#Stop421a

It's URGENT That We End 421--a Tax Breaks This Year

Tell Mayor de Blasio (212) 788-3000 and

Gov. Cuomo (518) 474-8390 that 

we can’t afford to give tax breaks 

to the rich that cause our rents to go up !

Stop421a Tax Breaks

Stop 421a Tax Breaks

Is Bill de Blasio coördinating with Hillary Clinton's 2016 POTUS campaign ?

de Blasio's non-endorsement of Hillary Clinton

Possible coördination ? The decision by Mayor Bill de Blasio (D-New York City) to refuse to endorse former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign triggered lurid tabloid covers, including one in The New York Daily News with the headline, “Stabbed in de Back !” The political fallout from the non-endorsement has ranged from one of portraying Mayor de Blasio as having acted traitorously to calculating. On The New York Times Close-Up news magazine broadcast on NY1, The New York Times editorial board member Eleanor Randloph said she had a difficult time believing that the non-endorsement had not been orchestrated with the Clinton campaign, giving Mayor de Blasio time to deliver support from the political Left to the Clinton campaign at the right time. It was not referenced by Ms. Randolph, but, in the lead up to the 2013 New York gubernatorial election, Mayor de Blasio worked behind the scenes to strong arm the Working Families Party to endorse the neoliberal incumbent, Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-New York), even though Governor Cuomo had been waged an unrelenting attack on the poor by making cuts to Medicaid and closing hospitals, and, lately, threatening to undermine public education.

RELATED Week in Review : de Blasio's non-endorsement of Hillary Clinton ; Preet Bharara's upcoming speech (Progress Queens)

Bill de Blasio's war on public housing

Cash-strapped NYCHA sold apartment buildings that had been recently refurbished

NYCHA claimed that it needed to sell 900 Section 8 apartments, because it could no longer afford to maintain them.

However, a Progress Queens investigation has revealed that four buildings that were sold were recently refurbished by NYCHA, seemingly refuting claims that these buildings were too dilapidated for NYCHA to maintain.

Before NYCHA sold the buildings 1780 and 1782 Madison Avenue in Manhattan to private real estate developers, the city housing agency spent an unknown amount of money making unspecified refurbishing or repairs to the buildings.

Before NYCHA sold the building at 903 Halsey Street in Brooklyn to private real estate developers, the city housing agency spent an unknown amount of money making unspecified refurbishing or repairs to the buildings.

Before NYCHA sold the building at 55 Saratoga Avenue in Brooklyn to private real estate developers, the city housing agency spent an unknown amount of money making unspecified refurbishing or repairs to the buildings.

Conflicts of Interest : Administration officials were either paid to lobbying in support of the sale of approximately 900 NYCHA Section 8 apartments, or else they had prior relationships with some of the developers. A controversial structured finance transaction originated by the New York City Housing Authority, or NYCHA, to create a special purpose vehicle to offload some Section 8 buildings to private developers is coming into greater view, according to an analysis by Progress Queens. The portfolio of project-based, Section 8 buildings that NYCHA sold to a consortium of private investors named Triborough Preservation LLC included four buildings that had recently been refurbished. The portfolio of buildings that were sold were situated in neighborhoods, where there was a great potential for real estate value appreciation due to recent trends in gentrification, begging the question whether real estate developers had cherry-picked some of the best properties amongst NYCHA's roster of buildings. Two principal de Blasio administration housing officials, Gary Rodney and Vicki Been, have had prior close ties to two of the developers in the consortium, BFC Partners, L.P., and L&M Development Partners, Inc., respectively. A third de Blasio administration official, Jonathan Greenspun, who serves as a commission on the city's Commission on Human Rights, was a lobbyist for BFC Partners, L.P. Administration officials defended the controversial sale by arguing that NYCHA did not have the financial resources to maintain the dilapidated buildings. However, as documented in archival photographs published by Google Street View, four of the buildings had had scaffolding encircling the buildings, with one photograph showing workmen suspended along the front of one building doing exterior construction or repair work. Some government reform activists told Progress Queens that the de Blasio administration disenfranchised taxpayers and NYCHA tenants by sidestepping the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, or the ULURP process, when it sanctioned NYCHA’s sale of the properties. According to one source, a lawyer with expertise in city legislation, Section 197-c of the City Charter requires that any disposition of city real property must be made through the ULURP process. City housing officials have suggested that they may seek to sell other NYCHA buildings in order to offload the responsibility of upkeep and maintenance for the buildings, a potential backdoor for for-profit real estate developers to raise the rents on tenants living in public housing. According to a reading of some of the transaction agreements, the city conveyed rights to the consortium of developers to building residential and non-residential units on developable land that was also sold along with the project-based, Section 8 buildings. Officials with NYCHA, City Hall, and the developers, who bought the Section 8 apartments, declined to answer questions about the transaction in time before the publication of Progress Queens report.

