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    Why It’s So Expensive to Live in Phoenix

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    In the five years since they began their life together in the desert sprawl of greater Phoenix, Devon Lawrence and Eren Mendoza have bounced from one itinerant home to another.They have camped alongside a freeway off-ramp, using a gas station sink as their bath and a plastic tarp as their refuge from the relentless sun. They have slept on an air mattress in a friend’s living room. For the last two years, they have crammed into rooms at motels, paying as much as $650 a week.Ms. Mendoza and Mr. Lawrence are both 32, and both have jobs. She works at a supermarket deli counter. He stocks shelves at a convenience store. Together, they earn about $3,500 a month. Yet they have been stymied in their reach for a modest dream: They cannot find an affordable home in a safe neighborhood in Phoenix, where rents have roughly doubled over the last decade.“These prices are just wild,” Ms. Mendoza said. “It’s pretty much all anybody talks about. The fact that a dual income can’t support us is insanity.”The impossible arithmetic of housing is a potent source of economic anxiety in Phoenix, and in many major American cities — a reality that could influence control of the White House.Devon Lawrence and Eren Mendoza earn about $3,500 a month together, but they have been unable to find affordable housing in Phoenix.Cassidy Araiza for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Christine Quinn Fights for Migrants and the Homeless. Could It Destroy Her Dream?

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      Christine C. Quinn was impatient. The leader of New York City’s largest provider of shelter for homeless families with children, she peered over her fuchsia reading glasses at her team, assembled in a conference room, and rattled off a list of instructions.Listen to This ArticleListen to this story in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.It was a few weeks after she had helped persuade the City Council to pass some of the most consequential legislation on the worst homelessness crisis in New York City’s history, and a few days before Mayor Eric Adams would veto those bills.Ms. Quinn, the former City Council speaker, directed one of her staff members to offer to brief a deputy mayor on the legislation. She named a handful of journalists who might write more about the bills, a move that she knew would frustrate City Hall’s press office.She rolled her eyes at the mention of one advocacy group she considered especially ponderous, joking it would take months to release new data. And she snapped her fingers at no one in particular as she asked whether a meeting scheduled for the next day could be moved up to that afternoon, or even sooner.“I miss being able to pick up the phone and say, ‘Do this, do it now, get it done,’” she said later.It only takes a few minutes in Ms. Quinn’s presence to understand that she is itching to return to the action and authority of elected office.Once the city’s second-most powerful politician, Ms. Quinn is now a high-profile advocate on one of the most divisive issues in New York City — one that could threaten her chances with voters in the future.As protests against waves of migrants coming into the city grow louder and larger, and New York’s Democrats cannot seem to settle on a path forward, the city’s shelter population has exploded to over 100,000 people — all while affordable housing lags pitifully behind demand.Ms. Quinn has jumped into the fray.Over the past few months, she helped set the stage for the most contentious fight yet between the Council and Mr. Adams, after leading an effort to secure enough votes for the Council to override the mayor’s opposition to the bills.The package of bills that she helped create is part of a push to help free up space in shelters for asylum seekers. The bills will reduce the time homeless people need to wait to look for permanent housing after they enter a shelter, make more homeless people eligible for vouchers that help them pay rent for permanent housing and provide vouchers for those at risk of being evicted.Ms. Quinn, 57, has spent the last eight years using her knowledge of local politics to build an advocacy arm for Win, the shelter provider, and the organization has since become a frequent thorn in the mayor’s side — even as it receives most of its annual funding through contracts with the city.She may no longer run the Council, but she has become a kind of elder stateswoman on homelessness and housing for an especially green group of legislators.For a while after she lost the Democratic primary for mayor in 2013, it was weird to come back to City Hall, Ms. Quinn said. But these days, she embraces the Council’s security guard and janitor on her way into the building.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesThough Ms. Quinn is firmly back in the mix of New York politics, there is only so much an advocate can do from the outside. The kind of power she really wants is still to be found elsewhere.Ms. Quinn was once considered the person most likely to become the city’s first female and first openly gay mayor. That expectation evaporated in 2013 amid a disastrous Democratic primary in which she went from front-runner to also-ran. For years afterward, she operated largely behind the scenes.Now, she is not coy about still wanting to be mayor one day.That aspiration has created a conundrum for Ms. Quinn: The better she is at expanding Win’s influence, the more she risks alienating the New Yorkers who increasingly view the influx of migrants as a strain on the city and say officials have done enough for them.“Quinn is trying to have a really hard conversation with New Yorkers,” said Christina Greer, a professor of political science at Fordham University. “She’s chosen an issue that is of great import but doesn’t really do her any favors” if she wants to run for any elected office in New York.Even as she says she has no plans to run in a primary against Mr. Adams, she has emerged as a prominent foil, challenging his warnings that the migrant crisis will “destroy” New York and protesting his push to weaken the city’s right-to-shelter law and his declaration that migrant families might be moved into mass shelters.She likes to tell a story about mothers at a Win shelter pooling their extra clothes to donate to migrants as proof that vulnerable families will not be pitted against each other.But the city’s twin homelessness and migrant crises defy such neat packaging.As she looks ahead, Ms. Quinn says she knows full well that these issues are stubborn, at the very least. Making a real dent in homelessness — to say nothing of the migrant crisis — would take a decade or more, Ms. Quinn says, a challenge no mayor can credibly promise to solve in two terms.She knows that voters are not always forgiving of her perceived stumbles. And she is not surprised that some regard her as a politician playing at advocacy before she runs again.For now, Ms. Quinn insists she is unconcerned.“When are you really going to use your capital, when are you really going to do something? In the next job?” she said. “You know, I thought I was going to get the next job. I didn’t.”Crossroads of powerWin, the nation’s largest provider of shelter for homeless families with children, operated shelters but did not have an advocacy arm when Ms. Quinn became its chief executive in 2015. She quickly set about changing that.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesThe George Washington statue in the white marble lobby of City Hall stands at a crossroads of power.To the right are the Council’s offices, where Ms. Quinn long made her mark on the city.To the left is the mayor’s office, where she assumed she was heading as 2013 drew closer.That race was supposed to be Ms. Quinn’s coronation, as Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was leaving an open seat for a Democrat to seize. By then, Ms. Quinn had earned a reputation as a pragmatic speaker who vastly expanded the Council’s influence, passing legislation in part by her sheer force of will, including the occasional burst of straight-up yelling.In the primary’s final stretch, her opponents cast her as the second coming of Mr. Bloomberg, a moderate at a moment that demanded something more radical. In what ended up being a fatal blow to her chances, Ms. Quinn had paved the way for Mr. Bloomberg to run a third time by helping overturn the city’s term limits law, a move that voters had soured on.To some, Ms. Quinn seemed to be saying she should be mayor simply because she really, really wanted to be.She finished third, losing to Bill de Blasio.Ms. Quinn spent the first few months of 2014 willing herself to leave her Chelsea apartment.After finishing a distant third in the primary, Ms. Quinn endorsed Bill de Blasio, the winner. She said she spent the next few months struggling to get out of bed.Ozier Muhammad/The New York TimesEventually, after a stint working as a special adviser for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and a fellowship at Harvard, Ms. Quinn got a call from a headhunter about Win. Part of it felt like a homecoming. She had spent the early part of her career as a tenant organizer, and, as speaker, she successfully sued Mr. Bloomberg’s administration over its push to limit eligibility for shelter spots and made it easier for tenants to sue their landlords.When she took over in 2015, she quickly began trying to shift the public’s perception of homelessness. New Yorkers knew they were seeing mentally ill people on the streets, but they often did not realize that the majority of the city’s homeless population is made up of families with children, many of whom have 9-to-5 jobs.But there was no way to get people to listen without changing something about Win, which ran shelters but did not advocate on behalf of homeless families.Ms. Quinn began training her staff to become political activists. They have distributed iPads and other devices to 1,600 homeless students learning remotely and created a legal clinic to help migrants apply for asylum.Under her direction, Win — which employs 1,000 people with an annual budget of about $150 million — added seven new shelters and now operates 14. They serve about 7,000 people nightly, and, recently, over 270 families seeking asylum, including about 700 children. Ms. Quinn makes $424,000 a year, roughly triple what she made as speaker.While she has found her way back to a version of a life she never wanted to leave, some of her former peers or rivals have struggled to do the same. Several — Mr. de Blasio, Mr. Bloomberg, and her two successors as speaker — have run for other offices they did not win. Some of her male peers fell in sexual misconduct scandals, including Anthony Weiner, who helped topple Ms. Quinn in 2013.Ms. Quinn may be the only one of the bunch who still has a job that requires telling people things they do not want to hear, over and over.She is used to that.Nice until it wasn’tMs. Quinn visited children living at the Shirley Chisholm Family Residence, a new Win shelter in Park Slope that drew some opposition from local residents.