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N.Y.C. Mayoral Candidates Debate Homelessness and Mental Illness
The city’s chronic homelessness has taken on greater urgency over the course of the campaign this spring, as New York has seen an apparent rash of random assaults, often carried out by people who appeared to be homeless, mentally ill, or both.The candidates clashed Wednesday night over whether this was more of a problem for those who are afflicted with mental illness and homelessness, or for everyone else.Andrew Yang said the solution was simple. “We need to get them off of our streets and our subways into a better environment,” he said of mentally ill people on the streets and subways. “There will be no recovery until we resolve this.” He promised to double the inventory of inpatient psychiatric beds in the city, a nod to the fact that many hospitals have gotten rid of psychiatric beds to build Covid-19 units.Scott Stringer, who had spoken of the need to build tens of thousands of units of “truly affordable housing,” went on the attack. “That is the greatest non-answer I’ve ever heard in all of our debates,” he barked at Mr. Yang. “Not one specific idea.” He defied Mr. Yang to tell him how much his plan would cost. The exchange came hours after Mayor Bill de Blasio announced plans to move 8,000 homeless people from the hotel rooms they were moved into during the pandemic back to barrackslike congregate shelters by the end of July, to make way for tourists. Many of the hotels are in Manhattan neighborhoods where long-term residents have complained that the hotel guests use drugs and create other nuisances.Other candidates shied away from Mr. Yang’s harsh rhetoric. Maya Wiley mentioned the struggles of a formerly homeless man who goes by the name Shams DaBaron and emerged as a spokesman for the residents of one of the hotels, The Lucerne. “When the response was to send more police into the subways where he was riding because the congregate shelters were so dangerous, he asked for help, and what he got was handcuffed and taken to jail,” Ms. Wiley said, adding that outreach to try to get people to accept placement in shelters needed to be done by “the right people,” rather than the police. More
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New York Has a Housing Crisis. How Would the Mayoral Candidates Fix It?
New York City’s affordability problems were laid bare by the pandemic. Mayoral candidates offer solutions, but steep political and logistical obstacles remain.New York City’s leaders have been vexed for decades by a problem that has helped turn the city into a worldwide symbol of inequality: As years of prosperity gave rise to soaring luxury apartment towers, public housing crumbled and affordable neighborhoods vanished.The current mayor, Bill de Blasio, had made addressing the city’s housing crisis an imperative during his tenure. But now, the Democratic candidates vying to succeed him next year are confronting a crisis that may be even more severe as a result of the pandemic.All the leading candidates agree that housing is a top issue with huge implications for New York’s future, and each has offered a sweeping plan to tackle the problem. While their proposals overlap in many ways — every contender wants to spend more on public housing, for example — the candidates differ in the solutions and strategies they emphasize most.Kathryn Garcia, a former sanitation commissioner, and Raymond J. McGuire, a former Wall Street executive, have made the creation of tens of thousands of new homes for the poorest New Yorkers a top objective. Maya Wiley, a civil rights lawyer and former counsel to Mr. de Blasio, and Shaun Donovan, a former housing secretary under President Barack Obama and a onetime city housing commissioner, say they would steer hundreds of millions of dollars to struggling renters to help keep them in their homes.Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, is taking aim at private developers by calling for a hefty increase in the number of affordable units the city requires in big new residential buildings. Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, wants wealthy neighborhoods to make way for more affordable units. Andrew Yang, a former presidential candidate, and Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive, have keyed in on converting hotels to housing.Many of the plans face steep political and financial hurdles. But experts and housing advocates say that a failure by the next mayor to address the crisis in a meaningful way could jeopardize New York’s cultural fabric and stunt its economic comeback by making the city even more unaffordable for low-wage workers and residents of color.