

Brian Lehrer: New York City Comptroller Brad Lander is my guest. All right, let's talk inflation. This report out this morning is making the stock market go down a little. The rate of inflation did continue to go down last month. Let's not miss that part of the headline. The rate of inflation continued to go down last month, but not as much as expected. Consumer prices are going up at around a 3% annual pace right now. Any thoughts on the report in national context and any thoughts on how it is most affecting New Yorkers?

Comptroller Brad Lander: First, let's appreciate how far down that is from when inflation peaked at above 6%. That was really stressing households out in rising costs. 3%, still above the Fed's 2% target, for sure, and slightly above what economist projections were, but it's really come down. It looks like we might be able to get that "soft landing" that economists were hoping for, but thinking was going to be elusive that inflation and prices could keep coming down, but still have good job creation, and that that could persuade the Fed to go ahead and lower interest rates back down a bit, which makes it easier for people to buy homes and start businesses. I remain hopeful. Yes, it's a little higher than expectations, but the big trend is good. Inflation is easing. Consumer confidence is good. Hopefully, the Fed will be able to bring rates down and keep our economy growing.

Brian Lehrer: Does that inflation report, that national inflation report that comes out once a month, even cover the cost of housing, which we'll talk about in some detail in a minute around your new report?

Comptroller Brad Lander: You mentioned the PCE deflator, which just looks at the core costs. Some metrics include and some metrics exclude housing. Obviously, as you say in New York City, housing costs, especially if you're looking for a unit, are what have arisen the most and are what hit families' pocketbooks the most.

Brian Lehrer: Right, so that's not even counted in what we think of as the consumer price index or the annual inflation report that comes out like it did this morning every month from the Treasury Department.

Comptroller Brad Lander: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: What about inflation and the finances that your job is specifically to watch? Expenses for the city government, which, of course, could affect tax rates and maybe could affect if everything costs more. How many services the city could provide whether it's libraries or anything else? Where has this several-year burst of inflation hit the city budget the hardest?

Comptroller Brad Lander: The biggest is in giving raises to city workers. About a year ago, the mayor reached the deal with the first big public sector union, DC 37. Now, it's been applied almost across the board to all city workers. Over the four years of the financial plan, that added about $17 billion to the budget, so about $4 billion a year. The annual cost of those raises is more than we're spending on asylum-seeker shelter and services.

Of course, we got to have our city workers be able to make enough to keep doing their jobs so they don't leave. We can't deliver snowplowing or affordable housing or teaching our kids. That's the biggest. It shows up in other ways as well when interest rates are high. That means the city pays more in debt service for the same amount of debt. We found some creative ways in the comptroller's office to keep our financing costs down even as interest rates are rising, but those are two of the big places inflation shows up in our budget.

Brian Lehrer: Now, listeners, our phones are open for New York City Comptroller Brad Lander. Your stories, questions, and comments about anything local economy-related, 212-433-WNYC. What's the inflation news from your life recently? What's still going up? What's coming down and who do you blame or, more importantly, what do you think they should do about it now at the policy level? 212-433-9692.

How about the eternal housing supply question, which we're about to get into in some detail? We have two perennial opinions about affordable housing around here. Comptroller, tell me if you agree. Number one, we desperately need more affordable housing. Number two, just don't build any near me, or any other questions for New York City Comptroller Brad Lander. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Call or text.

Your report called, New York City's Housing Supply Challenge. Top line, the rental unit vacancy rate is at its lowest point in decades. Only 1.4% of units, a little over 1% of units, are vacant at any one time recently. My first question about that is, why is it that low? I thought hundreds of thousands of people moved out of the city during the early part of the pandemic, which theoretically would reduce demand for rentals relative to supply.

Comptroller Brad Lander: There was in 2021 when that happened, actually an increase, that rate that's now down to 1.4%. It was a little over 4% in 2021. The first is a long-term trend. We have not built enough housing from 1980 to 2010. The rate of job growth in the city and new housing. That's what you're tracking to compare housing growth to economic growth. We're about even. About 14% a year over those 30 years.

After the Great Recession, the recovery meant job growth went up to 23%, but housing growth really stalled. Only about 9% a year, opening up a much bigger gap in the ratio between employment to housing. That's just supply and demand. We have fewer housing units per person. We've gotten that during the pandemic because a lot of people left at the beginning, but then most of them came back. We don't have good data on this yet, but it looks like people are, where they can, consuming a little more housing.

