Brad Lander Interview Transcript

A transcript of The New York Editorial Board's Dec. 12 2024 interview with mayoral candidate Brad Lander.

Brad Lander, the current New York City Comptroller and a candidate in the June 2025 Democratic primary for Mayor, spoke with The New York Editorial Board on the morning of December 12, 2024. (photo by Juan Manuel Benítez)

Participating journalists: Juan Manuel Benítez, Nicole Gelinas, Josh Greenman, Alyssa Katz, Ben Max, Myles Miller, Harry Siegel, Ben Smith, Liena Zagare.

Full Transcript

Introductory Remarks

Brad Lander
Thank you, Ben [Smith], for pulling this together and to all of you for being part of it. I really appreciate it. I’m looking forward to it.

On the campaign trail, we are going to have a lot of pulls in particular directions. We’re going to talk to unions and neighborhood groups and issue groups, and their job is to pull us to their thing. What’s missing is a set of people who pull in the direction of the public interest. That’s what the Times Editorial Board represented. You would think in your mind, as a particular group is asking you for a commitment, “OK, what’s the public interest here and who cares about it?,” and that's the role that they played, and that is missing. And I am glad that you are putting something together that fills it. So thank you.

Like everybody at the table, I really love this city. I believe deeply in its future for my kids and all of yours and everybody else’s, and it is pretty straightforward that that future requires better leadership than we are getting. New Yorkers are fed up with government that is not delivering. You can see that a month ago in the federal election results, and you can see it in how people feel about Eric Adams, who, on the one hand, has betrayed our trust and now is seeking a pardon rather than focusing on the problems of New Yorkers, but who, even before that, was not delivering on the things that actually matter to people.

As I talk to New Yorkers, the things that really are on people’s minds right now fall in two main categories: the affordability crisis and the crushing cost of living, housing especially, but also child care and health care and education; and then safety and the sense of disorder in our neighborhoods and on our streets.

There are, of course, lots of other issues. I hope we’ll get some chance to talk about public education, transit, infrastructure, economic growth, arts, culture. But those two issues — affordability, and safety and disorder — are the ones that I hear about the most.

The first has been the focus of most of my career. From my time at the Fifth Avenue Committee, building and preserving thousands of units of affordable housing, to being the champion for the Gowanus rezoning, the biggest affordable housing rezoning in the city’s history, to the Comptroller’s Office, where I’ve invested in more affordable housing than any comptroller in history, including saving the 35,000 rent-stabilized units that were put at risk when Signature Bank failed. I will have a lot of proposals for how to address the housing affordability crisis and on other issues like child care as well.

On safety and disorder, I want to acknowledge that progressives, including myself, were slow to respond to the growing sense of disorder coming out of the pandemic — elevations of crime, the mental health crisis, and then a whole bunch of other quality-of-life issues, from mopeds, to illegal weed shops, to retail theft. And those issues are really critical. They’re, you know, the things people feel.

Those issues are on people’s minds every day. If you don't feel safe, nothing else matters. And also if you don’t see government delivering on those issues, there's no trust to focus on anything else.

That is why I’ve made the commitment to end street homelessness of severely mentally ill people the number one promise of my campaign. With mayoral attention, with a better coordinated continuum of care, with a housing-first approach that will work for most people, and with more secure facilities in the cases where it doesn’t, we can make dramatic progress on street homelessness of severely mentally ill people. We do not have to be a city where thousands of people who are mentally ill are sleeping on the streets and are sometimes — too often — a danger to themselves and to others. And we can talk more about the other issues in this category, of course, gun violence, policing, retail theft, mopeds — where I already put out a plan.

Look, I have always seen myself as a pragmatic, pro-growth progressive, and I think the evidence is pretty clear. What I like to do is bring people together, set ambitious goals and then take pragmatic and really data-driven steps to get things done. I brought participatory budgeting to New York, but paired that with a real focus on capital process reform to get projects built on time. That’s the Gowanus rezoning model, the biggest affordable housing rezoning in the last 20 years, but also the only one supported overwhelmingly by the community board, because we built it from the ground up. And you can see it delivering right now. That’s the Reckless Driver Accountability Act, a really data-driven solution that can save lives, that the Adams administration has let lapse and I put back in place. That’s legislation to help set minimum pay standards for deliveristas and Uber and Lyft drivers, stable schedules for fast food workers, protections against wage theft for freelancers, which literally has put billions of dollars in the pockets of hundreds of thousands of working New York families.

And every time people said the sky would fall. But we met with employers and did it pragmatically, so there are more fast food jobs than ever. You could get an Uber or your food delivered. It’s a great place to freelance.

The way we'll make growth, build a durable coalition for growth, is by enabling people to see themselves in it. That same pragmatic, pro-growth approach is what I've taken in the Comptroller’s Office. Pension funds are at record levels. Last year, our 10% returns beat CalPERS and CalSTRS and most of our peers. The returns over the last two years have saved taxpayers two and a half billion dollars, even while we’re leading the way on climate solutions and decarbonization, on affordable housing, and increasing management by MWBE [Minority- and/or Women-owned Business Enterprise] asset managers. And we’ve put forward more audits, reports, dashboards focused on how you make government run better and get every possible cent of value out of taxpayer dollars.