“If we want to see New York City actually recover, start with housing,” said Annetta Seecharran, the executive director of the Chhaya Community Development Corporation, a nonprofit group based in Jackson Heights, Queens, that advocates the creation of affordable housing. “If we don’t do housing, we’ll be spinning our wheels for decades.”By several measures, the situation is dire. Even before the pandemic, about half of the city’s households spent more than 30 percent of their income on rent, according to an analysis by New York University’s Furman Center. The New York City Housing Authority — the largest public housing entity in the United States, with more than 400,000 tenants — estimates that it needs $40 billion to fix leaky roofs, dilapidated heating systems and other problems.The pandemic has added a troubling layer of uncertainty. Federal aid is on the way, and a moratorium on evictions is in place. But renters’ arrears have risen to hundreds of millions of dollars. Despite the moratorium, landlords have been allowed to file new cases that could lead to the eviction of tens of thousands of residents — particularly in Black and Latino neighborhoods — once the moratorium ends. A spike in homelessness could follow.The winner of the Democratic primary is almost certain to become the city’s next mayor. And while the leading candidates have indicated with their plans that they would build on Mr. de Blasio’s strategies, they have also criticized the mayor, implicitly and explicitly, for not providing enough financial support to the poorest New Yorkers.In a report released this year, the Community Service Society, an anti-poverty group, said Mr. de Blasio’s administration had significantly expanded investment in affordable housing. But most of the efforts, the group found, were directed toward those who earned at least $53,700 for a family of three, equivalent to half of the area’s median income — when the need was greatest among those who earned less.Ms. Garcia said that she would borrow and use state incentives and federal money to help build or preserve 50,000 rent-stabilized housing units that would be affordable to people making less than half the area’s median income, as well as 10,000 housing units that incorporated social services for homeless people. She did not offer a price for her plan, but the money would be used to build new apartments, buy existing buildings, or offer subsidies and incentives to nonprofit or private developers.Mr. McGuire said he would borrow $2.5 billion a year over eight years, which would help finance the construction of more than 350,000 housing units. Most of that money would be earmarked for subsidies and incentives for developers to include rent-stabilized units in mixed-income developments that are affordable to those making less than half the median income. He said he would spend up to $500 million to create about 3,000 affordable units for older people with little income.“It is a departure from what we have built for the past few years,” he said.Mr. Yang and Mr. Donovan said they would spend billions of dollars a year to build or preserve 30,000 units meant for families in a range of incomes.Ms. Wiley is focused on distributing more than $1.5 billion in subsidies to New Yorkers who make less than half the median income to ensure they do not pay more than 30 percent of their income in rent. Initially, she said, federal coronavirus aid would cover the subsidies.She said the program would help keep people from becoming homeless, freeing up money that would have gone to shelters to finance the subsidies instead.Mr. Donovan has proposed something similar, a rental-assistance program that he said could be paid for partly with $330 million that would otherwise be spent on shelters.“Although building allows you to provide affordable housing, solving the affordability crisis has more to do with income and rent subsidy than development,” he said.For many candidates, investing in the housing authority, or NYCHA, is crucial to helping the poorest New Yorkers. Ms. Wiley and Mr. Donovan said they would borrow and spend $2 billion a year in city money to improve public housing; Mr. McGuire and Mr. Stringer said they would borrow and spend up to $1.5 billion..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Mr. Adams said he planned to raise $8 billion for NYCHA by selling the so-called air rights for some of its properties to private developers, something the authority has already begun to explore.Ms. Garcia said she would push state officials for approval of a complex authority plan that could raise $18 billion to $25 billion, in part by letting a new public benefit corporation manage some buildings. Mr. Yang said he also supported the creation of the new corporation, which could potentially tap into federal funding.Some residents and activists have argued against the plan, asserting that it could open public housing to the influence of private investors at the expense of tenants.Ms. Morales said she would reject the plan, which she characterized as the “privatization of NYCHA,” and would seek state and federal aid instead.Several Democratic candidates said the rules governing development in the city should be overhauled.Mr. Stringer has proposed that every new development with more than 10 units permanently set aside 25 percent of those units for low-income tenants. The proposal would expand the requirements placed on private developers substantially. But the real estate lobby would most likely fight it aggressively, arguing that without significant subsidies from the government, such buildings could reduce profits and thus any incentive to build.