Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Delivers Remarks at Church of God of Prophecy

November 22, 2015

Mayor Bill de Blasio: First, I want to give honor to God, without Him this day would not be possible.

[Applause]

It is such a joy to be with you here and I appreciate the spirit of this congregation.

[Applause]

There is love in this room. There is faith in this room.

Audience: Amen.

Mayor: There is family in this room.

Audience: Amen.

Mayor: God bless you for it. It is a joy to be here, and I must admit it is a joy to be introduced by Vanessa Gibson.

[Applause]

She gives a heck of an introduction.

[Laughter]

But my dear friends, you need to know you are so well served by her in City Hall. She is adamant on behalf of her constituents.

[Applause]

She fights so hard. She never gives me rest when there is something her constituents need. I say that as a compliment. And what an honor for the people of this district, that your councilmember is the chairperson of the Public Safety Committee for this entire city. 

[Applause]

It’s a very big responsibility. And she is respected across this city. When it comes to all of the issues that we face, keeping us safe but also ensuring that it’s a fair city – because I’ve always said we must be safe and we must be fair, and those two ideas need to walk hand-in-hand. Vanessa Gibson is doing a lot to make that possible, and she is respected by people all over this city for that work. Let’s thank her for all she does.

[Applause]

Now, I want to thank your leaders. I want to thank Bishop McKay for his tremendous leadership.

[Applause]

I want to thank him for making this congregation strong and for ministering to all of you in such a positive, powerful way. And I also want to thank him for his vision for creating affordable housing for this community, which we’re going to be his partner in, because that is what the community needs. We thank you for that.

[Applause]

Now I also want to honor and express my appreciation to your First Lady, [inaudible] Ella McKay.

[Applause]

Even though my wife, Chirlane, could not be here with us, if she were here she would remind me that in our family we do not accept that – that traditional phrase, “Behind every great man stands a great woman.” We don’t do that in our family.

[Laughter]

No, it would be unwise, let me tell you. In our family, we say, “Beside every great man stands a great woman.”

[Applause]

First Lady, we thank you for your leadership. And speaking of Chirlane, please pay attention the next few days because my wife has led an extraordinary effort – and Vanessa mentioned it – an extraordinary effort to make New York City the national leader in addressing the mental health challenges of all of our communities.

[Applause]

And you’re going to hear a lot from our First Lady in these coming days, and you’re going to see a lot of changes because she is adamant that we need to embrace all people and wipe away the stigmas to get everyone access to the mental healthcare they need. There should be no shame in getting the help somebody needs.

[Applause]

So I want to thank you so much for the chance to be with you, and I don’t want to take up much of your time, but I want to just spend a few minutes truly delving into something that’s on everyone’s minds. And as I said, the Bishop is already acting on this with his vision for affordable housing in this community. I tell you, wherever I go in this city – wherever I go, the number one thing people talk to me about is there concern about a place to live that they can afford –

[Applause]

It’s amazing, everywhere we go, this is what’s on people’s minds, they want to keep living in a neighborhood they love, in many cases a neighborhood they’ve been a part of for decades or even many generations have been in that same neighborhood, and they’re so committed to it and they don’t want to be forced out of a place they consider home. This is what’s on people’s minds everywhere, and they want to know what we can do and I’ll be ready to do something different than what happened in the past. And my answer is a powerful yes. We are not going to allow to have happened what did in the past, because we’re not going to allow a world in which the only that happened was the will of the market. And I want to be very clear about this – and I saw it, you know, Chirlane and I, until we went to Gracie Mansion last year, we were Brooklyn. And we saw Brooklyn change, and we saw -- it was almost like a tidal wave, we saw change coming over neighborhoods, you couldn’t predict it, no one knew where it came from. The prices went up and up, people were forced out, and what did our city government do over those last 10 or 20 years when that was happening? Well, in most cases, nothing. It just let the market take its course.

