Public Housing and Section 8 Households Under Attack by Trump’s HUD
In March 2026, the Trump Administration proposed two extreme rule changes with the goal of evicting thousands of public housing and Section 8 tenants.
2021 Voter Guide
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Carlos Menchaca (D)
carlos2021.com
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Small Buildings and Climate Change
New York City faces two existential crises: an out-of-control housing market, with prices entirely divorced from most New Yorkers’ economic capacities; and rising temperatures and tides from climate change, which are making parts of the city increasingly unlivable and are presenting dangers to New Yorkers everywhere.
Public Housing and Climate Change
New York City faces two existential crises: an out-of-control housing market, with prices entirely divorced from most New Yorkers’ economic capacities; and rising temperatures and tides from climate change, which are making parts of the city increasingly unlivable and are presenting dangers to New Yorkers everywhere.
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PrintCOVID-19
+1. Workers who have been hit hardest by pandemic-related job losses worked overwhelmingly in low-paid service industries such as restaurants, hotels, and other sectors requiring in-person interactions. These sectors have experienced widespread layoffs and business closures. How will your administration ensure that these workers can transition back to full-time employment?
Walking around our city, I have seen the traumatic effects of the pandemic in once-vibrant communities. Universally, New Yorkers feel left behind, while Wall Street executives and the top one percent have added to their bottom lines. I believe in New Yorkers’ resilience; I saw it firsthand as an organizer during the Hurricane Sandy recovery. The current economic situation, however, will require bold leadership and intervention to help families who are struggling to make ends meet. We have not given New Yorkers a way to pay for rent, utilities, food, and basic necessities. The next mayor must strengthen our city’s social safety net by creating new jobs, investing in green infrastructure and housing, and stimulating our local economies. Employing the municipal Green New Deal which will make sure our recovery is founded on good paying jobs.
We are currently waiting on a response to this question.
2. The pandemic has exposed the absence of an adequate social safety net for undocumented workers, app-based gig workers, and other New Yorkers in nonstandard work arrangements. These workers are ineligible for employer-provided health coverage, unemployment benefits, and emergency government relief. What is your position on providing more financial assistance and workplace protections to these workers?
The next mayor must commit to a municipal Green New Deal. Central to this plan are capital investments in green technologies which would stimulate our economy, create new jobs, and bring New York City into the 21st century. Additionally, this mayor must guarantee a universal basic income (UBI) for all New Yorkers that will help give families purchasing power and a necessary lifeline, based upon the successful model of unemployment and stimulus that we have recently seen and accepted as necessary during COVID. Economic recovery cannot happen without economic equity, and that includes our immigrant communities, our gig workers, and small businesses. As part of a municipal Green New Deal, we must support our community partners in the important work they do to strengthen city services.
We are currently waiting on a response to this question.
3. The pandemic and ensuing recession has destabilized the city’s low-income families, who were twice as likely as those with higher incomes to suffer permanent job loss related to COVID-19. The most vulnerable are children in households reeling from loss of income, food insecurity, and housing instability. What steps would you take to provide relief for low-income families struggling to survive as the city begins its economic recovery?
See above. The next mayor must commit to a municipal Green New Deal and guarantee a universal basic income (UBI) for all New Yorkers.
We are currently waiting on a response to this question.
Economic Equity
+1. According to a recent report from the New York State Comptroller, New York City is currently facing a $4 billion budget gap. How would you strengthen the city’s fiscal outlook while minimizing the impact of potential cuts in critical public services on low-income New Yorkers?
The municipal Green New Deal will grow jobs and strengthen the tax base.
We are currently waiting on a response to this question.
2. The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the devastating racial inequities that exist in our city – from healthcare access to housing discrimination to education resources. What will you do as mayor to address racial disparities in city policymaking?
There is no economic recovery without economic justice. Opportunities must be available to all New Yorkers.
We are currently waiting on a response to this question.
3. Student loan debt is impacting about one million New York City residents, and first-generation college students and communities of color are bearing the brunt of this debt. What role can New York City play in tackling student loan debt and how would you start to address these disparities?
The federal government needs to cancel student loan debt. As mayor I will be a strong advocate for student debt cancellation.
We are currently waiting on a response to this question.
