The reason the right are so anti Mamdani is obvious: they don’t want you to see what your tax dollars being put to work the right way would actually look like. Then everyone would want it everywhere.
It appears funding is coming from private sources and upkeep labor is being organized by the 32BJ Union, a massive local union that specializes in affordable housing that’s populated with people who work and specialize in “cleaners, property maintenance workers, doormen, security officers, airport workers, window cleaners, building engineers, school and food service workers, factory workers, etc”.
The conversion costs and labor appear to be funded and plan to be performed by GFP Real Estate and city partners, no doubt in exchange for good favor for future permit approvals and project integration by the Mayor’s administration.
Having trouble finding any real info on this, but it appears that the city isn't actually performing the work, just changing rules and providing incentives to do the conversion.
So the "no cost" is really just that the city isn't paying for it.
Seems like the setup is that the developer gets paid back via the market rate housing revenue, while the city gets a guarantee a minimum number of the new residences are rent controlled. So the developer self funds (or take loans) to start the project, it seems. And the city is still the landowner as far as I can tell, so the developer pays the city a share, which is how the city funds getting new office buildings for agencies to replace these.
They rent a building to a property-developer/manager (eg Hines, Douglas Elliman, etc) that converts to residential and rents apt units to individuals, with a guaranteed portion of them affordable and rent stabilized.
It’s like if the city had a fleet of commercial vans they let a local taxi cab company lease at a submarket rate and convert to taxis. In exchange for the deal on the fleet, the taxi company sets aside a certain number of cabs dedicated to shuttling New Yorkers whose disabilities make public transit hard to use.
This property development business model is common, as is the affordable housing stock deal developers make with the city for things like tax breaks. What’s unique here is that the mayor’s office addressed the problem of perpetually lagging housing stock creation and skipped past years of slow property development and construction by offering a large building in the city that’s already built and ready to convert to residential. The city will then use the lease revenue to construct a new office. In the meantime, New Yorkers have more places to live.
It's wise to look for the potential 'catch', and the story provides it if you look, though the headline itself makes it pretty obvious by stating there will be 3,000 unaffordable residences.
In this case, the 'catch' still seems pretty solid. Sure a real estate company gets to gouge 3,000 units, but 1,000 units may well be worth that. But it does mean continued vigilance, to make sure the real estate company doesn't somehow screw up stewardship of those 1,000 affordable units.
The point is that the original commenter accurately noted that there are costs, but this particular little screenshot does nothing to explain the nuance.
So you have to acknowledge the costs and how they were actually handled, instead of just 'I need sources for the very obvious reality that renovating a building isn't "free".
"No cost to the city" is accurate, but it's completely reasonable to fixate on how 'no cost' doesn't make sense and not think hard enough on the 'to the city' part of it and ask for some explanation/discussion of that nuance.
Where I live they are trying to do the same. Sadly the shape of the building do not work well for housing. There's more inside dark areas than window accessible areas. The proposal was to make a "community area" towards the centre of the building which is a terrible idea. The alternative is converting the inner area to apartments without any sunlight, which isn't going to work even if it's legal. The building sits empty because nobody can provide a good idea how to use it.
Slavoj Zizek calls the Democrats “capitalism with a kinder face - LGBT rights and so on and so on.”
That’s really it. They think the core economic system is working. They’re fine to greenlight social policies that don’t challenge it, especially if they think it will win them votes. And that’s all they are.
They stand for whatever gets them votes. Given the current cultural climate with the right actively controlling the media landscape and the left busy purity testing before they even consider voting, they would obviously consider taking a seat on the topic.
Then you should have no problem identifying an issue that the centrist wing of the party has fought for harder than it fought for netanyahu's campaign of genocide.
My thought is that for many many years politicians didn't really have to do anything to re-elected. And when they were asked to do something they would always say "we can't afford that." or they would write a bill that would promise "thing" will get funded 10 years from now. So these lifelong politicians have turned into lazy fucks just there for the money and are pissed at these younger officials that are actually doing the job they were elected to do.
I have to admit I had been lulled into a sense of nothing will change attitude and now that I see how wrong I was I've become quite pissed off.
I can't remember who said it, but it's like he got in office and saw the "Get Shit Done" button an jus for the life of him couldn't understand why previous Mayors weren't usin it
DeBlasio was pretty good about hitting it. Bloomberg could hit it, but only for Evil. Adams was just an incompetent shithead who only knew how to take bribes and do photo ops.
Shit no. That would be like living in Mordor. No, to hallow that place turn it into the Trump library with every floor an exhibition of the lies, stupidity, evil and crimes he committed, with the penthouse dedicated to the Epstein Files.
The answer is simple: Capitalism has outstayed it's welcome. Its time to go for Scientific Socialism. You ever watch star trek's society in tng and go "huh, that would be nice..."? Well thats Scientific Socialism.
No it's Fairmount. That's where the party favors are. In the Camillus area where my grandma lived. Tully's the ball runner. We got six yack in the clack-a-shackerlantern. Doug ain't what he used to be, but one thing's fer sure - that boy likes them quails real nice n plenty. It is embarrassing. But you shave, right?
No it's time to form a decentralized autonomous technotheocracy, what are you talking about? This is self-evident how the structure of the mothership will be manifested.
The real urgent solution is to have the municipality build low income housing. The people responsible for the housing crisis should not be involved at all in that.
You can see it in Mamdani's smile; the man radiates joy from the inside out. His smile says he loves New York, he loves New Yorkers, and he loves serving them. I wish the world had more Mamdanis.
I don't know if I love that phrase's use here as it sets up the government as some foreign entity that is stealing from you when, at least in theory, it should be the price you pay for your community's betterment. Of course that's not what it feels like in the US (maybe anywhere, maybe federal taxes feel bad always), but that's an argument for redistributing power and fixing the underlying systems more so than it is to be upset that taxes are a thing (or paint them as... Evil or something which this phrase does).
"Reach into your pocket" makes it sound as if they're stealing from you. Which, if you live in the USA, is mostly true.
In functioning democratic societies those taxes pay for things that benefit the citizens. At least that is the stated goal, and if they fuck it up, they get voted out.
I think you guys need to start voting with your bullets.
