Question One:
Housing is a central priority in my campaign for Mayor. As Borough President I allocated funds to complete the comprehensive redevelopment of Frederick Douglass Boulevard, an initiative that included 1,600 affordable homes. In addition, I created and funded New York's first lead safe house for families whose children have suffered severe lead poisoning, played a key role on the Cooper Square task force, and created affordable housing with 25 % set aside for low income residents.
As Mayor I will not stray from that vision because I recognize that the lack of housing has negative impact on the education of our children, our health, general quality of life, and the economic vitality of our city. Recognizing that the city is losing too many units of our aging housing stock, my vision is to not only create more affordable housing, but also preserve and maintain our current stock. As Mayor, I will work with labor unions, non-profit developers to reduce the cost of housing construction and increase the availability of housing. My goal is to promote homeownership by working with the private and public sectors. Recognizing that weak code enforcements contribute to the deterioration of our housing stocks, I will work with the department of buildings to expand the capacity of code enforcers and ensure greater code enforcement, particularly those requirements related to health and safety. In addition, I will and work with landlords to bring their buildings up to code. The prevalence of illegal tenant evictions is testimony to many tenants’ lack of awareness about their legal rights. As Mayor, I will and reduce the incidents of immigrants being targets of unruly landlords by promoting legal awareness through education. As part of my strategy to ensure that New Yorkers live in decent good quality homes, I will work to create a dedicated source of revenue to fund additional housing for low income and for middle income families.
In order to ensure that any housing developments include an affordable housing I will set aside city owned land, where and when available, at no or low cost for the development of affordable senior housing. In addition, I will make vacant land available to developers for below market rates on condition that developers build and set aside a percentage for low income and medium income families. I will make capital funding, tax credits and other financing resources available to not-for-profit developers.
Gentrification is affecting many neighborhoods across the city, from Harlem to Chinatown in Manhattan. While gentrification is a result of many factors, I will work to prevent people being thrown out of their homes because they can no longer afford to live in areas where they have lived for a long time. I will work with legislators in Albany and Washington to maximize the amount of help we can get from federal and state programs such as the HUD funded Section 202 and Section 8.
As Mayor, my housing strategy is in conjunction with my vision to reduce chronic unemployment and create jobs that provide a decent living wage and an opportunity for home ownership or better housing.
Question Two:
The creation of affordable housing requires collaboration between the private sector and city government. While my administration will require specific percentages of affordable housing in every development on city owned land, my vision is to make capital funding, tax credits and other financing resources available to not-for-profit developers to generate more housing. As Mayor, my goal to create 100,000 units of affordable housing over 10 years through inclusionary zoning and will involve a great deal of collaboration with the private sector. I will provide the leadership needed for government to maximize its share on new housing developments.
Question Three:
My vision to create affordable housing calls for measures to require developers to build housing over given time periods and set aside certain percentages for low income and middle income families as a precondition for the city providing city owned land to developers at below market rates. As Mayor, I will create a database of all vacant city land, and create a plan to develop this land in a way that is constant with our needs for housing and other developments.
Question Four:
While all students face problems in schools, I recognize the special circumstances of immigrant students trying to assimilate into our way of life. My plan on education revolves around two areas: Opportunity and Excellence
1. Opportunity by way of expanding avenues through which we can attract, engage and ensure that more of our students complete their education in a safe and supportive environment, and
2. Excellence by ensuring that we provide a quality education in Math, Science, technology, good facilities in schools and incentives to attract, recruit, retain and empower educators and parents to educate our students.
As Mayor, my priority would be to create target school districts where we will identify needs, allocate extra resources, create incentives to attract qualified teachers and work with educators and parents to improve performance in these schools. In Chinatown, Lower East Side, Flushing, and Sunset Park school districts, I will increase recruitment and retention of qualified teachers knowledgeable in various languages and dialects to teach students who need this support. I will expand the role of parents in schools by creating independent parent resource centers to address many issues including violence and empower parents to help their children. I will also provide sufficient translators in schools to work with parents and keep them involved in the activities of the children and teachers.
A central part of my agenda on education includes expanding options to attract and engage students, attracting and retaining educators by empowering principals and teachers to make decisions on school policy, behavioral rules and sanctions to allow schools to effectively respond to their daily needs. In order to retain teachers we must provide a good working environment and ensure that teachers are part of the decision making process.
As Mayor my goal is to reduce class sizes by expanding and improving infrastructure, as well as building the capacity of teachers and educators to meet the needs of students in these small schools. I will work to reclaim unused school buildings, lease temporary classrooms and work with non-profit developers to make more classroom space available to reduce the teacher-student ratios, teaching loads, and improve the overall education of our children.