That's what I've done in the Comptroller’s Office. That's what we need at City Hall. What New Yorkers want is a safer, more affordable, and more livable city. What you guys know is the only way to do that is by having a better-run city, and that's what I'm focused on. That’s why I brought you guys this very detailed plan.

Ben Smith
Yes, which we really appreciate, but we are not going to ask you that much about.

Brad Lander
Which, I know we’re not going to talk about today. But if you think less corrupt, more honest government, more effective government, with civil service reform and tech to solve policy solutions, and modernizing the fiscal framework 50 years after the fiscal crisis are a good idea, I would be delighted to work with any of you on pieces of that.

Ben Smith
I think Nicole is going to kick us off.

Public Safety / Serious Mental Illness / Policing

Nicole Gelinas
Thank you, comptroller. So you talked about the issue of mental illness and the nexus of disorder and you talked about the [Daniel] Penny case this week. What would you do in the specific case of someone like Mr. Neely, who was getting significant amounts of help from New York City government, and who walked away from a residential treatment facility that he was supposed to go into that facility as part of his bargain for a series of assaults on a woman? There was a warrant for his arrest at the time he died on the train. Would you have specifically prevented him from walking away, do you think he should have been arrested once he walked away? In other words, how do you get people help when they don’t know that they need help, when they don’t want help, without coercing them?

Brad Lander
Thank you for the question, and thank you for the stuff you've been writing on this, like both Times pieces. After your piece on the SCOUT [Subway Co-Response Outreach Team] program, I reached out to [MTA chair] Janno [Lieber] and said, can I go do a SCOUT visit, and can I get that data? And the more recent articles on what happens when you focus the system on leniency are really helpful.

We looked at this a lot. We did an audit of the Intensive Mobile Treatment program. We focused in that instance on the case of this guy, Rashid Brimmage. Very similar — like 92 arrests, in and out of hospitals, in and out of jail. And when the Times reporter spotted him, he was on the subway with his hospital bracelet still on his wrist. So it’s systemic breakdown.

I will get to Daniel Penny, but I want to say first, what I think is required to make this work is one, mayoral attention. It’s a discoordinated system, and unless [the Department of] Correction and H+H [NYC Health + Hospitals] and [the Department of] Homeless Services know that the mayor is focused on it, knows who these individuals are, and wants every week to see what progress looks like, nothing is going to improve. You need a more coordinated continuum of care.

The data shows that a “housing first” approach works 70% to 90% of the time, which means it doesn't work 10% to 30% of the time, and those are serious cases. But taking it here, like they have in Denver and Salt Lake and Houston would mean a 70-90% reduction in the number of homeless, mentally ill folks on the street, who in most cases, a stable apartment and services does actually work for them. If you can get on the subway, not worrying about whether that person is [Jordan Neely] or Rashid Brimmage, because they are stably housed, that’ll be a lot more happy New Yorkers and a lot more stable people.

For the 10% to 30% of the times it doesn’t work, more secure options are needed. First, that is building a secure detention facility. Beds at H+H, the 300 of which were supposed to be already delivered, in which the Adams administration delayed by two years, those are folks who have been, who are in DOC custody, so are in detention. But we need that.

And then we do need some more secure options. There’s this thing, AOT, Assisted Outpatient Treatment, that people can be mandated to, but the “O” is for outpatient, so if they’re homeless but mandated outpatient treatment, it works pretty badly. And I think having some more mandated and secure facilities, which are inpatient, is one piece of the continuum of care I would like to — as you heard me in talking about it, I would like to focus on the Housing First elements that could get most of those folks in stable housing and services in a way that works for them and for everyone else — at the same time, we need more secure beds, and that's got to be part of the system we built.

Josh Greenman
Which crimes have gone up the most since the pandemic, violent crimes, particularly? And what's your policing strategy and other strategies to bend those curves in the near term?

Brad Lander
Yeah. I mean, obviously, there was a huge rise in the first year of the pandemic, and then in some cases quite modest declines, but still with numbers about 30% above pre-pandemic levels. Shootings up a lot, obviously, theft, you know, retail theft, also up a lot. Murders and gun violence below where they were last year, but still way up from where they were before the pandemic.

Josh Greenman
Do you know which violent crimes have seen the biggest increases over the last couple of years?

Brad Lander
I mean, from pre-pandemic levels in general, the violent and serious crimes are up about 30%. Murders came down from last year to this year a little bit, but I think are still about 30% above the pre-pandemic levels and shootings overall up a lot.

And that’s a place, I mean, I was talking to [Brooklyn District Attorney] Eric Gonzalez about what he’s trying to do is focus on investigating every shooting with the level that they bring to homicides. Shootings where there is a victim, with the idea that they haven’t been getting nearly as much attention. Clearance rates on murders are decent in New York, but clearance rates on shootings are still quite low. And when they are able to get the cops to focus on those things in partnership with them, they can quite often track that back to whoever shot the gun and then actually do something about it. That is not always easy. They have seen a rise in young people being the shooters, which presents a real set of challenges for how you address that issue.