And as I watched this, I came to the very strong conclusion that this would keep happening. New York City was not going to become a less appealing place, it was going to become a more appealing place. We are the greatest city in the world and you know for some period of time it wasn’t recognized, but once – once it became clear that in the modern world, in the globalized world, New York City had it all, well then you started to see everyone wanted to be here. People from the suburbs saw that they wanted to be in the city. People from all over the country wanted to be in the city. People from all over the world wanted to be in the city. What about the people who are already in the city? That’s the question.

[Applause]

And so when you see those dynamics changing, and by the way brothers and sisters a lot of that is a blessing, this is the complication and the challenge in this discussion. We want to be the greatest city in the world. We love the fact that people want to be here and that they see such greatness here. We love that people are investing in our city. We love that our businesses are creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs. That’s good for every neighborhood. There’s a lot of good in this but there is a problem and a challenge in it too. All that good comes with a price. The price of housing goes up and up. The pressure on communities increases. So what – what are we going to do?

Again, in the past too much of the time, the government just stood idly by and let the market forces shape the reality, and that was not fair to working people, that was not fair to the people who lived in those communities for so long. We said it there’s a different way. There is a way for this city government to be muscular and to respond strongly in trying to shape the outcome on behalf of the people. We’re not going to make the market reality go away, that’s not realistic, but what is realistic is to change the rules of the game. So we said some very simple things. We said if we’re going to allow more development in any community, we are going to insist that developers create affordable housing as a part of that. It must be a requirement, not an option, a requirement that affordable housing get built wherever there is to going to be development in a community.

[Applause]

And that requirement changes the discussion, because then that is the people taking their share. That is the city saying on behalf of the people, it’s very simple to any developer, if you want come in here and build something, that’s your desire, give the people their share of affordable housing. If you won’t, you don’t get to build here. It’s as simple as that.

[Applause]

Then we said, alright, we not only have to build new affordable housing – everyone knows we need more affordable housing, everybody in this city knows we need more affordable housing,  we also have to protect the affordable housing we have. So we came up with a plan and we said we will find 120,000 units, 120,000 apartments, and we will protect them in place, we will preserve the affordability in the long term, we will subsidize, we will provide whatever it takes to keep those apartments affordable for the long term.  And we will build 80,000 new apartments across the city for a grand total of 200,000 apartments.

[Applause]

Now in case anyone says to you that your city is not doing enough, I’m the first to say we have to do more and more and more all the time. I will not rest, I know Vanessa will not rest, but what does 200,000 apartments mean? That is enough for half a million people – half a million people.

[Applause]

That is more people than in the city limits of Kansas City or Miami. It’s like we’re ensuring a whole city within us of affordability. That’s our vision. We’re two years into it, it’s a 10 year vision, we are on track, in fact, we’re ahead of schedule. We now have, already, 30,000 units that we’ve already – 30,000 apartments we’ve already either to preserved or put the money in place to build. So it’s moving. Right now.

So then people will say – and I think it’s a very fair concern – if – if we recognize that development will happen, and we say, instead of just letting it go unfettered with no rules, with no conditions, we’re adding those rules. We’re adding those conditions. We’re building that affordable housing, but preserving housing in place.

All that may be good, but what happens to the people who become the victims of unscrupulous landlords? And we’ve known too many of these stories. A bad landlord senses opportunity. And that’s not every landlord; that’s not most landlords. It’s a smaller number, but still, there’s too many law-breaking, unscrupulous – and they harass their tenants and they force them out, or they use legal mumbo-jumbo to confuse someone and make them think that they must be evicted, when, in fact, they have a right to stay in their apartment.

So there are illegal evictions going on. There is harassment going on. We said we will put our money where our mouth is. We put $60 million dollars into legal support for tenants – legal aid so a tenant can have a lawyer when a landlord is trying to evict them illegally, for free.