Recognizing that small classes will require increased in teaching staff, my administration will promote the recruitment of new "home-grown" teachers by instituting scholarships and loan forgiveness programs for college students from communities with hard to staff schools and provide quality of life fringe benefits such as housing allowances and debt refinancing by local banks to attract qualified teachers to underperforming schools and schools with special needs.
Recognizing the diversity of our city, my approach also calls for training and hiring more math/science-skilled educators and minority teachers at all levels of education. To this end, I will work with principals to ensure that teachers are teaching subjects for which they are trained and help principals attract appropriate subject teachers and deploy teachers across the schools system based on where their particular skills are needed.
As Mayor, I will advocate for competitive wage compensation programs, negotiating contracts in a timely fashion, offering incentives to motivate and reward improved teaching, and provide ideal working conditions for teachers. To maintain job satisfaction and workforce development, my vision also includes investing in program mentoring and continuing education for teachers to improve outcomes for children.
Question Five:
I find it difficult to fathom the idea that crime is decreasing particularly given the stories I continue to hear as I travel in different communities around the city. Chinatown, as well as many other parts of the city, have experienced several incidences of hate crimes and sexual assaults- a practice we must stop. One hate crime is too many. As Mayor, I will work with various religious leaders, civic organizations and elected officials to set the right tone - that acts of violence are unacceptable in our city.
My vision for this city calls for strong preventive measures to combat sexual assault, particularly the assault committed by our young people; prosecuting crimes when they occur, and helping victims get health and legal services. Toward that end, I will work with educators to institute violence prevention programs and after school programs for our youth. In order to reduce crime in communities, I will ensure that we emphasize community policing so that neighbors are a central part of fighting crime because communities know best what goes on in their neighborhoods. Community policing will only work if we recruit officers from the same neighborhoods they patrol. As Mayor I will work with the Chinese and Korean communities to promote aggressive recruitment programs with incentives for local residents to become officers.
In order to facilitate the reporting of crimes from those who don’t speak English, I will work to diversity our law enforcement agencies and ensure that they not only reflect the diversity of our city, but are better equipped to respond to the diverse needs of our city. As Mayor, I will promote awareness and education by strengthening the capacity and role of the human rights commission and ensure that we train officers to be able to deal various dynamic cultures. Furthermore, I will add interpreters in police stations and the court system.
For safety in our subways I have and will continue to call on the MTA to increase security in our subways where some of the crimes occur. I have called for the MTA to put token booth operators back to work and trained these personnel so they can assist during an emergency evacuation. I have called the MTA to immediately provide public service announcements in various languages, including Spanish, Chinese and Korean. I have also called for the emergency evacuation signs to be posted in the various languages. As Mayor, I will immediately adopt these practical steps to keep our riders safe. Subway safety will be a priority because a safer subway system will go a long way to reduce congestion and improve our quality of life.
Question Six:
As Borough President I strongly supported the opening of Park Row and was part of the law suit with the local residents demanding its reopening. I am committed to reducing congestion on our roads because I recognize the economic, social and health costs of this problem. As Mayor, I will commit to reopening Park Row in full in my first months of my administration so Chinatown is connected once again to the rest of the city. I will work with the community and various stakeholders to find the best way to protect residents while safeguarding the economic vitality of neighborhoods and ensure a good quality of life for all New Yorkers.
Question Seven:
Shortly after September 11th, I was one of the first elected officials to provide grants and funding to small businesses in downtown Manhattan. Increasing access to job training programs falls within my larger vision to reduce chronic unemployment by linking our educational system to jobs and by strengthening the capacity of all businesses to provide jobs for New Yorkers.
As Mayor, I will expand vocational training of varying length and levels to increase opportunities for many of our students. In addition, I will coordinate institutions of higher education, business, CUNY, DOE and public agencies to develop a more coherent, integrated education, and job training curriculum that responds to educational needs and links students to jobs. Through a partnership with the private and non-profit sectors, we will expand the science and technology programs in every borough by allocating resources to bring New York City schools into the 21st century for all students, not just a select few.
In order to engage immigrant parents and empower them to help their children, I will create fully funded independent parent resource centers to educate with language and skills training. As Mayor, I will work to diversify our economy, expand the job-creating capacity of our growing immigrant population, minority and women business entrepreneurs, provide incentives to grow new businesses from our academic and scientific research institutions, and direct a coordinated campaign to put to work those who are chronically unemployed.