I am slowly loathing commenting on Lemmy, people here seem increasingly incapable of having a good conversation.
I'm explicitly saying framing it as "reaching into your pocket and taking your wages" is a negative light to cast taxes in. You don't go to the bakery and buy bread and describe it as the baker reaching into your pocket and taking your wages. That would be insane. You pay the baker to provide you bread.
Society should, and I'm gonna emphasize this for the most common commentors, should as in theoretically in an ideal society taxes should feel like a person paying the city for good public transit, universal healthcare, UBI, minimally expensive maximally effective defense, a social safety net, regulatory bodies, public education, fire protection, wildlife preserves and parks, libraries, and public and enriching spaces.
It shouldn't, ideally, feel like someone reaching into your pockets, it should feel like a valuable transaction. Taxes don't have to be a negative thing, akin to someone stealing your money. They should be something people take pride in.
Of course the US is a falling state and so this hasn't been the case for a long time (if ever), and most other countries despite providing better services still have to deal with the conservative propaganda that "welfare" and "healthcare" and "public transit" are wasteful. That's not what I'm really here addressing. I'm just saying painting taxes as theft enables and supports conservative propaganda that disables or errodes community ownership and power - the very things that are synonomous with quality of life.
I mean I get your point, it's easy to assume the consistent factor in the discussions is the problem and you might be right. Id argue the systems of Lemmy are producing, through a mechanism I don't understand, worse conversations over time. It might not even be Lemmy but the rise of AI or bots, I don't really know. But I've had a couple conversations now within a short period that it's like talking to people with an axe to grind throwing a random dart at the comment section and having it out there under the guise of talking to me - a person. It's infuriating.
You've not been that bad, but you did miss the entire point of what I was saying and didn't really engage with the point of my comment. Maybe my comments aren't as focused as I think they are, or maybe in online discourse the capacity to focus on the secondary threads (or maybe the inability to distinguish what the main topic is) is too hard. Idk.
I'm not trying to attack you, I'm venting my frustration for something you did but that isn't your fault as I'm systemically seeing it on Lemmy as of late.
Like imagine replying to this comment with "ignoring what you wrote, when the government reaches into your pocket to take your money, shouldn't we have a better say in where that money gets spent." It's like... Not engaging with the person's comment in it's entirety and focusing on the smallest secondary thread instead while reinforcing the reason why I brought up the primary thread.
Again, no shame or disdain or ill feelings towards you. I'm just trying to explain what happened from my perspective and now officially and publicly wondering why this keeps happening.
They've raised a valid criticism of our tax structure and we're focused on wording. Governments are taking money from working class people, and the assertion that this is necessary for a healthy society is not true.
The OC did not raise a valid criticism of our tax structure, or calling their statement that is a stretch. They complained at where it went, but not how our taxes are structured. You brought up a tax structure complaint, specifically a land value tax. That's not applicable to the primary thread although sure, I'm all for taxing landlords out of existence. Everyone should own the land they live on and part of the land they work on and part of the land their community is built on.
Now back to the primary thread, explain to me how the exchange of goods and services for money is taking money from working class people? Do you describe the baker as taking money from you? I know you don't because you aren't programmed to, so why not extend that same language to the government which (ideally) does the exact same thing.
I don't know how a society gets high quality public healthcare, research, transit, welfare, regulations, or defense without taxes. I think that's naieve given the current state of the world showing that when you remove or corrupt government from/in things like healthcare (for example in the US) you get a terrible healthcare system. Same with every other category. There is no country with strong defense that doesn't have a government and taxes, same with every other category I provided. Not to say what exists today bounds what can exist tomorrow but still.
They are going to reach into your pocket no matter what.
They aren't even in your pocket, relatively speaking. At the local level, you're a drop in the bucket beside the big land owners and corporate industries. At the state level, you're even less relevant. At the federal level, between intentional trade and deficit spending, you might as well not exist.
The joke of modern taxation is how it's largely unnecessary at the individual level. If the state simply planned it's economy and managed it's natural resources, everyone could do the Alaska thing where they pay you to live there.
California hosts multiple trillionaires, ffs. Nobody with an income under seven figures needs to pay a dime to support that state's spending plan.
The phrase "at no cost to the city" is a red flag.
It either means someone is lying, or that there's some kind of "public-private partnership" which are frequently handouts to corporations or rich people.
Maybe this is the rare case when the government will properly supervise the private side, and hold them to account.
And as usual I don't know if I should be outraged that a private company is involve that may lead to questionable practices or happy that at least they are 1000 affordable units available. Both maybe? I guess I'm cautiously optimistic.
They rent them out, so likely had a contractor do the conversion and then woth the rental income cancels out the cost. "No cost" is also just what that post used, doubt official documents say no cost.
Following a competitive request for proposals process, the city selected GFP Real Estate to develop the site.
Note it said only 1,000 affordable residences, but 4,000 overall. A real estate company is happy to cover the cost and cede 1,000 units to affordable terms in exchange for 3,000 residences at market rate.
The reason the right are so anti Mamdani is obvious: they don’t want you to see what your tax dollars being put to work the right way would actually look like.
So many of these NYT / WaPo Op-Eds are written by Landlords. So many Twitter shitposts and Facebook hate threads are started by landlords. So much of the local news bullshit is financed by landlords.
Wasted funds to combate homelessness that went missing, funds not missing where not used strategically. Train to no where that cost billions. Employment Develoment Department fraud, billions lost. Misjudged capital gain spikes as permanent revenue, over stated multi year revenues by billions which triggered multi year budget deficits
Office buildings are generally unfit for apartment conversions since they have so much interior space that isn't really appropriate to use as homes - there's usually a requirement that you get an actual window in your apartment, something I don't think is particularly unreasonable.
Office space is easily remodeled. Most high rise commercial buildings have windows. they are designed for it to be changed every few years.
Older buildings regularly get turned into housing and sell well exactly for their unique characteristics.
I lived in a converted building that had an enormous industrial crane structure inside of it. They had retrofitted a pool, hot tub, and basketball court on the roofs. It even had two stall parking.
Also, the plumbing isn't suitable. Office buildings have all the lines routed to a few huge bathrooms per floor, plus maybe a standard break room that's in the same place on every floor.