“The big real estate developers hate this plan,” Mr. Stringer said. “For me, that’s a badge of honor.”Ms. Garcia, Mr. Yang, Mr. McGuire and Mr. Donovan have said they would move to rezone wealthier neighborhoods and those with more public transit options to accommodate additional affordable housing units. Such a strategy could touch off the kind of fierce local opposition that has torpedoed similar initiatives in the past. Mr. Adams said he would push for wide swaths of Midtown Manhattan, from 42nd Street to 14th Street and from Ninth Avenue to Park Avenue, to be rezoned for more affordable housing.“It is the job of the next mayor to break through the bureaucracy and cynicism to deliver the affordable housing needed to sustain our city,” Mr. Adams said.A core piece of Mr. Yang’s plan involves converting closed hotels and office buildings left unused because of the pandemic into 25,000 units of affordable housing by 2025, with building owners getting grants whose size is tied to how affordable the rents are.“The system is broken, and we need a new way of delivering affordable housing to New Yorkers,” he said.Mr. Adams and Ms. Wiley have also proposed converting hotels and unused offices, and Ms. Morales said she would specifically seek to convert the hotels into housing for 100,000 homeless youth and their families. She did not say how she would pay for it. More
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Rash of MTA Subway Attacks Raise Worries With Service Set to Return
Hours after mayoral candidates clashed over how to address crime in the transit system, the police reported a series of early-morning assaults.In the span of 12 minutes early Friday, the police said, a group of men attacked commuters aboard a moving subway train, increasing concerns about public safety in New York City’s transit system just as 24-hour subway service is set to resume on Monday.The attackers, striking together on a southbound Lexington Avenue express train as it passed through several stations starting at around 4:30 a.m., slashed three riders, two in the face and one in the back of the head, the police said. A fourth person was punched. The attackers took a phone and a wallet from one of the victims.The three slashing victims, all men in their 40s, were hospitalized and in stable condition, according to the police. One of the attackers, they said, slashed at the three men as another urged him on. The attacks came amid rising concern about crime in New York. Much of that concern has focused on the subway, which is about to resume nonstop service after it was curtailed last May for the first time in the system’s history because of the pandemic.Despite the flurry of reported attacks, the overall trend in subway violence is less clear. Data suggests that crime per rider may be lower so far this year than in 2020, when ridership plunged amid a citywide lockdown, but up from 2019.And now, even as the system gears up for a full return, at least a dozen attacks and other violent episodes have taken place on train cars or at stations this month alone.The police initially said that two men in their 20s were responsible for the three early morning attacks. But at a news conference later on Friday, officials said the assaults were the work of a larger group that was involved in a fourth attack around the same time. In that incident, the police said, a 48-year-old man was stabbed in the eye with a knife. Like the other victims, he was taken to a hospital, where he was undergoing surgery, the police said.Jason Wilcox, an assistant police chief, said at the news conference that the investigation was continuing but that it appeared that the victims had been attacked by a group of men who were coordinating their actions and occasionally splitting into smaller groups. “It looks like they were pairing off, mixing off, as the train was moving down along the 4 line this morning,” Chief Wilcox said.Four men were subsequently taken into custody in connection with the attacks, the police said. They had not been formally charged as of Friday afternoon, the police said. The spate of assaults prompted transit officials to renew their call for more police officers in the subway. An additional 500 officers