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesSome years ago, Ms. Quinn and an aide walked to the back of a restaurant and found James Gandolfini, the star of “The Sopranos,” waiting for them. He was unhappy. Ms. Quinn had been pushing to open a sanitation department garage in his TriBeCa neighborhood.Mr. Gandolfini, who died in 2013, told her if she did not reconsider, he was prepared to blanket TriBeCa with fliers criticizing her. She told him to do what he needed to do.“It was a nice conversation until it wasn’t,” Ms. Quinn recalled. “You can’t have a city that calls itself fair and equitable if only some parts of the city are doing their part.”That is particularly true when you are building homeless shelters in neighborhoods where many residents do not want them.Consider Win’s newest shelter, set to serve about 200 families on Staten Island.At a 2019 town hall, Ms. Quinn sought to explain that Staten Island needed a shelter in part so that the borough’s many homeless families could remain close to their children’s public schools. Residents appeared unmoved, and Ms. Quinn was greeted by “an aggressively pissed off” group, she recalled.Afterward, The Staten Island Advance published an opinion piece dismissing her chances amid rumors of another run: “Christine Quinn for mayor? Not after homeless shelter debacle.”It is a change for Ms. Quinn, who spent years fending off criticism from progressives who found her too cozy with Mr. Bloomberg and his conservative allies. Now, she is going up against a highly passionate force that is skeptical of new shelters. While the migrant crisis has prompted a reshaping of that movement to include more Democrats, it has been led by Republican politicians and advocates.Protesters rallied against a facility housing migrants on Staten Island in August. Demonstrations against migrant shelters have become larger in recent months.Stephanie Keith for The New York TimesRepresentative Nicole Malliotakis, a Republican, said Staten Islanders she represents are fed up with Democrats like Ms. Quinn “building shelter after shelter in communities that don’t want them” — particularly for migrants.But even some who might have been sympathetic to Ms. Quinn say they were turned off by the debate over the Win shelter, set to open later this year in an area that tends to vote Democratic.“You don’t poke a stick in the eye of a potentially favorable community,” said Michael Harwood, a member of the St. George Civic Association.Mr. Harwood said Win did not communicate effectively with residents about the impact of the shelter and noted that Ms. Quinn had opposed a new shelter in her own Manhattan district when she was speaker.Ms. Quinn says she has a new calculus for decision making.She acknowledges that some of her choices as speaker were made more because of future ambitions rather than the right policy, and she regrets it.So even as she weighs whether and how to return to elected office, she says she is focused on immediate goals: moving more families into permanent housing faster, raising more private money, making Win into a top developer of affordable housing with services for formerly homeless families — and continuing to shape city policy.But it does not always feel like enough.She recently remembered something that Judith S. Kaye, the late chief judge of New York State, once told her: She would have paid a million dollars to keep her job for just five more minutes.It was a joke, sort of. But it is how Ms. Quinn feels about being speaker, and the reason she is given to daydreaming about how much more she could accomplish on homelessness, the migrant crisis and housing if she ran the city one day.The idea of actually getting elected on the agenda of addressing those crises might seem like a bit of a fantasy.But Ms. Quinn believes, still, that there is a first time for everything in New York City politics.“In a way, it would be the greatest issue for a mayor to take on,” she said. “If you solve the unsolvable, you get credit.”Audio produced by More

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      This Is Not How Pete Buttigieg Wanted to Visit Ohio

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      Gail Collins: Bret, Democratic strategists are worried about hanging on to support in the working class. The good news, from my perspective, is that it looks like the big problem is economic concerns, not cultural ones.Saying that’s good news because the Biden administration can respond to those worries by pointing to a ton of effort to create jobs and fight inflation.Guessing you may, um, disagree?Bret Stephens: In the immortal words of the “Airplane” sequel: “Just a tad.”The big problem for Democrats is that their economic message — that happy times are here again — isn’t landing in the places where they need to win, particularly factory towns where elections in states like Wisconsin or Ohio are sometimes decided. Inflation is still too high and probably means the Fed will continue to raise interest rates. Unemployment is low in part because so many people have dropped out of the labor force. Years of lax border control creates a perception that cheap immigrant labor will further undercut working-class wages. And a lot of the projects that President Biden’s spending bills are supposed to fund will take years to get off the ground because there’s rarely such a thing as a “shovel-ready” project.Gail: Yeah, gearing up for a big construction effort does take time. But people who’ve suffered with terrible transportation problems for years do know the shovels are coming. Like the bridge project over the Ohio River that Democrats in Cincinnati have joined hands with Mitch McConnell to celebrate.Bret: The other problem for Democrats is that if they aren’t winning the messaging battle when it comes to the economy, they are losing it badly when it comes to cultural issues. You and I often rue the collapse of the moderate wing of the G.O.P. that was occasionally willing to break with right-wing orthodoxies, but Democrats could also do more to embrace candidates who depart from progressive orthodoxies on issues like guns, immigration, school choice, trans issues and so on.Gail: “Depart from progressive orthodoxies” is a nice way of saying “embrace the bad.” I appreciate that it would be strategic for some purple-state Democrats to take moderate positions on guns, immigration, etc. But I’m not gonna be applauding somebody who, for instance, votes against an assault weapon ban.Bret: You’re reminding me of the story, probably apocryphal, of the supporter who told Adlai Stevenson, during one of his presidential runs in the 1950s, that “Every thinking person in America will be voting for you.”“I’m afraid that won’t do,” he supposedly replied. “I need a majority.”Gail: Let’s go back to infrastructure for a minute. Big story about that train wreck in Ohio. Do you agree with me that the whole thing is the fault of Republicans caving in to pressure from the rail industry to loosen regulations?Bret: Er, no. I read recently that there were more than 1,000 train derailments last year, which averages out to more than two a day, and that there’s been a 60 percent decline in railroad safety incidents since 1990. Accidents happen. When they do, they shouldn’t become a partisan issue.Gail: When major accidents happen in an industry that’s both necessarily regulated and greatly lobbied over, it should be a call for investigation.And while we’re on this subject, please let’s talk about our transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg ….Bret: So, to illustrate my point, I’m not going to raise an accusing finger at him. Not even remotely his fault, even if Republicans are trying hard to pin him with the blame. Although, for someone with presidential aspirations, he didn’t exactly help himself by showing up a day after Donald Trump did.Gail: Sort of embarrassed that while I was trying to ponder rail regulation, my thoughts kept drifting off to Buttigieg the possible presidential candidate.He’s one of the guys we always mention when we talk about who might be nominated if Biden doesn’t go for a second term. But Buttigieg’s performance in Ohio was definitely not the work of a guy who knows how to run for that job.Steve McCurry/Magnum PhotosBret: Switching subjects again, we should talk about the legacy of President Jimmy Carter. I was a 7-year-old child living in Mexico City when he left office, so your recollections of him are much more valuable and interesting than mine.Gail: I distinctly remember bemoaning the energy shortage that left drivers waiting in long lines at the gas stations, but that’s hardly an insider’s story.Bret: Those lines put last year’s spike in gas prices in perspective.Gail: And every Democrat worried about Carter’s minimal talent for communication. He made a big TV appearance to promote energy conservation, wearing a sweater and sitting next to a fire, looking more silly than inspiring.Now, when I recall some of the stuff he did — environmental protection, promoting diversity, negotiating a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt — I appreciate him a lot more.Bret: Airline deregulation, too. Made air travel affordable to middle-class America for the first time. And he had the guts to nominate Paul Volcker to the Federal Reserve in 1979 to jack up interest rates and finally tame inflation, even though it would help cost him his presidency the next year.Gail: But the biggest thing he’s leaving us, Bret, is the story of his post-presidency. Campaigning endlessly for human rights, fair voting around the world and housing for the poor. Rather than holding press conferences to make his point, he’d swing a hammer with the crew at low-income housing construction sites.If high-ranking politicians see retirement from their top jobs as just a path to giving big-money speeches and writing the occasional memoir, they set a bad example for every older American. Carter showed how the later stages of life can actually be the richest and most rewarding.Bret: There’s a lot about Carter’s policy views that didn’t square with my own, and his persona sometimes struck me as … immodestly modest. But he was a unique figure in American political life, and he single-handedly disproved F. Scott Fitzgerald’s contention about there being no second acts in American lives.Gail: Not to mention third acts!Bret: He also showed how much more valuable a purpose- and values-driven life can be than one consumed by the culture of celebrity, wealth and pleasure — something that seriously tarnished the post-presidential legacy of a certain Southern Democrat who succeeded him, to say nothing of an even more saturnalian Republican president.Totally different topic, Gail, but I want to recommend our colleague Michelle Goldberg’s terrific column on the terrible mental-health effects of social media, particularly for teenagers. She mentions a proposal by Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri to totally ban social media for kids under 16. It’s one to which, as a father of three teenagers, I’m pretty sympathetic. Your thoughts?Gail: I read Michelle’s great piece and remembered how paranoid I was as a teenager when I thought two of my friends might be talking about me on the phone after school. Can’t imagine how I’d have felt if they had the capacity to do it as a group, while they were supposed to be studying after dinner. With a transcript available to the entire class later in the evening.Bret: Not only frequently abusive but also addictive. Someone once said that there are only two industries that speak of their customers as “users” — drug dealers and social-media companies.Gail: Just saying that kids can’t use social media sounds very attractive. But somehow I have my doubts it’ll work. Wonder if the more likely outcome might be a system the more sophisticated kids could use while the poorer, or less technologically cool ones, got sidelined.Am I being overly paranoid?Bret: No ban works perfectly. But if we were able to more or less end teenage cigarette smoking over the last 20 years, it shouldn’t be out of the question to try to do the same with social-media use. I can’t imagine that it’s beyond the technological reach of a company like Apple to write some code that stops social-media apps from being downloaded to phones whose primary users they know are under the age of 16.Gail: Well, happy to insist they do that. Even if they don’t know how, it’d increase pressure for them to find a way.Bret: I would welcome it, and I suspect most teenagers would, too. It’s hard enough being 14 or 15 without needing to panic about some embarrassing Instagram pic or discovering too late that something stupid or awful you wrote on Facebook or Twitter at 16 comes back to haunt you at 20.Gail: Hey, it’s traumatic enough being haunted by what I said last month.Bret: Or last week.As columnists, we volunteered to have a paper trail for our critics to pick through. We owe it to the kids to shield them from creating public records of their own indiscretions and idiocies. Life will come roaring at them soon enough. I say no social media till they’re old enough to vote, smoke and maybe even buy a drink. Full-frontal stupidity should be left to the grown-ups — like us!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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      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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      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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      Interview: Kathy Hochul Talks to the New York Times Editorial Board

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      Kathy Hochul is the governor of New York. She served as the state’s lieutenant governor.This interview with Ms. Hochul was conducted by the editorial board of The New York Times on Oct. 17.Read the board’s endorsement for the governor’s race in New York here.Brent Staples: Give us some insight into why this race is so close.Why it’s so close? Well, first of all, thanks for having me back again. There’s something going on nationally. If you track all the races, the Democratic races, the congressional races, the gubernatorial races, and we’re outperforming in a lot of those.But you’re basically — again, you’re referencing that on polls, and polls don’t make a difference to Election Day. And I will tell you, as someone who’s run in 14 elections, they go up and down like this, depending on all kinds of factors outside the control of the person running — the cost of gas and inflation rate. So I think that’s what’s happening.People are just looking at what’s happening all over the country, feeling some unease. And take a look at it, but all I need to do is get my message out, and to be able to point to the fact. And I think this is going to widen the race very substantially.Because of your excellent reporting, people will now find out that Lee Zeldin was not this innocent bystander that he’s trying to present himself as, but was actually giving direction to President Trump’s chief of staff on how to subvert the electoral process. And when that gets out there, that is a disqualifying fact that people will need to know about him.[In the days after the 2020 presidential election, Mr. Zeldin texted Mark Meadows “ideas” for how to use unsubstantiated allegations about voting irregularities.]So we just got to build our case, talk about what we’re going to do, but also expose Lee Zeldin for who he truly is. And he does not deserve to be the governor of New York.Kathleen Kingsbury: Obviously, crime is down from its historic highs, but it is still up about a third here in the city. Your opponent has made quite a big deal about the issue of public safety. How do you — how will you get voters to trust that you’re going to make the city safer?They know what I’m doing already. We have worked very hard to get guns off the streets, and I understand people know, from me, my words directly, that public safety is my top priority, always has been. And what we’ve done to focus on something — Lee Zeldin thinks that we need more guns on the streets, we need more guns in the subways.I was in a synagogue Saturday, and I was in churches on Sundays, and I’ll tell you, none of those individuals want to sit next to someone that might be carrying a weapon. And that is the Lee Zeldin world that he’s trying to present to us. So I’m focusing on guns.We had over 7,000 guns off the streets in the last year — actually, since January, when I convened a first-ever task force — nine states, plus N.Y.P.D. … and New York police are actually working together. Extraordinary. No one’s ever done that.I was called out by President Biden for doing that. He says no one’s ever done this. So we now have — we’re getting more guns off the streets. And the crime rate, overall, I dissect — I look at the numbers every day.Statewide, our shootings are down about 13 percent — statewide, about 12 percent; New York City, down 13 percent since I’ve been in office. Nationwide, it’s down 2 percent. And that’s all the states.So we’re making more progress on illegal guns, banning ghost guns, my assault weapon ban for teenagers — all the things we’ve had to do. And despite our best efforts — and since we last met, I had to deal with the Supreme Court that overturned the right of a governor to protect her citizens from people carrying guns anywhere they want. The concealed carry law worked for 108 years.And so I pulled back the Legislature, literally, by June 30, had a plan in place. I knew this was coming or could come. And we got them — this is how cooperation really leads to quick results.The Legislature was willing to come back, pass legislation, and we made those changes. And again, we’re in court — every time the governor does something on guns, there’s always litigation. We knew it. Bring it on.But I believe that we have a right to protect our citizens on the streets, get the guns off the streets. And that is my focus. With any crime plan that Lee Zeldin puts forward, that does not talk about guns, is a joke.Nick Fox: Do you think concerns about crime are real or exaggerated?They’re real, because people feel it. I understand the sense of insecurity that’s out there. I do spend a lot of time in the communities. I was at a diner yesterday. I talked to people just randomly, and people are concerned.Now, convincing people that this is still the safest big city in America, that our crime rates are down — our subways have had some recent problems, but we have more law enforcement down there, and putting cameras in the subways. We’re making progress, but it’s a difficult — that’s the challenge.I can talk about data all day long. But how people feel — and in this hyper-politicized environment, being told how they feel — it was fascinating to see a Bloomberg study that showed that incidences of crime over the last decade, and the news coverage of it — about parallel.They both go up absolutely across the nation. And since the pandemic, the media coverage of crimes is up four times in relation to the actual number of instances. And I’m not saying this paper — there’s another paper.So I just want to say that that feeds into people’s perceptions and anxieties, but I deal with people’s feelings. That’s what I have to deal with. I can’t just say the numbers are better. I need to let them know that I am focused on this 100 percent, because that is the reason that we’re being held back from our full recovery. And we have to overcome that.Eleanor Randolph: So Zeldin talks about — if he gets elected, he’s going to declare a state of emergency about crime. And he also says he’s going to — I don’t know — fail to enforce the bail law. What do you think about that? What do you think about whether he can actually do that?Right out of the Trump playbook. Sounds like a dictator to me. He’s going to just undermine laws and forget laws that were passed — duly passed by the Legislature? You can’t do that. You can’t do that.And it’s absurd to try to use that as a panacea to tell everybody, I’ll just magically wave a wand and ignore the will of the Legislature, which has a supermajority. You can’t do that. So he’s just feeding people a whole lot of lies, misperceptions, and trying to create this image of himself to be able to do more than I can on crime.I will put my record on fighting crime out there with anybody’s. We have made real progress. And we’ve made targeted changes to the bail laws. We spoke before at our previous meetings — the underlying premise behind them.We make some targeted changes to make sure that repeat offenders, cases where there’s guns involved, orders of protection and hate crimes are now covered. But we’re not turning our backs on criminal justice reform either. So we’ve found the right balance, but you know what’s not working? The system itself.I need all the components to work — starting with our backlog in the court system. This has been exposed as a real driver for two straight years — no jury trials. When I got elected, I said, “Why aren’t there jury trials?” Because the Office of Court Administration, court appeals judge, was firm that they not have jury trials, because people had to sit six feet apart.This is a time — kids are back in school. People are back at work. Closer than six feet, but the jury system, they said you couldn’t put anybody within six feet. So, you know the size of our courthouses. There’s not enough room.So we did not have the administration of justice for two years. People that had their day in court, who should have their day in court — either proven innocent, go back home, or you’re guilty of a crime — deal with the consequences. So that’s a problem. I’m working toward getting a new court appeals judge.My responsibility, after recommendations come, I’m going to be focused on someone where their No. 1 top assistant has the capacity to deal with what has become an administrative nightmare. We have to fix that.We also