I will appoint a Deputy Mayor for Full Employment to coordinate programs so immigrants who lost jobs in the manufacturing sector will be able to gain valuable English skills, training in hospitality or other sectors and then be placed in these new job opportunities. Bringing people back to work will require creative and innovative thinking and a commitment to link vocational training programs to attract and engage students and immigrant workers, and provide technical and financial assistance to small businesses so they can expand and hire local residents.
Recognizing that many immigrant communities are the driving forces of small businesses, my economic development plan to help small businesses grow, reduce chronic unemployment, will create opportunities for all New Yorkers.
Question Eight:
As Borough President I established a commission to study the health divides between minority and non minority communities. From this commission it was clear that there are communities that still suffer from preventable and treatable diseases. In addition, many of these communities have poor health service delivery because of poor communication between healthcare officials and patients who speak different languages.
As Mayor, my vision to improve health care involves specific strategies to expand and improve service delivery in all the different communities around the city. I will create health empowerment zones that will identify the unique health needs of communities and provide incentives to attract medical practitioners to these areas.
As part of our initiative to increase our medical practitioners’ capacity to respond to heath issues in various communities, we will create a database of people with different language abilities so that they can be encouraged to go into communities where their skills are needed most. Furthermore, I will provide funding and the leadership to ensure that interpreter services and translation of medical documents are available at all public and private New York City hospitals.
My plan on health care also includes recruiting a diverse staff of health professionals and expanding opportunities for minorities from different cultural backgrounds to get into the field of health care and promote diversify among our medical practitioners. Through the office of Mayor, we will work with educational institutions to create seamless transitions for minorities to enter medical professions and increase our recruitment of minorities from our schools in the city.
My office will work to ensure that our students and professionals are culturally competent to respond to the various health needs presented by different ethnic communities in the city and improve service. Furthermore, I will ensure that health messages are accessible in the various languages spoken by the population of the City, and that they are offered in a culturally sensitive manner. In addition, my administration will work with our elected leaders to petition Washington to allow New York City to use federal Medicaid dollars for interpreter services for Medicaid patients.
Question Nine:
While immigrants face most of the problems that affect all other New Yorkers, they also have unique challenges specific to their need to assimilate and be part of this country. I was an opponent for the REAL ID Act as it is a devastating measure affecting more than 300,000 immigrants. I opposed this measure because it will prevent New Yorkers from legally driving to work and providing for their families. Immigration status is not a requirement for drivers’ licenses.
As Mayor, I will strengthen the office of immigrant affairs and other agencies serving immigrants. In addition I will be a strong advocate for immigrants by working with our delegation of state and federal legislators.
According to the most recent census, nearly half of all New Yorkers speak a language other than English at home and about two-thirds of New Yorkers are either immigrants or children of immigrants. Too many New Yorkers are still having trouble accessing city services simply because city agencies can not communicate with them in a language that they understand.
Even though the City Council passed the “The Equal Access” bill back in 2003 that calls for translation and language assistance through translators and translated materials, we need to ensure the law is enforced. Still too many agencies are not providing adequate translators and translated materials for new immigrants.
In order to help immigrants assimilate into life in the city, I will provide funding to enable our human rights commission to promote educational workshops on legal rights and responsibilities in housing and employment matters such as wage and hour laws, work-related health and safety issues, and access to worker compensation benefits and recourse to legal assistance in cases of violations.
As Mayor, I will ensure that our schools respond to the needs of second language speakers, work with courts of law and medical institutions to expand interpreters and access to information. In the area of small businesses, I will ensure that the office of small businesses works with immigrant business owners to ensure that they understand the laws, regulations, and business environment of the city. My plan to reduce unemployment also calls for issuing business contracts to women and minority owned businesses, an initiative that will help immigrants.
Question Ten:
From the age of 17 when I marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to bring down barriers against discrimination, I have always known that when a diverse group of people come together we can achieve better results. My campaign reflects this commitment as I have appointed the first Asian American to serve as my campaign manager. The campaign staff is more diverse of any of the other Democrats.
As Mayor, I will continue this commitment by appointing, recruiting, and retaining a diverse group of Commissioners and senior staff for all levels my administration. Furthermore, I will institute mechanisms to ensure that students from immigrant families have a seamless transition into professions in our city and work to diversify our public agencies such as health, education, and law enforcement.
As Mayor, I will work to ensure that my administration, our schools, hospitals, law enforcement agencies, and our workforce reflect the diversity of our city in a way that enables us to best respond to priorities of all New Yorkers.
Click for other candidate’s response.
Fernando Ferrer
A. Gifford Miller
Anthony Weiner
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