Progressive policy and political reality in de Blasio’s New York (Reported in partnership with The Nation)
Lots of new laws and major new programs. A few points of public tension but no vetoes. If that’s the recipe for progressive change in New York, is the same mix going to exist over the next four years?
This fall, veteran journalist Juan Gonzalez and respected scholar Joseph Viteritti each published revealing books about de Blasio’s life, his rise to power and the progress—and shortcomings—of his mayoralty. We sat down to share insights about where the mayor might be headed in a second term.
The mayor has done a lot. But his critics in the housing world say he is still falling short of what the city’s affordability crisis demands.
So why have elected officials let it molder and fall apart?
The biggest reason for the doubts about de Blasio’s devotion to closing Rikers is that doing so will require tough decisions in a policy area where this mayor faces unusually high expectations and especially acute risks.
Announcing in an election year a plan to create 90 new homeless shelters takes a certain amount of courage. But that doesn’t mean it will solve the problem.
3-K for All in NYC”will be the largest such program in the nation—a ‘game-changer’ according to the mayor. But de Blasio warned that pulling it off would be harder than pre-K was.
The prosecutors have spoken, and the court of public opinion will render its decision in under eight months’ time. Yet neither one is really equipped to answer the deeper question of whether what de Blasio did was right.
Bill de Blasio has added significantly to New York’s decades-old effort to protect the undocumented. But when it comes to fully resisting Trump’s aggro enforcement policy, the city’s political will and legal authority are limited.
The state of the city focused on the same problem de Blasio ran to fix: the affordability crisis. Having spent three years working on the housing side of that issue, the mayor now wants to focus on its income dimension.