were deployed to the system in February after a homeless man was accused of stabbing four people in the subway.The issue of subway crime was among the issues discussed at a mayoral debate on Thursday. The eight leading Democratic candidates in the race all used the occasion to express concern about the system’s safety, but they were split over whether more officers were needed. Andrew Yang, Eric Adams, Kathryn Garcia, Shaun Donovan and Ray McGuire said they would expand the police presence in the system. Scott Stringer, Dianne Morales and Maya Wiley said they would not.On Friday Sarah Feinberg — who, as the New York City Transit Authority’s interim president, has consistently raised concerns about the system becoming a de facto shelter for homeless people — lashed out at Mayor Bill de Blasio over the attacks.“The mayor is risking New York’s recovery every time he lets these incidents go by without meaningful action,” Ms. Feinberg said in a statement.In a background note appended to Ms. Feinberg’s statement, the authority pointed out which of the mayoral candidates had expressed support for assigning more officers to the subway. Ms. Feinberg was appointed to the authority’s board by Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, who has frequently clashed with Mr. de Blasio, a fellow Democrat, on policies related to the transit system, and to the pandemic and its impact more broadly.Last week, Mr. Cuomo compared the current condition of the subway to what it was like in the 1970s, and he blamed city officials for failing to address the system’s problem.A spokesman for Mr. De Blasio, Bill Neidhardt, responded to Ms. Feinberg, saying that the city had diverted officers from desk duty to subway platforms and trains.“We’re going to keep putting massive resources into this fight to keep our subways safe,” Mr. Neidhardt said in a statement. “Meanwhile, the M.T.A. sends out statements that point fingers and talk about mayoral politics.”Danny Pearlstein, the policy and communications director for the Riders Alliance, a public transit advocacy group, said in a statement that the subway remained overwhelmingly safe, and he urged Mr. Cuomo not to spread fear about the state of the system.“The reality is that the governor’s fear-mongering may be scaring people away from public transit and making riders who need to travel less safe,” Mr. Pearlstein said in the statement.The victims of the dozen subway attacks this month include: a 60-year-old woman stabbed in the back; two men slashed in the face on separate days; a woman hit in the face with a skateboard; a man visiting from Ecuador attacked with a screwdriver; a transit worker punched in the face, and a subway conductor chased off a train by a razor-wielding man.Several of those episodes resulted in service being shut down, as did other incidents that did not involve attacks on people.On May 5, a man shouting incoherently about Covid-19 vaccines broke into an operator’s compartment on a train car and holed up there for 90 minutes, and hours later another man pulled the emergency brakes on a train, smashed the windows and fled. 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Can Biden Save Americans Like My Old Pal Mike?
Mike Stepp in McMinnville, Ore., in 2018.Credit…Lynsey AddarioSkip to contentSkip to site indexOpinionCan Biden Save Americans Like My Old Pal Mike?A childhood friend’s deadly mistakes prompt reflection on our country’s — and my own.Mike Stepp in McMinnville, Ore., in 2018.Credit…Lynsey AddarioSupported byContinue reading the main storyOpinion ColumnistFeb. 13, 2021, 2:30 p.m. ET More
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No More Playing Nice: 5 Highlights From the Mayor’s Race
#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }N.Y.C. Mayoral RaceWho’s Running?11 Candidates’ N.Y.C. MomentsA Look at the Race5 Takeaways From the DebateAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyNo More Playing Nice: 5 Highlights From the Mayor’s RaceThe candidates make stronger attacks against one another, as a Republican enters the race hoping to court Hispanic voters.Maya Wiley criticized Andrew Yang over his campaign’s use of nondisclosure agreements.Credit…Jose A. Alvarado Jr. for The New York TimesEmma G. Fitzsimmons, Luis Ferré-Sadurní, Katie Glueck, Jeffery C. Mays and Feb. 8, 2021, 3:00 a.m. ETWhen New Yorkers vote in the June mayoral primaries, they will get to pick up to five candidates, in ranked order of preference.No one knows exactly how the system, known as ranked-choice voting, might affect the outcome, but plenty of voters were still confused about how it worked when it was used in a special City Council election in Queens last week.The new approach to voting was expected to make candidates refrain from attacks, but the friendly sheen among them is starting to wear off. They are more directly criticizing one