But I think mostly this is a police management issue. When you've got a department led by someone who’s running a protection racket with his brother, that does not help you get focused on the areas where you need to have real accountability. And I've been talking to folks like Ken Corey, who’s running the Policing Leadership Academy at the University of Chicago Crime Lab. They have a much more disciplined model for how you are, both training people to be good managers at the precinct level and using the data to drive better outcomes. And that is what works in policing.

Josh Greenman
Felony assaults have gone up a lot. Shootings and murders, not so much of late. And it's a pretty steep curve and it's a lot of crimes. Do you have any particular answer to how the police ought to confront felony assault rising so steeply?

Brad Lander
I think it’s the same strategy. It’s like you’re using data in partnership at the precinct level to see where things are, to be working with the district attorneys and to be coming up with the solutions on investigating each individual crime and trying to clear them so that you can actually get those folks off the street. That’s the model. I guess I've been focused more on shootings than on felony assault so far, and thinking about what the strategy actually is. There was that Gothamist article that showed that, you know, 4% of the city’s 120,000 blocks account for essentially all of the shootings of the last decade. Those are the same blocks on which we're spending for community-based violence interruption, but with really no approach to outcomes. Like, what are we getting? What's coming down? Is there dialogue between those groups and the precincts in the places where you've got the most shootings? That’s an outcomes-based management approach to focusing on confronting the problems. I think the same would work on the felony assaults.

Myles Miller
If you're talking with Ken Corey, are you worried about the biases he brings to the policing conversation, given he was a [Keechant] Sewell person who was then pushed out by Adams and so has had sort of an axe to grind, sort of mentality towards the Caban era of NYPD?

Brad Lander
I think the problems with the Caban era of the NYPD are not an issue of peoples’ biases or perceptions. That was an era of corrupt leadership that was bad for cops themselves, as well as New Yorkers. When you don't have accountability at the top, you can't build — the relationship between New Yorkers and their cops at the moment is pretty badly broken. That comes partly from June 2020, but it was badly exacerbated by corrupt leadership. So you need a reset. I have a long and good working relationship with [Police Commissioner] Jessie Tisch, and I hope she can do that now. But what's going to be critical for the next mayor is somebody who's got both a track record and a real ability to take a good management approach that helps train police leaders at the precinct and departmental levels, uses data to hold folks accountable, works with the community-based organizations.

Ben Smith
Would you consider keeping Tisch as police commissioner?

Brad Lander
It’s way too soon to talk about individuals. I have a good working relationship with Jessie Tisch. I respect her. I worked with her when she was at the department before. I love that she basically ran a political campaign to become the sanitation commissioner. So, I think highly of her, and I hope she does well.

Ben Max
You don’t know that Edward Caban is corrupt —

Brad Lander
Those are allegations. It’s true. I don't know —

Ben Max
I mean, his phone might have been seized because his brother was doing something he shouldn't have been doing, but you don't know more than that. You don’t know more than we know.

Brad Lander
What I’m speaking to here is the damage done by a perception of corrupt leadership to the department, and I include [Philip] Banks and [Tim] Pearson and Caban in that. And no, I mean, I’m not on the juries. I don’t have the evidence. But the damage is done when it looks like the leadership is not accountable…is involved with people who are committing crimes themselves. Is not focused on what the problems are…is not honest about the data in the way that Nicole’s recent piece spoke to. It is bad.

Josh Greenman
You just said you’re not on the juries. Is it fair for people who are not on juries to question, related to the Penny trial, to question the outcome of those trials?

Brad Lander
Well, you respect the outcome of them, but you can still give your opinion. I mean that jury has — that's our process — the jury made the decision they made, and I respect the decision they made. I disagree with it. I don’t think we can be a city in which vigilantism is encouraged. That doesn’t mean I don’t feel the anger people have. People want a safer city. They are frustrated with what’s going on on the subways. That’s why I’m making this issue number one. But what they want is for it not to happen, like, that's the job of the mayor. To do more to make it not happen, not to be the one who does the charging or the decision-making on outcomes.

Harry Siegel
How would your NYPD handle political protests differently? In particular, ones in support of Palestine or against the police?

Brad Lander
On the one hand, free speech is a treasured right in America and in New York City, and you want to make room for nonviolent protest. And on the other hand, when people violate the law or break the rules there, you know that there has to be enforcement. I have engaged in civil disobedience at some points in the past, and I knew I would be arrested for engaging in civil disobedience. And you know, at the same time, you want to make room for nonviolent and peaceful protest. There's plenty of evidence that you can do that well.

Harry Siegel
Well, you talked about trust getting broken in 2020 there’s been a lot happening with this administration, with how it's policing. Is there anything you want to see handled differently?