If you're working from home, you might have been looking for an extra bedroom. That led to even more demand relative to supply. The results are those numbers you gave. For the average New Yorker, the median rental unit at $1,650, the vacancy rate is below 1%. That's why asking rents on available units city-wide are at $3,500. $4,000 in Manhattan. Just way, way beyond the price the average New Yorker can pay.

Brian Lehrer: You then give a surprising stat though that in the past 40 years, the population of the city and the supply of new housing both increased by about 25%. You mean housing supply has actually been keeping up with new demand since the 1980s? Because if true, that would also make me scratch my head about rents going up so much faster than most other things.

Comptroller Brad Lander: Yes, we dig in. I encourage other people to take a look at this report that's up on our website. There are more adults per household in New York than there were, so somewhat more single adults rather than families or two-adult or three-adult households. Again, those folks are seeking more bedrooms. What it looks to us like is even as much housing has been produced, it just hasn't kept pace with the demand for housing overall relative to jobs or relative to people per household. Americans have gradually been wanting more and more square footage for housing. That continues. If we're going to keep prices down, we've got to push supply up.

Brian Lehrer: Let me understand that a little more. Did you say that there are more adults-only households in New York City than there used to be, that is there's a larger percentage of households in New York City than in the past have no children?

Comptroller Brad Lander: That's right. The proportion of adult-only households, might be single adult or might have two or three adults, but no kids under 18, rose from 71% in 2017 to 74% in 2022. That's not a huge increase, but those households-- you'll have more bedrooms. They need more square footage. They are, on average, consuming a bit more housing.

Brian Lehrer: It's interesting. That too, it's a little bit counterintuitive, isn't it? Because I might think that when you're a young person, let's say a young single person in your 20s, you can live with roommates. There'd be multiple units in the apartment, but pretty small number of square feet per individual than when you have kids if you're raising kids. That's why people move to bigger places traditionally, right? I know one liberal New York City version of this. Did you ever hear this? People who are single on the Upper West Side, when they have a kid, they move to Park Slope because you can get a second bedroom cheaper than in Manhattan. Then when they have their second kid, they move to Montclair.

Comptroller Brad Lander: Exactly.

Brian Lehrer: That feeds the traditional notion that as you have children, you need more space. Then when the children are grown and out of the house, older people then downsize because they don't need the kids' rooms. Is that not true or did it use to be true and it's no longer true?

Comptroller Brad Lander: Broadly, those things are still happening, but we just didn't have that much slack in the rental market to begin with. I mentioned it got to just above 4% at the height of the pandemic as people had left. It's generally hovered between 2% and 3%. There just has not been that much slack in New York City's housing market and the rental market, especially anything below 5% is considered a housing emergency.

That's why we continue to have rent regulation to protect tenants from getting pushed out as rents rise. Even these small impacts, in some ways, just the pandemic churn, you have people go out and come back in. Now, if they're looking, you've got more people looking for a new unit. Again, these numbers just came out this week and we're still digging into them, but that's what we think is going on.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a question about affordable housing from the listener who writes in, "Brian, please ask about the more than 60,000 rent-controlled apartments that were found to be purposely kept out of circulation by landlords in that investigative journalism piece you guys covered several months ago." I think rent control, it's more generally rent-stabilized. I'm not sure if the 60,000 is the exact number. Of course, we did talk about and we do talk about this topic, warehousing. How much of a problem is it?

Comptroller Brad Lander: We point to and link to a report in August 2023 by the city's independent budget office that really digs in on this. They did find that there were more rent-stabilized units not only that were vacant but had been vacant the year before. They found that long-vacant rent-stabilized unit had doubled from 6,500, I think, in 2017 to over 13,000 in 2022. That larger number might be off the market but for less than a year. This is a real concern. People give different reasons for this.

Some landlords will say when the rent laws were changed in 2019, they can't raise the rate on a vacant unit as much. Maybe if they have to redo the bathroom, having a hard time getting the money to do that. Tenant advocates will tell you, "Look, those units were over-leveraged before expecting to push tenants out and raise rents, so we need to have those strong caps on." There's a lot of ways to solve that.

The city's got a new program called Unlocking Doors, which will give those owners a grant to put that unit back on the market. There are vouchers where families are homeless. We give them a housing voucher to move into a new unit. We've got to get those units back online. I'm a big advocate of a program called Neighborhood Pillars, which is giving city money to some of the non-profit affordable housing and community development groups who will maintain that housing affordably. Your caller is right that this is in a tight housing market. We can't afford to have any rent-stabilized units being held offline.