An apartment needs its own bathroom, its own kitchen, etc. So, instead of the pipes going to two areas on each floor, they now need to be re-routed to go to 50 small areas on each floor. So, the entire plumbing for the building needs to be redone.
Also, modern office buildings are very big, and there are a lot of cubicles / offices / open areas that are nowhere near a window. When the place doesn't have many walls, maybe that's not so bad, because you can still vaguely see a window off in the distance. But, when it's an apartment building, you can't now have an apartment that doesn't have windows. So, the apartments have to end up being these narrow things with windows only on one side at the end.
Big windows, but only on one narrow bit of an apartment is bad for ventilation, and it also means the place gets really hot when the sun hits those windows. When the thing was an office building the entire floor was one "climate control area", with a limited number of walls and lots of wide corridors. So, if it got hot on one side it would even out across the floor. That doesn't work when that floor is subdivided into 50 individual apartments. So, now you need brand new solutions to the problems of ventilation and climate control.
It's less work than building a whole new building from scratch, but there are a lot of trade-offs.
Is there a written version of this podcast, all this article says is there are structural and governmental problems, ending with if we want more have the government doing it, which is what they did.
My conclusion from it was that, sad as it may perhaps be, it's probably better if we replace these buildings with actual purpose-built apartment buildings. The juice is not really worth the squeeze for these retrofits, in most cases.
Around here the commercial buildings are insulated very differently from the residential. I don't know the specifics, just that commercial has worse insulation (per my insulation guy)
I wish I could shake this man's hand. We need somebody to do this in Canada as well. But our politicians are equally as spineless as the rest of them, just with a fresh coat of paint covering their faces like the clowns they are.
I guess I'm just at the point now where I don't care what government is in place either federally or provincially or locally - if myself and the people around me aren't feeling any improvements in our quality of life, then I don't give a fuck what they claim.
Actions speak so much louder than words and the government is proving that their actions ≠ their words in any meaningful way.
Canada needs radical reform. Sorry I can't help but go off like this nowadays.
It's sad but I know exactly what you mean. My friend, enjoy those rare up days when they come! If you're able to let it all go for a day here and there then you've more than fucking earned it.
Also, quick scroll through the posts like you said, eyes were drawn to "if you're kinky". I am! I am kinky! Kinky and proud ⛓️💥 👹
When basic competent governance is seen as radical, you know how bad things have been/are. I'm so jealous of the city right now. I'm seeing videos pop up every day about some new project. Meanwhile my town wont fix potholes unless you very specifically ask them to do so, and then they will only fix THAT ONE even if there are others nearby. There are not nearly enough trees and basically no functional public transportation, so getting anywhere without a car is a pain. I can't get anyone in the town gov to answer my emails and while I haven't been to a board meeting yet, I've been told by someone else who has gone that they're so disinterested in what people have to say some of them have literally fallen asleep on the job. But we've just been stuck with them because my town are a bunch of NIMBYs who don't care as long as their taxes don't go up.
We can see how using taxes better helps people in many other countries and states, and like this where he can do good work that helps people and society, as public servants are supposed to do. People see it but don't care. Just look up how much is spent per person for healthcare in countries and their health outcomes. Basic things are getting worse in us due to unhealthy policies they chose. It's too hard to pass the big changes we want w/o supermajority and for long enough to maintain them. Even if things are passed that they want, they swing the other way a few years later due to propaganda, and it gets destroyed again. Stop doing that, support unions and the politicians that actually do too.
The situation in LA is so bad that I'm going to vote exclusively based on how they'll deal with the armed thugs all over the city. It was bad enough when it was just the LAPD!
I hope Mamdani doesn't get cynical about all of the roadblocks that will be put up against him. Keep the faith against those white old corpulent entrenched establishment types!
If he hasn't gotten cynical at this point, he'll be fine. It's basically expected that he's going to get roadblocks from the establishment and he has been so far, whining from the left is also fairly inevitable and it seems like he has a good enough support system and popularity that I'm not concerned about that.
Politician pockets via dark money and obfuscation, as is always has. The reason most people hate taxes is they go right into corrupt pockets. I wouldnt mind taxes if they actually did shit like this.
"At no cost to the city". The office building is going to be developed by GFP Real Estate and in exchange for the 3,000 units for free market stuff, they have to make 25% of them available as affordable.
So this is a public-private partnership with strings attached. Hopefully it goes according to plan and/or the company is held accountable for any bullshit it pulls.
You know that the developer is going to be spending hundreds of thousands if not millions on lawyers to draft the deal. I hope the city's lawyers are up to the challenge of spotting all their loopholes and neutralizing them.
This will end poorly, I guarantee that in 10 years a successor to Mamdani will alter the deal, screening over New Yorkers in favor of that developer. I hope he's at least smart enough to not give them the land that the city owns.
Well, I hope your pessimism is wrong, but can't dismiss it. The perils of public-private partnerships is a pretty legitimate worry.
I'm hoping they have enough leverage to have a good, enforceable deal and further hope that succossors will be too afraid of screwing up a popular program.
In red states they're forcing urban city owned properties to sell. Getting the buildings out of gov. ownership and control is difficult. Doing it this way makes everyone overlook the taxpayer money going to a private investor later. Don't look too close at the fact that Cochran Gardens, and Pruitt Igoe (StL) were both built buy Minoru Yamasaki, the same man who built the WT towers. It will fail and prolly be demolished in 20 years or so. The building, much like the towers, is probably to expensive to rehab. Also I will just put to people that our nations crubling infrastructure, is not a good sign as far as invasion is concerned. Liquidating government buildings so they're not liable for their repairs, or so they are not targets of dissent, is also not a good sign. Investors are not investing money in the future. They are invested in the planning process of the future. Roman concrete is reviered not for its composition, but for its ablity to control a society with infrastructure. They say not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but the 'too good to be true' rule exists for a reason.
The far right are so virulently anti-Mamdani bcs they know it'll get the compatible left to even more entrench their support for him even as he's already drifting towards the positions of the center-right party that he's adopted, despite them fighting tooth and nail to keep him out of office.
Everything in politics makes way more sense when you stop believing the kayfabe and recognize they're all on the same team. "It's a big club, and you ain't in it."
