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      A Times Square Hotel Was Set To Become Affordable Housing. Then the Union Stepped In.

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      At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Paramount Hotel, sitting empty in Times Square, was on the verge of turning into a residential building, offering a rare opportunity to create affordable housing in Midtown Manhattan.A nonprofit was planning to convert the hotel into apartments for people facing homelessness. But after 18 months of negotiations, the plan collapsed this year when a powerful political player intervened: the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, the union representing about 35,000 hotel and casino workers in New York and New Jersey.The union blocked the conversion, which threatened the jobs of the workers waiting to return to the 597-room hotel. Under the union’s contract, the deal could not proceed without its consent.The Paramount reopened as a hotel this fall, an illustration of how the union has wielded its outsized political power to steer economic development projects at a critical juncture in New York City’s recovery.The pandemic presented a devastating crisis for the city’s hotel workers, more than 90 percent of whom were laid off. But as the union has fought harder to protect them, its political muscle has also drawn the ire of hotel operators and housing advocates, who say the group’s interests can be at odds with broader economic goals.After the conversion failed, the Paramount reopened this fall, saving about 160 hotel jobs.Ahmed Gaber for The New York TimesThe union’s impact ripples throughout New York. It can block or facilitate the conversion of large hotels into housing and homeless shelters, a consequential role in a year when homelessness in the city reached a record high of about 64,000 people. The union pushed for the accelerated expansion of casinos, which could transform the neighborhoods of the winning bids. And it was a driving force behind a new hotel regulation that some officials warned could cost the city billions in tax revenue.The union’s influence stems from its loyal membership and its deep pockets, both of which it puts to strategic use in local elections. Its political strength has resulted in more leverage over hotel owners, leading to stronger contracts and higher wages for workers.In this year’s New York governor’s race, the union was the first major labor group to endorse Gov. Kathy Hochul, whose winning campaign received about $440,000 from groups tied to the union. The group was also an early backer of Eric Adams, whose mayoral campaign was managed by the union’s former political director.“H.T.C. is playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers,” said Chris Coffey, a Democratic political strategist, referring to the union’s more common name, the Hotel Trades Council. “They’re just operating on a higher playing field.”Origins of the union’s powerHistorically, the Hotel Trades Council avoided politics until its former president, Peter Ward, started a political operation around 2008.Mr. Ward and the union’s first political director, Neal Kwatra, built a database with information about where members lived and worshiped and the languages they spoke. This allowed the union to quickly deploy Spanish speakers, for instance, to canvass in Latino neighborhoods during campaigns.Candidates noticed when the Hotel Trades Council, a relatively small union, would send 100 members to a campaign event while larger unions would send only a handful, Mr. Kwatra said.The Aftermath of New York’s Midterms ElectionsWho’s at Fault?: As New York Democrats sought to spread blame for their dismal performance in the elections, a fair share was directed toward Mayor Eric Adams of New York City.Hochul’s New Challenges: Gov. Kathy Hochul managed to repel late momentum by Representative Lee Zeldin. Now she must govern over a fractured New York electorate.How Maloney Lost: Democrats won tough races across the country. But Sean Patrick Maloney, a party leader and a five-term congressman, lost his Hudson Valley seat. What happened?A Weak Link: If Democrats lose the House, they may have New York to blame. Republicans flipped four seats in the state, the most of any state in the country.To recruit members into political activism, the union hosted seminars explaining why success in local elections would lead to better job protections. Afterward, members voted to increase their dues to support the union’s political fights, building a robust fund for campaign contributions. Rich Maroko, the president of the Hotel Trades Council, said the union’s “first, second and third priority is our members.”Ahmed Gaber for The New York TimesThe Hotel Trades Council ranked among the top independent spenders in the election cycle of 2017, when all 26 City Council candidates endorsed by the union won. Some of these officials ended up on powerful land use and zoning committees, giving the union influence over important building decisions in New York.In a huge victory before the pandemic, the union fought the expansion of Airbnb in New York, successfully pressuring local officials to curb short-term rentals, which the union saw as a threat to hotel jobs.Mr. Ward stepped down in August 2020, making way for the union’s current president and longtime general counsel, Rich Maroko, who earned about $394,000 last year in total salary, according to federal filings.The union’s sway has continued to grow. Some hotel owners, speaking on the condition of anonymity, say they are fearful of crossing the union, which has a $22 million fund that can compensate workers during strikes. In an interview, Mr. Maroko pointed out that the hotel industry is particularly vulnerable to boycotts.“The customer has to walk through that picket line,” he said, “and then they have to try to get a good night’s rest while there are people chanting in front of the building.”The Hotel Trades Council’s contract is the strongest for hotel workers nationwide, labor experts say. In New York City, where the minimum wage is $15 an hour, housekeepers in the union earn about $37 an hour. Union members pay almost nothing for health care and can get up to 45 paid days off.During the pandemic, the union negotiated health care benefits for laid-off workers, suspended their union dues and offered $1,000 payments to the landlords of workers facing eviction.Along the way, the union has become known for its take-no-prisoners approach to politics, willing to ally with progressives or conservatives, with developers or nonprofits — as long as they support the union’s goals.