Cain and Abel, Michael and Fredo, Cuomo and de Blasio They were once brothers in liberalism, but now the governor regularly yanks the mayor’s chain, especially about homelessness. By Kyle Smith
http://www.wsj.com/articles/cain-and-abel-michael-and-fredo-cuomo-and-de-blasio-1452297140
When New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, the first Democrat to hold that title in 20 years, assumed office two years ago this month, he and his fellow New York Democrat, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, appeared to be political brothers, both progressive former Clinton allies. Mr. Cuomo served as secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the 1990s; Mr. de Blasio was Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager for her 2000 Senate bid.
Today, though, it’s clear the brothers that Messrs. Cuomo and de Blasio most closely resemble are Michael and Fredo Corleone in “The Godfather” movies. What started as friction grew into a rift and is now undisguised mutual loathing. One of Mr. Cuomo’s top political priorities seems to be using his superior political power to nettle, check and/or humiliate Mr. de Blasio at every opportunity. Nearly every day, the two men act out another scene in one of the most curious and entertaining political psychodramas of our time.
A recent New York magazine profile noted that when Mr. de Blasio was, for instance, described in the press as “universally acknowledged to be bumbling and incompetent” by an unidentified “Cuomo administration official,” that official was generally understood to be Mr. Cuomo himself. New Yorkers are getting the feeling that if one of the two leaders called hot dogs our greatest street food, the other would immediately hold a press conference declaring the knish to be far better.
In the past week, the two men butted heads over homelessness in Manhattan. It is widely believed (though disputed by the city) that street disorder, exemplified by ragged mounds of humanity huddled under blankets on sidewalks, has increased under Mr. de Blasio. A New York Times -Siena College poll released in November said that 62% of New Yorkers disapproved of the mayor’s handling of homelessness.
The problem became increasingly dire as temperatures dropped into the teens, and the governor interceded yet again. Mr. Cuomo—following up on his spokeswoman’s bald November statement that “it’s clear that the mayor can’t manage the homeless crisis, and the state does intend to step in with both management expertise and resources”—rolled up his sleeves and announced his policy: Roust the vagabonds and tell them to get to the nearest city shelter. Mr. de Blasio’s team replied that they were already doing that, but many of the sidewalk dwellers simply refuse to budge.
Unless the homeless are able to warm themselves with the hot air emitted by the two politicians, their plight appears to be merely a platform for Messrs. Cuomo and de Blasio. After Mr. de Blasio said homelessness was “much more an economic problem than it’s being acknowledged to be,” Mr. Cuomo fired back in another forum: “The homeless problem is not an economic problem . . . it’s a human problem.”
To Mr. de Blasio, who spent his honeymoon in Cuba and honed his economic policy while working for the Sandinistas in Nicaragua in 1988, the homeless problem is simply a piece of the big puzzle, which is inequality. Why wouldn’t there be inequality in a city that attracts both penniless immigrants and Wall Street fund managers? Indeed, with the latter’s gusher of tax revenue funding services for the former, isn’t inequality critical to the city’s solvency? Mr. de Blasio has little interest in such questions, but he has resolved to build more affordable housing. That’s a little like telling your hungry toddler not to worry because you’re about to plant some wheat.
All New York mayors talk up affordable housing—voters expect it—but Mr. de Blasio is peculiarly indefatigable, suggesting that he believes it is in his power to make rents more affordable by adding to supply. Alas, in a city where developers must hack their way through thick jungles of red tape lovingly nurtured by Mr. de Blasio’s progressive predecessors, housing grows slowly. During former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s 12-year administration, some 165,000 affordable-housing units were built, but the city population increased by more than 300,000. Hence the waggish headline: “As Bloomberg Built Affordable Housing, City Became Less Affordable.”
Mayors can’t give New Yorkers more affordable housing without also handing them something they don’t want—a recession or a crime spree, sometimes both. Mr. de Blasio might look for inspiration on this point to the past two Democrats to hold the office before him, Ed Koch and David Dinkins. Their success in spurring economic turmoil and street mayhem led unregulated rents to drop about 15% between 1988 and 1992, while prices of condos and co-ops plummeted about 30%, as the New York Times reported at the time. A headline in the Nov. 28, 1990, Times noted, “After Decades of Rises, Rents Sag in Much of New York City.” That was the first year of the Dinkins administration, the year when 2,245 New Yorkers were murdered, setting a record as yet unequaled.
Or is Mr. de Blasio cleverer than he seems? Though his administration boasted of record low levels of major crime last year, Bloomberg-era Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly openly accused Mr. de Blasio’s police department of fudging the numbers. Even so, the city admitted that murders rose 5.1%—the first increase in five years—while rapes were up 6.3%.
Meanwhile, in response to the latest temporary Wall Street boom, the mayor has been busy committing the city to expensive and intractable new entitlements, such as a $15 minimum wage for municipal workers, that seem to herald future tax hikes. Maybe Mayor Sandinista understands the demand side of the housing market after all. He may not be able to roust the derelicts, but he can certainly chase successful people out of New York City.
Mr. Smith is a critic and columnist for the New York Post.
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