Brad Lander
Oh, a lot of things. I mean, look, and some of this is how you use resources. Like overtime is at an insanely high level, right? It's gonna be a billion dollars this year. You know, some of that is on, like, planned events, like parades where you don’t need overtime. Some of that is people who are closest to the commissioner and senior leaders. So I would rather be spending that money on actually investigating those shootings or those felony assaults so we could solve crimes and prevent them, that’s job one.

Nicole Gelinas
Do you think we need more police? I mean a lot of this overtime is because people want police in the subway and to make that happen we need officers working overtime.

Brad Lander
I think a lot of the overtime that we've spent — all that overtime from people who are close to the senior leadership, is not about a demand for more staff. A lot of people who are in the last years of their — just before retirement. So I think we need to fill the slots that —

Nicole Gelinas
That’s a pension reform issue.

Brad Lander
I don’t disagree, but that’s where a lot of the overtime hours are, that’s where a lot of the overtime hours are. We need to fill the slots we have. So I support the new academies to fill the slots we have. We have had a hard time retaining officers and even keeping the level of headcount that we’ve got, and that is what I would focus on.

Migrants

Juan Manuel Benítez
The incoming border czar is meeting with Mayor Adams today. You said in the past that the migrant influx was good for the city. Now there are talks about the mayor —

Brad Lander
I don’t think I said it was good for the city. I said I think immigration broadly in our history is like what has made New York City, but it was managed extremely badly by Eric Adams.

Juan Manuel Benítez
By Eric Adams, or the Biden administration?

Brad Lander
New York City’s issues, by Eric Adams. Like, taking all these no-bid emergency contracts with folks who had no history of providing shelter services for asylum seekers and asking for absolutely no outcomes in helping people get work authorizations, jobs, and move out of shelter into stable housing. And then putting 4,000 people on Hall Street. All of that is on Eric Adams.

Juan Manuel Benítez
So right now, the city will cooperate with ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] when an immigrant, undocumented immigrant, has committed a violent or been convicted of a violent crime. But Mayor Adams would like for that to change, to include also undocumented immigrants to be charged with a crime. Do you think we need to change or relax some of those rules, and how are you going to cooperate with the Trump administration when it comes to immigration, on any other issue that Trump wants to work on here in New York City?

Brad Lander
Yeah, I think the first thing you said is really important for New Yorkers to know: the laws we have already provide for cooperation when someone has been convicted of a serious or violent crime. And of course, that should be the rule. We shouldn't abridge due process rights. Eric Adams himself, facing charges, should know that due process rights are important, and the fact that you were charged with something doesn't necessarily mean you did it. So there is good room for cooperation where someone has been convicted of a serious or violent crime, and that is the right place for cooperation. In other cases, I think it is pretty clear that Trump intends to send a deportation force into city shelters where you're talking about families and moms and kids who have not committed serious or violent offenses. And I want to keep this a city where crimes are prosecuted and immigrants are welcome.

Juan Manuel Benítez
So how are you going to stop that? If the president sends ICE agents into New York City, how are you going to deal with that?

Brad Lander
So obviously some of that is going to happen with Eric Adams as mayor, and I'm very worried about it, because he is quite — to me, it sure looks like he is more focused on seeking his own pardon than he is on solving the problems of New Yorkers. I would enforce the laws as we have them. ICE agents shouldn't come into our schools or our shelters. They should be able to coordinate to seek detainers and coordinate where people have committed serious or violent crime.

Josh Greenman
Only after conviction? What if they’re arrested, have a long rap sheet, no conviction?

Brad Lander
If they’re arrested with a long rap sheet and no conviction, and in jail awaiting a trial, they should have their trials.

Juan Manuel Benítez
For the record, you did say, I think it was an NYCLU podcast, that the new migrants were good for the city — is it that you're having second thoughts now about this new wave of asylum seekers in the last two years?

Brad Lander
Look, there are many people who have come to the city in the last two years who are good for New York City. We created this program to provide childcare for families who are here. In the last two years, I've gotten to meet a bunch of those families and they are working hard. I was at New Jewish Home, which is a senior assisted-living facility. They're desperate for employees. They have some folks that have come, that they've been able to help get jobs. So there are lots of people contributing to the vitality of the city in ways that people have — I want to keep that going. But I think the administration by failing to focus on helping people apply for asylum, get work authorization, get some workforce development, and get placed in jobs have made it much, much worse than it should have been.

Juan Manuel Benítez
Many immigrants who’ve been in the city for a long time, they feel that the new wave has been treated so much better, and they're upset. That the new wave of migrants are getting free shelter. They're getting all kinds of services. A lot of immigrants in the city, many of them Hispanic and some of them have been here for a long time now, they are citizens and they voted for Donald Trump this past election. Can you understand why they are upset? Do you think that they were treated fairly or that they were treated too good, the ones coming in?

Brad Lander
Well first, I think what people are pissed off about is that they can’t afford housing. They don't imagine they’ll be able to buy something in this city. And all the disorder issues that we've talked about. Like people are pissed off because their lives are precarious. And the cost of living is high and the quality of living is not as good as we want it. That's what I believe. Like that is what the core thing at the root of people’s anger is. And then it could get directed in a lot of different places, and Donald Trump in particular, is a master at deflecting people's sense of precarity and and scapegoating.

