@CedricH None of this is magic. Rent is the single biggest expense for most Americans, especially New Yorkers. By ratcheting down rental prices in one of the world's most expensive cities, you massively cut cost of living, which in turn gives regular people more money to spend on small businesses and nutritious food in the area. The main reason why New Yorkers perceive their cities as unsafe is that the subways are flooded with mentally-ill homeless people. Taking those struggling residents in, treating their conditions, and giving them a place to stay makes the urban environment a much more livable place.

I can personally attest to this, too. I've been on NYC's subway system. It's fast, it's efficient, and I didn't see anyone getting attacked or hurt. What I did see was human shit on the floor and creepy subway dwellers talking at me about the Jews and the Italians while I tried to look away. It's just uncomfortable, you should be able to ride the bus without being bothered by people with half the DSM-5 between their ears and nowhere to go.

@BlueVeins His proposals are based on flawed and magical thinking.
And we’ve seen the very same policies fail before in various Latin American countries and in Greece on a structural, national and systemic level, not just in one single mismanaged city.
Therefore, expecting actual positive outcomes will depend on your faith in magic.

@CedricH In Milwaukee, housing first policies led the city to have the lowest homelessness rate out of every city in the country. In Portugal, granting drug addiction treatment services to residents massively reduced its rate of drug deaths, to a point where it became the envy of the world. In New York City, rent control continues to save hardworking Americans thousands of dollars a year. The commodification of housing has turned cities like LA and Chicago into hives of homelessness, corruption, and crime with blisteringly high rents and not enough new construction to meet demand.

Citing Greece as an example of why rent controls can't work is comical. Greece failed because it is and always was a backwater of the EU that the Europeans thought they could infinitely lend to. It had inefficient public services, a massive overreliance on tourism, and very little tax revenue. New York City is an economic juggernaut that carries its entire region in terms of economic prosperity, and its tax base is nye unrivaled worldwide.

@CedricH


You know, if you'd just stop there, you might have said something respectable. But then, if you were capable of that level of self-awareness you never would've made your original post in the first place.

@ElwoodBlues And they were wrong.

@WestonTexan
And in both cases the reaction is absolutely warranted.

PS: I‘ve been to NYC before but you’re completely right, I‘d never wanna live in any of the boroughs except perhaps in Staten Island. I‘d be comfortable in Orange county, Westchester county, Nassau county or Long Island in general. And that’s exactly where many successful and productive New Yorkers will be increasingly drawn to in the near future.