4. More than 220,000 New Yorkers have enrolled in Fair Fares, a program that provides half-priced MetroCards to New Yorkers living at or below poverty. Yet the program was slashed by $65 million in the city's Fiscal Year 2021 budget. Most low-income New Yorkers continue to rely on public transit for their daily commute and jobless New Yorkers struggle to afford the fare as they attempt to return to the workforce. What is your position on ensuring adequate funding for the continued expansion of Fair Fares?
We need to have the funds for the program. I will work as mayor to make sure we can budget for this.
We are currently waiting on a response to this question.
Housing
+1. Under the de Blasio mayoralty, affordable housing has been a key priority, but the housing that has been produced has not met the needs of the bottom 40 percent of income earners. How would you re-align both the city’s affordable housing programs and its land use policies to promote deeper levels of affordability at a larger scale?
Housing is a human right, and we must treat it as such. Having grown up in public housing, I watched my mother struggle to make ends meet for me and my siblings. Just like mine was occasionally forced to, too many families in New York are choosing to pay the rent over their next meal, keeping the lights on, and buying a MetroCard: these are the difficult choices that can put a family, or an entire community, into a position that it will take years to recover from. Our current mayor’s approach to housing is flawed and must be overhauled.
Our leaders have spent their entire careers championing a housing and land use system that puts the burden on communities to speak out against displacement. Housing market speculation has overtaken New York as a competitive sport where the winners make the most money and the losers are first time home buyers and low-income renters. That time is over. We must structure housing policy as an investment in community. We cannot keep squeezing development through this flawed land use process. Developers have profited from it and will continue doing so if we follow the status quo. Investments in transportation, school seats, telecommunication and utility infrastructure must be part of the land use planning process.
We are currently waiting on a response to this question.
2. NYCHA and its 500,000 residents are an integral part of the city, and homelessness has reached record highs. Yet public housing and homelessness are often treated as afterthoughts or outliers in city planning discussions. How should the next mayor integrate preserving public housing and ending homelessness into their comprehensive affordable housing plan?
The next mayor must commit to fully funding public housing renewal and development, instead of turning to the private sector to increase housing supply for working families and the homeless. We cannot afford to fail to reform a system that ignores the most vulnerable. I know we can do better together, and our next mayor must do better.
We are currently waiting on a response to this question.
3. Despite new city investments in NYCHA public housing during the de Blasio administration, the data indicates these investments have not kept pace with worsening, accelerating deterioration of resident living conditions. What initiatives would you take to improve NYCHA living conditions and address its $40 billion capital backlog?
No RAD. Let's tax the rich.
We are currently waiting on a response to this question.
4. Decades of risky financial practices have left rental buildings overleveraged and vulnerable to foreclosures or debt buy-outs, with pandemic-related rent arrears adding to their financial distress. As a result, many landlords are having difficulty maintaining payments on their buildings. What would you do as mayor to prevent speculative investors from buying up these buildings and their debt, and to instead promote their preservation as permanently affordable forms of social housing?
More protections for tenants.
We are currently waiting on a response to this question.
Health Care
+1. Immigrants are disproportionately uninsured due to federal and state policies that limit eligibility and discourage access to health programs available to citizens and lawful residents. As mayor, what types of programs or policies would you champion to maximize enrollment of immigrants in quality insurance coverage that they can afford?
The Department of Health will be critical to the continued monitoring of the city’s public health recovery and to address perennial challenges. Too many New Yorkers are still vulnerable to diseases such as drug abuse, obesity, and asthma, which is especially grave among people who live in NYCHA housing and other low-income neighborhoods. As someone who grew up in public housing, this issue is personal for me. The department will have to coordinate with H+H to extend medical care and opportunities for preventative care to all New Yorkers. My plan as mayor is to build up our public health infrastructure to meet the need for health and mental health services. The Department of Health will also be important in coordinating with community partners who are essential agents across the city in disseminating public health information.
We are currently waiting on a response to this question.
2. In 2020, Manhattan had 6.4 hospital beds for every 1,000 residents, while Queens had only 1.5 hospital beds for every 1,000 residents. Similar disparities exist in the Bronx and Brooklyn. The COVID-19 pandemic is exposing the devastating toll these maldistributions have had on New York’s communities of color in the outer boroughs. What would you do as mayor to ensure that healthcare infrastructure is distributed equitably?