Now I share people’s anger at the way that the situation has been mismanaged. The DocGo contract that we audited is $432 million on a no-bid emergency contract to a for-profit company with no track record of providing shelter or services and no outcome. So what I think people would like to see is these folks get their work authorization, they're moving into jobs, they're moving into stable housing, they're out of shelter. And then you could have a different narrative that was: That’s what New York is, is a place that turns people who come here fleeing war and poverty and violence into hard-working New Yorkers who are taking care of our kids and our elders and building buildings and working in restaurants, and that's what we should be doing. And the mayor failed to do that, and people are pissed off about it.

Nicole Gelinas
You mentioned DocGo, do you think that the MoCaFi debit cards were a good idea?

Brad Lander
DocGo we rejected from the beginning and audited. For MoCaFi, we gave prior approval on the idea that it would save money. That we could spend less money on food in that way than on the contracts. It never got really rigorously evaluated to figure it out. It would have been better to bid out. If the idea was going to be, “let's use debit cards and see whether we can save money on food.”With so many of these things, – we said this over and over and over again — even if you're using emergency procurement, you can still bid. So yes, I mean, they should have bid out the shelter operations with outcomes. In addition to providing overnight shelter and food, we're going to be asking whether you help people get their work authorizations, get jobs and get moved out of shelter. And on this program it should have been, we want to test what the cost is. What food are people buying? Are we saving money on food and shelters? That would have been a good idea. It should have been bid. None of it got rigorously evaluated, so we really don't know if it saved money.

Ben Max
Even with better intake processes. Eric Adams — the city was receiving a huge influx of people — he was asking for federal help. It wasn't coming. What would you have done differently to get more federal help? He first did it nicely before he got frustrated. How would you have gotten more federal help? The Biden administration didn't seem to want to hear it.

Brad Lander
I think he was right about, the federal government should have provided resources. This is a thing you understand why Texas and border communities are frustrated with. For the federal government to allow in so many folks who are undocumented and provide essentially no resources to the communities receiving them was terrible.

So there’s a question about border policy, which is not a local one. But it is the federal government’s responsibility to meet people's rights to seek asylum. And they should have had a program like they did for Ukrainians and Afghans to provide the resources to communities, not just for shelter, but for some program that helps people actually get the legal services so you could file your asylum application or TPS [Temporary Protected Status] if you’re eligible, and then get some workforce development and job placement. So yes, all of that should be funded federally, and I share the frustration that it wasn't.

At the same time, it still would have been better if seeing that it wasn’t coming, that was the approach New York City had taken. We would have saved money already if we had said, “Okay, it's got to be pro bono legal assistance.”We're going to be able to afford to give everybody a lawyer for it. They did a little piece of this at the Asylum Application Help Center after we agitated for it. And several thousand people were able to file their asylum papers, and then were eligible six months later for work authorization, except that then they got evicted from shelter in 30 or 60 days, and lost their mail. The city lost track of them and wasn’t able to implement a more effective system for helping say, “Okay, now you're six months on from having filed you can get your work authorization, and here are a set of jobs that we can help you into.”

Is it fair that the city would have needed to spend city taxpayer dollars where federal dollars should have been sent? It’s not fair, but it still would have been wise.

Housing

Alyssa Katz
You’re talking about housing affordability as a priority issue, I don't think any mayoral candidate is going to differ with you on that. I have a two part question, both related to supply. One is I think we’ve seen with de Blasio and Adams have really, I think, maxed out on the levers that they directly control. Zoning being one of them, capital funding, capital investments, right? And that’s been the playbook with a little bit of action in Albany, but on the margins. The first part of the question is just, what are you going to do to build on those, including what you were going to do in Albany. And related to that, I think there’s a lot of skepticism about adding to supply as being part of the solution. Some of that is coming from folks who are just skeptical, having seen transformations of neighborhoods like Williamsburg and displacement related to that. But I think it also relates to things we’re seeing now, especially post-COVID, where we see, for example, people keeping an apartment here, maybe having one somewhere else, people have been hoarding housing in some ways, or using it part-time. So I think the skepticism is more warranted, perhaps, than it was in the past. Simply adding supply may not put it in the hands of working people. But how would you make sure that people who don't have huge amounts of money have access to housing?

Brad Lander
First, I really do think, Gowanus for me is the model. I want to scale what I did there. I don’t know how many of you are buying. We got a lot of Brooklynites around the table. It’s amazing what’s going up there. We thought it would be 8,000 units over 10 years. It’s probably 8,000 units already. 3,000 of them genuinely and deeply affordable, the low-income and working-class families. And we made it so that also, the 1,500 families in the Gowanus and Wyckoff Houses are getting a modernization of their development as well.