[Applause]

For free – and this is so important, because one of the things we believe in in this administration is if we are really going to serve people, we have to make this kind of opportunity available to people for free. So when I say – if you are being illegally harassed or illegally evicted, you can’t wait too long. You don’t have money to pay for a lawyer. You need a lawyer now, and you need that lawyer for free. [Inaudible]

[Cheers]

So here’s what I want you to know: if anybody you know believes they are being illegally harassed or illegally evicted, now, under this administration – I’m proud to say this – you pick up the phone and you dial 3-1-1. You tell them the problem; they connect you to legal aid. Legal aid talks to you and if you are being illegally forced out or illegally harassed, they give you a lawyer for free. It’s as simple as that – as simple as that.

[Applause]

These are all the things we have to do. We have to work with all the partners at the community level. We have to work with faith communities, and community-based organizations, and everyone who is trying to create affordable housing. We have to help people stay in the housing they are in. We have to help stop the illegality and the harassment. All of these pieces come together. This is the way we keep it a city for everyone.

And I keep saying – and I know – I know so many people get this – I don’t know if some of the folks who are blessed with a lot of resources always get it, but I know everyday people get it – this city will not work if it becomes an exclusive, elitist city. It won’t be the same thing anymore. It won’t be the greatest city in the world if it becomes a gilded city – a city for only the few and not the many. It won’t work. It just won’t work.

[Applause]

Because New York City is so great, but it has become great over generations, time and time again. Why? Because we embraced wave after wave of immigrants who brought their energy, and their creativity, and their entrepreneurship, and their culture, and their heart, and their soul.

[Applause]

And it worked over and over again. The cast of characters has changed from year to year. My grandparents came from Southern Italy. Some folks in this room came from Jamaica or Trinidad or other wonderful places in the Caribbean.

[Applause]

Or like my wife’s family, from Barbados and St. Lucia.

[Applause]

Everyone brought something great.

[Applause]

And it didn’t matter what language you spoke or what part of the world you came from, what you cooked at home, what accent you had, it all kept adding to the greatness of this city.

[Applause]

And these weren’t the rich and famous, these were working people who came here and made this city great. So, if you have a magic formula, if for decade upon a decade, generation after generation, this city has been so successful and such a beacon to the world, who would mess with that formula? Who would mess that formula, take away that which has made us great?

[Applause]

So, that’s why we’re doing what we do. If we don’t step in and stop the madness that has happened before, it will not be the New York City we know and love. We have to make it a city for everyone again.

[Applause]

So, I want to thank you for this chance to be with you. I want you to know, this is a fight worth fighting and we will stick with it every day. I can tell you it is an honor to serve you and it’s an honor to fight that fight on your behalf because I know how hard people work. I know how much they give back to this city in so many ways and I know that people are working harder than ever just to make ends meet, but that doesn’t make them any less good people or any less god members of a community or less good members of a church. They’re working harder and harder and they’re keeping their faith. You deserve a city government that keeps faith with you [inaudible] responds to what you’re going through.

[Applause]

And we will keep doing it. We will keep doing it day in and day out. And I want you to know, with your help, we can protect this city. With your help, we can make sure that people are not harassed and treated wrongly. With your help, we can bring new affordable housing to the community. With you help, we can bring a lot of the other things a community needs because with the affordable housing – and I know your council member feels this strongly – with that affordable housing is a chance for us to right some other wrongs from the past. We’re going to build more housing, let’s build more parks while we’re at it, let’s build more schools while we’re at it. Let’s build pre-k centers, a passion of mine, while we’re at it.

[Applause]

When you have an opportunity to re-envision your community, when we say we’re going to bring to the community a lot of things it has needed in the past, that is a precious moment. The people have to speak as to what their needs are. The people have to tell us what will make this community better and stronger. So, if we protect affordable housing, if we build new affordable housing, if we bring you the things that have not been here before, we can make it the kind of neighborhood that people will embrace for a long, long term. We want the working people of this city, protected in their communities. We want them to have the things they have wanted for so many decades. This is a chance to get it right and with your help we will.

Thank you and God bless you all.