New York Times magazine on a failed presidential candidacy: "How Bill de Blasio Went From Progressive Hope to Punching Bag"

Apt observation: "Even admirers remain confounded by how little he seems to participate in the life of the city—at once the perk and the obligation of its chief executive."

Re #affordablehousing policy, I'd add this #AtlanticYards @pacificparkbk anecdote: https://t.co/ZPR4e76UjE https://t.co/EbviN2D8Ph

— Norman Oder (@AYReport) August 6, 2019

Here's the article's limited summary of de Blasio's housing plan:

The mayor’s plan to create and preserve 300,000 affordable housing units by 2026 will inform how he is measured through the ages. But to induce developers, he has relied on the kind of “upzoning” that critics fear will worsen gentrification and displacement, as new structures often fill with many more market-rate units than inexpensive apartments.

The mayor, acknowledging concerns that lower-income families had been left behind, added nearly $2 billion to the plan in 2017 to subsidize units for those earning far less than the local median income. “There’s more affordable housing being built for a wider range of incomes than at any point in history,” Alicia Glen, who oversaw much of the program as deputy mayor, says. But demand for these homes far outstrips supply. “He could have carried the mantra of the progressive movement to a much higher place,” Jonathan Westin, the executive director of New York Communities for Change, an advocacy group with close ties to the mayor until shortly after his election, told me. “And on all things housing, he has completely failed. Utterly, entirely failed.”

Part of this, sure, could be blamed on the mayor, who considered but did not adopt a plan to emphasize the role of nonprofits and to hire as his housing chief an expert from that world, such as Ismene Speliotis.

To be fair, it's not just de Blasio's responsibility. The suburbs have to be part of the plan, and a set of equitable changes within the city, including property tax reform, is necessary.

(Comptroller and 2021 mayoral candidate Scott Stringer has proposed a "fundamental realignment" in the housing plan, with new transaction taxes. But even that's easier than making property taxes across the board--and disadvantaging homeowner-voters--more equitable.)

That said, de Blasio's disingenuousness doesn't help. And statements from Westin deserve a question mark, given that he once dubiously praised Atlantic Yards affordable housing, then stepped away.

A defense

And while many of the comments on the article are negative, here's a defense:

One only has to read the very first paragraph to understand why a Mayor who has accomplished significantly more in 6 years than his predecessor did in 12 years -- universal pre-k, the end of stop and frisk, historically low crime rates -- is tired of NYC. de Blasio is tired of a co-opted media that fawned embarrassingly over Bloomberg as the billionaire they wanted to make like them.