We were able to build a durable coalition for growth, not because we said to people, “you must believe in supply as the strategy for housing affordability.” I believe that we need more supply as a strategy for housing affordability. We did in Gowanus, instead of a kind of a lecture on, “there must be more housing supply,” “what would growth look like that you saw yourself in and were excited about?” That’s why, you know, we worked with those public housing tenants on improving their homes and all the artists who feared getting displaced. And there’s artists studios in the new buildings that are going up, and there's some preservation of industrial spaces. The Brooklyn Granary, everyone’s going to be getting their bread from the Brooklyn Granary that’s going at 300 Huntington.

We facilitated a big new housing development, but also made it possible to keep manufacturing, industrial and some construction businesses.

Josh Greenman
So how do you scale it up?

Brad Lander
Yeah, so that took some work. We built that vision: biggest affordable housing rezoning, but overwhelming supported by the community board. One example that I think could help drive much more belief in the value of supply and growth is a focus on affordable homeownership. A kind of the modern version, which everyone is always talking about, but that you could actually deliver on, for what a 21st-century Mitchell-Lama–type model would be. This will involve Albany and New York City, and it'll involve more density and some subsidy. Because you could take outer-borough neighborhoods that are currently low-rise and have a strip like Coney Island Avenue where there’s a lot of low-rise commercial and say, there’s going to be much more density here. You've got a low-rise neighborhood, and there’s going to be the kinds of buildings going up in Gowanus. But a big chunk of that is going to be affordable, multi-family co-ops, with restricted sales prices, but some opportunity for appreciation, but they stay affordable, that makes some ownership possible for the next generation of working- and middle-class New Yorkers.

My idea is to say, we’ve got that model. OK? It’s a rezoning that involves some more density, that a big chunk of it will be affordable, co-op, home-ownership. A mix of density and subsidy.

We’re going to start in the first five neighborhoods where community boards vote they would like to commence a rezoning like that. And then still work with you on working out the details of that rezoning. And I really believe we'll get five community boards who say, “we want to start that.” And now it’s not City Hall who pointed at your neighborhood on a map, or a developer who proposed it, but an idea for what growth looks like.

So I do think there’s more to do on neighborhood-based rezoning that centers affordable homeownership and the kinds of things that people think will support their growing neighborhoods. Look, I supported “City of Yes.” There is more to do on supply overall. There’s a bunch of models like more shared housing, things where people would have five or six bedrooms and a common kitchen, the kinds of things that college students are looking for after they graduate. So there’s a lot to do on overall supply. There’s a lot to do on those kinds of neighborhood rezoning where people could see themselves in growth. You’re right. People are skeptical, which is why building a more durable long-term coalition for growth has to be a big part of the strategy.

Alyssa Katz
And what about the property tax code? That's something Albany controls that has a huge bearing on cost of living, with rental housing taxed more than anything else. How would you —

Brad Lander
I’ve laid out a plan for this, and I have committed to go to Albany with legislation in the first year of my administration on it. This is what I called for. So it builds on the proposal that came out of the task force that [former City Council Speaker] Corey Johnson and de Blasio set up that announced its results on the third to last day of that administration, which mostly is a uniform assessment. It's roughly 1%, every property should be taxed at the same percentage of its value, and that means not trying to tax rentals based on comparable sales, but on their value.

So we go into a lot of detail on what that would look like. And yes, it would reduce the tax rate forward-going on new multi-family rentals by about a third, without subsidy. Big problem right now is if you own a piece of ground and you’re thinking about building, the tax rate if you do it as condos is a third less than the tax rate you do it as rentals. That does need to be solved. In addition to the homeowner inequities between my neighborhood and Staten Island and the Northeast Bronx, which is patently unfair and should be corrected.

Josh Greenman
Super quick follow, have you eschewed real estate donations? Why would you single out an industry like that? And what's the logic of it, with arguably different industries in New York City with disproportionate influence?

Brad Lander
Well that’s not the only one. So I don’t take money from real estate developers, from private equity or investment firms who are the kind that do business with pension funds and with the city, from fossil fuel executives or from lobbyists. In all those cases, I go further than what is required by the New York City campaign finance and pay-to-play laws. None of that is casting aspersions on individuals. There are a lot of individuals who are my friends in all of those professions.

It is my experience that in some cases, when those folks are giving, some of them are doing it with something in mind, or people believe they're doing it with something in mind. If you want people to believe what you are fighting for is the public interest, then you show it in how you run your campaign. We’ve got a great system that does matching funds. You can do it by raising money from New Yorkers who don't have a particular interest in giving.

Nicole Gelinas
You have talked about supportive housing in relation to crime and disorder. New York is a magnet for troubled people. Is there an upper limit to the amount of supportive housing we can build? And also neighborhoods that have a lot of supportive housing, there have been many serious crimes in the past few years by people living in that housing, the stabbing of the tourist in Times Square. How would you ameliorate the disorder that stems from not enforcing the law around that housing?