need the support for the policing. We also need to support the violence disrupter programs, which I’ve supported financially three times more than we have before, and also the district attorneys to properly charge and for judges to do the right thing. Then the system works. Because simply saying it’s bail when all across the country, our crime rate is lower — I mean, there’s just a disconnect between reality and the representation that he is making in his campaign. It’s absurd.Mara Gay: Governor, thank you. Inflation, and especially in New York, the cost of housing, is a serious constituent issue for many voters in the state. What specifically will you commit to doing about those issues, especially on housing?Thank you. I mean, I talked about what I’m leaning into. We spoke about how I’ve had to be a crisis manager since I took office — the shooting in Buffalo, Omicron, hurricanes, and even since we last met, the Supreme Court decisions, what I had to deal with on abortion and guns.But when I think about my vision for going forward, top priorities are creating a New York where people want to live and want to move here. And within that is how do we make it affordable so they can?No. 1 cost for a family or an individual is their housing. So we will not be able to be this place that meets all the needs of bringing people here if we don’t get more affordability. So I know that the governor sets the agenda. I’m fully aware of that. I plan on unleashing the power that I have, working together with the Legislature, advocacy groups, the industry, and pulling together a plan that’s going to be transformative.And I say that because, since the last day the Legislature left session, I directed my top-notch policy team to go out there and find the answers from other states, think tanks, convene meetings with industry. So my policy team has been working on ideas.Part of it’s going to have to be incentives for developers. Because as we saw, when you shut down 421a, permits dried up. I said this was going to happen. Now, I put together something that was better than 421a — 485w, which allowed for far more affordable housing in the context.And that was actually an agreement with the industry and labor to do that. The Legislature wasn’t supportive, and I had spent a lot of my political capital on public safety initiatives, where I said, “All right, we’ll visit again next year.” Then we’ll see the data, which shows, despite the fact that people said that so-called giveaways to billionaires, they’ll still build affordable housing because of the goodness of their heart. We know that didn’t work.And so now I have the data to show the stoppage of permits. So the crisis I have, the state has — over the next 10 years, we have to build over 500,000, possibly up to 1.2 million, new units.My plan last year was $25 billion toward affordable housing. It sounds like a big number, right? To do something? That gets me one-tenth of that goal. It’s 100,000 units. One hundred thousand units of affordable housing and supportive housing.So, it’s about looking at all the regulations. I said I want to see a list of every single city and state barrier to be able to have more density, grant-oriented development, and take another look at A.D.U.s [accessory dwelling units]. We talked — tried hotel conversions, but as it turned out, there wasn’t as much inventory as there had been when this was first proposed, so that wasn’t successful.So now we look at offices as well. Office conversions — classy office space — a lot of little buildings won’t lend themselves to it. But we have a plan to focus on that as well.So I will also look to other thought leaders to help me build the support behind this. Newspapers, like The New York Times — because you have that. But I need to change the mind-set of the elected officials, who have been — with one decision, be able to stop a project that could help literally hundreds of families in the Bronx, in Queens, elsewhere.These projects have to be unleashed with — we need market rate. We need affordable housing. We need supportive housing. This has been jammed up for too darn long. And I plan on unleashing this with an aggressive approach, because failure is not an option.That is the barrier we have to people being able to live here. Places on Long Island, where I was at the diner yesterday — families saying to me, “My kids can’t grow up in the same community they were raised in.” That’s a tragedy. That’s a tragedy. That’s nothing to do with them. It’s not education. Love the state. And if we drive them out because of affordability, then we fail.Same thing with the city — more young people want to come here than I’ve ever seen in my lifetime. And the energy behind the tech jobs — they’re just booming, especially on the West Side. It’s exciting. But if they can’t afford a house, an apartment, co-op, condo, it’s not going to work.So that is where I’m going to spend my political capital, because it fits into my larger framework. The vision of New York over the next five years is creating a place where people not just want to live but can live, and get a good job, and start a business if they want, and raise their families.When I focus on my policies — and I really do love policies, as much as I’ve had to deal with crises — I love getting my hands into policies and asking: Why? Why can’t we do it this way? Why can’t we do it this way?So I’ll be taking a very, very engaged approach. Already have been, and put forth our plan. So that’s — we have to have that.Alex Kingsbury: You answered Mara’s question on housing. I’m curious about inflation as the biggest political headwind the Democrats are facing nationwide, and probably here in New York. Your opponent’s running against it. Is there anything you can do?Well, we’ve focused on areas we can put more money back in the pockets of New Yorkers. Inflation’s about 8.2, 8.3 percent right now. It is this record high. I understand that. And this is one of those challenges that we have across this country, not just New York.But in our budget, we addressed the gas tax. We waited for the duration of the year. We want to take a look at that again. We got $2.1 billion in property tax rebates for people — middle-class tax cuts.The one area where we haven’t really spent as much time as I’d like is on the affordability of child care — one of the reasons so many moms are not back to work and couldn’t get back to work. So our plan was $7.7 billion. We’re starting to see the benefits now, as we’re able to tell New Yorkers that half of all children in the state of New York are eligible for subsidies, plus subsidies and increases for the workers.It’s important to organizations. You know, whether it’s in a church and it’s in a synagogue, or whether it’s the Y.W.C.A., all the places are getting more support from us than they ever have before. But I also tell you what — I’m using a different approach.When I talk to developers and people who want economic development support from the state of New York, I say bring it on. Come on, we’re all excited. Tell me about your child care plan. Tell me what you’re doing for your employees, whether it’s a consortium of other businesses in a small downtown, you’ve got to work together, whether it’s you’re rebuilding a new office — can you dedicate one floor to this?I said, “This will be the biggest driver for women to want to work at your facility.” They’ll get you at a competitive advantage. I’ve said this all over the state to tech companies as well. So I’m excited about blending the needs of families with our economic development dollars. And I think we’ll have a real key for success. We’re putting that in our next budget as well.Jyoti Thottam: So, Governor, just back to your power to set the agenda. As you know, the governor has more than $900 million in your budget that can be used without real oversight or transparency. You’ve accepted tens of millions of dollars in campaign funds from donors with business before the state.You’ve also decided that you’re accepting campaign donations from state board and commission appointees. I know they weren’t people that you originally appointed. But you’ve come under some criticism for that. What do you say about voters who are concerned about ethics and expecting you, again, to set the agenda on ethics?Brent Staples: I’ll piggyback on that question, too. I just want to emphasize, do you realize how bad the optics of that were, in accepting the contributions from the people on boards, from these people on the commission?We are very clear that we weren’t. I was not putting anyone on a board for making a contribution —Brent Staples: My question is, do you realize how bad the optics of that was? It looked really bad from there.Well, I appreciate the commentary on that, but here’s what I’m doing. I’m following all the rules, making sure that there is no connection between any contributions and any policies with state government. I’ve been in office for 30 years. I’m very careful about this — making sure that everyone around me follows the rules.But what you’re proposing, in a sense, is creating an environment where it’s very difficult for people who don’t have millions of their own dollars to run for office. I come out of public service. I follow the rules. Always have, always will. And raising money is part of being able to remain as governor when I took office a year ago.So what I don’t do is have billionaires, like Trump-supporting billionaires, like Ron Lauder, dumping nearly $10 million in dark money against me. That’s what someone in my position has to counter, you know? That’s the reality. No matter what I raise, and they’re still not done, more money can come in at the end and give them the firepower. That is the challenge we all face.I will support reforms. I helped write campaign finance reform when I was a young staffer for Senator Moynihan. I’ve worked on this my whole life. And I’ve stood up to the campaign finance office. I have 14 employees. I unlocked this. And it’s been talked about — these reforms. And those will come. That’s what we’re putting in motion now.But what I don’t do — and predecessors have done this — is, at a fund-raiser, where there’s people — all different individuals have interests, yes? I don’t bring government staff. It’s pretty shocking to realize that, before, you could go to a fund-raiser and talk to the chief of staff to the governor, the budget director, head of an agency. I said, “No, think about the perception of that, the access.”I only have a couple of young campaign staffers at events with me. We do it very differently. But I will always, because of the responsibility I have, to let people know that I’m going to make sure that we have the highest ethics.I changed JCOPE [the Joint Commission on Public Ethics] completely. I said I was going to blow it up because it wasn’t working. I don’t even know who my appointees are on that board. I said, “I want distance.” We had set up a system where independents — I have — law school professors, law school deans are the ones who are selecting who determines ethics