Until he arrests Netanyahu and stops the NYPD from brutalizing protestors, I'm going to stay highly skeptical of him. At the end of the day, bourgeois democracy will never serve the interests of the people. He's controlled opposition.
He literally explained how he cannot arrest Netanyahu and told exactly who is stopping him and called Netanyahu a criminal several times on that announcement. The NYPD thing I cannot argue against because I literally know nothing of it, so I'd love to learn about it, but calling him a controlled opposition smells of either right wing paid troll to get the left to not like Mamdani or a person who really wants to let perfect be the enemy of good. Gog forbid anyone be less than perfect and help us move towards a better future in any shape or form besides all the way in a single move exactly how I envision it
The mindset that there's one person who's going to save us is something that the left has to just get rid of. It doesn't matter whether it's Mamdani or Bernie or AOC. Putting anybody up on a pedestal like that just means that they're inevitably going to disappoint you, because they aren't gods, they're human, and the machine that they're a part of is so much bigger than they are.
No, he isn't "controlled opposition", but he also isn't some socialist ubermensch who can't ever be corrupted. What is important is the movement, not these figureheads.
Rent control is a lottery, some people randomly get a good deal, but most people continue to be fucked over. This is great if you're running out of people who can afford to work at Starbucks, but I don't think it's fair or progressive.
I think its about dealing with the increase. Most people are already thin in margin, having a guarantee that your expense aren't growing arbitrarily each year is FAR better than the alternative.
It's not even ideal for the people who have rent control.
Sure, they have rent that's a lot cheaper than it could be. But, they're stuck. Maybe their place doesn't have enough bedrooms. Maybe it's not near their friends or family. Maybe it's too big for them. Maybe they hate their neighbours. But, they have rent control, and they lose it if they move.
Meanwhile, someone else who that apartment would be perfect for has to look elsewhere.
It's a bad system, but rent in NYC is so outrageous people will fight for the bad system because they doubt anything better is really possible.
Centrist democrats will shit on anything that helps poor people.
4
The reason the right are so anti Mamdani is obvious: they don’t want you to see what your tax dollars being put to work the right way would actually look like. Then everyone would want it everywhere. | Spyke
185 replies
Converting office space into apartments has a cost, it will be easily recouped but there is a cost.
Seems like a good idea though.
It appears funding is coming from private sources and upkeep labor is being organized by the 32BJ Union, a massive local union that specializes in affordable housing that’s populated with people who work and specialize in “cleaners, property maintenance workers, doormen, security officers, airport workers, window cleaners, building engineers, school and food service workers, factory workers, etc”.
The conversion costs and labor appear to be funded and plan to be performed by GFP Real Estate and city partners, no doubt in exchange for good favor for future permit approvals and project integration by the Mayor’s administration.
Pretty smart if you ask me.
Source: https://www.nyc.gov/mayors-office/news/2026/09/mamdani-administration-advances-plan-to-build-nearly-4-000-new-h
Having trouble finding any real info on this, but it appears that the city isn't actually performing the work, just changing rules and providing incentives to do the conversion.
So the "no cost" is really just that the city isn't paying for it.
https://www.metro-manhattan.com/blog/which-manhattan-buildings-are-office-conversion-candidates-under-mamdanis-housing-first-agenda/
Seems like the setup is that the developer gets paid back via the market rate housing revenue, while the city gets a guarantee a minimum number of the new residences are rent controlled. So the developer self funds (or take loans) to start the project, it seems. And the city is still the landowner as far as I can tell, so the developer pays the city a share, which is how the city funds getting new office buildings for agencies to replace these.
https://www.nyc.gov/mayors-office/news/2026/09/mamdani-administration-advances-plan-to-build-nearly-4-000-new-h
I had to dig into what they mean by cross-subsidy to figure that out
So do they sell off sections of the building to developers, who do the work and then sell units back to owners at a price cap?
They rent a building to a property-developer/manager (eg Hines, Douglas Elliman, etc) that converts to residential and rents apt units to individuals, with a guaranteed portion of them affordable and rent stabilized.
It’s like if the city had a fleet of commercial vans they let a local taxi cab company lease at a submarket rate and convert to taxis. In exchange for the deal on the fleet, the taxi company sets aside a certain number of cabs dedicated to shuttling New Yorkers whose disabilities make public transit hard to use.
This property development business model is common, as is the affordable housing stock deal developers make with the city for things like tax breaks. What’s unique here is that the mayor’s office addressed the problem of perpetually lagging housing stock creation and skipped past years of slow property development and construction by offering a large building in the city that’s already built and ready to convert to residential. The city will then use the lease revenue to construct a new office. In the meantime, New Yorkers have more places to live.
Vacant buildings have a cost too. A vacant high rise building that gets repossessed becomes a massive cost to the city.
Can you just get the win? It is healthy to be skeptic but in the context of how shit everything else is, what's the point of stating the obvious?
It's wise to look for the potential 'catch', and the story provides it if you look, though the headline itself makes it pretty obvious by stating there will be 3,000 unaffordable residences.
In this case, the 'catch' still seems pretty solid. Sure a real estate company gets to gouge 3,000 units, but 1,000 units may well be worth that. But it does mean continued vigilance, to make sure the real estate company doesn't somehow screw up stewardship of those 1,000 affordable units.
This is the haternet. The only reason people come online is to nitpick and naysay others.
More good steps in the right direction 👍
Source please if you have one, I’d love to read about what those costs are if they’re real
https://www.nyc.gov/mayors-office/news/2026/09/mamdani-administration-advances-plan-to-build-nearly-4-000-new-h
The costs are real of course, but seemingly handled by a private company that was willing to pay for the project.
Which means the cost to the city was - everyone all together now:
The point is that the original commenter accurately noted that there are costs, but this particular little screenshot does nothing to explain the nuance.
So you have to acknowledge the costs and how they were actually handled, instead of just 'I need sources for the very obvious reality that renovating a building isn't "free".
"No cost to the city" is accurate, but it's completely reasonable to fixate on how 'no cost' doesn't make sense and not think hard enough on the 'to the city' part of it and ask for some explanation/discussion of that nuance.
Thank you
Sinks and showers and walls do not install themselves? What kind of a source are you looking for here?