another at forums, seeking to highlight their differences.And a new Republican candidate joined the fray. Here are some key developments in the race:The candidates began to take the gloves offScott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, suggested that some of his rivals should exercise better judgment while campaigning during the pandemic.Credit…Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesThe conventional wisdom around ranked-choice voting is that candidates should avoid insulting their opponents for fear of alienating those opponents’ supporters. After all, voters’ second choices could be critical.But now, less than five months before Primary Day, several of the mayoral candidates appear to be making a more straightforward calculation: The time for sharper contrasts has arrived.Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, laced into Andrew Yang over his campaign’s use of nondisclosure agreements, which he said had been discontinued, and highlighted complaints about the culture on his presidential campaign. Shaun Donovan pointedly raised Raymond J. McGuire’s Wall Street background. Mr. McGuire shot back by calling Mr. Donovan “Shaun Obama,” a dig at the former federal housing secretary’s regular mentions that he worked under President Barack Obama. Scott M. Stringer issued barely veiled rebukes of Eric Adams and Mr. Yang over their in-person campaigning during the coronavirus pandemic.And at a candidate forum on homelessness, Dianne Morales contrasted her experience with Mr. Stringer’s, calling him out by name.“Unlike Scott, I’ve actually been talking to the people that are homeless for the last 15 years,” Ms. Morales said. “I’ve been doing the work.”In the scheme of American political discourse, these were, at most, mild exchanges. But they reflect a growing recognition that there is limited time to break out of the pack — and that candidates cannot count on anyone else to negatively define their chief rivals for them.On Sunday, though, advisers to two top candidates certainly tried: Aides to Mr. Yang and Mr. Stringer broke into a sharply personal Twitter exchange tied to the issue of support from the real estate industry.The first ranked-choice election confused votersIt was the debut that wasn’t.A little-known special election in Queens became the testing ground for New York City’s ranked-choice voting system last week, the first time the new system was used ahead of the mayoral primary.How would voters welcome the ability to rank up to five candidates instead of picking just one? Would the system, which could trigger multiple rounds of vote tabulations, be a stumbling block for the traditionally dysfunctional Board of Elections?In the end, however, one candidate, the former councilman James Gennaro, seemed poised to receive more than 50 percent of the vote, making him the likely winner in the City Council’s 24th District. Were he to receive less than 50 percent, the last-place candidate would be eliminated, and that candidate’s votes would be redistributed to the second choices listed on the ballots of voters who favored the eliminated candidate. The process would be repeated until one candidate reached a majority of the vote.Still, the election served as a dry run for a new voting method that will require significant public education.Some voters said they were unfamiliar with exactly how ranked-choice worked, despite being contacted by the campaigns or receiving mailers explaining it.“It didn’t really quite sink in, and I really liked one candidate, so I just voted for him,” said Kanan Roberts, 71, who voted for Mr. Gennaro. Other voters were more aware of its intricacies and appreciative of the ability to vote for several candidates.“If you want to take a risk on a candidate that you don’t know whether they have a realistic shot of winning, but they’re your candidate of choice, they don’t have to be a spoiler anymore under ranked-choice voting,” said Peter Sullivan, 39. “You can pick them first, then pick the safer, ‘electable’ candidates second and third.”Could the city’s first Hispanic mayor be a Republican?Fernando Mateo in December, before he shaved his head last week during his mayoral launch.Credit…Michael M. Santiago/Getty ImagesA key question in the mayor’s race is which Democratic candidate will win support from the city’s sizable Hispanic community. Ruben Diaz Jr., the Bronx borough president who is of Puerto Rican heritage, was viewed as a top contender before he dropped out of the race last year.But what if that candidate turned out to be a Republican?Fernando Mateo, who was born in the Dominican Republic, announced his mayoral campaign in an unusual video on Facebook last week where he shaved his head — a nod to new beginnings as New Yorkers look forward to the end of the pandemic.