“There may be no union which has more discrete asks of city government on behalf of its members,” said Mark Levine, the Manhattan borough president, who was endorsed by the union. “You can’t placate them with nice rhetoric. To be a partner with them, you really need to produce.”Political wins during the pandemicLast year, the union scored a victory it had sought for more than a decade, successfully lobbying city officials to require a special permit for any new hotel in New York City.The new regulation allows community members, including the union, to have a bigger say over which hotels get built. The move is expected to restrict the construction of new hotels, which are often nonunion and long viewed by the Hotel Trades Council as the biggest threat to its bargaining power.Budget officials warned that the regulation could cost the city billions in future tax revenue, and some developers and city planners criticized the rule as a political payback from Mayor Bill de Blasio in the waning months of his administration after the union endorsed his short-lived presidential campaign in 2019. Mr. de Blasio, who did not return a request for comment, has previously denied that the union influenced his position.In the next mayoral race, the union made a big early bet on Mr. Adams, spending more than $1 million from its super PAC to boost his campaign. Jason Ortiz, a consultant for the union, helped to manage a separate super PAC to support Mr. Adams that spent $6.9 million.Mr. Ortiz is now a lobbyist for the super PAC’s biggest contributor, Steven Cohen, the New York Mets owner who is expected to bid for a casino in Queens.The union, which shares many of the same lobbyists and consultants with gambling companies, will play an important role in the upcoming application process for casino licenses in the New York City area. State law requires that casinos enter “labor peace” agreements, effectively ensuring that new casino workers will be part of the union.A new threatDuring the pandemic, as tourism stalled, there was growing pressure to repurpose vacant hotels. With New York rents soaring, advocates pointed to hotel conversions as a relatively fast and inexpensive way to house low-income residents.But the union’s contract, which covers about 70 percent of hotels citywide, presented an obstacle. A hotel that is sold or repurposed must maintain the contract and keep its workers — or offer a severance package that often exceeds tens of millions of dollars, a steep cost that only for-profit developers can typically afford.A plan to convert a Best Western hotel in Chinatown into a homeless drop-in center was scuttled by city officials after the effort failed to win the union’s endorsement.Ahmed Gaber for The New York TimesEarlier this year, Housing Works, a social services nonprofit, planned to convert a vacant Best Western hotel in Chinatown into a homeless drop-in center. There was opposition from Chinatown residents, but city officials signed off on the deal. It was set to open in May.Right before then, however, the Hotel Trades Council learned of the plan and argued that it violated the union’s contract.Soon, the same city officials withdrew their support, said Charles King, the chief executive of Housing Works. He said they told him that Mr. Adams would not approve it without the union’s endorsement. Mr. King was stunned.“Clearly they have the mayor’s ear,” Mr. King said, “and he gave them the power to veto.”A spokesman for the mayor said the city “decided to re-evaluate this shelter capacity to an area with fewer services,” declining to comment on whether the union influenced the decision.The Chinatown hotel remains empty.An obstacle to affordable housingIn the spring of 2021, state legislators rallied behind a bill that would incentivize nonprofit groups to buy distressed hotels and convert them into affordable housing. They sought the Hotel Trades Council’s input early, recognizing that the group had the clout to push then-Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to oppose the bill, according to people involved in the discussions.The union supported the conversions, but only if they targeted nonunion hotels outside Manhattan. Housing groups have said that, unlike large Midtown hotels, nonunion hotels are not ideal candidates for housing because they tend to be much smaller and inaccessible to public transit.As a compromise to gain the union’s support, the bill allowed the Hotel Trades Council to veto any conversions of union hotels.“While we certainly support the vision of finding shelters and supportive housing for the people that need it,” Mr. Maroko said, “our first, second and third priority is our members.”One housing advocate involved in the legislation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said she warned elected officials that the veto provision would diminish the law’s effectiveness.The law, which passed last year, came with $200 million for conversions. Housing experts criticized the legislation for not sufficiently loosening zoning restrictions, prompting another law this spring that made conversions easier.Still, no hotels have been converted under the new law.Now, with tourism rebounding, housing nonprofits say the window of opportunity has largely passed.“It’s not like hotel owners are clamoring to sell the way they were two years ago,” said Paul Woody, vice president of real estate at Project Renewal, a homeless services nonprofit.How the Paramount deal endedIn the fall of 2020, the owners of the Paramount Hotel began discussing a plan to sell the property at a discount to Breaking Ground, a nonprofit developer that wanted to turn it into rent-stabilized apartments for people facing homelessness.But as the deal neared the finish line, Breaking Ground failed to anticipate pushback from the Hotel Trades Council. In a series of meetings last year, the union said its obligation was to fight for every hotel job and it proposed a range of solutions, including keeping union employees as housekeepers for residents. Breaking Ground, however, said the cost was too high.The nonprofit even asked Mr. Ward, the union’s former president, to help facilitate the conversion. Mr. Ward said he agreed to call Mr. Maroko to gauge his interest in Breaking Ground’s severance offer.This spring, lobbying records show, union representatives met with Jessica Katz, Mr. Adams’s chief housing officer, and other officials about the Paramount. Soon after, Ms. Katz called Breaking Ground and said city officials would not be able to make the conversion happen, according to a person familiar with the conversation. A spokesman for the mayor said the city “cannot choose between creating the housing the city needs and bringing back our tourism economy,” declining to comment on whether the union swayed the decision on the Paramount.The failed conversion saved about 160 hotel jobs, and the Paramount reopened to guests in September.It was a relief for workers like Sheena Jobe-Davis, who lost her job there in March 2020 as a front-desk attendant. She temporarily worked at a nonunion Manhattan hotel, making $20 less per hour than at the Paramount. She was ecstatic to get her old job back.“It is something I prayed and prayed for daily,” she said. More

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      How a ‘Golden Era for Large Cities’ Might Be Turning Into an ‘Urban Doom Loop’

