Lefty Democrats making NYC unaffordable – AOC is right
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 wants more of that have made the city so expensive.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-Bx./Queens) is, after all, a Democratic Socialist.
Look at what occasioned the digital town hall where she spoke: recently announced cuts across city agencies.
Why are these needed?
To pay for the migrants AOC and her ilk demand we admit in infinite numbers, and house and feed forever at a cost of more than $12 billion through fiscal 2025 (and that’s a conservative estimate).
What about housing? A recent survey shows a third of New Yorkers are paying over half their income for rent.
Lefties used that fact to call for even more rent control — which in fact is a huge reason city housing is so limited.
Beyond that is the way progs have done so much to reduce the amount of housing, from blocking renewal of the 421a tax break for developers (responsible for the vast majority of new affordable housing in the past two decades) to 2019’s Tenant Protection Act, which has taken 43,000 units off-market because it doesn’t let landlords cover the costs of bringing old apartments up to code.
Now, the city’s on track to see only 11,000 new units built this year, half the number from 2022.
And this is to say nothing of the state’s “Green New Deal” climate laws that are already sending power prices for New Yorkers skyward.
Or 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 and her fellow leftists simply don’t care what their ideas actually mean for the people whose interests they claim to represent.
And if progressive ideology continues to rule New York, it’ll get ever more unaffordable — and the exodus accelerate.