“I wanted to show my beauty,” he said in an interview. “I’m the cutest candidate in the race.”Mr. Mateo runs a restaurant, Zona de Cuba, in the Bronx and has led trade groups for livery drivers and bodega owners. He has been involved in politics for years but was also linked to a scandal over Mayor Bill de Blasio’s fund-raising.His campaign website boasts that he was once named “One of the Five Most Influential People in the Country” by The New York Times. That article, in 1994, reflected the results of a survey of senior executives shortly after Mr. Mateo had created a program to trade guns for toys.Mr. Mateo said he wants to to revisit bail reform, keep the jail on Rikers Island open and “re-fund the police” — instead of defunding the department. He distanced himself from former President Donald J. Trump and said he was embarrassed by the riot at the U.S. Capitol.“That’s not what the Republican Party is all about — that’s not what we’re about,” he said. “I’m an urban Republican. I believe in cities and immigration. I don’t believe in hatred.”There has been some debate over whether the city has already had a Hispanic mayor. John Purroy Mitchel, who was mayor from 1914 to 1917, was descended from Spanish nobility.A homeless expert on homelessness grills the candidatesShams DaBaron won praise for his aggressive questioning as a moderator at a mayoral forum on homelessness.Credit…Amr Alfiky/The New York TimesTen mayoral candidates took part in a Zoom forum on homelessness Thursday night, but the standout speaker was one of the moderators: a homeless man who goes by the name Shams DaBaron.Mr. DaBaron, 51, who emerged last fall as the self-appointed spokesman for homeless men battling to remain in the Lucerne Hotel on the Upper West Side over objections from neighbors, demonstrated a grasp of the issues that comes from having lived them.When the candidates were asked if they would disband the police unit that tries to move homeless people from street to shelter, one of them, Loree Sutton, said she would not, and that she would “team up police with peer-to-peer counselors.”Mr. DaBaron explained to her how “outreach” is practiced by the police. “Where they were telling me they were going to help me, and I submitted to the help, I ended up in handcuffs,” he said. “They brought me to a police station, made me take off my sneakers and threw me into a cell and then threatened to give me a ticket unless I entered the shelter system.”In response to a question about plans for the unsheltered people the city has placed in hotels during the pandemic, Shaun Donovan, a longtime government official, offered a mini-filibuster touting his college volunteering, his work with veterans under Mr. Obama and the importance of “reimagining the right to shelter as a right to housing.”Mr. DaBaron asked his co-moderator, Corinne Low of UWS Open Hearts, an organization that supports shelters on the Upper West Side, to pose the question to Mr. Donovan again, suggesting that the candidate had not really answered it.Mr. DaBaron, who tweets as Da Homeless Hero, garnered some raves on Twitter.One person praised him for “not letting any candidate talk about anything other than the content of the questions”; another suggested he might consider running for office.“@homeless_hero for mayor!” the user @SoBendito wrote.Maya Wiley chose Gracie Mansion over her own TV showTwo candidates had to abandon high-profile jobs as television pundits to run for mayor: Ms. Wiley, a legal analyst at MSNBC, and, Mr. Yang, a commentator at CNN.But for Ms. Wiley, the sacrifice might have been more substantial. Speaking to more than 170 women on a “Black Women for Maya” virtual event on Wednesday, Ms. Wiley said she had an opportunity to audition to replace Joy Reid’s weekend talk show “AM Joy” as Ms. Reid was being promoted to host her own prime-time show.Ms. Wiley, a civil rights lawyer, said that she “loved MSNBC” because “it felt like a family” and that she was proud of being a Black woman who was being paid to deliver legal analysis.After Ms. Reid “broke a Black glass ceiling” and received her own prime time show, “MSNBC knew one thing; They’d better put somebody Black in that seat, they knew it,” Ms. Wiley told the audience.She said that she decided not to take the network’s offer of an audition, because “as much joy and as big a paycheck as that MSNBC slot would have been, I knew we had so many treasures that could fill that seat.” She ultimately decided that “in this moment, to me, the greatest gift and privilege would be making people’s lives better.”Mr. Yang said he made a similar deliberation when deciding to leave his position at CNN.“I was very appreciative of my time at CNN. I made a lot of friends,” Mr. Yang said. “But I’m someone who is looking to help people at scale, and New York City is in a lot of pain right now. I’m more of a doer than an analyst.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