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      The last thirty years “were a golden era for large cities,” Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, a professor of real estate and finance at Columbia Business School, wrote in November 2022: “A virtuous cycle of improving amenities (educational and cultural institutions, entertainment, low crime) and job opportunities attracted employers, employees, young and old, to cities.”New York, Los Angeles, Boston and San Francisco, Van Nieuwerburgh continued, “became magnets for the highest-skilled employees and the top employers, with particular concentrations in finance and technology.” In late February and early March 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic hit New York and other population hubs. In Van Nieuwerburgh’s telling, the Covid-19 crisis “triggered a massive migration response. Many households fled urban centers. Most of these Covid migrants moved to the suburbs.”As the pandemic endured and subsequent Covid variants prompted employers to postpone return-to-office plans, Van Nieuwerburgh noted, “Covid-induced migration patterns began to take on a more persistent character. Many households transitioned from temporarily renting a suburban home to purchasing a suburban home.”In Van Nieuwerburgh’s view — and that of many of his colleagues — what seemed like a transitory step to avoid infection has become a major force driving the future direction of urban America.Scholars are increasingly voicing concern that the shift to working from home, spurred by the coronavirus pandemic, will bring the three-decade renaissance of major cities to a halt, setting off an era of urban decline. They cite an exodus of the affluent, a surge in vacant offices and storefronts and the prospect of declining property taxes and public transit revenues.Insofar as fear of urban crime grows, as the number of homeless people increases, and as the fiscal ability of government to address these problems shrinks, the amenities of city life are very likely to diminish.Jacob Brown, a post- doctoral fellow at Princeton’s Center for the Study of Democratic Politics, elaborated in an email on the consequences for cities of the more than 20 percent of urban employees now working full- or part-time from home:With respect to crime, poverty and homelessness, Brown argued,One thing that may occur is that disinvestment in city downtowns will alter the spatial distribution of these elements in cities — i.e. in which neighborhoods or areas of a city is crime more likely, and homelessness more visible. Urban downtowns are often policed such that these visible elements of poverty are pushed to other parts of the city where they will not interfere with commercial activities. But absent these activities, there may be less political pressure to maintain these areas. This is not to say that the overall crime rate or homelessness levels will necessarily increase, but their spatial redistribution may further alter the trajectory of commercial downtowns — and the perception of city crime in the broader public.“The more dramatic effects on urban geography,” Brown continued,may be how this changes cities in terms of economic and racial segregation. One urban trend from the last couple of decades is young white middle- and upper-class people living in cities at higher rates than previous generations. But if these groups become less likely to live in cities, leaving a poorer, more disproportionately minority population, this will make metropolitan regions more polarized by race/class.My Times colleague Nicholas Fandos documented the damage that even the perception of rising crime can inflict on Democrats in a Nov. 27 article, “Meet the Voters Who Fueled New York’s Seismic Tilt Toward the G.O.P.”: “From Long Island to the Lower Hudson Valley, Republicans running predominantly on crime swept five of six suburban congressional seats, including three that President Biden won handily that encompass some of the nation’s most affluent, well-educated commuter towns.And on Tuesday, Mayor Eric Adams of New York announced plans to potentially subject severely mentally ill people who are found on subways or city streets to involuntarily hospitalization.Nicholas Bloom, an economist at Stanford, described some of the economic forces at work in an email:In big cities like New York and San Francisco we estimate large drops in retail spending because office workers are now coming into city centers typically 2.5 rather than 5 days a week. This is reducing business activity by billions of dollars — less lunches, drinks, dinners and shopping by office workers. This will reduce city hall tax revenues.Compounding the problem, Bloom continued,Public transit systems are facing massive permanent shortfalls as the surge in working from home cuts their revenues but has little impact on costs (as subway systems are mostly a fixed cost. This is leading to a permanent 30 percent drop in transit revenues on the New York Subway, San Francisco Bart, etc.These difficulties for cities will not go away anytime soon. Bloom provided data showing strong economic incentives for both corporations and their employees to continue the work-from-home revolution if their jobs allow it:First, “Saved commute time working from home averages about 70 minutes a day, of which about 40 percent (30 minutes) goes into extra work.” Second, “Research finds hybrid working from home increases average productivity around 5 percent and this is growing.” And third, “Employees also really value hybrid working from home, at about the same as an 8 percent pay increase on average.”In the case of New York, Bloom wrote that he is “reasonably optimistic in the long-run,” and “current office leasing markets are soft but not in collapse.”That view is not shared by three other experts in real estate economics, Arpit Gupta, of N.Y.U.’s Stern School of Business, Vrinda Mittal, both of the Columbia Business School, and Van Nieuwerburgh. They anticipate disaster in their September 2022 paper, “Work From Home and the Office Real Estate Apocalypse.”“Our research,” Gupta wrote by email,emphasizes the possibility of an ‘urban doom loop’ by which decline of work in the center business district results in less foot traffic and consumption, which adversely affects the urban core in a variety of ways (less eyes on the street, so more crime; less consumption; less commuting) thereby lowering municipal revenues, and also making it more challenging to provide public goods and services absent tax increases. These challenges will predominantly hit blue cities in the coming years.In their paper, the three authors “revalue the stock of New York City commercial office buildings taking into account pandemic-induced cash flow and discount rate effects. We find a 45 percent decline in office values in 2020 and 39 percent in the longer run, the latter representing a $453 billion value destruction.”Extrapolating to all properties in the United States, Gupta, Mittal and Van Nieuwerburgh write, the “total decline in commercial office valuation might be around $518.71 billion in the short-run and $453.64 billion in the long-run.”Their conclusions are not necessarily cast in concrete but they are bleak:We estimate that remote work is likely to persist and result in long-run office valuations that are 39.18 percent below prepandemic levels. The decline in office values and the surrounding central business district retail properties, whose lease revenues have been hit at least as hard as office, has important implications for local public finances.For example, the share of real estate taxes in N.Y.C.’s budget was 53 percent in 2020, 24 percent of which comes from office and retail property taxes. Given budget balance requirements, the fiscal hole left by declining central business district office and retail tax revenues would need to be plugged by raising tax rates or cutting government spending.Both would affect the attractiveness of the city as a place of residence and work. These dynamics risk activating a fiscal doom loop. With more people being able to separate the location of work and home, the migration elasticity to local tax