Comptroller Mark Levine’s truth-telling could make – Latest News
Someone should’ve slipped reality serum into the Municipal Building’s water, as a result of metropolis Comptroller Mark Levine’s rash of honesty is beginning to make him appear to be metropolis authorities’s true anti-Mamdani.
Levine, a Democrat who endorsed Zohran Mamdani for mayor, dedicated a brazen act of candor Sunday when he blasted New York rent legal guidelines for fueling the housing disaster.
“We just have a shortage of supply of homes,” argued the comptroller. Yet “in rent-stabilized buildings, we have tens of thousands of apartments” sitting vacant as a result of the legal guidelines make it too tough for landlords to rent these models.
“When an apartment becomes vacant” and wishes “expensive renovations,” house owners aren’t allowed “to raise their rent enough to cover the cost” — so that they need to allow them to sit idle.
Bingo. It’s an utter no-brainer (we’ve typically made that very same level), but metropolis and state lawmakers insist on ignoring it.
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Good for Levine for demanding landlords get better “flexibilities” to recuperate renovation prices.
Kudos, too, for stating one other housing reality: It “costs too damn much” to construct new residences within the metropolis, because of native insurance policies.
Government “has so many rules and regulations,” grumbles Levine.
He may’ve additionally famous that Mamdani’s rent freeze is driving emptiness charges ever decrease, and market-rate rents ever greater — making it practically unattainable to seek out an inexpensive condominium.
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But this isn’t the primary time Levine has displayed anti-Zo frankness.
In distinction to the mayor’s boasts that he closed a $12 billion price range hole, Levine warns the town continues to be spending more than it takes in and this 12 months’s price range is “balanced” solely with Band-Aid options, like one-time money infusions and borrowing, that’ll create ever-bigger shortfalls later on.
Levine additionally spoke plainly in regards to the logic of investing the town’s pension funds in Israel bonds, a place Mamdani — who helps the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions motion — opposes.
The comptroller’s “No. 1 responsibility,” Levine notes, is to “maintain a healthy pension fund” that “protects the finances of our retirees,” and “Israel bonds have been an extremely solid investment.”
He additionally factors to the dearth of any gripes over metropolis investments in nations with actually doubtful human-rights data: China, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia. . . .
No, we’re not anticipating Levine to launch all-out political struggle in opposition to the mayor any time quickly (not earlier than the following election cycle, anyway).
But if New York’s Zocialists begin concentrating on Levine for defeat, you’ll know his reality telling has hit home.