RELATED Cash-strapped NYCHA sold apartment buildings that had been recently refurbished (Progress Queens) Councilmember Torres : A public housing puppet on REBNY's strings (Progress Queens) Activists worry that de Blasio administration will keep selling NYCHA to developers, undermining regulated rents (Progress Queens)

de Blasio heads a bi-racial household, yet, in wake of NYPD double homicide, he cannot unify a multi-cultural city

de Blasio set to end first year presiding over an ungovernable New York City

Two NYPD officers killed in Brooklyn ; suspect reportedly commits suicide ; de Blasio in hot seat Rather than inspire from a place of equality, justice, due process, and the rule of law, Mayor Bill de Blasio and NYPD Commissioner William Bratton are resorting to invoking fear to frighten New Yorkers, moving them in a direction of hatred and suspicion. At Saturday night's press conference at Woodhull Hospital in Brooklyn, where the fallen officers were taken and later pronounced dead, in his brief remarks, Mayor de Blasio invoked a sense of fear to motivate New Yorkers into action, saying that, "every New Yorker should feel they, too, were attacked," that "our entire city was attacked," further requesting that New Yorkers should report any information about plans for attacks on police, a sense of fear that NYPD Commissioner William Bratton reaffirmed by saying that New Yorkers should consider this like the Homeland Security alert system, an alarum code that the Bush administration notoriously abused to keep Americans living in fear of terroristic attacks, so that the administration could keep pushing its political goals, as well as its agendas of war and surveillance. The reply messages of violence were further fueled by Patrick Lynch, the president of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, or PBA, who Saturday night laid blame for the officers' deaths before Mayor de Blasio and police reform activists. The ratcheting up of inflammatory rhetoric and tensions comes at a time when the de Blasio administration had been trying to fluff its nominal accomplishments in its first year. Activists, who are calling for an end to discrimination, violence, and state-sponsored forms of oppression, are reaching for understanding and unity. However, elected officials and police union leaders remain entrenched in language of fear and suspicion.

RELATED de Blasio set to end first year presiding over an ungovernable New York City (Progress Queens) Two NYPD officers killed in Brooklyn ; suspect reportedly commits suicide ; de Blasio in hot seat (Progress Queens)

Sen. Schumer asked for help to appoint a new commission to investigate and prosecute NYPD, IAB corruption

Letter to Sen. Charles Schumer - Help us appoint a new commission to investigate NYPD, IAB

Activists ask for a new commission, modeled after Knapp and Mollen, to investigate NYPD and IAB, but this time with the power to prosecute cases of corruption, authority that both the Knapp and Mollen commissions lacked Sen. Charles Schumer, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was asked for his assistance and support for the creation of a new commission to investigate a pattern of corruption and the lack of accountability at the New York Police Department, including at its troubled Internal Affairs Bureau. "The nation needs a substantive examination of the overreach, the corruption, the brutality and murder, the abuse of discretion, and the lack of accountability of police departments in the nation, beginning with the NYPD, the largest police force in the nation. As your office contemplates how best the U.S. Senate can take part in the national debate over the need for policing reforms, we hope that in the meantime you will call for either Manhattan District Attorney Vance, U.S. Attorney Bharara, or Assistant Director Venizelos to create a new, independent commission with subpoena power to investigate -- and prosecute -- corruption, brutality, and murder by the NYPD, including corruption at IAB, along with other violations of constitutional rights, civil liberties, and civil rights." The letter to Sen. Schumer was sent after a prior e-mail to City Hall, dated 13 October 2014, went unanswered.

RELATED Written letter to Senator Charles Schumer asking for his assistance and support for the creation of a new commission to investigate and prosecute NYPD corruption, including at IAB (Scribd) Exigen crear nueva comisión que investigue quejas contra NYPD (El Diario) Written demand to Mayor de Blasio to appoint a new commission to investigate NYPD corruption, including at IAB (Scribd)

2014-12-01 Senator Charles Schumer Office Fax (NYPD Commission Follow-Up Letter) (FILE COPY) by NYPDFivePoints

To address mental health needs of Rikers inmates, NY should examine state shortage of psychiatric hospital beds

Mayor de Blasio announces mental health reforms at Rikers Island without acknowledging social impact of hospital closings

People with mental health needs end up in jails and prisons, overwhelming law enforcement Amongst the Rikers Island reforms announced Thursday by Mayor Bill de Blasio (D-New York City) was the allocation of $32.5 million to fund mental health and anti-violence efforts. The mayor cited as a cause of challenges at Rikers Island the large number of severely, mentally-ill inmates, who created problems that needed to be "dealt with at their root." However, public health advocates fault the state and city for allowing the closure of so many hospitals that used to treat people with mental health needs in a healthcare facility instead of allowing people with mental health needs get swept up in the city's dragnet of over-policing that then jails people with mental health needs at Rikers Island. “We stand ready to take legal action to compel long-overdue reforms at Rikers, if that becomes necessary to get the job done.” — U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara According to statistics reported in an investigation published last July by The New York Times, "Rikers now has about as many people with mental illnesses — roughly 4,000 of the 11,000 inmates — as all 24 psychiatric hospitals in New York State combined. They make up nearly 40 percent of the jail population, up from about 20 percent eight years ago." There is a shortage of public hospital beds for people with mental health needs, according to a study by the Treatment Advocacy Center. The study recommended that New York state would need to add over 4,300 hospital beds dedicated to people with psychiatric needs in order to meet minimum standards of care. In announcing reforms for Rikers Island, Mayor de Blasio never raised the issue of the lack of capacity to provide people with mental health needs minimum standards of care to prevent people with mental health needs from getting swept up in the city's dragnet of over-policing.

RELATED Mayor de Blasio promised to get to the root of unsafe conditions at Rikers Island, but he overlooks high social cost of hospital closings (Progress Queens)