Bill de Blasio Archives - Public Seminar

Democracy

Confessions of a Poll Worker

When I volunteered to work on Election Day, my melting pot neighborhood taught me about the complexity of Trump’s America

November 5, 2020 • by Mitchell Abidor

It’s not the least of the paradoxes of the Trump era that this wannabe authoritarian did more than any decent man to lead Americans to assume their civic duties. Trump’s attacks on the electoral process led 52,000 New Yorkers to sign up for work at the polls, 18,000 more than in ...

Capitalism

As New York City Rebuilds, Business Can Be Part of the Solution

Higher taxes are necessary, but who will have the political courage to make it happen?

October 1, 2020 • by Kim Phillips-Fein

Early in September, more than 160 executives from companies like Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, the white-shoe corporate law firm Skadden Arps, and a host of real estate developers and financial firms sent a letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio. They expressed their fear that “deteriorating conditions” in the city might slow ...

As New York City Rebuilds, Business Can Be Part of the Solution

Politics

Harnessing Federal Power for Police Reform in America

What we can learn from Reconstruction and the Voting Rights Act of 1965

July 8, 2020 • by Richard Johnson and Desmond King

History suggests that the response to the current crisis of policing in the United States must be a stronger role for the federal government. Yet few activists within the Movement for Black Lives are demanding that the federal government flex its coercive muscle. Given the racism of the current occupant ...

Harnessing Federal Power for Police Reform in America

Prisons and Police

Out of Jail and Homeless

City struggles to stop COVID-19’s spread among New York’s recently released prisoners

May 6, 2020 • by Abigail Kramer

Stefan Outlaw had just recovered from the worst of his COVID-19 symptoms when he learned that a charitable fund had paid to bail him out of the Rikers Island jail. It was mid-March, and much of the jail population was quarantined in cells for 24 hours a day. Outlaw, age ...

New York City

Are de Blasio’s Rezonings a Trojan Horse for Gentrification?

Probably Not.

February 22, 2020 • by Alex Schwartz

Mandatory inclusionary zoning applies to neighborhoods that are rezoned for higher densities and also to individual sites granted higher-density zoning variances. It offers developers several options, all of which specify minimum percentages of units that must be provided to households earning various percentages of what is known as “area median ...

Are de Blasio’s Rezonings a Trojan Horse for Gentrification?

New York City

The Daunting Math of Solving New York’s Housing Crisis

January 31, 2020 • by Alex Schwartz

Since 1987, New York has invested more than $17.5 billion (adjusted for inflation) of its own capital resources on constructing and preserving more than 450,000 housing units. No other city has drawn on its own tax base to anywhere near this extent to help finance affordable housing, and no other ...

The Daunting Math of Solving New York’s Housing Crisis

New York City’s Sunnyside Yards, and Our Urban Future

Citizens are challenging high-tech megaprojects

September 16, 2019 • by Joseph Heathcott

Welcome to contentious New York City, where real estate rules, but residents engage in feisty, concerted, and highly underfunded opposition. While real estate interests have long called the shots in this town, the reign of global finance and development capital over the urban landscape is a product of the near ...

Feature

What Would New York’s ‘Guaranteed Health Care Plan’ Actually Accomplish?

Mayor de Blasio’s proposal is designed to take advantage of New York City’s large public hospital system to offer a different non-insurance option to the uninsured

February 10, 2019 • by Barbara Caress

In his State of the City address last month, Mayor Bill de Blasio promised a “guaranteed health care plan” for New York City residents. It’s designed to address the fact that currently roughly one in 10 working-age New Yorkers – some 600,000 adults – is uninsured, a figure derived from ...

What Would New York’s ‘Guaranteed Health Care Plan’ Actually Accomplish?

Feature

Budget Watch

If New York’s economy slows, reality-based budgeting must prevail

January 11, 2019 • by James Parrott

Two years ago, the outlook for New Yorkers was bleak on the political side but brighter on the economic front. Today, the trends appear to have reversed. The midterm election results portend more hopeful changes in Albany and, the effects of the partial federal government shutdown notwithstanding, Washington. On the ...

Education

Promising Outcomes, Limited Potential

Diversity In Admissions In New York City Public Schools

November 18, 2018 • by Nicole Mader, Abigail Kramer and Angela Butel

In 2016, New York City rolled out a small pilot project intended to address a problem that many in the city had long ignored or taken for granted: While New York’s public school population is one of the most diverse in the country, it is also one of the most ...

Feature

Better Jobs, Cleaner Air, Safer Streets

How To Revamp Commercial Waste Pickup

October 7, 2018 • by Justin Wood

New York City is poised to launch a major reform of its sprawling commercial waste system, in which dozens of private haulers now deploy thousands of garbage trucks every night to collect about three million tons of waste per year from about 200,000 businesses. For the past five years, a coalition ...

Education

The Flawed Specialized High School System

And Ways to Fix It

June 9, 2018 • by Clara Hemphill

Mayor Bill de Blasio faces an uphill battle in Albany in his quest to get rid of the admissions test for elite high schools including Stuyvesant and Bronx High School of Science, but there’s a lot he can do now to advance his Administration’s stated goal of increasing opportunities for ...