In red states they’re forcing urban city owned properties to sell. Getting the buildings out of gov. ownership and control is difficult. Doing it this way makes everyone overlook the taxpayer money going to a private investor later. Don’t look too close at the fact that Cochran Gardens, and Pruitt Igoe (StL) were both built buy Minoru Yamasaki, the same man who built the WT towers. It will fail and prolly be demolished in 20 years or so. The building, much like the towers, is probably to expensive to rehab. Also I will just put to people that our nations crubling infrastructure, is not a good sign as far as invasion is concerned. Liquidating government buildings so they’re not liable for their repairs, or so they are not targets of dissent, is also not a good sign. Investors are not investing money in the future. They are invested in the planning process of the future. Roman concrete is reviered not for its composition, but for its ablity to control a society with infrastructure. They say not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but the ‘too good to be true’ rule exists for a reason.
I hope Mamdani doesn’t get cynical about all of the roadblocks that will be put up against him. Keep the faith against those white old corpulent entrenched establishment types!
If he hasn’t gotten cynical at this point, he’ll be fine. It’s basically expected that he’s going to get roadblocks from the establishment and he has been so far, whining from the left is also fairly inevitable and it seems like he has a good enough support system and popularity that I’m not concerned about that.
I can’t remember who said it, but it’s like he got in office and saw the “Get Shit Done” button an jus for the life of him couldn’t understand why previous Mayors weren’t usin it
DeBlasio was pretty good about hitting it. Bloomberg could hit it, but only for Evil. Adams was just an incompetent shithead who only knew how to take bribes and do photo ops.
Josh Johnson
Josh Joshson.
That’s Crazy…
The main thing is that he’s really good at publicizing what he’s doing.
BUT HOW ARE THE LANDLORDS (I am not one) GONNA AFFORD TO LIVE!!! THE POOOR LANDLORDS
BUT HOW ARE THE LANDLORDS (I am not one)
So many of these NYT / WaPo Op-Eds are written by Landlords. So many Twitter shitposts and Facebook hate threads are started by landlords. So much of the local news bullshit is financed by landlords.
The NYPost is landlord required reading.
Yes. The biggest advertisers for most city papers are real estate and the results as predictable as they are obvious.
Same reason status quo democrats dont like him.
Well what about the Democrats huh!
its why most democrats are against him too.
Cause hes setting a dangerous precedent of an elected official serving people, not money.
Slavoj Zizek calls the Democrats “capitalism with a kinder face - LGBT rights and so on and so on.”
That’s really it. They think the core economic system is working. They’re fine to greenlight social policies that don’t challenge it, especially if they think it will win them votes. And that’s all they are.
Slavoj Zizek calls the Democrats “capitalism with a kinder face - LGBT rights and so on and so on.”
Let’s not pretend they stand for the T in that acronym.
My thought is that for many many years politicians didn’t really have to do anything to re-elected. And when they were asked to do something they would always say “we can’t afford that.” or they would write a bill that would promise “thing” will get funded 10 years from now. So these lifelong politicians have turned into lazy fucks just there for the money and are pissed at these younger officials that are actually doing the job they were elected to do.
I have to admit I had been lulled into a sense of nothing will change attitude and now that I see how wrong I was I’ve become quite pissed off.
Start rolling out guillotines and i bet they’d start finding ways to serve their electorate rather quickly.
That won’t be their first instinct. Their first instinct will be to kill anybody who seems at all threatening.
The reason the right are so anti Mamdani is obvious: they don’t want you to see what your tax dollars being put to work the right way would actually look like.
More like the left way 🥁
🐑 🥁 🐍
Yep.
They are going to reach into your pocket no matter what. The only question is if your money goes to a bunch of rich guys or back to people like you.
They are going to reach into your pocket no matter what.
They aren’t even in your pocket, relatively speaking. At the local level, you’re a drop in the bucket beside the big land owners and corporate industries. At the state level, you’re even less relevant. At the federal level, between intentional trade and deficit spending, you might as well not exist.
The joke of modern taxation is how it’s largely unnecessary at the individual level. If the state simply planned it’s economy and managed it’s natural resources, everyone could do the Alaska thing where they pay you to live there.
California hosts multiple trillionaires, ffs. Nobody with an income under seven figures needs to pay a dime to support that state’s spending plan.
I don’t know if I love that phrase’s use here as it sets up the government as some foreign entity that is stealing from you when, at least in theory, it should be the price you pay for your community’s betterment. Of course that’s not what it feels like in the US (maybe anywhere, maybe federal taxes feel bad always), but that’s an argument for redistributing power and fixing the underlying systems more so than it is to be upset that taxes are a thing (or paint them as… Evil or something which this phrase does).
Even if it’s for something good, they’re still reaching into your pocket and taking wages you earned by working.
It would be more progressive if taxes were raised from the unearned rents of the wealthy, with land value taxes.