Brian Lehrer: Who can drop the hammer on those landlords?

Comptroller Brad Lander: [chuckles] Well, a few things. The city can put some pressure on, but it's really carrot and stick. The carrots are that Neighborhood Pillars program, the Unlocking Doors program. It's an effort in Albany, even as we also inspect, to make sure units are in good condition and keep them online.

Brian Lehrer: Jenny in Jackson Heights on this subject, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jenny.

Jenny: Hi. Yes, I agree with a lot of what's just been said, but I wanted to really push back on this accepted notion that simply increasing supply in a blanket way is going to, in any way, affect rents. Because with all the building that's going on in this city, it's different housing markets. If you're building 99% market-rate housing, which is essentially what it is, even what's called affordable in the MIH buildings, it's really not affordable to most of us. I can't afford most of those rents. What you're really doing is you're building for a certain sector of the rental market.

The rents for the rest of us stay the same, if not, spiral up. We see it with the commercial rent market. You have empty offices. You have tons of empty storefronts. Lucy's bar in the East Village, their rent just tripled, even with all the empty storefronts. I think it's such an oversimplification to create housing policy and do these blanket upzonings for market-rate housing with an eye toward reducing rent. I just don't think that works. I think if you want affordable housing, you have to have tighter rent control and you have to build affordable housing. It's not the market that's going to do it.

Brian Lehrer: Comptroller, I think you agree.

Comptroller Brad Lander: I'm so grateful for this call. I really think it's a both/and, I guess, is what I would say. I'm a supporter of good cause eviction protections because, in a tight market otherwise, tenants are going to get pushed out of their homes. I'm for investing money in genuinely affordable housing, call for changes to the so-called 421a tax break to make sure what we're getting are genuinely affordable units.

I like to see when nonprofits have housing that will stay permanently affordable or we've proposed a new model of the old Mitchell-Lama program that would enable homeownership for working-class families where you can make some money over time but not speculate and sell at a price that makes it unaffordable to the next buyer. All that said, we do need more housing supply overall across income levels.

Yes, absolutely with a strong focus on affordable housing, but there is just a basic supply-and-demand element here as well. That's what the numbers we've put out this month show and I get it. I love my neighborhood. I understand why people aren't enthusiastic in many cases about development nearby. That's why we need a thoughtful citywide approach that helps everybody do their fair share that invests in neighborhoods to make them great places.

That's why open space matters. I was just back in Gowanus, where I supported neighborhood rezoning as city council member. A lot of housing is going up, but a lot of it is going to be genuinely affordable. It's coming with affordable artist studios and lots of new open space and investments in public housing and stormwater infrastructure. I believe there really are ways to do this.

It takes good management. We put a report out this week about challenges at the city's housing department. It's taking so long just to get the affordable units financed or rent them up when the units are available, but I really think there's an overall deal to be made in Albany and some management work in New York City that can help us actually make a real dent on housing affordability.

Brian Lehrer: In theory, supply and demand by itself could work if it was really in a very different kind of balance than we have. The prospects for building that much new housing and really changing the balance between supply and demand, the prospects for that are very small. In theory, if you have a million apartments and 100,000 renters, then all the landlords are going to compete for the renters and the rents are going to go down, so that's why supply also matters.

Comptroller Brad Lander: This, I think, is what economists-- they always say, "In theory." Of course, supply and demand really matters. Yes, we've been producing on average between 20,000 and 25,000 housing units a year in New York City. If we could double that, which would obviously be gargantuan to, overnight, double the housing supply increase, that would be 50,000 units instead of 25,000 units. In a market with three million housing units, that's just not going to trickle down that much. As your caller rightly says, unless you make sure it's targeted affordably, those will get gobbled up at the top of the market. By the time they trickle down, it just does not open up much space.

Brian Lehrer: We are going to go on to a few other things as we talk. On this precise point that Jenny in Jackson Heights raises, you have a long history with affordable housing. I know you ran-- tell me if I'm remembering this correctly, you ran an affordable housing nonprofit in Brooklyn.

Comptroller Brad Lander: That's right. The Fifth Avenue Committee. That's right.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, and then you were at the Pratt Center for Community Development during the Bloomberg years. You were vocal in your opposition then to some of Mayor Bloomberg's development policies. I wonder if that's an era worth visiting in this context because Bloomberg was a "Build, Baby, Build" mayor, which I think is what the caller is referring to, no?

