Cea #CancelRent

People out here talking about how “The City Council doesn’t have any power” like land use, zoning, budget, and LAWS don’t exist. Tell me why we had 2 okay years up in Albany in its entire history and now people think that’s where change happens. PS Cuomo will be Gov forever

I kinda think we only had 1 good year in Albany. But that 1 year was tremendously more consequential than 8 years of the most progressive mayor in our city’s history, and progressives totally sweeping the City Council. Zoning/land use matter ofc, but we run into a massive 1/

...problem. Which is that the city is totally constrained on the budget. I would argue that the most consequential thing the CC / Mayor have done is UPK, and actually the State had to do it.

MIH is one of the most progressive housing policies in the country, and has totally failed. And part of the reason is that the city is constrained to tying progressive housing policy to land use, because the city is constrained in rent-setting.

That is to say, the knot we have to tie ourselves in to win on land use kinda sucks! All our “wins” have been defensive wins, and offensive wins require capital investment at a level the city can not afford. On housing!

And yeah, Cuomo big time sucks. Anyway! This is an important debate to have bc we actually have to be able to organize everywhere, all the time.