rates and amenities may be larger than in the past.In a separate email, Van Nieuwerburgh warned thatAs property values of urban office and urban retail fall, with the increased importance of work from home, so do the tax revenues generated from those buildings and the associated economic activity. Since local governments must balance their budget, this means that they need to raise tax revenues elsewhere or cut public spending. The former is bad for the business climate. The latter is bad for the quality of life in the city: cuts to public transit, schools, police departments, sanitation departments, etc. As the quality of public services deteriorates, crime could increase, making public transit potentially even less attractive. More generally, an urban doom loop could ensue, whereby lower property tax revenues beget lower spending and higher taxes, triggering more out-migration, lower property values, lower tax revenues, less public spending, more crime and worse schools/transit, more out-migration.In his November 2022 paper, “The Remote Work Revolution: Impact on Real Estate Values and the Urban Environment,” Van Nieuwerburgh writes:Since March 2020, Manhattan has lost 200,000 households, the most of any county in the U.S. Brooklyn (-88,000) and Queens (-51,000) also appear in the bottom 10. The cities of Chicago (-75,000), San Francisco (-67,000), Los Angeles (-64,000 for the city and -136,000 for the county), Washington DC (-33,000), Seattle (-31,500), Houston (-31,000), and Boston (-25,000) make up the rest of the bottom 10.As major cities are caught in a downward fiscal spiral, the forces driving the process will be felt in varying stages. The loss of transit ridership fares and sales taxes is immediate; declining residential, retail and office property taxes will take longer to phase in as new appraisals are performed; drops in income tax revenues will occur as families moving outside city limits change their legal residence.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesOne of the major consequences of these patterns, Jessica Trounstine, a political scientist at the University of California-Merced, wrote in an email, “has been segregation in fiscal capacity within metro areas.” In most cases, Trounstine suggested, “the people who will leave cities will likely be higher income and whiter than the people who stay. This means that prior patterns will only be amplified, not reversed.”There are a number of ways to describe the changing character of urban America and the ever-evolving nature of post-pandemic life.Tracey H. Loh, a Brookings fellow, wrote in an email that one way to view an urban downtown is like “a natural ecosystem” that has received a major shock:Prior to the pandemic, these ecosystems were designed to function based on huge surges in their daytime population from commuters and tourists. The shock of the sudden loss of a big chunk of this population caused a big disruption in the ecosystem.Just as the pandemic has caused a surge in telework, Loh wrote, “it also caused a huge surge in unsheltered homelessness because of existing flaws in America’s housing system, the end of federally-funded relief measures, a mental health care crisis, and the failure of policies of isolation and confinement to solve the pre-existing homelessness crisis.”The upshot, Loh continued,is that both the visibility and ratio of people in crisis relative to those engaged in commerce (whether working or shopping) has changed in a lot of U.S. downtowns, which has a big impact on how being downtown ‘feels’ and thus perceptions of downtown. These negative perceptions have become a real barrier to further recovery and are also shaping local elections, especially out west where homelessness is worse, such as last year’s Seattle mayoral election or the recent L.A. mayoral election.Some urban experts have a less pessimistic outlook.Edward Glaeser, an economist at Harvard and a co-author, with David Cutler, of the 2021 book “Survival of the City: The Future of Urban Life in an Age of Isolation,” wrote by email that “Conventional economic theory suggests that real estate markets will adjust to any reduction in demand by reducing price. Some of this has already happened in commercial real estate.” Glaeser also noted that “many businesses that thought that they were priced out of N.Y.C., San Francisco and Boston markets will reconsider if commercial prices are 30 percent lower.”In fact, Glaeser argued, whilea thirty percent drop in rents in N.Y.C. or S.F. would not lead to disaster, a similar drop in Buffalo or Cleveland might be more problematic because many landlords might just decide to walk away from their properties. In that case, a bleak spiral could begin where vacancies beget vacancies as the urban service providers that cater to local businesses shut down or relocate as well.The nation, Glaeser continued, isat an unusual confluence of trends which poses dangers for cities similar to those experienced in the 1970s. Event#1 is the rise of Zoom, which makes relocation easier even if it doesn’t mean that face-to-face is going away. Event#2 is a hunger to deal with past injustices, including police brutality, mass incarceration, high housing costs and limited upward mobility for the children of the poor.Progressive mayors, according to Glaeser,have a natural hunger to deal with these problems at the local level, but if they try to right injustices by imposing costs on businesses and the rich, then those taxpayers will just leave. I certainly remember New York and Detroit in the 1960s and 1970s, where the dreams of progressive mayors like John Lindsay and Jerome Patrick Cavanagh ran into fiscal realities.In the short run, Glaeser wrote,both the reduction in tax revenues and current political impulses are likely to lead to more crime and homelessness, which will in turn create more of an urban exodus. I am sufficiently optimistic about cities to think that they are likely to react relatively quickly to that exodus and then pivot to being smarter about urban management. In this more hopeful scenario, the likely medium term effect is to create a new generation of city manager-mayors, like Mike Bloomberg, who care about inequity but fight it in a smart way.Richard Florida, a professor of economic analysis and policy at the University of Toronto, stands out as one of the most resolutely optimistic urban scholars. In his August 2022 Bloomberg column, “Why Downtown Won’t Die,” Florida asks, “Can America’s iconic downtowns survive?” His answer:Great downtowns are not reducible to offices. Even if the office were to go the way of the horse-drawn carriage, the neighborhoods we refer to today as downtowns would endure. Downtowns and the cities they anchor are the most adaptive and resilient of human creations; they have survived far worse. Continual works in progress, they have been rebuilt and remade in the aftermaths of all manner of crises and catastrophes — epidemics and plagues; great fires, floods and natural disasters; wars and terrorist attacks. They’ve also adapted to great economic transformations like deindustrialization a half century ago.What the Covid-19 pandemic has done, Florida argues, “is to accelerate a set of changes in our downtowns that were already underway. Vestiges of the industrial age, they were gradually evolving from the one-dimensional, work-only central business districts