REMARKS
Council Member Oswald Feliz advocates for City of Yes housing plan
0:48:09
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102 sec
Council Member Oswald Feliz delivers remarks in strong support of the City of Yes housing plan, emphasizing the urgent need to address New York City's housing crisis. He highlights the importance of making it easier to build housing and praises the plan's inclusion of homeownership opportunities.
- Feliz stresses the real effects of the housing crisis on New Yorkers, including cramped apartments and homelessness
- He commends Speaker Adams for her negotiation skills in developing the plan
- Feliz highlights $41 million for down payment assistance and the creation of new Mitchell Lama programs as key components of the plan
Oswald Feliz
0:48:09
Thank you, majority leader.
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For years years years, our city has been in a housing crisis, a housing crisis with real effect on New Yorkers, including cramped apartments, housing instability, and even worse, homelessness.
0:48:24
We can only resolve this housing crisis by making it easy to build, removing obstacles that get in the way and prevent new homes from being built.
0:48:31
And that's exactly what we are doing today.
0:48:34
Building housing should not be challenging, shouldn't be difficult, and we must think about every highly restrictive and overly complicated rule that gets in the way of us getting out of this housing crisis.
0:48:45
This city of Yaz is a great start.
0:48:47
It's not perfect, but it's a great start and it goes a long way.
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I proudly represent District 15 in the Bronx, which has proudly, built some of the largest amounts of affordable housing in the entire city.
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But as we all know, District 15 cannot resolve this housing crisis alone.
0:49:03
So encourage everybody to vote yes.
0:49:05
I wanna congratulate, all of my colleagues, including speaker Adams.
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As we all know, speaker Adams is a tough, principled, and effective negotiator.
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So congratulations, speaker Adams, and everybody else.
0:49:17
Also, before I conclude, I just want to emphasize how proud I am of the many homeownership opportunities included in this bill.
0:49:24
When New Yorkers move up the economic ladder, they want to own their own home.
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And if New York City does not offer those opportunities, we're gonna lose these New Yorkers to other nearby cities and states.
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We should wanna keep these New Yorkers, and and we need to invest in them.
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And that's exactly what we're doing today, including $41,000,000 for down payment assistance programs, creation of new Mitchell Lama programs, and many other initiatives.
0:49:47
So very proud, and I'm strongly encouraging everybody to vote yes on the city of yes.