Brad Lander
In the cases that I have seen where it works well, you have good supportive housing operators, who have a community advisory board, who have close relationships with the local precincts and community groups. You have to focus on and care about that and make sure it actually is working. You know, I supported these two shelters around the corner from my house. A lot of my neighbors, when I was in the Council, were not happy about it. What I was able to say is like, this is a good operator, it’s Win NYC who operates them. I will make sure, in that case as a Council member, that there's a real community advisory board that brings the precinct and the local organizations and the operators together.

And fortunately, I’m gonna literally live around the corner from 250 shelter units, and I can say that they have been well operated. And in the couple instances where there’s been an issue, the community is able to get the response it needs. Everybody deserves that, whatever neighborhood you’re in, or whatever its income or race. You got to be able to have this to just get back to having a well-run city.

Nicole Gelinas
Is there a limit on how many [supportive housing] units we can build? It seems there’s unlimited demand.

Brad Lander
I don’t think there’s unlimited demand. The housing crisis is very large, and building the number of units that we broadly need to ease housing affordability for the many New Yorkers who are rent-burdened, that is a large problem. It needs a large solution. Severely mentally ill homeless people is probably not more than 5,000, probably lower than that. And solving that, we could make enormous progress with the vouchers and the resources that we already —

Ben Smith
We have 15 minutes for three more questions.

Education

Liena Zagare
Not only is it hard for people with children to find housing, schools are a big issue. Do you think that schools are running as well as they could and if not what is the main reason that is holding them back? Is it funding, we’re spending as much as a private school on our children’s education. Is it instructional quality? What is it and what would you do?

Brad Lander
The schools are not performing as well as they could. There are some great ones, but there are not enough great ones and people can’t count on getting one. In a similar way, honestly, to the way the relationship between cops and New Yorkers was damaged by the pandemic, the relationship between teachers and New Yorkers was damaged by the pandemic. It was like a gut punch to schools. We do not have a good post-pandemic vision for what our schools will look like and how we kind of reset with them.

There are a few things that we know work. Pre-K is one of them, getting 3-K so that it is there for every three-year-old — important. And I think all the mayoral candidates are on board for an expansion of afterschool. My son works at the DREAM Academy, a network of charter schools in East Harlem and the Bronx, where they have extended school days. They do after-school and summer. It means they can do sports and arts and social-emotional learning and financial literacy. It's not just childcare. It really is making a difference in these kids’ lives.

What I have seen work at the school level, because there’s a lot of different ways for schools to succeed. There’s some that focus on expeditionary learning, and there’s some that focus on sports and arts, and there’s some that really focus on a more disciplined method like three Rs. What you need are really good principals with a clear vision for the school, that are aligned with their teachers, that can hire them, teachers who have some time to focus on which — that have some data — focus on which kids are succeeding and not succeeding. Have some extra supports for those kids and where people are paying attention to those things —

Josh Greenman
Would you keep the reading curriculum overhaul?

Brad Lander
The reading curriculum I would keep. I mean, I do think one thing that I agree with the Adams administration on is the focus on phonetic awareness and phonics education. There were too many kids slipping through the cracks when that was diminished. You can integrate that into a lot of different reading curricula. So I think there is room for some more flexibility, where folks are showing that they’ve got real results and are doing phonics education but still have books on the shelves. But yes, broadly, I think the reading adjustment is a good one.

Alyssa Katz
How do you work with the UFT [United Federation of Teachers] to reach some of those objectives that you’re talking about? Because you're talking about changing up how they’re teaching.

Brad Lander
That’s part of why you need somebody who brings people together. Who, on the one hand, works with labor, but on the other hand, is willing to stand up and say, these are some changes we're going to have to make on afterschool. You know, it'd probably be a different model, but I like the DREAM Academy where it's the same teaching staff working the whole day. Probably that will not be able to be the case in the larger number of New York City public schools, so it’s going to have to be human service and nonprofit organizations who run the afterschool programs.

But there are good community schools models where the nonprofit and the principal — where the principal actually had a hand in choosing who was running the afterschool so they can make a more aligned approach. The expeditionary learning model is a really good one that they have at the Brooklyn New School and the Brooklyn Children’s School.

Liena Zagare
It is all expensive. With the student numbers declining, projected to be declining, how are you proposing to fund it — are you closing schools? How are you optimizing?

Brad Lander
At one level it is a management issue. You need a mayor focused on it, with a chancellor who's got a track record and the kinds of supers and principals that are focused on getting value for the resources that we have. But yes, we did a case study on the merger of Arts and Letters and Brooklyn PS 305, that showed that it saves money, reduced class size, and has way better outcomes.

So I think the small schools, especially that got created in the Bloomberg administration, as they’ve lost enrollment, are too small to have all the things a school needs. Once you get below 400 kids in an elementary school, it is really hard to operate, so there will need to be some mergers. That can be a benefit for class size improvements and for finding good leaders to lead those schools. It's not easy to do, but we're going to have to —

Liena Zagare
How would you go about convincing the parents not to send their kids to say, charter schools or parochial or private schools?