of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s.”In an email, Florida wrote that many urban central business districts are “relics of the past, the last gasp of the industrial age organization of knowledge work the veritable packing and stacking of knowledge workers in giant office towers, made obsolete and unnecessary by new technologies.”Now, he argued, “Downtowns are evolving away from centers for work to actual neighborhoods. Jane Jacobs titled her seminal 1957 essay, which led in fact to ‘The Death and Life of Great American Cities,’ ‘Downtown Is for People’ — sounds about right to me.”Despite his optimism, Florida acknowledged in his email thatAmerican cities are uniquely vulnerable to social disorder — a consequence of our policies toward guns and lack of a social safety net. Compounding this is our longstanding educational dilemma, where urban schools generally lack the quality of suburban schools. American cities are simply much less family-friendly than cities in most other parts of the advanced world. So when people have kids they are more or less forced to move out of America’s cities.Florida made the case in his email that cities have become critically important incubators:What worries me in all of this, in addition to the impact on cities, is the impact on the American economy — on innovation. and competitiveness. Our great cities are home to the great clusters of talent and innovation that power our economy. Remote work has many advantages and even leads to improvements in some kinds of knowledge work productivity. But America’s huge lead in innovation, finances, entertainment and culture industries comes largely from its great cities. Innovation and advance in. these industries come from the clustering of talent, ideas and knowledge. If that gives out, I worry about our longer-run economic future and living standards.While the future path of cities remains uncertain, Patrick Sharkey, a sociologist at Princeton, provided an overview of the problems they face:Cities that have lost revenue from commercial activity have received substantial support from the federal government over the last few years, but that assistance won’t be sustained in the future. What comes next is not clear, but big cities have to reinvent themselves in an era when the downtown business district seems to be permanently changing. The risk that comes with fiscal distress is clear: If city governments face budget shortfalls and begin to cut back on funding for public transit, policing, and street outreach, for the maintenance of parks, playgrounds, community centers, and schools, and for services for homelessness, addiction, and mental illness, then conditions in central cities will begin to deteriorate.The result?When support for the people and the basic institution of urban life is withdrawn, people suffer and public spaces start to empty out. This, along with the rising prevalence of guns across the country, creates the conditions for gun violence to worsen, reinforcing the process of decline. None of this is inevitable, and we know that investments in the people and institutions of cities are effective in creating safe, thriving public spaces. But it’s not entirely clear to me where those investments will come from if revenue falls in the years to come.In a paper from September, “Working from Home Around the World,” Nicholas Bloom, whom I cited earlier, and five colleagues, argue that “the implications for cities are more worrisome. The shift to working from home reduces the tax base in dense urban areas and raises the elasticity of the local tax base with respect to the quality of urban amenities and local governance.”There is reason for both apprehension and hope. Cities across time have proven remarkably resilient and have survived infectious diseases from bubonic plague to cholera to smallpox to polio. The world population, which stands today at eight billion people, is 57 percent urban, and because of the productivity, innovation and inventiveness that stems from the creativity of human beings in groups, the urbanization process is quite likely to continue into the foreseeable future. There appears to be no alternative, so we will have to make it work.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      College Athletes and Ideals for Women’s Body Image

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      More from our inbox:Elizabeth Warren’s Election Analysis: We DisagreeEric Adams and the MidtermsSue Republican LiarsA Matter of SpaceAudra Koopman, who ran track and field at Penn State, said she felt pressured to avoid sweets and to trim down. But even as she did, she didn’t feel like she performed better.Rachel Woolf for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Women in College Sports Feel Pressure to Be Lean at Any Cost” (Sports, Nov. 14):Thank you for raising awareness about the risks of scrutinizing body composition in college athletes. I am a clinical psychologist specializing in eating disorders, and the highlighted profiles echo stories I have heard many times over.No evidence suggests that participating in a sport causes eating disorders, but rates of these illnesses among athletes are higher than the national average. Athletes who participate in endurance, weight-class or aesthetic-based sports are at heightened risk.A focus on metrics like body fat percentage and body weight may breed an unhelpful hypervigilance on restrictive eating, body size and burning calories. College-age men and women are often still maturing physically, and by taking drastic measures to change their bodies risk their physical and psychological well-being.They also risk missing out on the greatest pleasures of sports: being a good teammate and finding joy in competition even while competing at a high personal level.Deborah R. GlasoferNew YorkThe writer is an associate professor of clinical medical psychology, Columbia Center for Eating Disorders, New York State Psychiatric Institute.To the Editor:Women in college sports are simply the tip of the spear when it comes to our affluent culture’s widely promoted ideal of thinness for women. I lived in Nigeria for many years, and there plumpness in a woman is seen as a desirable signifier of affluence. So this ideal for women’s bodies is anything but universal or timeless.Athletes and dancers perform in public, and the moves that make up their routines are easier when there is less body fat to contend with.This fact extends into other areas of daily life. But though men perform these activities too, and can also have eating disorders, the fact that women are the focal point of this discussion, as they were when I was a professor of women’s studies at Rutgers, says something about the larger issue of gender ideals in our culture.Katherine EllisNew YorkElizabeth Warren’s Election Analysis: We Disagree Kenny Holston for The New York TimesTo the Editor:In “Democrats, Let’s Seize This Moment” (Opinion guest essay, Nov. 14), Senator Elizabeth Warren claims, “The so-called experts who called Democrats’ messaging incoherent were just plain wrong — and candidates who ignored their advice won.”I beg to differ. Surveys show that a large majority of Americans favor most Democratic policies — legal access to abortion, a fair and progressive tax structure, strong environmental regulations and worker protection, a reasonable minimum wage, not cutting Social Security or Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act. Yet many Democratic candidates barely squeaked by, and the Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives.It’s easy to know what Republicans stand for — even if it’s based on lies. It’s all over the media. I’m not sure that most Americans can say what Democrats stand for, although a large minority of Americans seem to think that we steal elections, and want to curtail the police, open the borders and hand out large sums of money to people who refuse to work. Why? Because the Republican message (often lies) is getting through.Democratic politicians may have great ideas, but they’re terrible at communicating them. Otherwise they’d have a much bigger majority in government.Shaun BreidbartPelham, N.Y.To the Editor:Democrats squeaking by in the midterms is not an overwhelming endorsement of President Biden’s spending and other policies. In many cases it’s voting for the least worst candidate.Has Elizabeth Warren not seen the polls about dissatisfaction with both former President Donald Trump and President Biden? If “none of the above” were a choice, it would likely have won on many ballots.As a centrist, I want elected officials to stop talking and writing about how great they are and how bad their opposition is. Rather, focus on what you will accomplish, bipartisan cooperation and problem solving.Many of my moderate Democratic friends would vote for Liz Cheney if she were a presidential candidate. Sure, she is more conservative, but she has demonstrated integrity, bipartisanship and intelligence. That would be a refreshing change.Gail MacLeodLexington, Va.Eric Adams and the MidtermsMayor Eric Adams views the Democrats’ poor performance in New York as validation of his messaging about crime and his brand of moderate politics.Sarah Blesener for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Democrats See Adams at Root of State Losses” (front page, Nov. 18):Mayor Eric Adams did not lose four New York congressional seats. Asserting that he is to blame says, in essence, that the majority of voters who elected Republicans in swing districts chose poorly and that if voters had not been told crime was a problem, the Democratic candidates in those districts would have won.Mr. Adams has identified crime as a priority for his administration. By virtue of winning election, he is entitled to set his agenda. Whether the current increase in crime is a surge or a blip can be debated, certainly, but the idea that he should soft-pedal concerns about public safety to help other Democratic candidates is inappropriate.On the other hand, the fact that Republicans exploited perceptions about crime for electoral gain may be deplorable, but it is well within the rules of the game.The Democrats’ loss of New York congressional seats resulted from hubris around redistricting and willful ignorance about public perception of issues like bail reform. Eric Adams had nothing to do with either.Rob AbbotCroton-on-Hudson, N.Y.Sue Republican LiarsTo the Editor:Re “Misinformation on Pelosi Attack Spread by G.O.P.” (front page, Nov. 6):The notion seems firmly rooted among Democratic political leaders that since politics is rough and tumble, they should rise above it when the G.O.P.’s fabrication machine spews ominous conspiracy theories and baseless slurs to obscure reality.But since Republican politicians aren’t restrained by shame, common decency or respect for the truth, tolerating their falsehoods only encourages the right wing to wallow in fact-free filth. Instead, the victims of right-wing slanders owe it to themselves — and to us — to seek money damages for defamation from reckless Republican liars.First Amendment law protects scorching invective. But there’s a limit. Under the constitutional principles that govern defamation law, a political speaker is not free to knowingly utter falsehoods or to speak with reckless indifference to truth or falsity.That principle plainly applies to unfounded Republican claims about Paul Pelosi. It likewise applies to Newt Gingrich’s assertion that John Fetterman has “ties to the crips gang,” and to Donald Trump’s lies about a voting machine maker.Multimillion-dollar damage awards might deter Republicans from fouling the political landscape with lies designed to conceal their lack of answers to America’s problems.Mitchell ZimmermanPalo Alto, Calif.The writer is an attorney.A Matter of Space Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Dimming Hope Office Buildings Will Ever Refill” (front page, Nov. 18):Not enough housing? Too much office space? Go figure.Deborah BayerRichmond, Calif. More

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      Why Lee Zeldin Might Win the New York Governor’s Race

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      The voters of San Francisco recalled their district attorney over crime in June, and now the big question in next week’s election is whether the voters of New York will turn out their Democratic governor over the same issue. Several recent polls say that Gov. Kathy Hochul is holding on by just single digits in a state that Joe Biden won by 23 points in 2020.New York hasn’t had a hotly competitive governor’s race since 1994, a year like this one when many voters were frustrated with one-party Democratic rule in Washington, and crime and economic issues were top concerns for the electorate. Republicans took control of both chambers of Congress that year, and in New York, Republican George Pataki toppled Gov. Mario Cuomo. The headwinds now facing Ms. Hochul and Democratic incumbents nationwide are in some ways worse, with high inflation hurting voters and an overwhelmed immigration system that is now making life more chaotic in American cities.But crime is the issue particularly bedeviling Ms. Hochul and some other Democrats, and in the end could lead New York voters — including independents, Bloomberg Democrats and others — to elect Representative Lee Zeldin as the first Republican governor since Mr. Pataki. Mr. Zeldin faces a tough climb in a strongly Democratic state, but why a Zeldin victory is even conceivable is instructive about the mood of the electorate and the state of the Democratic Party in New York and nationally.Rather than change course over the last year in the face of troubling trends on crime, inflation and immigration, Democrats nationwide, including Ms. Hochul, have paid lip service to voter anxiety and offered a mix of empathy and multi-point plans instead of bold solutions. Virtually every New Yorker knows that Democrats run the show in Albany and New York City, with large majorities, and have the power to confront problems in the state and are accountable for failing to do so. Voters want fiscal responsibility, violent criminals taken off the streets, and a working immigration system. Ms. Hochul has given them a $220 billion budget, stalled on meaningful fixes to the bail system and sidestepped confronting the immigration system. Mr. Zeldin has had an open field on all of these issues.In New York, these national trends play out particularly with a focus on crime, which is up in New York City by 30 percent this year. That includes a 33 percent increase in robberies and an 11 percent increase in rapes (although homicides are down 14 percent). Subway ridership remains depressed, with regular stories of people being pushed onto the tracks, random muggings, and most