I am slowly loathing commenting on Lemmy, people here seem increasingly incapable of having a good conversation.
I’m explicitly saying framing it as “reaching into your pocket and taking your wages” is a negative light to cast taxes in. You don’t go to the bakery and buy bread and describe it as the baker reaching into your pocket and taking your wages. That would be insane. You pay the baker to provide you bread.
Society should, and I’m gonna emphasize this for the most common commentors, should as in theoretically in an ideal society taxes should feel like a person paying the city for good public transit, universal healthcare, UBI, minimally expensive maximally effective defense, a social safety net, regulatory bodies, public education, fire protection, wildlife preserves and parks, libraries, and public and enriching spaces.
It shouldn’t, ideally, feel like someone reaching into your pockets, it should feel like a valuable transaction. Taxes don’t have to be a negative thing, akin to someone stealing your money. They should be something people take pride in.
Of course the US is a falling state and so this hasn’t been the case for a long time (if ever), and most other countries despite providing better services still have to deal with the conservative propaganda that “welfare” and “healthcare” and “public transit” are wasteful. That’s not what I’m really here addressing. I’m just saying painting taxes as theft enables and supports conservative propaganda that disables or errodes community ownership and power - the very things that are synonomous with quality of life.
Pausing the discussion about progressive taxation for a second.
If people on Lemmy seem increasingly incapable of having a good conversation, then who do you think is the most likely person to have changed?
We should be about to discuss this subject without personal attacks.
That is the point. The taxes are reality, you are going to pay them. Whether they are evil or not depends on what that money is used for.
“Reach into your pocket” makes it sound as if they’re stealing from you. Which, if you live in the USA, is mostly true.
In functioning democratic societies those taxes pay for things that benefit the citizens. At least that is the stated goal, and if they fuck it up, they get voted out.
I think you guys need to start voting with your bullets.
Sounds like here it’s letting a private company spend the money to get access to 3,000 residences in exchange for 1,000 affordable ones.
The phrase “at no cost to the city” is a red flag.
It either means someone is lying, or that there’s some kind of “public-private partnership” which are frequently handouts to corporations or rich people.
Maybe this is the rare case when the government will properly supervise the private side, and hold them to account.
And as usual I don’t know if I should be outraged that a private company is involve that may lead to questionable practices or happy that at least they are 1000 affordable units available. Both maybe? I guess I’m cautiously optimistic.
I live in Harlem. He really has been great! He’s just a genuine and nice guy too!
Edit: word
Edit: word
You don’t have to add “word!” just because it’s Harlem
It’s ok, we speak jive.
Word
Church.
You can see it in Mamdani’s smile; the man radiates joy from the inside out. His smile says he loves New York, he loves New Yorkers, and he loves serving them. I wish the world had more Mamdanis.
at no cost to the city
Converting office space into apartments has a cost, it will be easily recouped but there is a cost.
Seems like a good idea though.
It appears funding is coming from private sources and upkeep labor is being organized by the 32BJ Union, a massive local union that specializes in affordable housing that’s populated with people who work and specialize in “cleaners, property maintenance workers, doormen, security officers, airport workers, window cleaners, building engineers, school and food service workers, factory workers, etc”.
The conversion costs and labor appear to be funded and plan to be performed by GFP Real Estate and city partners, no doubt in exchange for good favor for future permit approvals and project integration by the Mayor’s administration.
Pretty smart if you ask me.
Having trouble finding any real info on this, but it appears that the city isn’t actually performing the work, just changing rules and providing incentives to do the conversion.
So the “no cost” is really just that the city isn’t paying for it.
Seems like the setup is that the developer gets paid back via the market rate housing revenue, while the city gets a guarantee a minimum number of the new residences are rent controlled. So the developer self funds (or take loans) to start the project, it seems. And the city is still the landowner as far as I can tell, so the developer pays the city a share, which is how the city funds getting new office buildings for agencies to replace these.
I had to dig into what they mean by cross-subsidy to figure that out
So do they sell off sections of the building to developers, who do the work and then sell units back to owners at a price cap?
They rent a building to a property-developer/manager (eg Hines, Douglas Elliman, etc) that converts to residential and rents apt units to individuals, with a guaranteed portion of them affordable and rent stabilized.
It’s like if the city had a fleet of commercial vans they let a local taxi cab company lease at a submarket rate and convert to taxis. In exchange for the deal on the fleet, the taxi company sets aside a certain number of cabs dedicated to shuttling New Yorkers whose disabilities make public transit hard to use.
This property development business model is common, as is the affordable housing stock deal developers make with the city for things like tax breaks. What’s unique here is that the mayor’s office addressed the problem of perpetually lagging housing stock creation and skipped past years of slow property development and construction by offering a large building in the city that’s already built and ready to convert to residential. The city will then use the lease revenue to construct a new office. In the meantime, New Yorkers have more places to live.