Just because there is A cost, doesn’t mean it cost the city anything. The original comment sounds like an assumption, and I’d like to validate it
3/4 of the apartments will be market rate, I bet it’s paid off in the first year when you look at market rate there.
Where I live they are trying to do the same. Sadly the shape of the building do not work well for housing. There's more inside dark areas than window accessible areas. The proposal was to make a "community area" towards the centre of the building which is a terrible idea. The alternative is converting the inner area to apartments without any sunlight, which isn't going to work even if it's legal. The building sits empty because nobody can provide a good idea how to use it.
A lot of commercial real estate has gone unoccupied since COVID and the explosion of remote work. I see for lease signs all over downtown in my city.
So it doesn’t necesarily have a cost and could in fact be revenue positive to convert to residences.
Opportunity cost
its why most democrats are against him too.
Cause hes setting a dangerous precedent of an elected official serving people, not money.
Slavoj Zizek calls the Democrats “capitalism with a kinder face - LGBT rights and so on and so on.”
That’s really it. They think the core economic system is working. They’re fine to greenlight social policies that don’t challenge it, especially if they think it will win them votes. And that’s all they are.
Let's not pretend they stand for the T in that acronym.
They stand for whatever gets them votes. Given the current cultural climate with the right actively controlling the media landscape and the left busy purity testing before they even consider voting, they would obviously consider taking a seat on the topic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGfE-mbdmXg
They stand for genocide and nothing else and do not care about votes.
Ah, you're one of those persecution fetishists. Normally y'all are about Jesus.
Then you should have no problem identifying an issue that the centrist wing of the party has fought for harder than it fought for netanyahu's campaign of genocide.
Literally anything lol wtf are you smoking?
My thought is that for many many years politicians didn't really have to do anything to re-elected. And when they were asked to do something they would always say "we can't afford that." or they would write a bill that would promise "thing" will get funded 10 years from now. So these lifelong politicians have turned into lazy fucks just there for the money and are pissed at these younger officials that are actually doing the job they were elected to do.
I have to admit I had been lulled into a sense of nothing will change attitude and now that I see how wrong I was I've become quite pissed off.
Start rolling out guillotines and i bet they'd start finding ways to serve their electorate rather quickly.
That won't be their first instinct. Their first instinct will be to kill anybody who seems at all threatening.
I can't remember who said it, but it's like he got in office and saw the "Get Shit Done" button an jus for the life of him couldn't understand why previous Mayors weren't usin it
Josh Johnson
https://youtube.com/shorts/SCKj7gwbYrc
Josh Joshson.
That's Crazy...
DeBlasio was pretty good about hitting it. Bloomberg could hit it, but only for Evil. Adams was just an incompetent shithead who only knew how to take bribes and do photo ops.
And awkwardly mention 9/11
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Hc9CUlunOuQ
The main thing is that he's really good at publicizing what he's doing.
It's why the corporate neo-libs hate him too. They truly are in the business of managing decline instead of doing their fucking jobs.
They'd rather support a sexual predator that they said should resign from being Governor a few years earlier.
Is there even such a thing as a non-corporate neolib?
I think there kinda sorta used to be, in 2026? Naw not really.
Next, convert Trump Tower into affordable housing.
I wouldn't wanna live in that gaudy hellhole even if you paid me
Nah, convert it to a pile of ash.
Shit no. That would be like living in Mordor. No, to hallow that place turn it into the Trump library with every floor an exhibition of the lies, stupidity, evil and crimes he committed, with the penthouse dedicated to the Epstein Files.
I was gonna say to just line every wall on every floor with copies of the unredacted files. Name it the Trump Epstein Corruption Library
And Trump into compost for affordable food?
That would turn any food grown with it into poison, tho?
Trump Tower isn't mobile. One star housing. This is the future. Next.
The answer is simple: Capitalism has outstayed it's welcome. Its time to go for Scientific Socialism. You ever watch star trek's society in tng and go "huh, that would be nice..."? Well thats Scientific Socialism.
Username checks out
I mean, more like moderate socialist, but sure whatever floats your boat.
Lol
Lulz is a corruption of lol
Fair point
No it's Fairmount. That's where the party favors are. In the Camillus area where my grandma lived. Tully's the ball runner. We got six yack in the clack-a-shackerlantern. Doug ain't what he used to be, but one thing's fer sure - that boy likes them quails real nice n plenty. It is embarrassing. But you shave, right?
No it's time to form a decentralized autonomous technotheocracy, what are you talking about? This is self-evident how the structure of the mothership will be manifested.
Same reason status quo democrats dont like him.
Well what about the Democrats huh!
The real solution is to have the municipality build low income housing. The people responsible for the housing crisis should not be involved at all.
The
realurgent solution is to have the municipality build low income housing. The people responsible for the housing crisis should not be involvedat allin that.I live in Harlem. He really has been great! He's just a genuine and nice guy too!
Edit: word
You don't have to add "word!" just because it's Harlem
It's ok, we speak jive.
Word
Church.
You can see it in Mamdani's smile; the man radiates joy from the inside out. His smile says he loves New York, he loves New Yorkers, and he loves serving them. I wish the world had more Mamdanis.
Yep.
They are going to reach into your pocket no matter what. The only question is if your money goes to a bunch of rich guys or back to people like you.
I don't know if I love that phrase's use here as it sets up the government as some foreign entity that is stealing from you when, at least in theory, it should be the price you pay for your community's betterment. Of course that's not what it feels like in the US (maybe anywhere, maybe federal taxes feel bad always), but that's an argument for redistributing power and fixing the underlying systems more so than it is to be upset that taxes are a thing (or paint them as... Evil or something which this phrase does).
That is the point. The taxes are reality, you are going to pay them. Whether they are evil or not depends on what that money is used for.
"Reach into your pocket" makes it sound as if they're stealing from you. Which, if you live in the USA, is mostly true.
In functioning democratic societies those taxes pay for things that benefit the citizens. At least that is the stated goal, and if they fuck it up, they get voted out.
I think you guys need to start voting with your bullets.
Even if it's for something good, they're still reaching into your pocket and taking wages you earned by working.
It would be more progressive if taxes were raised from the unearned rents of the wealthy, with land value taxes.
I am slowly loathing commenting on Lemmy, people here seem increasingly incapable of having a good conversation.
