Members from the Coalition to Protect Chinatown and Lower East Side, of mostly Asian and Latinos, called on Mayor Bill de Blasio to step down for failing to stand up for Asian, African-American and Latino communities from being displaced gathered again today outside City Hall in a group of a couple of hundred.
The plan to rezone a 100-block area of the East Village and part of the Lower East Side came under Mayor Mike Bloomberg back in 2008 which ignited fears in surrounding neighborhoods that development pressure would then, be moved into their communities. The people demanded that Chinatown and the unprotected parts of the Lower East Side also be included in the rezoning. They were proven right — development with what’s being called, “supertall” skyscrapers, is already underway in the Two Bridges section of NYC just north of the Brooklyn Bridge, where an 800-foot-tall building is being constructed by Extell at 227 Cherry St.
Tony Avella interviewing with the press voiced his concerns of De Blasio selling out the public:
I believe we have reached a crossroad in the direction our City should be taking. Under Mayor de Blasio we have more homeless than ever – our taxes continue to rise and it is more expensive to live here than ever before, all of this, while our quality of life fades away. I believe it is time for a change. It is time to eliminate the corruption at City Hall where campaign consultants and lobbyists sit at the table. It is time for the people of this City to be at the table.
It is time to stop dumping homeless families and individuals in hotels and motels throughout the City without support services and the prospect of stable long-term housing and without community notification or involvement. It is time to make New York City more affordable to live, so families can thrive and senior citizens can afford to retire in the City they helped build, such as capping the City’s water and sewer bills. It is time to create jobs in every neighborhood and create incentives to bring manufacturing jobs back to this City. It is time to enact the Small Business Survival Act to protect small businesses, most of whom are minority owned, against exorbitant lease increases. It is time to end the financial assault on the middle class and adopt the 2% property tax cap that the Mayor opposes, which everyone else in the State enjoys except us. It is time to ensure the viability of coops and condos, real affordable housing, in our City by creating a new property tax class akin to one-two and three family homes, again something that the Mayor opposes.
It is also long overdue to restore and enhance New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) buildings, another existing affordable housing stock. It is time to stop talking about education and commit to end the bureaucratic nightmare for Principals and Teachers and allow them to teach. It is time to properly fund school capital and expense projects so that students have up-to-date technology, are not sitting on broken auditorium seating, and have arts and music and after-school programs that many of us had when we were students. It is time to allow neighborhoods the ability to approve additional traffic controls in their communities to address dangerous intersections, instead of the de Blasio administration’s narrow-minded anti-motorist policies such as their crazed rush to install bike lanes and pedestrian plazas, which do little to increase pedestrian safety.
It is time to restore and enhance our public transportation system in all of the boroughs, instead of a proposed billion-dollar boondoggle for a tram along the Queens and Brooklyn waterfront. It is time to fix our roads and infrastructure and end the traffic gridlock that encompasses our City. It is time to stop the failed top down planning approach in this City and allow every neighborhood – every resident to have a voice – a real say in what happens in their community. It is time to help students and families deal with college tuition and student loan debt by creating free tuition at CUNY for City residents and employees and helping those with huge existing college loan debt. It is time to fix our streets, improve our parks and enable every New Yorker quick and easy access to simple City services.
It is time to ensure that every neighborhood has a senior center and every center be funded regardless of their size and how often it is open. It is also extremely important that we provide better services to our veterans who have given so much and have received so little. Finally, it is time to put people and neighborhoods first in this City and politics last. For all of these reasons and much more, I officially announce my candidacy for Mayor of New York City.
The coalition calling for De Blasio to step down underscores their anger at his Mandatory Inclusionary Housing initiative, a key element of his Affordable Housing Plan passed in March. Under the M.I.H. initiative, developers are allowed to build taller buildings in any part of the city, But rather than a win for affordable housing, coalition members fear the affordable housing initiative will only lead to further luxury development and gentrification of Chinatown, the Lower East Side and other communities of color.
The coalition is angry at De Blasio’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing initiative which is a main ingredient of his “Affordable” Housing Plan passed back in March of 2016. According to the Mandatory Inclusionary Housing initiative developers are “allowed” to construct higher any where in the city as long as 20 percent of housing are committed to affordable housing.
“De Blasio, step down!” they chanted. “Displacement no more! High rent, no more! Racism, no more!”
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