There is no issue that weighs as much on New Yorkers right now as healthcare. Amid this pandemic, access to quality care has been the dividing factor between those with the most and those with the least in our city. Millions of New Yorkers continue to go uninsured and underinsured. As the pandemic rages on, even more people lack adequate, culturally competent access to mental care. Our healthcare workers are underpaid, under resourced, and overworked. In order to guarantee dignity to all New Yorkers, to make sure our communities are healthier and safer, we must start by bridging the healthcare divide, destigmatizing mental health, and compensating the healthcare workers who keep our communities healthy and safe.
We are currently waiting on a response to this question.
3. Policy experts and advocates have long argued that New York City’s public Health and Hospitals system that serves hundreds of thousands of low-income uninsured patients annually is under-funded by the state lawmakers that control the allocation of billions of Indigent Care Pool and Medicaid dollars. Mayors typically have been unable to turn this situation around. What would you do to improve the financial stability of NYC Health + Hospitals?
The plain truth is that our mental health system has been chronically underfunded for decades. Moreover, the stigma around mental health is real and it is specially felt in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color. This coupled with the social and economic stresses of COVID demands that our city meets the moment to tackle mental health as part of our city’s recovery. Funding must go towards getting the hundreds of thousands of people who go undiagnosed or undertreated the appropriate care they need: insured, diagnosed, and treated. We have to tackle the crippling high turnover rate at our mental health institutions which also leads to significant vacancies. I propose that we increase the average hourly wage of a healthcare professional by 25 percent in my first year as mayor, followed by further 25 percent increases over the next two years.
We are currently waiting on a response to this question.
4. Over 6,000 New York City residents have been sued by New York’s non-profit charitable hospitals for medical bills, often at a 9 percent commercial interest rate. Hospital lawyers usually win these cases on default – most patients do not appear in court and none have lawyers. What would you do as mayor to protect patients and prevent non-profit hospitals from filing these lawsuits and other unfair and/or discriminatory hospital policies?
I support the NY Health Act. We must make healthcare universal.
We are currently waiting on a response to this question.
5. Black women in New York City are much more likely than white women to die from pregnancy-related causes. What would you do as mayor to address the maternal mortality crisis experienced by Black and Brown women in New York City?
Work with community partners to ensure culturally competent care.
We are currently waiting on a response to this question.
Criminal Justice
+1. Following a series of highly publicized police killings of civilians, police reform is on the nation’s agenda. Here in New York City we’ve been concerned over the NYPD’s troubling lack of accountability for officer misconduct, as well as general lack of transparency and apparent lack of real action concerning disciplinary issues. What would you do as mayor to hold officers accountable for misconduct, and how would you reform the NYPD to minimize that misconduct, if not eliminate it?
We must see crime exactly for what it is and what it means. We must depart from the old ways of management and policing which have failed us. We must move towards using good, reliable data, managing the performance of police officers by treating them with respect, listening to both employees and community members, working to solve problems and continuously seeking to improve public safety. We must renew confidence in our police department so that communities can feel safe and can work alongside our officers to tackle violent crime.
We are currently waiting on a response to this question.
2. The enduring consequences of a criminal conviction history can result in a “civil life sentence” that denies individuals access to jobs, housing, higher education, bank accounts, and credit. Given this reality, how would you work to ensure that fewer New Yorkers become entangled with the criminal justice system in the first place? In your answer please include any diversion programs you think should be introduced or expanded, particularly those that could obviate the need for arrest in certain circumstances.
As mayor, I will put an end to broken windows policing that has torn families and our city apart. We must address criminalization and over-policing of communities of color, as well as excessive force in otherwise harmless situations. Given that a vast percentage of public interactions with police involve minor offenses and harmless activities like sleeping in parks, possessing drugs, looking "suspicious" or having a mental health crisis, I will allocate funding to the city services that will address the issues of drug addiction, homelessness, workforce development, and mental illness directly. As mayor, the NYPD’s entire $8 billion budget will be under review for reallocation to the city agencies that will directly aid and heal our communities. That means investing in communities where we have seen an increase in gun violence, robbery, and abuse.
We are currently waiting on a response to this question.
3. Of the 13.3 percent of Americans currently looking for work, individuals with a criminal record will almost certainly be among those last hired once jobs do reappear. What are your thoughts on legislation that allows individuals to have their record expunged after a certain period of time?
I am open to this.
We are currently waiting on a response to this question.