BY SAL ALBANESE

It’s tough to live in New York City these days. The prices of real estate, rental apartments included, is skyhigh. Mom and pop stores are vanishing daily. The phenomenon of “towerizing” threatens to make every unique neighborhood into a soulless copy of midtown Manhattan.

Homelessness is way up, and affordability is way down.

Here are three practical proposals to change that.

Fund and fix mass transit.

While it’s true that the MTA is run by both the city and the state, New York City can and should do better. Under my administration, I will increase the city’s yearly contribution to the MTA to $1 billion. That sounds like a lot of money until you realize that it represents only one eighty-seventh of the city’s total budget. I’d also finally put the transit system on solid financial footing by dedicating 0.3% of the personal income tax that’s already collected in the MTA district to the MTA’s financial assistance fund and demand that $1billion of the money received by New York from the financial industry settlements be dedicated to the same fund. With this financing in place, we’d be able to immediately start to fix the subway signal system, which is over 100 years old.

Take money out of politics and bring back real democracy.

Everyone knows that the influence of money, especially big money, on politics and political campaigns, is out of control. I call it “legalized corruption.” What I am proposing is a plan called Democracy Vouchers. Each registered voter would be given four vouchers. Each one would be worth $25. A voter would be able to give their vouchers to any candidate that they deem worthy.

This means that anyone, no matter how much money they earn, would be able to participate. It would level the playing field between the wealthy and the poor and working class. I’d hold a referendum on Democracy Vouchers so that New Yorkers could weigh in.

Create real affordable housing.

The current affordable housing plan isn’t affordable for most New Yorkers. Even civil servants, once considered the bulwark of the middle class in the city, are having a hard time finding and keeping affordable apartments and homes. I want to impose a “pied-a-terre” tax on luxury properties owned by foreign investors who don’t even live in New York City and put that money into a dedicated affordable housing fund. This will generate at least $1 billion over a couple of years. And I will remove the stranglehold that big developers have on City Hall by taking the vacant properties city government owns — there are more than 1,000 of them — and building truly affordable housing with local non-profits and tying affordability to the local median income. Albanese represented Brooklyn in the City Council.