investigations in our state. And I think that’s appropriate, instead of having my own appointees. You talked about the optics of appointees. How about appointing your former staffers and friends to the ethics board? So —Eleanor Randolph: Well, you changed a lot of things.I understand perception is important. But the reality is, we follow all the rules. Full disclosure. Everybody knows where our money comes from. And unlike the dark, sinister money that’s going to super PACs, there actually are limits.Eleanor Randolph: But to Jyoti’s point, the Citizens Budget Commission identified almost $1 billion that they called — that has been called a slush fund — and said there was very little transparency about where this money went and questions about whether it went to different areas for political purposes for this campaign. How can you promise that there’ll be more transparency upfront about this? And I know that slush fund has been there forever. It’s not new. But still, the transparency is the hard part, really.Right, and the transparency comes from — this has to be approved by the Legislature. I don’t just go find a billion dollars and put it in a fund. The Legislature is involved in this.Eleanor Randolph: Yes, but you and I know there are all these private meetings before you come up with a budget. And this particular fund is the one that Citizens Budget Commission is concerned about, because it’s just there like a slush fund that you can use to hand out to different areas.No, these all come through different agencies. If it’s economic development funds, it comes through our Regional Economic Development Councils. The decisions made, for example, for money dedicated for Long Island — I didn’t make the decisions that we do $10 million for Feinstein Institute. That went through a process.That went through a process where the Regional Economic Development Council makes recommendations. And they recommend it to us. And money that’s for any economic development project. There’s no situation where I sit there and say where it’s going to go. I take the recommendations of — these are fellow citizens. These are citizens and business people who make those determinations.So, I know there’s cynicism associated with all of this. I understand that. And my job is to restore equal space in government once again. And I’ll continue doing that every single day, following all the rules, making sure we have the highest ethics. And that’s what I committed to from the first day, when I knew I had to do a lot of cleanup and rehabilitation of the state’s reputation at the time. And I’m still committed to that.Nick Fox: You recently got a very good look at some of the worst of the M.T.A. and how East Side Access went billions of dollars over budget. Do you think enough has been done to change the way the M.T.A. operates? And given the decline of the revenue, how do you improve ridership, and how do you get the repairs that need to be done?Important question, something I deal with regularly. First of all, the history you talked about was long and sordid. And I’m glad that Janno Lieber, who I elevated, was part of the solution, not the problem. So we don’t have the same actors that were involved in what has happened in the past. So I’m looking forward. How do we continue to make these investments?First of all, operationally. I’ve already asked Janno for a report on internal savings that can be found that — we also know that increase in ridership — people have to feel secure, safe. And it’s interesting how it works. Look, the more riders there are, the safer the subway is. We’re still down about 61 to 63 percent of prepandemic ridership on weekdays, depending on which day. Seventy-three percent on weekends. But as long as there’s trains that are not full, then people don’t feel secure, and they’re not as secure.So driving more people back by giving them quality service, on-time trains — there’s no changing our trains, our system, our services. If we cut services, then people have a disincentive to come. So we have to maintain high-quality service, find areas we can cut, find new revenue sources. And I push them to find new revenue sources for us.Look, that’s on the operations side. On the capital side, we’re going to continue making the investments. And East Side Access will finish under my watch. When I first became governor — I still have regular meetings with the Port Authority, Rick Cotton, Janno Lieber, tell me all the products that are outstanding. What’s the timetable, and how can we shave off time? Shave off a year, six months, whatever you do, because now, rising cost inflation, time is money. I cannot afford another day.So I bring this sense of urgency of just getting the job done. Finished Long Island Rail Road Third Track. Critically important. Finishing East Side Access literally by the end of this year. We’re starting Penn Station before the costs get any higher, because I don’t want there to be any excuse why we can’t have a world-class, spectacular facility there. We’ve already made some progress in one of the terminals, or one of the wings there.So the operations side and capital side. Capital side is going to be assisted by congestion pricing. Right now we have the Traffic Mobility Review Board coming up with recommendations to give to the M.T.A. That process will probably go on for two more months. I think they’re doing all the public comments that came in. And a lot of issues arose. We’re listening to them. They’re listening to them. They’ll make recommendations.So that’s how we have the money dedicated for future capital investments to make up for years of neglect. And then we also have challenges on the operational side. Because of federal money, we’re good through 2024 with the budget. But I said, “Let’s start making the changes now.” I’m not waiting until then. Let’s start making the changes internally now so we don’t go off a cliff in 2024, 2025.Mara Gay: What’s the most significant change that you’ve made that you can point to with the M.T.A. versus the way former Governor Cuomo was involved?I’m letting them run it. I’m letting them run it because they are the transit experts, not us. My own agenda does not come into play when I have brilliant experts running the operations and have worked on finding public safety.We’ve put cameras in the trains now. That gives people a strong sense of security. We’ve been focusing on our M.T.A. transit police that watch the trains all along Metro-North. The City of New York is responsible for policing the subway itself. So I think it’s more of a collaborative approach — letting the experts drive the decisions as opposed to political interference.Jyoti Thottam: Congestion pricing, though — that’s a policy that transit experts really love. But how do you sell it to New Yorkers whose commutes will immediately get more expensive — the ones who are still driving — that this is good for you and good for the city?And this was a major change. What people will learn about me is, I’m not afraid of major challenges. Yes, the easier thing is to walk away and say, “Let someone else handle this a decade from now.” That’s not who I am. We need to get this done. And the operative word in congestion pricing is “congestion.” That’s why I had to walk here today, because there’s delivery trucks. Delivery trucks are jamming up 39th.Listen, all over, we’re becoming paralyzed. And there’s a huge economic cost to that. And it becomes a deterrent. Why would you even want to drive in the city? It’s like, they’re going to get stuck trying to find a parking lot. They’re not going to get within a block of where they want to go for 40 minutes.So then there’s the environment. We have only this time on Earth to make a huge difference and reverse what has happened to our planet under our watch. And I’m committed to this. And so the efforts to get more vehicles off the streets is going to have a better outcome with asthma rates.We’re transitioning to electric buses, electric public buses, but also vehicles, and also enhancing our public transit. We have — have you guys seen Long Island Rail Road? It is spectacular. If you’ve not been on it lately, you need to take a ride on this. The cars are clean. The stations are gorgeous. You can plug in and charge your phone.So what we’re offering people to help overcome the hesitation is more connectability, a better experience, more reliable, so we can encourage more people to take public transportation, which is the whole origin, the whole premise behind congestion pricing overall. We’re looking for the recommendations on communities that will be hit, industries that will be hit. So this is not set in stone yet. So obviously those conversations are still ongoing.Eleanor Randolph: You mentioned climate change and the environment. What do you think about fracking? I gather that Mr. Zeldin, Congressman Zeldin, is interested in opening that back up again. How do you feel about this?Donald Trump told him that’s what he should do. I’m sure that’s what he’s proposing. I don’t support that. No, we have a vision. And it has an executable plan behind it. It’s not just a pipe dream. We actually have a strategy on how to bring in more renewable power from Hydro-Québec coming down from Champlain Trail, bringing in more wind and solar from places like Sullivan County. I did this one year ago.And people suggested that one of these two energy sources — one might be better than the other. I said, “Do them both.” P.S.C. [the New York Public Service Commission] had to make a decision, but I recommended we do both. Then we can really, really stop our reliance on renewable — on fossil-fuel-generated power — and just start getting into this future and reducing the cost of electricity so no one thinks twice about their next vehicle being an electric vehicle, and as we electrify buildings.So if you don’t just take the leap and say, “Now is the time” — I’ve said this before, growing up in a very polluted community in Buffalo. I thought the skies were supposed to be orange, because that’s all I saw in Lackawanna with the steel plant, where my dad worked, grandpa worked. So I come out of [inaudible]. I am by nature an environmentalist, and know that we’ve lost too much time. So we are the —Eleanor Randolph: No fracking.Last generation that can really do anything about climate change. We’re the first to really feel the effects, the last [inaudible].Eleanor Randolph: No fracking.Kathleen Kingsbury: We only have a couple of minutes left, but I wanted to return to the M.T.A. for one second. One of the biggest drivers of the perception that taking the train is unsafe right now is the clear number of people with mental illness who are often on the trains now. Is there anything that you can do, as the governor, on that issue specifically, or any way that you can work with the mayor to improve that question?Working very close with the mayor on this. Our teams have been embedded since he was on the job two weeks. And we went down to the subway together and proposed a joining of his forces and state resources for people that are part