horrifically, a mass shooting on a Brooklyn train earlier this year.The New York City mayor, Eric Adams, declared a state of emergency this month as the number of people in shelters approached an all-time high — exacerbated by the influx of migrants, including thousands bused in from Texas. The city shelter system is struggling to accommodate these men, women and children.More important than the actual statistics, at least when it comes to politics and elections, is that public concern about crime has increased. It is the most important issue in the governor’s race, dominating this election just as it did last year’s election for New York City mayor. When asked the most important issue in New York State, 28 percent of likely voters picked crime, while 20 percent said inflation and 14 percent chose protecting democracy, according to a Quinnipiac poll conducted in mid-October.In particular, New York City’s anxiety over crime could make the difference in this election. Thirty-six percent of New York City residents said crime was their greatest concern — three times as much as those that picked inflation, the second most popular choice. Mr. Zeldin most likely needs at least 30 percent of the New York City vote in order to win, and that doesn’t seem as unlikely as it did earlier this fall. The Quinnipiac poll has Mr. Zeldin getting 37 percent.Voters’ greatest concerns vary by party, but Mr. Zeldin could win because independents are siding with Republicans on crime and inflation rather than with Democrats, whose concerns over protecting democracy take precedence. The story of the 2022 election could be that Democrats overestimated how much voters cared about the events of Jan. 6 and the ties to Donald Trump of Republicans like Mr. Zeldin. In fact, by constructing a campaign around those concerns — and not the threats posed by crime, inflation and immigration — Ms. Hochul and other Democrats nationwide are at real risk of not facing up to the mood of the electorate at a time of pressure and fear. They are clearly counting on enough moderates and independents to conclude that supporting a Trump-loving Republican and abortion opponent on Nov. 8 is beyond the pale. Mr. Zeldin, in turn, says that abortion laws in New York State are safe and implies that the election-denying attacks on him are overblown.In the Quinnipiac poll of likely New York voters, independents said they care most about crime (31 percent) and inflation (21 percent), while protecting democracy was a distant third (11 percent). Protecting democracy was the most common choice for Democrats, but even 30 percent of Democratic voters chose crime and inflation in the number two and three spots, respectively.Mr. Zeldin was attacked while onstage at a campaign stop this summer by an assailant with a knifelike weapon; the attacker was released from custody soon after his arrest, only to be rearrested and held after intervention by a U.S. attorney. Mr. Zeldin’s daughters recently called 911 when a shooting erupted outside their suburban home. These incidents underscore the prevalence and salience of the crime issue this year. In the 1990s, when crime rates were high and the issue was of enormous concern to voters, President Clinton’s ads featured a major police union endorsement, and then-Senator Joe Biden spearheaded the crime bill; as a result, Democrats largely neutralized the issue.Voters across America may want to switch things up because they are fundamentally unhappy with the direction of the country and their states as we come out of the pandemic. In New York, 52 percent of likely voters think the state is on the wrong track, up eight points from 2018. Not only are crime and inflation voters’ top concerns, but Mr. Zeldin’s messaging on these issues is working: voters believe he will perform better than Ms. Hochul on reining in crime, taxes, and spending, according to a New York Post report on a recent Schoen Cooperman Research poll. Mr. Zeldin also wants to bring energy costs down with renewed fracking, while Ms. Hochul called it “dead on arrival.”In last week’s New York governor’s debate, Ms. Hochul hit abortion and Mr. Zeldin’s ties to Mr. Trump while Mr. Zeldin tried repeatedly to focus on crime, vowing to declare a “crime emergency.” Ms. Hochul, who was endorsed by the N.R.A. when she ran for Congress, focused on new gun control measures. They each got their messages out, offering clear contrasts of their campaigns. Mr. Zeldin put fighting crime first. The question is whether New Yorkers will do the same in high enough numbers to elect (or even nearly elect) the first Republican governor in decades and send a bracing message to the Democratic Party about what matters most urgently to them.Mark Penn was a pollster and adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton from 1995 to 2008. He is chairman of the Harris Poll and chief executive of Stagwell Inc.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Zeldin Uses Adams as a Surprising Weapon in N.Y. Governor’s Race

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      Lee Zeldin and other Republicans are trying to attract swing voters by aligning themselves with Mayor Adams, a Democrat, over his law-and-order platform.In his uphill battle to become New York’s next governor, Representative Lee M. Zeldin, the Trump-supporting conservative Republican from Long Island, has turned to an unlikely weapon: Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City.In recent weeks, and despite Mr. Adams’s protestations, Mr. Zeldin has repeatedly aligned himself with Mr. Adams, a first-term Democrat, over the issue of the state’s 2019 bail reform law, which both men have argued is deeply flawed and needs to be overhauled.It is a message that some other Republicans have also begun sounding, echoing the law-and-order credo that helped Mr. Adams get elected last year and the litany that Republicans have been reciting in races across the country. Their goal appears to be to focus swing voters on crime and public safety rather than divisive social issues, like abortion, that often lead those voters to favor Democrats.Marc Molinaro, a Republican running for Congress in the newly redrawn 19th Congressional District, which now stretches from the northern Hudson Valley to the Southern Tier, said he sometimes invokes Mr. Adams’s call to tighten bail restrictions.“I will say it in town hall meetings, sort of to emphasize the logic of the reforms that we want to see, I point to Mayor Adams,” said Mr. Molinaro, who serves as the Dutchess County executive.The Republican minority leaders in the State Legislature have also cited Mr. Adams, and Nick Langworthy, the state Republican Party chair, suggested other Republicans would be wise to employ the tactic.“I do think that Mayor Adams’s position could be used” more broadly, he said. “Not because he’s collaborating, but because common sense should unite people of all party affiliations.”With less than two months until Election Day, Mr. Zeldin is generally considered an underdog against Gov. Kathy Hochul, with polls generally showing him consistently behind the incumbent. Mr. Zeldin is also badly trailing Ms. Hochul, a Democrat, in the fund-raising race, and has recently leaned on Mr. Trump for help.Mr. Zeldin’s embrace of Mr. Adams is particularly striking given Mr. Adams’s endorsement of Ms. Hochul and the outsize role that the mayor’s predecessor, Bill de Blasio, played as a boogeyman for conservative campaigns across New York State during his eight years in office. Republicans frequently deployed Mr. de Blasio as an example of liberalism run amok, often tying him to candidates with little or no actual connection to the former mayor.