It was good that it was cold.
The freezing wind and the coming storm reminded you of the icy heart of the previous administration as Bill de Blasio was sworn in as the 109th mayor of the City of New York — an outdoor ceremony on the afternoon of New Year’s Day. He took office with a promise of a warmer attitude toward the city’s have-nots and struggling middle class.
All through the holidays, I caught up with old pals at lunches and parties and heard the same lament. Many retired city workers have already moved out of the overpriced city to places like New Jersey, Florida, Long Island and the Poconos, where their pensions go further. Young people say it’s no longer possible to raise a family on a working man’s salary in New York City.
“All the working-class neighborhoods of Brooklyn are gone,” one friend said. “Windsor Terrace rents are through the roof with yuppies and hipsters willing to pay top dollar. In fact, the hipsters refer to us natives as ‘leftovers.'”
“Five single hipsters move into a three-bedroom pad kicking in $600 a month each so they can afford $3,000 rent,” said another pal. “A couple with two kids can’t pay that. And I’m talking an apartment in Bushwick!”
The January cold at his inauguration on New Year’s Day also reminded you that de Blasio was adopting the largest number of homeless the city has ever known, with 22,000 children in shelters — a shameful legacy of Bloomberg’s New York. As 5,000 New Yorkers gathered to celebrate the inauguration of a progressive new mayor, you realized he was also faced with a few more cold facts. Bloomberg, who had as much sympathy for the common working man as a robber baron, left his pro-labor de Blasio 153 unsettled municipal contracts to negotiate.
According to a story in The Nation, 1% of New Yorkers earned 39% of the city’s total city income in 2012, compared with 27% in 2002, when Bloomberg took office. The poor stayed poor under Bloomberg: 21% lived in poverty in 2011; 20% in 2001, according to the Fiscal Policy Institute.
Meanwhile, Forbes reported that Bloomberg’s personal wealth grew from $5 billion in 2005 to $27 billion in 2012.
The Community Service Society says rents rose by 25% between 2005 and 2011. And real median wages fell by 8% between 2008 and 2011, the Fiscal Policy Institute found.
No wonder the homeless population exploded by 61% under Bloomberg, to a staggering 50,000 men, women and children in shelters each night. And that’s according to the Coalition for the Homeless. But Bloomberg’s supporters in the Brownstone Belt will gush that the city is in much better shape because we now have 400 miles of bike lanes and pedestrian plazas in places like Times Square.
I’d be curious to know how many of the 22,000 kids in the shelter system own bicycles. Still, my friends who are planning to flee the city to start families heard de Blasio deliver an impassioned, optimistic speech on the steps of City Hall.
“We will require big developers to build more affordable housing,” he said. “We’ll fight to stem the tide of hospital closures. And we’ll expand community health centers into neighborhoods in need so that New Yorkers see our city not as the exclusive domain of the 1%, but a place where everyday people can afford to live, work and raise a family. We won’t wait. We’ll do it now.”
De Blasio has a mandate, winning election by 50 points. He had Bill Clinton introduce him. Hillary Clinton applauded him. He cut his political teeth working at the Department of Housing and Urban Development under Andy Cuomo, now our Democratic governor. If anyone knows how to build affordable housing, it’s Bill de Blasio.
But there are thousands more of the middle class poised to flee this two-tiered town this year.
Bill de Blasio has no time for a honeymoon. He really does need to do it now.
