{"id":162284,"date":"2021-01-25T04:06:43","date_gmt":"2021-01-25T01:06:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/dont-let-the-mayoral-candidates-get-away-with-these-dodges\/"},"modified":"2021-01-25T04:06:43","modified_gmt":"2021-01-25T01:06:43","slug":"dont-let-the-mayoral-candidates-get-away-with-these-dodges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/dont-let-the-mayoral-candidates-get-away-with-these-dodges\/","title":{"rendered":"#Don’t let the mayoral candidates get away with these dodges"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Don’t let the mayoral candidates get away with these dodges<\/strong>”
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With New York still all but locked down and the mayoral primary just five months away, voters could spend all day binge-watching candidate Zoom forums. But what if the candidates, despite their different backgrounds, mostly sound the same \u2014 all pledging the magic of no crime yet minimal policing, balanced budgets yet no friction with unions? Herewith, some common nostrums to look out for as markers of unseriousness.\u00a0<\/p>\n

First, the handy wrong answer to questions about abysmal quality-of-life conditions and nuisance crime, from open-air drug use on Eighth Avenue to chronic shoplifting from the Duane Reade: The perpetrator needs to \u201cget help.\u201d Yes, he probably does. If you\u2019re exposing yourself to passersby or defecating in the subway, you\u2019re probably not operating at optimal mental capacity. But what if the person in question doesn\u2019t want help?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Most subjects are already familiar with the social<\/a> services the city offers and aren\u2019t interested in going through the system again. Repeat theft suspects have already been through treatment programs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say the fifth time, or the 30th time, won\u2019t be the charm \u2014 it often is.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But in the meantime, what? If a candidate won\u2019t commit to assertive use of Kendra\u2019s Law, to compel people into treatment or, yes, use of the criminal-justice system to keep the streets safe, the \u201cget help\u201d answer is only shorthand for, \u201cthere\u2019s nothing we can do about the street disorder.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Second, relatedly, the trendy wrong answer to more serious crime is \u201cviolence interrupters.\u201d That is, instead of police, nonprofit workers, often former gang members, use their supposed street cred to convince young men not to retaliate for a shooting by committing another shooting.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The\u00a0large-scale model for this? Chicago, LA and Baltimore are the usual cities,\u00a0and they all suffer homicide rates far higher than New York\u2019s, with Baltimore\u2019s homicide rate 13 times ours. Will you commit to a specific goal, say, getting shootings down to 2019 levels, before they doubled in 2020? If you can\u2019t achieve this, will you return to policing crime, or say the \u201croot causes\u201d of poverty make crime unfixable?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Third, the wrong answer about the budget: \u201cEverything is on the table.\u201d With 545,200 New Yorkers out of work, and the city facing a long-term crash in commercial-property values and thus property taxes, voters deserve specifics.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Will you ask the public-sector workers for a wage freeze, if necessary to keep trash picked up and swimming pools open? Will you ask public-sector retirees to pay their own Medicare premiums out of their retirement income, as everyone in the private sector does?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Taking a firm hand with unions is hard even during the good times. The next mayor will need to show he or she has a voter mandate to do so \u2014 and that\u2019s hard if you won\u2019t divulge your plans.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Other tell-tale signs are vows to eliminate waste \u2014 if you don\u2019t have an example of such waste, you probably don\u2019t know what you\u2019re talking about.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Finally, housing for all \u2014 with homelessness couched as a lack-of-housing issue, not a chronic joblessness, addiction or mental-illness issue.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With candidates largely focused on building low-income housing, including ideas to convert Manhattan office space into cheap apartments, the question is: with what money?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Just as with existing public housing, the problem isn\u2019t just the initial construction costs \u2014 offices aren\u2019t going to convert themselves into high-rise apartments without tens of billions of dollars in capital investment. Rather, the unanswered question is the ongoing maintenance, operation and security costs, which low-income tenants can\u2019t pay.<\/p>\n

For two decades, the city\u2019s app<\/a>roach has been to provide operating subsidy through the private sector, not the public sector. That is, through \u201c80-20\u201d buildings and other such schemes, market-rate apartment tenants paid high monthly prices to defray the operating cost of lower-income neighbors.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But with market-rate rents plummeting, and retail space on the ground floor of many buildings empty, can this model hold? If not, the city can\u2019t do much more than commit to a limited quota of new supportive-housing units for people with severe mental illness with strong pre-existing ties to the city.<\/p>\n

\u00a0From universal housing, to utopias, to public-safety-by-persuasion, the mayoral candidates have lots of easy answers \u2014 which are no answers at all.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute\u2019s City Journal.<\/em>\n <\/div>\n

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“#Don’t let the mayoral candidates get away with these dodges” With New York still all but locked down and the mayoral primary just five months away, voters could spend all day binge-watching candidate Zoom forums. But what if the candidates, despite their different backgrounds, mostly sound the same \u2014 all pledging the magic of no…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":162285,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/01\/city-hall.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[90607,72182],"class_list":["post-162284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-1-24-21","tag-mayoral-race"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162284\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}