Comptroller Brad Lander: Yes, and we did have a lot of back-and-forth. I thought we weren't getting enough out of our tax breaks and pushed hard to reform that 421a program. I thought we weren't getting enough out of the zoning programs to create affordable housing. Mayor Bloomberg had it as a voluntary program and it just did not create many affordable units. I understand not everyone loves mandatory inclusionary housing, but it has produced tens of thousands of units that are affordable for low and moderate-income and working-class New Yorkers.

Brian Lehrer: Let's finish that piece of the history. Mandatory inclusionary housing was what de Blasio came in on following Bloomberg as a backlash to what you were just describing or something more progressive. Generally, I know it was different development by development, but that was generally a 20% requirement. If you build--

Comptroller Brad Lander: 25%

Brian Lehrer: 25%. even that, and again to the good caller from Jackson Heights point, if you take, let's say, a relatively low-income neighborhood and build apartment buildings that are 75% market rate and only 25% rent-regulated, then the overall impact is going to be to raise the rents in that neighborhood. That's why it didn't work as well as people hoped?

Comptroller Brad Lander: Well, let me tell you. I was in Gowanus on Friday, which is what I had worked on rezoning. That rezoning is to allow about 8,000 units of housing overall, 2,000 affordable through this program. We're talking about 25% of the market units. Then there's also one piece of city-owned land where all 950 units will be affordable at various incomes. In total, 3,000 of the 8,000 new units around the Gowanus Canal are going to be affordable to low-income and working-class New Yorkers. In Park Slope and Carroll Gardens, which are on either side of that canal, there's almost no affordable housing today. I think that's going to be a much more inclusive neighborhood because of this program.

Brian Lehrer: That's not 25%. That's, you're saying, 100%.

Comptroller Brad Lander: Well, that's 25% from the market rate developments, plus using city-owned land, housing subsidies, other programs to boost that number up. Yes, we need a lot of tools here. If I could pick just one, it would be rebooting a program like Mitchell-Lama that builds multifamily affordable cooperatives that would let young families buy their first unit when they couldn't otherwise possibly afford to buy in the market. I think a lot of people would support growth if that's what they thought it was going to be. Not just a developer building a new rental building, but yes, sure. A new building may be bigger than what's nearby, but with affordable cooperative homeownership for neighborhood families.

Brian Lehrer: Well, who built the Mitchell-Lama buildings in the first place? Was it the government?

Comptroller Brad Lander: The State Urban Development Corporation created this program. Mitchell and Lama were state legislators and it used some state-owned land and zoning, mostly built by private developers, but then the cooperative units at the end of the building phase were handed over to the residents themselves as a co-op. There's really no reason we couldn't do that again other than political will.

Brian Lehrer: Would take new taxes though, wouldn't it?

Comptroller Brad Lander: Well, we're already putting a lot of money into affordable housing subsidies. New York City invests over $1 billion a year in capital. I think that is money well spent on affordable housing, but most of it goes to for-profit private developers to build rental housing. If we just said like, "Let's do 50/50," and have half that go to permanently affordable limited-equity co-ops and community land trusts and nonprofit affordable and supportive housing development, I think we could get more permanent bang for our buck. Again, this is why we did that report on the city's housing department. So much of this is just management and implementation, getting the projects done faster, getting them leased or sold faster. I think there's a lot we could do even without investing more dollars.

Brian Lehrer: We'll continue in a minute with New York City Comptroller Brad Lander. Stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC with New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, among other things, talking about the report that his office is releasing today, New York City's Housing Supply Challenge. I want to take one more on housing because I think it's different from what we've been hearing from other callers and texters. Then I do want to get to some other topics. Education. Jason on the Upper East Side, we see you about the retired city workforce and your health insurance, but Carl in Manhattan, you're on WNYC with the comptroller. Hi.

Carl: Hi, how are you? I'm a long-time listener and a long-time supporter. I just wanted to put in, the private sector and the city have to work together because we saw in the '60s and '70s that the city just fell flat. Who was the largest landowner or the property owner in the '60s and '70s? It was the city. The city's housing as demonstrated by NYCHA is just a disaster.

The problem with Mitchell-Lama is if you drive by them, yes, the original buyers and renters are doing great, but those units don't get passed along. In many cases, they get sold at a profit if they're co-ops. That's not fair. If you're going to build subsidized housing, then there should be no profit incentive in it. The problem with no profit incentive is that nobody does anything to improve the housing.

