BY BOB GANGI
Our campaign’s central purpose is to achieve a vision for the Big Apple, that it become a truly just, safe, affordable and livable city for all New Yorkers. Here’s how we get there.
More affordable housing.
The mayor’s housing program artificially inflates the criteria for affordability by using a standard, the area median income, that includes the five boroughs plus three nearby counties: Westchester, Putnam and Rockland. Our initiative will apply a localized metric— the neighborhood median income — to ensure that all new housing units are actually affordable for the poor people living in the communities where the housing is built. We will also expand the use of Community Land Banks to provide funding for affordable housing on vacant city-owned property. This approach will include a commitment to rely entirely on the city’s many proven community-based housing groups to provide and manage affordable housing for residents in their areas.
Another piece will involve public works crews of mainly unemployed and underemployed young people from our inner-city communities which will work with neighborhood housing groups who can train the participants in construction skills and work discipline.
Fix policing.
The NYPD’s main law enforcement strategy involves “broken windows” policing, which holds that if a jurisdiction punishes low-level acts of civil disorder, it will reduce the incidence of serious crimes like murder, rape and armed robbery. While no study has ever concluded that this approach is effective in fighting crime, we do know from the government’s own numbers that its application by the NYPD is marked by a stark racial bias. City cops target black and brown New Yorkers for minor infractions that they virtually ignore entirely in white areas. For example, about 92% of fare evasion arrests, the NYPD’s second most common, involve people of color; about 90% of marijuana possession arrests, the Department’s fourth most common, involve people of color. On Day One, I will direct the NYPD to end all forms of “broken windows” policing. People of color will be able to walk and hang out on their streets as free of police harassment as their fellow white New Yorkers.
Better schools.
Small class sizes improve academic outcomes for all students across race and class lines. Two-thirds of the city’s schools are overcrowded, with many teachers struggling to manage classes with 28 or 32 students. A guiding principle for my administration will be that our 1.1 million public school kids,70% of whom are Latino and African-American, deserve as fulfilling an education as youngsters from wealthier backgrounds who attend private institutions. From monies saved by cutting some de Blasio plans — billions for new jails and billions for a trolley connecting the Brooklyn and Queens waterfronts — we can move forward with our plans. Gangi is a co-founder of the Police Reform Organizing Project.