NY mayor de Blasio takes equality battle to the rich
New York’s new mayor Bill de Blasio wants to fight inequality in his new role and his plans include an income tax on wealthy New Yorkers.
Take a drive from Park Avenue in the heart of Manhattan to Park Avenue in the Bronx and you start to see why New York City’s new mayor talks about a tale of two cities.
In one corner of Manhattan’s Park Avenue, where it bisects around 70th Street, you will find some of the most expensive real estate in New York.
We were shown around a $7.3million apartment by one of New York’s biggest real estate brokers, he told me: “This is probably one of the most expensive corners in all of New York City. The building across the street… the limestone building, the last sale was about $37.
“The building across the street, the last sale was about $24m. Again, one apartment per floor. Those are about twice the size of these apartments. So this is probably the poor stepson compared to those buildings across the street. John Rockefeller have the top the three floors of that building. His apartment, if it were to go on the market now, would probably be $100m.”
Severe poverty
By contrast Park Avenue in the Bronx is pastiche of grim, hulking public housing projects, ringed on one side by the clattering metro trains.
The Bronx has become a bleak pocket of severe poverty, with high crime and high unemployment, where many rely on food handouts.
It has become an affordability crisis in the last decade. So I think the people of this city are ready for change
Mayor de Blasio
We caught up with Mayor de Blasio in Harlem, an area with a large underclass. Under his proposals, the mayor wants to raise the income tax rate on city residents making more than $500,000 by about half a per cent for five years.
That would raise $530m per year, $340m of which would annually go to fund universal pre-kindergarten education programme, known as pre K, and after school programmes.
I asked him about his efforts to try to bring more equality to the city and he told me; “It has become an affordability crisis in the last decade. So I think the people of this city are ready for change.
“They certainly think that asking the wealthy to pay a little more so we can have full-day Pre-K and after-school programs is fair. And as I said in my inauguration speech, ‘asking those who are doing very well to give us what is the equivalent of the cost of a small soy latte each day is not unfair, it’s actually something that’s an investment in our society and our future’.
He added; “I think that a lot of people who are wealthy understand that and support that.”
Read more: NY mayor de Blasio pledges radical change
In these parts of New York the mayor has plenty of support, and one man cheered as he stepped into his car, he told me the city would face real problems if they did not address the inequality gap.
“It will be the rotten apple instead of the big apple,” the 61-year-old Harlem resident said, “the rotten apple.”
Struggling for work
In one of the roughest part of the Bronx we visited a church where black and Hispanic residents come to get a free hot meal. Some bring their children, to make sure they too get fed.
We met Zoraida Recio, a mother of two who has a sick husband at home and a family to feed. Neither she nor her husband has work.
After devouring her hot meal, she hauled her shopping trolley into the yard behind the church, bracing herself against the driving snow and biting wind. In among a throng she filled her trolley with donated vegetables and fruit, before trekking through the deepening snow to her home nearby.
We went with her and entered a cramped ground floor apartment where a jumble of boxes and were stacked against the living room wall.
Her son, who was incongruously called Wellington, emerged and greeted us. He told me how he has been struggling to find work. From his perspective, the poorest New Yorkers feel trapped and stigmatised as they fight prejudice and contempt in an uphill battle to change their circumstances.
“New York is all about money,” he said, “If you don’t’ have money you’re dead.”
I asked him about what opportunities he has, he said: “My education don’t take me to get a good job. Cause like I only made it to 9th grade like I told you. I came from the yard when I was nine.
“By the time I clicked and was really learning I was 20. By the time I’m 24 I have understanding. Now I’m 27, I’m trying to go for something.” I’ve tried. I get up every day. Everything that revolves with a job is like; you can get it for a month or three and make some money, but then you’re back sitting at home for three months looking for something else.”
Manhattan’s boom
Over on the other side of town, the heart of Manhattan continues to be an irresistible magnet for the world’s super rich.
In New York the top 1 per cent have never had it so good. Even at a time of world downtown, America’s economic capital has been booming.
The lavish lives of the super-rich are increasingly detached from grinding poverty endured by the city’s underclass: out of sight, out of mind. But how to bridge that gap is the challenge Mr de Blasio faces. It will be an almighty task.