I'm explicitly saying framing it as "reaching into your pocket and taking your wages" is a negative light to cast taxes in. You don't go to the bakery and buy bread and describe it as the baker reaching into your pocket and taking your wages. That would be insane. You pay the baker to provide you bread.
Society should, and I'm gonna emphasize this for the most common commentors, should as in theoretically in an ideal society taxes should feel like a person paying the city for good public transit, universal healthcare, UBI, minimally expensive maximally effective defense, a social safety net, regulatory bodies, public education, fire protection, wildlife preserves and parks, libraries, and public and enriching spaces.
It shouldn't, ideally, feel like someone reaching into your pockets, it should feel like a valuable transaction. Taxes don't have to be a negative thing, akin to someone stealing your money. They should be something people take pride in.
Of course the US is a falling state and so this hasn't been the case for a long time (if ever), and most other countries despite providing better services still have to deal with the conservative propaganda that "welfare" and "healthcare" and "public transit" are wasteful. That's not what I'm really here addressing. I'm just saying painting taxes as theft enables and supports conservative propaganda that disables or errodes community ownership and power - the very things that are synonomous with quality of life.
Pausing the discussion about progressive taxation for a second.
If people on Lemmy seem increasingly incapable of having a good conversation, then who do you think is the most likely person to have changed?
We should be able to discuss this subject without personal attacks.
I mean I get your point, it's easy to assume the consistent factor in the discussions is the problem and you might be right. Id argue the systems of Lemmy are producing, through a mechanism I don't understand, worse conversations over time. It might not even be Lemmy but the rise of AI or bots, I don't really know. But I've had a couple conversations now within a short period that it's like talking to people with an axe to grind throwing a random dart at the comment section and having it out there under the guise of talking to me - a person. It's infuriating.
You've not been that bad, but you did miss the entire point of what I was saying and didn't really engage with the point of my comment. Maybe my comments aren't as focused as I think they are, or maybe in online discourse the capacity to focus on the secondary threads (or maybe the inability to distinguish what the main topic is) is too hard. Idk.
I'm not trying to attack you, I'm venting my frustration for something you did but that isn't your fault as I'm systemically seeing it on Lemmy as of late.
Like imagine replying to this comment with "ignoring what you wrote, when the government reaches into your pocket to take your money, shouldn't we have a better say in where that money gets spent." It's like... Not engaging with the person's comment in it's entirety and focusing on the smallest secondary thread instead while reinforcing the reason why I brought up the primary thread.
Again, no shame or disdain or ill feelings towards you. I'm just trying to explain what happened from my perspective and now officially and publicly wondering why this keeps happening.
They've raised a valid criticism of our tax structure and we're focused on wording. Governments are taking money from working class people, and the assertion that this is necessary for a healthy society is not true.
The OC did not raise a valid criticism of our tax structure, or calling their statement that is a stretch. They complained at where it went, but not how our taxes are structured. You brought up a tax structure complaint, specifically a land value tax. That's not applicable to the primary thread although sure, I'm all for taxing landlords out of existence. Everyone should own the land they live on and part of the land they work on and part of the land their community is built on.
Now back to the primary thread, explain to me how the exchange of goods and services for money is taking money from working class people? Do you describe the baker as taking money from you? I know you don't because you aren't programmed to, so why not extend that same language to the government which (ideally) does the exact same thing.
I don't know how a society gets high quality public healthcare, research, transit, welfare, regulations, or defense without taxes. I think that's naieve given the current state of the world showing that when you remove or corrupt government from/in things like healthcare (for example in the US) you get a terrible healthcare system. Same with every other category. There is no country with strong defense that doesn't have a government and taxes, same with every other category I provided. Not to say what exists today bounds what can exist tomorrow but still.
They aren't even in your pocket, relatively speaking. At the local level, you're a drop in the bucket beside the big land owners and corporate industries. At the state level, you're even less relevant. At the federal level, between intentional trade and deficit spending, you might as well not exist.
The joke of modern taxation is how it's largely unnecessary at the individual level. If the state simply planned it's economy and managed it's natural resources, everyone could do the Alaska thing where they pay you to live there.
California hosts multiple trillionaires, ffs. Nobody with an income under seven figures needs to pay a dime to support that state's spending plan.
Sounds like here it's letting a private company spend the money to get access to 3,000 residences in exchange for 1,000 affordable ones.
The phrase "at no cost to the city" is a red flag.
It either means someone is lying, or that there's some kind of "public-private partnership" which are frequently handouts to corporations or rich people.
Maybe this is the rare case when the government will properly supervise the private side, and hold them to account.
And as usual I don't know if I should be outraged that a private company is involve that may lead to questionable practices or happy that at least they are 1000 affordable units available. Both maybe? I guess I'm cautiously optimistic.
Civilization is expensive and can only be paid for on the installment plan.
When you see what good your taxes can do, it makes you question why the rich don't pay their fair share. They do not like this.
How does converting an office building have zero cost?
No cost to the city. Sounds like some other entity foot the bill.
They rent them out, so likely had a contractor do the conversion and then woth the rental income cancels out the cost. "No cost" is also just what that post used, doubt official documents say no cost.
Everything has a cost, even if it's tickling pandas
No cost to the city as explained in comments written long before yours in this thread
https://www.nyc.gov/mayors-office/news/2026/09/mamdani-administration-advances-plan-to-build-nearly-4-000-new-h
Following a competitive request for proposals process, the city selected GFP Real Estate to develop the site.
Note it said only 1,000 affordable residences, but 4,000 overall. A real estate company is happy to cover the cost and cede 1,000 units to affordable terms in exchange for 3,000 residences at market rate.
It seems like a significant cost is in reading the whole sentence.
Converting the Oldest House into literal housing? Bold choice!
God, living there would suck. Somebody accidently turns harmonization device off and your hallway is now non-Euclidean shape.
Or take wrong turn when searching laundry room and you are now lost in interdimentional quarry.
"When you feel the floor deviate, it's already much too late!"