Brian Lehrer: The private sector needs incentives. In fact, here's a text that came in on a related point. It says, "The New York Times reported that the selling price of rent-stabilized buildings has fallen by 50% since new regulations went into effect and that landlords can't afford to renovate empty apartments that are not up to code. Looks like a downward spiral." To those two listeners, Comptroller?

Comptroller Brad Lander: First, there absolutely is a lot of room for both for-profit private developers and for not-for-profits and cooperatives. As I say, about 80% now of the subsidies and tax breaks for affordable housing go to for-profit private developers. There's a critical role, but I think your caller is mistaken on the Mitchell-Lama co-ops. I think it's 92% of them that are the Mitchell-Lama co-ops remain in the affordability program that severely restricts resale.

In most cases, the residents have voted to stay in the restrictions rather than privatize them and be able to sell at whatever price they could, and yet it's more challenging at more affordable prices to keep investing. I've been at Co-op City and amalgamated houses and a lot of other Mitchell-Lama co-ops around the city, Village East. I think that's what we need if we want working middle-class New Yorkers to be able to afford to stay here.

That's not to say there's not a lot of good room for developers and for-profit owners as well. Look on NYCHA. We absolutely have to manage it better, but it's a critical affordable housing resource for hundreds of thousands of low-income New Yorkers that would not be able to find a place they could afford to rent in New York City if we didn't still have it. To me, it's that mixed-market approach and growing it actually at all levels that has the best chance to achieve the outcomes we want.

Brian Lehrer: The texts are flying in. Someone wrote, "OMG, he mentioned Gowanus. All the oversized development there is so contrary to the spirit of the neighborhood and mostly bland and ugly and some--"

Comptroller Brad Lander: I live a block away. I think it actually is going to be a dynamite neighborhood with a great waterfront public realm. There's new affordable artist co-ops in it. There's lots of investment going into the public housing, into the sewer system. Give it a couple of years. Walk along the Gowanus Canal. I think you'll see. It's a neighborhood with a really dynamic public realm and a lot more mixed-income with a lot more diversity of families than what exists on either side of the canal today.

Brian Lehrer: On something completely different. Jason, on the Upper East Side, you're on WNYC with Comptroller Brad Lander. Hi, Jason.

Jason: Hi. I'm actually a recently retired city employee. I'm actually going to make some comments that are going to drive some other city retirees-- make them quite angry. The whole issue of city retirees being forced onto this Medicare Advantage plan, which I joined. So far, so good. City retirees, we don't realize how fortunate we are in that our Medicare premiums are fully reimbursed by the city. It's unheard of, I think, in the private sector and even in other public sector.

This is a benefit that's worth over $2,000 a year for a single retiree and $4,000 for a couple. I think of this as a microcosm of how difficult it is to control city expenses because everybody wants to cut something other than what they're benefiting from. Here I am. [chuckles] I wouldn't be thrilled about having this benefit reduced. This finally is something that the city could take action on this on its own, I think. If the city only reimbursed 50% of these Medicare premiums, it would save the city hundreds of millions of dollars a year. This is a hot potato I'm going to ask the comptroller about.

Brian Lehrer: Not in your self-interest, it doesn't sound like, Jason. Are you saying partly that, look, if the city is saving money on moving people, which is, so far, not happening because it's being blocked, but city wants to move retirees like yourself from regular Medicare to the Medicare Advantage plan as a mandatory move, you're saying, "People may not prefer that, but they're paying the whole premium, so let's let them try to save a little money on us that way." Is that part of your point?

Jason: Well, yes, again, I'm not a healthcare policy-- everybody wants to see their doctor and have their doctor be able to do any test they want whenever they want. I'm not expert on all the details of this, but yes, it's like, "Are we going to have shared sacrifice or not?"

Brian Lehrer: Jason, thank you very much. Comptroller, you were a big opponent of the Medicare Advantage mandatory switch, so what do you say to Jason?

Comptroller Brad Lander: Well, first, to Jason, I say your spirit of shared sacrifice, of willingness to say maybe a benefit I have is I admire the spirit. I think if we have more people saying, "Let's roll up our sleeves," I'd like to keep those libraries open at least one day on the weekends. Let's look at what else we could do more efficiently. I think it's a great spirit. I'm not going to argue with Jason there. I talked to a lot of retirees who persuaded me that if they were forced onto Medicare Advantage, they were going to face real challenges down the road.