“I believe the story that will be written in 2023 is how well a Governor Zeldin is working with Mayor Adams to save this city and to save the state,” Mr. Zeldin said in a recent interview. History is against him: Mr. Zeldin, a four-term congressman who voted to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, is seeking to become only the second Republican to be elected governor of New York in the last 50 years.But he believes he has a path to defeating Ms. Hochul, if he can capture about 30 percent of the New York City voters, something he thinks he is capable of doing despite daunting odds. The city is overwhelmingly Democratic, with Republicans and Conservative Party members making up about 10 percent of the city’s more than five million registered voters. Voters who decline to state their affiliation — generally considered independents — make up approximately 20 percent.William F.B. O’Reilly, a Republican consultant who worked with Rob Astorino, one of Mr. Zeldin’s vanquished primary opponents, said that by parroting Mayor Adams’s rhetoric on crime, Mr. Zeldin and Republicans elsewhere can heighten their appeal to independents and some middle-of-the-road Democrats.“By aligning himself with a prominent Democrat, it suggests that he’s part of the middle,” Mr. O’Reilly said, noting that Mr. Adams’s race could also be a factor. “He’s Black, he’s a Democrat, he’s a former police officer, and I think he’s generally considered a centrist. So the closer that Zeldin can get to him the better.”Ms. Hochul’s camp scoffs at the notion that Mr. Zeldin — who opposes abortion rights, supports nearly unfettered gun rights and has been close with former President Donald J. Trump — can somehow present himself as a moderate.Mayor Eric Adams, right, largely based his campaign on a law-and-order platform.Natalie Keyssar for The New York Times“This is another pathetic attempt from Lee Zeldin to distract voters from his extreme MAGA positions,” said Jerrel Harvey, a spokesman for the Hochul campaign. “Governor Hochul and Mayor Adams have made progress on countless issues and shared Democratic priorities, from reducing gun violence to expanding child care to getting our economy back on track.” Likewise, Mr. Adams has resoundingly and repeatedly rejected any suggestion that he and Mr. Zeldin have anything in common, saying that Mr. Zeldin is a threat to public safety, not an asset. Mr. Zeldin has criticized the state’s strict gun laws and hailed a recent Supreme Court decision allowing easier use of concealed weapons.“In spite of what people are attempting to say — Lee Zeldin and I are aligned at the hip — we must have a broken hip because he clearly doesn’t get it,” Mr. Adams said in August. “He has voted against all of the responsible gun laws in Congress.”Still, the implied association between the mayor and the Republican nominee has dismayed his fellow Democrats, particularly those whose political beliefs are to the left of his.“It’s not surprising that Zeldin wants to latch on to the Democratic mayor of the state’s largest city,” said State Senator Michael Gianaris, the Queens Democrat who serves as deputy majority leader in Albany’s upper chamber. “What is surprising is the mayor is giving him the fuel to do so.”Assemblyman Ron Kim, a Queens Democrat, said that it was “inevitable” that Republicans would pick up the similarities between their rhetoric and Mr. Adams’s in an election year, even if the mayor disapproves of Mr. Zeldin.“As a Democrat, this isn’t where you want to be, especially with other gender and racial justice issues that he’s clearly not aligned with Lee Zeldin on, ” Mr. Kim said. “So it’s unfortunate that he’s giving him cover around bail when there’s other big things that Democrats want to home in on.”The disdain expressed by Mr. Gianaris and Mr. Kim is part of a larger schism in the state Democratic Party between progressives and more centrist leaders like Mr. Adams, a former police captain who was elected in part by promising robust law enforcement in a city suffering from a rise in some forms of violent crime.Mr. Zeldin has made repeated references to Mr. Adams’s stance on bail in campaign events and news releases, echoing the mayor’s call for a special legislative session devoted to the issue.In 2019, the state changed its bail law to prevent those charged with relatively minor crimes from being held on bail. Proponents of the new law argue that the issuance of bail disproportionately affects poorer people, keeping them in jail because they cannot afford to post bail.The law, which took effect the following year, has since been amended twice amid widespread opposition from law enforcement officials, who claim it has led to increased crime. No data has emerged indicating that to be the case.Zellnor Myrie, a state senator from Brooklyn who helped craft the bail reform legislation, says it is particularly rich for Mr. Zeldin to use bail reform to paint himself a law-and-order candidate, in light of his fealty to Mr. Trump.“Lee Zeldin and those around him in my mind have zero credibility on public safety,” Mr. Myrie said. “This is the same candidate who, after the former president stole nuclear secrets from the White House, instead of distancing himself from that, has only drawn closer to him.”Mr. Myrie, who is Black, also noted a racial dynamic inherent to the debate. Both Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who is a constant Zeldin target, and Mr. Adams are Black. Mr. Zeldin and Mr. Trump are white.“I truly believe that deep down, race is driving this conversation,” he said. “That’s why to me it’s very insidious sometimes what we hear emanating from the mayor’s office or from various other city agencies, because they — they being the Republicans — are not good faith actors when it comes to this, and you have put Black men in the line of fire because of the nature and the temperature of the rhetoric around public safety.”In an interview, Mr. Zeldin said that bail wasn’t the only issue on which he agreed with Mr. Adams, noting his support for mayoral control of schools, something that Albany lawmakers agreed to in June, but only after extracting concessions on reducing class sizes.“I thought it was absurd,” said Mr. Zeldin, of the Legislature’s negotiating tactics. “He had just got into office. The correct policy is just to extend mayoral control. So just do it.”Mr. Zeldin says that he and Mr. Adams became acquainted, from opposite sides of the aisle, when both were state senators in Albany, sometimes sharing lunch amid colleagues in a conference room adjacent to the Senate floor.While in Albany in 2013, Mr. Adams also served as a chairman of the Senate Committee on Aging, the only mainstream Democrat to hold a chairmanship in that period from the chamber’s Republican leaders. Mr. Zeldin, who also served on the committee, recalled that the two “got along well, and we stayed in touch afterward.”“It’s not like he’s calling me up to be the best man at his wedding, or vice versa,” Mr. Zeldin added. “But the goal here, the objective, the motive is to work together.”Jonah Bromwich contributed reporting. More