Upvote for anything control❤️
<The nostalgia/pandering is very much appreciated/tolerated.>
More like the left way 🥁
🐑 🥁 🐍
👽🎅🤏
BUT HOW ARE THE LANDLORDS (I am not one) GONNA AFFORD TO LIVE????!! THE POOOR LANDLORDS
So many of these NYT / WaPo Op-Eds are written by Landlords. So many Twitter shitposts and Facebook hate threads are started by landlords. So much of the local news bullshit is financed by landlords.
The NYPost is landlord required reading.
Yes. The biggest advertisers for most city papers are real estate and the results as predictable as they are obvious.
I live in CA, and our tax dollars get squandered. Gotta be progressive and know what your doing. We have one but not the other
Seems like CA is doing pretty good actually. What's up?
Wasted funds to combate homelessness that went missing, funds not missing where not used strategically. Train to no where that cost billions. Employment Develoment Department fraud, billions lost. Misjudged capital gain spikes as permanent revenue, over stated multi year revenues by billions which triggered multi year budget deficits
Sounds very chat gpt-ey.
Wish I was joking
If wishes were fishes, I'd be a maritime bandit
A two letter word defining a direction perpendicular to the standing plane, obviously. You people are dum
Then you haven't been paying attention.
Newsom is a curse. He's carved up and sold out the state a dozen times over.
He's a decent mayor so far and we haven't had one of those since I've been living here
Office buildings are generally unfit for apartment conversions since they have so much interior space that isn't really appropriate to use as homes - there's usually a requirement that you get an actual window in your apartment, something I don't think is particularly unreasonable.
A great podcast episode on the topic: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/551-office-space/
Lies.
Office space is easily remodeled. Most high rise commercial buildings have windows. they are designed for it to be changed every few years.
Older buildings regularly get turned into housing and sell well exactly for their unique characteristics.
I lived in a converted building that had an enormous industrial crane structure inside of it. They had retrofitted a pool, hot tub, and basketball court on the roofs. It even had two stall parking.
They have windows, yeah. They also tend to have way more internal space than your average residential high-rise.
I'm all for reclaiming unused office space, but sometimes it's just better to build a new building on the lot, that is fit for purpose.
More internal space means more or larger units. Or am I misunderstanding?
Usually it's that the insulation sucks
Also, the plumbing isn't suitable. Office buildings have all the lines routed to a few huge bathrooms per floor, plus maybe a standard break room that's in the same place on every floor.
An apartment needs its own bathroom, its own kitchen, etc. So, instead of the pipes going to two areas on each floor, they now need to be re-routed to go to 50 small areas on each floor. So, the entire plumbing for the building needs to be redone.
Also, modern office buildings are very big, and there are a lot of cubicles / offices / open areas that are nowhere near a window. When the place doesn't have many walls, maybe that's not so bad, because you can still vaguely see a window off in the distance. But, when it's an apartment building, you can't now have an apartment that doesn't have windows. So, the apartments have to end up being these narrow things with windows only on one side at the end.
Big windows, but only on one narrow bit of an apartment is bad for ventilation, and it also means the place gets really hot when the sun hits those windows. When the thing was an office building the entire floor was one "climate control area", with a limited number of walls and lots of wide corridors. So, if it got hot on one side it would even out across the floor. That doesn't work when that floor is subdivided into 50 individual apartments. So, now you need brand new solutions to the problems of ventilation and climate control.
It's less work than building a whole new building from scratch, but there are a lot of trade-offs.
Is there a written version of this podcast, all this article says is there are structural and governmental problems, ending with if we want more have the government doing it, which is what they did.
There's a transcript here: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/551-office-space/transcript/
But really, I recommend you give it a listen.
My conclusion from it was that, sad as it may perhaps be, it's probably better if we replace these buildings with actual purpose-built apartment buildings. The juice is not really worth the squeeze for these retrofits, in most cases.
Around here the commercial buildings are insulated very differently from the residential. I don't know the specifics, just that commercial has worse insulation (per my insulation guy)
They're not converting the building. They're tearing it down and building new ones.
That's a different story then. I could only really go off of the fact that the image said "converting".
It's more costly than doing cookie cutter patterns that have been used for residential buildings. It's way cheaper than demo and rebuild though.
I wish I could shake this man's hand. We need somebody to do this in Canada as well. But our politicians are equally as spineless as the rest of them, just with a fresh coat of paint covering their faces like the clowns they are.
Naw, he's gone now
Made me chuckle, I didn't think of that haha ...
I guess I'm just at the point now where I don't care what government is in place either federally or provincially or locally - if myself and the people around me aren't feeling any improvements in our quality of life, then I don't give a fuck what they claim.
Actions speak so much louder than words and the government is proving that their actions ≠ their words in any meaningful way.
Canada needs radical reform. Sorry I can't help but go off like this nowadays.
Very much so.
I'm on a rare up day so am finding humour in things I prolly shouldn't (check some of my other posts from today, the one about horses hehe)
"on a rare up day"
It's sad but I know exactly what you mean. My friend, enjoy those rare up days when they come! If you're able to let it all go for a day here and there then you've more than fucking earned it.
Also, quick scroll through the posts like you said, eyes were drawn to "if you're kinky". I am! I am kinky! Kinky and proud ⛓️💥 👹
When basic competent governance is seen as radical, you know how bad things have been/are. I'm so jealous of the city right now. I'm seeing videos pop up every day about some new project. Meanwhile my town wont fix potholes unless you very specifically ask them to do so, and then they will only fix THAT ONE even if there are others nearby. There are not nearly enough trees and basically no functional public transportation, so getting anywhere without a car is a pain. I can't get anyone in the town gov to answer my emails and while I haven't been to a board meeting yet, I've been told by someone else who has gone that they're so disinterested in what people have to say some of them have literally fallen asleep on the job. But we've just been stuck with them because my town are a bunch of NIMBYs who don't care as long as their taxes don't go up.
We can see how using taxes better helps people in many other countries and states, and like this where he can do good work that helps people and society, as public servants are supposed to do. People see it but don't care. Just look up how much is spent per person for healthcare in countries and their health outcomes. Basic things are getting worse in us due to unhealthy policies they chose. It's too hard to pass the big changes we want w/o supermajority and for long enough to maintain them. Even if things are passed that they want, they swing the other way a few years later due to propaganda, and it gets destroyed again. Stop doing that, support unions and the politicians that actually do too.