of these S.O.S. teams, because just moving someone along is a guarantee they’re just going to be back the next day. Just dealing realities.Again, it ties into a question about this housing crisis. This is a driver because there’s not enough places to take people to give them a safe experience. But safety is important. And we worked on Kendra’s Law. We made some improvements to Kendra’s Law.And also, what I found is a lot of people really do need to be hospitalized for a time being to get on a path toward a real recovery program, as opposed to just cycling back into the community. And I said, “Why aren’t there more psychiatric beds out there?” And I was always pressing. I’m always asking questions. Why aren’t there more psychiatric beds?It turns out that there’s a differential in reimbursement for Medicaid for the hospitals and whether or not it’s a psychiatric bed, which is more costly than a nonpsychiatric bed. So there was a financial disincentive for hospitals to have psychiatric beds.So I said, “OK, compress that.” The state will pick up the cost of making it fairer for hospitals, because it’s a public-policy imperative that we have more places for them to get genuine treatment that’s going to help them get on a different path. And we’ll do that. Last I saw, there was another 1,000 beds that had come online as a result of just that decision.That’s how I operate. I see a problem. I know where I want to get. And I’ll press all the levers to make that happen. We did that with affordable housing. We’re going to do that with trying to help the cost-of-living challenges, because it’s energy costs as well. It’s almost $500, on average, for people’s monthly energy bill. These are real challenges.But dealing with the probably 700 to 1,000 people who have severe mental health problems that are either on the subways, in the subways, on the streets or in the stations is something that we’re focused on. More resources. I mean, a lot of people say we need more money. I put more money and I’ll continue to put more money to support the mayor’s efforts to deal with this crisis.Mara Gay: Governor, we have just two minutes more. Can we talk a little bit about your path to victory in this surprisingly competitive race?The more people know about Lee Zeldin and how extremely dangerous he is, and now his direct connection to the attempted overturn of our government and the democratic process, I think, is going to be jaw-droppingly shocking to people.Mara Gay: But who are your voters, and where are your voters? And how are you turning them out?We are. I was in the Bronx all day Saturday. People are excited. They’re excited. I think there’s an energy around the historic nature of the first woman elected. I’m proud of that. It’s not the reason I should be governor, but a lot of people are energized by that. Also, I’ve walked these streets. I’ve been in the communities, I spent last week in Brooklyn. That’s not my first time walking the streets of Brooklyn. It’s probably my 700th.And so the communities where I show up — the churches and the places of gathering in Black and brown communities — they have seen me before. Their leaders know me. Their elected officials know me. And they know that I have the heart and the passion to lead, and also the toughness. This is not a job for the faint of heart. And I’ve always believed, if it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger. There is no one stronger in the state of New York than I am. I am ready for this now.Eleanor Randolph: Do you think the women’s vote will be energized by abortion? Do you still see that? It seems to be fading in the polls.It’s still an issue. You only need to win by a small amount. You just have to win. You have to have the majority to win. So I do believe that there will be women in — suburban, Republican women. We’re seeing that there is more interest — independent women.Democratic women are with us. That’s great. And they’re excited about the historic nature, as well as knowing that they have someone who will protect abortion rights, as opposed to someone who actually literally cheered the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and now to try to back-walk this? That was just a couple months ago.Seriously, give the voters of New York a little more credit. They do not have amnesia. They’ve not forgotten your history in overturning the election and your resistance to any common sense gun —Brent Staples: Are you relying on ads for that? Are you relying on television ads for that? You keep saying about people learning how bad Lee Zeldin is. When are they going to learn that? How are they going to learn about it?We’ve been on the air since August on that message.Brent Staples: So you’ve — right now, you mean?Oh, yeah. We have been saying that to you. They’re all over the air. Our first one starts out with the insurrection, pictures of the overturning of the Capitol —Brent Staples: So you shot your shot on that already.Yeah, yeah.Brent Staples: So I’m asking what’s coming, because —Well, just stay tuned. I’m not going to tell you everything right now.Bent Staples: I will tell you, I think that the shot you shot is not working.Well —Brent Staples: Just a citizen’s observation.I’ll tell you another thing people don’t know is how aggressive I am on economic development. One thing that’s going to get people very energized … Micron. Micron — the rest of the nation, every governor wanted to attract Micron. They came to New York. We had a partnership with Chuck Schumer. We had to work at the federal level with President Biden.I got the deal done, overcoming a lot of hesitation. But because of relationships I have with the Legislature, they trusted me. I said, “If we can put together a green CHIPS bill, meaning there has to be intense sustainability standards in this, I can attract them.” And they were not coming here. In fact, after we won Micron, there was reporting in Texas, very disappointed community. They were sure they had landed it. So now what I had done is had a breakthrough. I could say that this is a state that welcomes business.And what that means, more importantly to me, is that 50,000 jobs, partially upstate. But [inaudible] walked in the Bronx. And he says, “Do you think we could use, possibly, the abandoned armory?” I’ve been sitting down with a lot of people saying, “What can we do with this armory?” It has to have new life. And it could be a work force training center. He says, “Can we think about getting semiconductor training, manufacturing,” which has now come to New York because I insisted that we have a policy —[A spokeswoman for Ms. Hochul told The Times that the governor has discussed with local officials the possibility of opening a work force training center in the Bronx for jobs expected to come to the state with Micron.]Brent Staples: It’s mainly robotic.Pardon me?Brent Staples: Semiconductor making is mainly robotic now.We need all kinds of skills. Fifty thousand jobs. And those aren’t the construction jobs. That’s not the construction. That’s 50,000 jobs for the supply chain, all the component parts. But he says, “Will we be teaching people in the Bronx about these jobs, getting that training done?”So that’s, to me, I see the connection of upstate and downstate. Continue creating jobs. And there’s a whole supply chain opportunity and training opportunity because we delivered — we promised we’d get people the jobs they needed. We came to New York. We will get you the people with the skills you need. This is a game changer. This is the most historic investment in our state’s history from the private sector. That happened because I wouldn’t let go of that deal.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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      Gov. Murphy Tones Down Liberal Message in Bid for Suburban Voters

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      In the first budget address of his second term, Gov. Philip Murphy responded to New Jersey voters’ discontent at a time of surging gas costs and high taxes.Gas prices are soaring. The war in Ukraine has rattled the stock market. And, months ahead of midterm elections, voters in key suburban swing districts in New Jersey are restive, contributing to increased dissatisfaction with the state’s Democratic leader, Gov. Philip D. Murphy.For much of his first term, Mr. Murphy governed as a steadfast liberal eager to talk about his successful efforts to protect abortion rights, legalize marijuana and enact stricter gun control laws.But on Tuesday, in his first budget address since winning re-election by just three percentage points in a state where Democrats vastly outnumber Republicans, Mr. Murphy offered a radically tempered message.The sweeping liberal rhetoric that defined his first budget address in 2018 was replaced by a recalibrated definition of progress and a promise to make New Jersey — where the cost of living is among the highest in the nation — a more affordable place to live.Months after remnants of Hurricane Ida crippled large parts of the state, killing at least 25 people, he did not utter the phrase “climate change.” There were no overt references to criminal justice, racial equity or immigrant rights. He cited a signature first-term win — lifting the minimum wage to $15 — just once, and instead chose to talk about tax cuts and rebates and a one-year “fee holiday” that would allow residents to visit state parks and renew driver’s licenses for free.“If you compare the really sharp racial justice messaging from last year to this year, there is a really big disconnect,” said Sara Cullinane, director of Make the Road New Jersey, a left-leaning coalition focused on immigrant and worker rights.“It seems that there’s a pivot,” she added.Instead of the unabashedly left-leaning budget message that set the tone for his first term, there were 24 mentions of the words “affordable” or “affordability.”“The Democratic Party is looking down at the 2022 midterms coming and knowing that its message needs to be revamped,” said Ashley Koning, director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University.“Many voters, probably most voters, are disenchanted.”Mr. Murphy is scheduled to move from vice chairman to chairman of the National Governors Association in July and to take over leadership of the Democratic Governors Association for the second time next year. Democrats must defend governorships in the key battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, races seen as must-wins to stave off Republican restrictions on voting rights.The governor has made it clear that he heard the message voters sent in November in Virginia and New Jersey, where Republican turnout surged and Democrats lost seven seats in the Legislature, including the Senate president’s.A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsMidterms Begin: The Texas primaries officially opened the 2022 election season. See the full primary calendar.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering, though this year’s map is poised to be surprisingly fairGovernors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.