3/4 of the apartments will be market rate, I bet it’s paid off in the first year when you look at market rate there.
Vacant buildings have a cost too. A vacant high rise building that gets repossessed becomes a massive cost to the city.
to the city
Where I live they are trying to do the same. Sadly the shape of the building do not work well for housing. There’s more inside dark areas than window accessible areas. The proposal was to make a “community area” towards the centre of the building which is a terrible idea. The alternative is converting the inner area to apartments without any sunlight, which isn’t going to work even if it’s legal. The building sits empty because nobody can provide a good idea how to use it.
Can you just get the win? It is healthy to be skeptic but in the context of how shit everything else is, what’s the point of stating the obvious?
It’s wise to look for the potential ‘catch’, and the story provides it if you look, though the headline itself makes it pretty obvious by stating there will be 3,000 unaffordable residences.
In this case, the ‘catch’ still seems pretty solid. Sure a real estate company gets to gouge 3,000 units, but 1,000 units may well be worth that. But it does mean continued vigilance, to make sure the real estate company doesn’t somehow screw up stewardship of those 1,000 affordable units.
This is the haternet. The only reason people come online is to nitpick and naysay others.
More good steps in the right direction 👍
- They’re not converting office space. They’re demolishing and rebuilding.
- There’s no cost to the city because they’re selling the building to a private developer on the condition they use the site for housing.
A lot of commercial real estate has gone unoccupied since COVID and the explosion of remote work. I see for lease signs all over downtown in my city.
So it doesn’t necesarily have a cost and could in fact be revenue positive to convert to residences.
Opportunity cost
Source please if you have one, I’d love to read about what those costs are if they’re real
The costs are real of course, but seemingly handled by a private company that was willing to pay for the project.
Which means the cost to the city was - everyone all together now:
The point is that the original commenter accurately noted that there are costs, but this particular little screenshot does nothing to explain the nuance.
So you have to acknowledge the costs and how they were actually handled, instead of just 'I need sources for the very obvious reality that renovating a building isn’t “free”.
“No cost to the city” is accurate, but it’s completely reasonable to fixate on how ‘no cost’ doesn’t make sense and not think hard enough on the ‘to the city’ part of it and ask for some explanation/discussion of that nuance.
Sinks and showers and walls do not install themselves? What kind of a source are you looking for here?
Just because there is A cost, doesn’t mean it cost the city anything. The original comment sounds like an assumption, and I’d like to validate it
I live in CA, and our tax dollars get squandered. Gotta be progressive and know what your doing. We have one but not the other
Seems like CA is doing pretty good actually. What’s up?
Seems like CA is doing pretty good actually.
Then you haven’t been paying attention.
Newsom is a curse. He’s carved up and sold out the state a dozen times over.
Wasted funds to combate homelessness that went missing, funds not missing where not used strategically. Train to no where that cost billions. Employment Develoment Department fraud, billions lost. Misjudged capital gain spikes as permanent revenue, over stated multi year revenues by billions which triggered multi year budget deficits
Sounds very chat gpt-ey.
Wish I was joking
It’s why the corporate neo-libs hate him too. They truly are in the business of managing decline instead of doing their fucking jobs.
They’d rather support a sexual predator that they said should resign from being Governor a few years earlier.
Is there even such a thing as a non-corporate neolib?
I think there kinda sorta used to be, in 2026? Naw not really.
Hey Karen Bass! I’m pretty sure its NBD to get Mamdani on the phone. Just puttin it out there…
The situation in LA is so bad that I’m going to vote exclusively based on how they’ll deal with the armed thugs all over the city. It was bad enough when it was just the LAPD!
How does converting an office building have zero cost?
No cost to the city. Sounds like some other entity foot the bill.
It seems like a significant cost is in reading the whole sentence.
Following a competitive request for proposals process, the city selected GFP Real Estate to develop the site.
Note it said only 1,000 affordable residences, but 4,000 overall. A real estate company is happy to cover the cost and cede 1,000 units to affordable terms in exchange for 3,000 residences at market rate.
No cost to the city as explained in comments written long before yours in this thread
They rent them out, so likely had a contractor do the conversion and then woth the rental income cancels out the cost. “No cost” is also just what that post used, doubt official documents say no cost.
Next, convert Trump Tower into affordable housing.
I wouldn’t wanna live in that gaudy hellhole even if you paid me
Nah, convert it to a pile of ash.
Shit no. That would be like living in Mordor. No, to hallow that place turn it into the Trump library with every floor an exhibition of the lies, stupidity, evil and crimes he committed, with the penthouse dedicated to the Epstein Files.
I was gonna say to just line every wall on every floor with copies of the unredacted files. Name it the Trump Epstein Corruption Library
And Trump into compost for affordable food?
That would turn any food grown with it into poison, tho?