Hey Karen Bass! I'm pretty sure its NBD to get Mamdani on the phone. Just puttin it out there...
The situation in LA is so bad that I'm going to vote exclusively based on how they'll deal with the armed thugs all over the city. It was bad enough when it was just the LAPD!
I hope Mamdani doesn't get cynical about all of the roadblocks that will be put up against him. Keep the faith against those white old corpulent entrenched establishment types!
If he hasn't gotten cynical at this point, he'll be fine. It's basically expected that he's going to get roadblocks from the establishment and he has been so far, whining from the left is also fairly inevitable and it seems like he has a good enough support system and popularity that I'm not concerned about that.
Corollary: where did those tax dollars go previously?
Politician pockets via dark money and obfuscation, as is always has. The reason most people hate taxes is they go right into corrupt pockets. I wouldnt mind taxes if they actually did shit like this.
we already do want it that way and have forever. mamdani just proves it is doable
A city owned office building, why aren't a majority of the units being made affordable?
"At no cost to the city". The office building is going to be developed by GFP Real Estate and in exchange for the 3,000 units for free market stuff, they have to make 25% of them available as affordable.
So this is a public-private partnership with strings attached. Hopefully it goes according to plan and/or the company is held accountable for any bullshit it pulls.
You know that the developer is going to be spending hundreds of thousands if not millions on lawyers to draft the deal. I hope the city's lawyers are up to the challenge of spotting all their loopholes and neutralizing them.
This will end poorly, I guarantee that in 10 years a successor to Mamdani will alter the deal, screening over New Yorkers in favor of that developer. I hope he's at least smart enough to not give them the land that the city owns.
Well, I hope your pessimism is wrong, but can't dismiss it. The perils of public-private partnerships is a pretty legitimate worry.
I'm hoping they have enough leverage to have a good, enforceable deal and further hope that succossors will be too afraid of screwing up a popular program.
That's still 1000 more people housed for 10 years!
Right, because who wants permanent solutions when you can have a cyclical homelessness
The permanent solution does involve a cost to the city. It's worthwhile, but might take 10 years to achieve.
What units?
In red states they're forcing urban city owned properties to sell. Getting the buildings out of gov. ownership and control is difficult. Doing it this way makes everyone overlook the taxpayer money going to a private investor later. Don't look too close at the fact that Cochran Gardens, and Pruitt Igoe (StL) were both built buy Minoru Yamasaki, the same man who built the WT towers. It will fail and prolly be demolished in 20 years or so. The building, much like the towers, is probably to expensive to rehab. Also I will just put to people that our nations crubling infrastructure, is not a good sign as far as invasion is concerned. Liquidating government buildings so they're not liable for their repairs, or so they are not targets of dissent, is also not a good sign. Investors are not investing money in the future. They are invested in the planning process of the future. Roman concrete is reviered not for its composition, but for its ablity to control a society with infrastructure. They say not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but the 'too good to be true' rule exists for a reason.
I mean it's no khrushchevka, but I suppose it'll do...
The far right are so virulently anti-Mamdani bcs they know it'll get the compatible left to even more entrench their support for him even as he's already drifting towards the positions of the center-right party that he's adopted, despite them fighting tooth and nail to keep him out of office.
Everything in politics makes way more sense when you stop believing the kayfabe and recognize they're all on the same team. "It's a big club, and you ain't in it."
Until he arrests Netanyahu and stops the NYPD from brutalizing protestors, I'm going to stay highly skeptical of him. At the end of the day, bourgeois democracy will never serve the interests of the people. He's controlled opposition.
He literally explained how he cannot arrest Netanyahu and told exactly who is stopping him and called Netanyahu a criminal several times on that announcement. The NYPD thing I cannot argue against because I literally know nothing of it, so I'd love to learn about it, but calling him a controlled opposition smells of either right wing paid troll to get the left to not like Mamdani or a person who really wants to let perfect be the enemy of good. Gog forbid anyone be less than perfect and help us move towards a better future in any shape or form besides all the way in a single move exactly how I envision it
The mindset that there's one person who's going to save us is something that the left has to just get rid of. It doesn't matter whether it's Mamdani or Bernie or AOC. Putting anybody up on a pedestal like that just means that they're inevitably going to disappoint you, because they aren't gods, they're human, and the machine that they're a part of is so much bigger than they are.
No, he isn't "controlled opposition", but he also isn't some socialist ubermensch who can't ever be corrupted. What is important is the movement, not these figureheads.
[Deleted Duplicate]
Rent control is a lottery, some people randomly get a good deal, but most people continue to be fucked over. This is great if you're running out of people who can afford to work at Starbucks, but I don't think it's fair or progressive.
I think its about dealing with the increase. Most people are already thin in margin, having a guarantee that your expense aren't growing arbitrarily each year is FAR better than the alternative.
A free for all hunger games winner takes all tournament to determine who gets a roof over their head.
Bribes apply and encouraged.
this is exactly what I had in mind when I said that, bravo
Thanks!
It's not even ideal for the people who have rent control.
Sure, they have rent that's a lot cheaper than it could be. But, they're stuck. Maybe their place doesn't have enough bedrooms. Maybe it's not near their friends or family. Maybe it's too big for them. Maybe they hate their neighbours. But, they have rent control, and they lose it if they move.
Meanwhile, someone else who that apartment would be perfect for has to look elsewhere.
It's a bad system, but rent in NYC is so outrageous people will fight for the bad system because they doubt anything better is really possible.
I think they’re afraid of over reach. A lot of them would love the services he’s building!
Wow, he's a magician. He can create something out of nothing. I don't think he's heard of secondary consequences !
I don't think that you are smart enough to know what the secondary consequences would be without being told by Joe Rogan first
Someone should either slap you or kiss you for that username, both concurrently even.
I will accept said actions with honor.
Why do dude's lips look like he could sail away if he caught a decent breeze with them?
The perfect reaction gif does not exi—
It’s so perfect I have to exercise restraint not to over use it, but he keeps winning and fascists keep whining…
Yeah!
The only ones who can create something out of nothing are those magical job creators who keep cutting jobs.
What are they, specifically, in this case?
I'd bet the consequences is more black people having better lives, which somehow is a bad thing to that commenter.
Centrist democrats will shit on anything that helps poor people.