I think Medicare Advantage, in my sense, works better for more recent or younger retirees. As you get needier in your care, there's real back-end risk that's happening all across the country. He's right that we definitely need the challenging approach to managing costs if we want to keep delivering resources for affordable housing and expand pre-K and 3-K so we can provide childcare for working families. We have to find things the city can spend less on. My office recently released a report on special education service dollars, which has grown from $33 million to $372 million over the last decade without evidence that we're actually delivering more better services to the kids who need it.

Last year, we paid $1.5 billion to settle claims against the city. One of the biggest areas is for traffic crashes caused by city vehicles. Let's put speed delimiters in some of those cars or have accountability for agencies or for city drivers. If you want to get to that point where you have the good pension that we are managing in the comptroller's office where you have that good health care, you can't cause crashes that do harm and make the city pay big payouts.

That spirit of shared sacrifice and even more the spirit of, "I want to make sure we're getting what we're paying for and have well-managed city government," that's the only way we're going to be able to-- It's an expensive city to run if you want to keep it safe and clean and have the subways well run. It's a place that's crowded. It's got so many people. It's so much scale. That's what we love about it, but it really does mean spending tax dollars wisely.

Brian Lehrer: I know we're over time. I want to touch on two education things real quick. I'm enough of a wonk that I read the full transcript of your recent testimony before the State Senate Finance Committee and Assembly Ways and Means Committee. I want to ask you about one particular item that raised my eyebrows. It's that funding for SUNY, The State University of New York, is going up, but funding for CUNY, the City University, is going down. Did I see that right?

Comptroller Brad Lander: The state last year, state legislature, increased funding for SUNY while the mayor's budget cut dollars to CUNY, in particular to the community colleges.

Brian Lehrer: Your reaction to that.

Comptroller Brad Lander: That's terrible. CUNY is the best engine of upward social mobility, at least in New York City, and maybe anywhere. It's been counting the cuts that are in the mayor's preliminary budget cut. I think it's $93 million just since the beginning of this term. Again, you have to find other places to save by cutting CUNY at this moment in time. I'm on a lot of CUNY campuses. I'm meeting those students. They're the future of New York City. We've got to give them good classes, good career and workforce development, and less student debt. To me, it would make a lot more sense to keep investing in CUNY in the way the state legislature showed last year was possible by increasing dollars going to the city.

Brian Lehrer: Last thing and it also has to do with the mayor and education cuts. The mayor was on last week with us on the show. We got a call from a listener, Stephanie in Brooklyn, who said she was considering moving out of the city because she's got a little kid. There's no guarantee that the 3-K and pre-K program will be fully funded enough for there to be a seat for every child who wants one in her neighborhood. Here's a little bit of Mayor Adams' response to Stephanie in Brooklyn.

Mayor Adams: Thank you, Stephanie. First of all, we don't want you to leave the city. Family like yours is who we want here in our city. Here's what happened, Brian, just giving a brief synopsis. First of all, pre-K, 3-K was on temporary dollars. It was stimulus dollars that the previous administration put in place. Those dollars are sunsetting. We have to find the right funding. In addition to that, we were not paying four bodies in seats. We were just paying four seats of the misalignment of the number of seats that were needed in a particular community. We're left open.

Brian Lehrer: The mayor was talking there about some pretty technical things like the difference between paying for seats and paying for bodies in seats, so maybe misalignment. Too many in one community, not enough in another community. Your job is to watch the city finances. Are the 3-K and pre-K programs, probably the number one accomplishment of Mayor de Blasio that he'll always be remembered for, is the city keeping that promise?

Comptroller Brad Lander: For pre-K, which the state is still supporting, mostly yes. For 3-K, no, we are not making it possible for every household to get a seat in their neighborhood. Some of that is outreach. If you have misalignment, what you need to be doing is reaching out to families, letting them know what their options are. Some of it is making sure you're putting the dollars into the right neighborhoods. Don't put it into the neighborhoods where you don't have the need. Put it where you do.

It is true. We use some federal pandemic stimulus dollars to grow 3-K, but that was a great investment. We do have some increasing state foundation aid for education as well as some additional tax revenue. To me, keeping that promise to Stephanie and to other families like her, that for your three and four-year-old, even if your housing costs are high and you've got other challenges of living in New York City, you are going to be able to get a good, high-quality 3-K and pre-K program in your neighborhood. One of the best things we could do to keep young families here and keep the city attractive and growing.

Brian Lehrer: New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, we always appreciate when you come on with us and answer so many questions. Thanks for the deep dive on housing today and really appreciate it.

Comptroller Brad Lander: Great to talk to you. Enjoy the rest of the snow day.

 

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