“Quite frankly,” Professor Koning said, “they’re not interested in hearing about climate change and racial justice.”Democrats worry that the same factors that contributed to Mr. Murphy’s re-election by smaller-than-expected margins — pandemic fatigue, rising costs and President Biden’s waning popularity — could also spell trouble during November’s midterm congressional elections.Just before Mr. Murphy delivered Tuesday’s address, the Eagleton Center released a poll showing that the number of voters with a favorable impression of the governor had dropped to 33 percent, down from 50 percent in November. Of the people surveyed, more than 40 percent gave him failing grades in connection with New Jersey’s high property taxes and cost of living.“Governor Murphy has never wavered in his vision to make New Jersey stronger and fairer for everyone who calls our state home,” Mr. Murphy’s spokeswoman, Alyana Alfaro Post, said.“This year’s budget proposal builds on that progress,” she added, “and continues opening doors of opportunity for all New Jerseyans.”During his first term, Mr. Murphy accomplished many of his most ambitious policy goals: adding a tax on income over $1 million; legalizing adult-use marijuana; establishing paid sick leave for workers; and giving undocumented immigrants access to driver’s licenses.On Tuesday, he talked about the millionaires’ tax but did not mention the other victories, referring only to the “many steps we took together over the past four years,” before focusing on property taxes.“This budget attacks two of New Jersey’s most difficult and intractable problems: property taxes and affordable housing,” Mr. Murphy told a joint session of the Legislature, in a marked shift from comments he made in 2019 minimizing concerns over the state’s high taxes.“If you’re a one-issue voter and tax rate is your issue, either a family or a business — if that’s the only basis upon which you’re going to make a decision,” Mr. Murphy said three years ago, “we’re probably not your state.”This year’s budget proposal — a record-high $48.9 billion spending plan — did not appear to veer from priorities Mr. Murphy set during his first term and would continue to fund programs important to Mr. Murphy’s progressive allies.The plan, which the Legislature must approve by July, sets aside more money for education, mental health programs, health care for children of undocumented immigrants, addiction treatment and lower-cost housing. For the second year, Mr. Murphy has proposed making a full payment to the state’s underfunded public-employee pension system.Just as he did in his first budget address, Mr. Murphy quoted the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde’s definition of a cynic — someone who knows “the price of everything and the value of nothing.” But that is where the parallels end.Gone was the fiery rhetoric from 2018, when he talked about the state’s high poverty rate, income inequality and the importance of embracing “the immediacy of the problems before us.”There was no renewed mention this week of initiatives to narrow the state’s racial income gap using tools like so-called baby bonds, an ultimately unsuccessful budget proposal he made in 2020 to give most newborns $1,000, payable with interest when they turned 18.Instead, a plan to set aside money to build 3,300 units of lower-cost housing was depicted as a win for the working class, not the working poor.“Let’s not lose sight of who actually benefits when we build more affordable housing,” Mr. Murphy said of units available to people with low to moderate incomes. “It’s the educator or first responder who can finally live within the community they serve. It’s also the server at the local diner, the cashier at the grocery store.”Julia Sass Rubin, a professor at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, said the speech represented a change in messaging, but not a “major retraction” of Mr. Murphy’s left-leaning priorities.“If you keep walking the walk, maybe they think they can adjust the talk a little bit, without substantively changing the direction,” Professor Rubin said.“It’s a way of trying to shore up what could be a vulnerability — both for the midterm elections and Democrats more broadly,” she added.Mr. Murphy emphasized “affordability” in his speech and played down progressive themes.Michelle Gustafson for The New York TimesJack Ciattarelli, Mr. Murphy’s Republican challenger who came close to unseating the governor, said the budget address showed Mr. Murphy was “definitely feeling the pressure from the closeness of the race and the themes that we hit on repeatedly, which up until this point he’s been tone-deaf on.”But the contents of the plan, he said, were the “same old, same old.”“There’s never been a better opportunity to completely reform the way we do property taxes,” said Mr. Ciattarelli, who plans to run for governor again in four years.Officials with left-leaning advocacy groups said that they found things to like in the budget draft, as well as missed opportunities.Ms. Cullinane, of Make the Road, praised the roughly $100 million the governor set aside for undocumented immigrants and working families who have been ineligible for federal pandemic-related aid. Andrea McChristian, law and policy director for the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, applauded Mr. Murphy’s efforts to expand college access and to fund a pilot program designed to keep juveniles out of prison. But she questioned the absence of any discussion about closing juvenile lockups, making reparation payments to Black residents harmed by slavery or a renewed push to implement baby bonds.“That’s definitely a missed moment,” Ms. McChristian said.The missing emphasis on social justice is particularly worrisome in a year when New Jersey is flush with cash from sales tax collections, revenue generated by the robust housing and stock markets and federal stimulus funds, Ms. McChristian said.“This is the moment to be bold,” she said, adding, “We have huge racial disparities here.”Doug O’Malley, director of Environment New Jersey, called it a “status quo” budget that continues to provide vital support for offshore wind energy but fails to take other meaningful steps toward addressing the climate crisis or establishing a guaranteed source of funding for public transit.“New Jersey should be investing in climate change solutions,” Mr. O’Malley said, “not fighting this fight with one hand behind its back.” More

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      No, California Isn’t Doomed

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      California has been struggling. It has stumbled through the Covid-19 pandemic and recession, afflicted by wildfires, an epidemic of homelessness and stratospheric housing prices. Last year it experienced its first population decline in records going back to 1900. Its latest mess was a costly and unsuccessful campaign to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom.The state’s problems are real. Nevertheless, there are positive signs. The first step toward fixing problems is recognizing them, and on that score, Californians have grown increasingly aware of what’s wrong. California is also blessed with abundant resources that enable it to fix problems that would be daunting for less endowed states.Housing is a good example. Prices are crazy: On Sept. 16, the California Association of Realtors announced that the median sale price in the state in August was $827,940, up 17 percent from a year earlier. Only 23 percent of California households could afford to buy a median-priced home in the second quarter, down from one-third a year earlier, the association announced in August.To make ends meet, many Californians scrimp and save and commute long distances from exurbs; others give up and move to cheaper states. Employers struggle to lure out-of-state recruits. Homeowners can swap one high-priced house for another, but renters can’t buy starter homes because they have no housing equity to use for a down payment. And California’s epidemic of homelessness can be traced in part to a lack of affordable housing.The upside is that almost everyone in California understands that building more housing is essential. More homes are being built in Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth and Austin combined than in the entire state of California, says Dan Dunmoyer, president and chief executive of the California Building Industry Association.One of Newsom’s first acts after surviving the recall attempt was to sign three bills to increase housing supply. Senate Bill No. 8 extends a 2019 law that accelerates approval of housing projects. Senate Bill No. 9 allows homeowners to build up to three additional housing units on their land. And Senate Bill No. 10 allows environmental review to be sped up for multiunit projects near transit hubs or in urban developments. Those are the latest of dozens of housing bills signed by Newsom and his predecessor, Jerry Brown.The California Environmental Quality Act, signed into law in 1970 by Ronald Reagan, who was then the governor, is valuable on the whole but enables people to use environmental pretexts to resist housing developments in their neighborhoods that they could not as easily oppose otherwise. There’s widespread agreement that this needs to change.Progress, though, is halting. The pace of issuance of permits for housing construction in California is slower now than in 1975, according to data compiled by the state’s Department of Finance and the U.S. Census Bureau. Environmentalists fight efforts to circumscribe the environmental quality act, worrying that legitimate environmental concerns about new projects will be neglected. And local elected officials continue to push back against efforts to increase density, which they perceive as reducing the value of existing homes. In Palo Alto, the headquarters of Hewlett-Packard and Tesla, Mayor Tom DuBois expressed opposition to Senate Bill No. 10, writing that “such legislation echoes more of Russia than of California.”Up against such forces, Dunmoyer, the president of the building industry association, told me that he’s impressed by the “courage” shown by Newsom and the California State Legislature in enacting senate bills 8, 9 and 10. But, he added, “This is a marathon, and we’re still in the first quarter of the marathon race.”Other problems in California should be fixable with effort and good will. As I wrote in my Sept. 8 newsletter, the state’s water shortages could be alleviated by diverting a little water from agriculture to other purposes. Farms account for only 0.8 percent of the state’s gross domestic product but more than 80 percent of the water used by people (that is, not counting water that stays in streams, deltas and so on).Homelessness is caused partly by a lack of housing, but also by inadequate treatment of people experiencing mental illness and drug addiction. Many conservatives argue that the state has focused too much on low-income housing as the solution to