AOC’s Right — on One Count

For once, AOC is right: “They can’t afford to live here any more,” she said Monday of working-class Gothamites. Thing is, it’s the policies that she and her progressive allies love that have made the city so expensive.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-Bx./ Queens) is, after all, a Democratic Socialist.

The city-agency cuts that prompted the digital town hall where she spoke are needed to pay for migrants AOC and her ilk demand we admit in infinite numbers, and house and feed forever at a cost of at least $12 billion through fiscal 2025.

A recent survey shows a third of New Yorkers pay over half their income for rent. So lefties called for more rent control — which only limits the housing supply.

And progs have done much more to reduce the amount of housing, from blocking renewal of the 421a tax break (responsible for the vast majority of new affordable housing the past two decades), to 2019’s Tenant Protection Act, which has taken 43,000 units off-market by not letting landlords cover the costs of bringing old apartments up to code.

Plus, the state’s “Green New Deal” laws are already sending power prices skyward.

Add in the billions of dollars stolen by shoplifting thugs from retailers big and small thanks to the criminal-justice “reforms” AOC and her compatriots back.

AOC offered her usual prescription on this issue: Tax the rich! But they’re fleeing the state and city in droves, also thanks to our progressive overlords.

AOC & Co. don’t care what their ideas mean for the people whose interests they claim to represent. As long as progressive ideology rules, New York will grow ever more unaffordable, and the exodus accelerate.