homelessness. “Focus on treatment first rather than housing first,” says Wayne Winegarden, senior fellow in business and economics at the right-of-center Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy. “Otherwise all we’re doing is taking the problem from the street to the hotel room.”Chris Hoene, executive director of the left-of-center California Budget and Policy Center, disagrees with Winegarden, and calls for more spending on Homekey, the state’s program for housing the homeless. Social services should be “wrapped around,” or integrated with, a home, Hoene says. It’s unfortunate, he says, that “people on different sides of strategies pit the potential solutions against each other.”One advantage that California has in dealing with these and other challenges — fixing K-12 education, lowering the tax burden on families and businesses and so on — is that the state’s finances have improved. The state raised taxes and trimmed spending to brace for the Covid-19 recession, but tax revenues came in unexpectedly high because higher-income workers kept working and the financial markets did well, generating taxable capital gains. The $100 billion California Comeback Plan, which Newsom signed in July, is a Christmas tree of Democratic priorities, including stimulus checks for two out of every three Californians, renter assistance, housing for the homeless, tax relief and grants to small businesses, universal pre-K, college savings accounts for low-income students and investments in infrastructure and wildfire resilience.I bounced this optimistic line of thought off Joel Kotkin, a professor at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., who is an expert on cities. He was more pessimistic. “The way our economy is structured, there’s an incredible amount of wealth being minted for a small number of people,” he said. “We have the worst overcrowding. The schools are terrible and they’re going to get worse.” He added, “Used to be a young, ambitious person went to California. I don’t think that’s happening anymore.”It’s hard to argue with a veteran observer of California like Kotkin, who began writing about Silicon Valley in 1975. On the other hand, the bearishness can be overdone. Matthew A. Winkler, editor in chief emeritus of Bloomberg News, observed earlier this year that people love to declare California “doomed.” It ain’t.The readers writeHow you describe a bill depends upon what you are talking about. If you are concerned about too much fiscal stimulus, then taking note of the tax increases and spending cuts makes sense. If you are concerned with the size of government, taking note of spending cuts makes sense, but it does not make sense to reduce the size of the bill by the amount of the tax increases. Same way with a Republican tax cut. If they cut taxes by $1.5 trillion and fully offset it with $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, that is a $1.5 trillion tax cut and that is how it should be described. Only offsetting tax increases should be taken into account.Paul PecorinoTuscaloosa, Ala.The writer is a professor of economics at the University of Alabama.Quote of the day“According to Wittgenstein’s ruler: Unless you have confidence in the ruler’s reliability, if you use a ruler to measure a table you may also be using the table to measure the ruler. The less you trust the ruler’s reliability, the more information you are getting about the ruler and the less about the table.”— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, “Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets” (2004)Have feedback? Send a note to coy-newsletter@nytimes.com. More

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      California’s Homelessness Crisis Threatens Democracy

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      Even if you don’t live in California, you’ve probably seen the pictures of tents lining Venice Beach. Or maybe you’ve seen photographs of Oakland’s sprawling homeless encampments, or the crowds of people living on the street in Los Angeles’s Skid Row neighborhood. Those images, while stark, do not come close to capturing the scope of the state’s homelessness crisis.Numbers come a little closer. California is home to nearly 12 percent of the country’s total population but, as of January 2020, 28 percent of its unhoused population, according to federal statistics. More than half of the country’s unsheltered homeless population resides in California. All told, the federal government’s most recent point-in-time count tells us that roughly 161,548 Californians were homeless as of just one night in early 2020, 113,660 of whom were unsheltered — and this was before Covid-19 plunged the United States into crisis.The political implications of mass homelessness cut deep, cut to the very foundations of our democratic system, in fact. Widespread homelessness is both a symptom of democratic decline and a harbinger of worse to come.It should never have gotten this bad. Homelessness is solvable. Its primary driver is housing unaffordability (not a sudden recent increase in mental illness or substance use disorder, despite claims to the contrary), and so the solution has always been more housing, particularly for those who don’t currently have it. But California has allowed homelessness to metastasize over the past few decades. As the humanitarian crisis has gotten worse, it has become a political crisis. Homelessness is one of the major themes in this year’s campaign to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom, and a growing number of commentators have cited it as evidence that the “California dream” is dying.But to eulogize the California dream or fret over the governor’s electoral prospects is to miss the larger picture.The structural factors that threaten U.S. democracy have directly contributed to homelessness in California. Take structural racism. In his landmark book “The Color of Law,” Richard Rothstein outlined how the government spent decades segregating neighborhoods as a matter of public policy, stifling Black homeownership and pushing Black Americans and other people of color into zones of concentrated urban poverty.California was an early innovator in racist housing policies: Berkeley was most likely the birthplace of single-family zoning, which constricts housing supply and pushes up the cost of housing. This policy puts it out of reach for low-income households, in particular the people of color it was intended to keep out.More than a century after it was first enacted, Berkeley is now in the process of undoing single-family zoning. But at both the city and the state level, other racist policies remain on the books. Some of them are baked into the state’s Constitution, which the voters amended in 1950 to restrict development of low-income public housing. And California’s decades-long effort to keep low-income Black residents out of adequate housing continues to bear fruit: today, Black people make up 6.5 percent of the state’s overall population, but 40 percent of its homeless population.Similarly, as economic inequality has threatened the nation’s political system, it has most likely exacerbated homelessness in California. In a recent paper, researchers presented evidence that income inequality may fuel homelessness in regions where housing supply fails to keep up with demand. The authors theorized that this may be because the wealthiest households in an unequal city bid up the cost of housing for everyone else, making it increasingly unaffordable to lower-income residents. This appears to be exactly what happened in the Bay Area, where the unfathomable wealth generated by the tech boom has been mostly captured by those at the top of the income distribution.Because Bay Area cities have failed to produce enough supply to keep up with population increases, lower and middle-income residents now have to compete for housing with the super-wealthy, whose ability to outbid everyone else continually forces prices up. As a result, homes in Berkeley sold for about 19 percent above asking price on average in the first three months of this year, the highest citywide average in the nation.Building more housing would break this dynamic. But much like federal efforts to expand voting rights, California’s fight to expand housing supply has been stymied by what I consider vetocracy. I alluded to one example of this vetocracy earlier: Article 34 of the state Constitution, which requires voter approval for any low-income public housing project to be built in a community. Another oft-cited example is the state’s California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, which, generally, requires environmental impact assessments of new developments. “Not In My Back Yarders” have capitalized on this prima facie reasonable requirement, burying proposed developments in CEQA litigation that can slow projects to a crawl, or kill them entirely.Even as the homelessness crisis has grown out of the same factors as the crisis of democracy, it has directly contributed to democratic decay. California’s continual failure to make inroads against widespread homelessness risks fomenting anger, cynicism and disaffection with the state’s political system. A state that appears powerless to address fundamental problems does not make a very persuasive case for its own survival. As such, state and local policymakers need to take homelessness seriously as not only a humanitarian disaster, but a threat to liberal democracy.Taking the threat seriously does not mean doubling down on cruel and ineffective policies, such as the criminalizing of homelessness or relying on temporary shelters to keep the unhoused out of sight. It means spending political capital to ensure that, long term, California can dramatically increase its housing supply. And it means offering immediate Housing First services to those who have already been pushed into homelessness.Housing First policies start with the premise — validated by a wealth of empirical research (including from my employer, University of California, San Francisco’s Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative) — that people who are homeless need stable housing in order to benefit from the other services, such as behavioral health care and substance use treatment, that will put them on a path to full recovery.This month, California took an important step in the right direction. The most recent budget signed by Governor Newsom includes $12 billion earmarked for combating homelessness, primarily through Housing First-aligned efforts. This amount, while significant, still represents only an initial step. Homelessness has become so dire in large part because the state allowed it to fester for years. It will require years more work, planning, public investment and legal reform, to undo the results. The cost will be high, but the cost of inaction is far higher.Ned Resnikoff is policy manager for the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative at the University of California, San Francisco.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