Brad Lander
By making the neighborhood public schools as strong as they can be. I’m not interested in persuading people not to send their kids somewhere else. Like I said, Marek is working at this great DREAM Academy. It is a great place for people to send their kids. I want to use what's working there, like having a good afterschool program and a good summer program, and they provide post graduation, college and career support. Let’s take what’s working and put it in more of the public schools and make that a compelling case. Josh and I were talking —

Josh Greenman
Would you say the same about Success Academy? Is there stuff we can learn from Success Academy to improve the public schools?

Brad Lander
I think it would be a good moment to take that step back and learn and reflect. The idea of charter schools was to produce innovations and lessons that could be applied more broadly.

I’ll give one. I did visit Success Cobble Hill. The thing that they were doing that I thought was great was they had focused on teaching students to edit and give feedback on each other’s work. So you’ve got classes that have differential levels of achievement in the classroom. And rather than saying, okay, like, let's sort them, it was like, Okay, if you’re done with your essay, now you’re gonna give feedback to your neighbor’s essay. And I was really impressed. So is that a model of something that could be done in other schools? Sure.

Economic Development / Taxes

Myles Miller
I wonder what companies, what industries you’re interested in bringing to New York. With high rents and, of course, high taxes, how you can get people here, new industry here. Does the city’s tax climate make that an obstacle? We see tech is investing in New York, what other industries would you target?

Brad Lander
This is what I learned from Dan Doctoroff, more than anyone else, is that the virtuous, what he calls the virtuous cycle of a successful city, starts with making the city well run and safe and clean. We don't have to make New York a place where the most talented people want to come and innovate in tech and life sciences and arts and theater. They already do. We need to make it a place where housing is more affordable, where the streets are safe and where public services are running well. And if we do that, we have the good fortune that people will bring their business, their innovation, their creativity here. That is the model of New York.

There was reason to worry about it in the pandemic, but it is working. That’s just first. Like the most important thing to do for economic development is make the city run better. Focus on safety, focus on affordability.

Now, there are sectors that are growing that we should be working with. Tech is surely one of them. We did a deep dive that showed where tech passed Wall Street for jobs in New York City. I met recently with this guy, Mike Intrator, who’s running this business CoreWeave, which is the data hubs for AI. It’s gone from zero to $20 billion, built in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and now taking a floor in Lower Manhattan. So there’s a lot of opportunities in tech, life sciences, in climate and resilience.

Myles Miller
But it seems like the tax issue is a real issue. As we talk to businesses, obviously with a foothold in financial companies…the biggest issue is the tax issue, the reason why they go across the water to New Jersey, the reason they go down to Texas —

Brad Lander
I think if we address affordability, safety and quality of life, people will keep locating here. We deal a lot with investment and private equity and investment managers. They’re coming here. Blackstone just took a giant extra floor and is growing here. I talked to, last year, the biggest private equity raise in the history of private equity is a firm called Patient Square Capital. They’re founded in the Bay. The CEO is desperate to come here. He’s like, “I can't wait for my kid to graduate from high school so we can move to New York.” There’s a couple of Connecticut firms who are looking to move here.

We do have a set of challenges. And they are affordability, safety and quality of life. And this is a diverse, messy city, and so investing in those things takes some resources. But if people see those resources delivering, if we could actually meaningfully reduce the number of mentally ill homeless folks sleeping on the streets and have schools that are the places people want to send their kids and have affordable home-ownership opportunities for working-class and middle-class families, I believe people will keep bringing and starting — the most creative people, the most hungry people in the world, want to be here. That is not because of New York City government, but New York City government can keep it going.

Ben Smith
Some of those people are spending 179 days a year here so that they do not pay taxes. Particularly titans of finance, senior executives. Do you think that’s immoral? And is there a way to stop it?

Brad Lander
I’m not going to comment on the morality of it. We want New York to work and I think a kind of New York City patriotism is a great thing. I think we need more of it. We’re lucky to be New Yorkers. It’s an amazing place. There’s a lot of people who were born here who are incredible. There are a lot of people who came here who are incredible. Let's make it work, you know? And I think we can actually.

Ben Max
New York City patriotism is not going to convince them to spend their 180th day in the city.

Brad Lander
I’m not sure that there is a thing that the next mayor can do that will force them to spend their 180th day here. We don’t control national tax policy. But the model is largely working. I don’t want to be a broken record, but people want to be here. They really do. The model is working. It is a place of creativity and innovation. If what the mayor could focus on is running the government better, so the schools are good and the streets are safe, and the housing and the affordability crisis is addressed. If you can have that child care for your 3-year-old so you don’t feel like, “this year, I gotta move,” and then you’re optimistic about the school you’re gonna get in, and maybe you could see a path to buying.

Health Care

Josh Greenman
So I have a morality question. I happened to run into you with Ady Barkan at the American Museum of Natural History. I know you were close.

Brad Lander
That’s the last time I was with him.

Josh Greenman
You care a lot about health care for all. Do you have some big, progressive moral vision of how to improve health care for New Yorkers, including at our not wonderfully run public hospital system?

Brad Lander
What New York City can do on health care is run H+H well and deliver a strong public health system. That is going to be critically important in the next four years with RFK Jr. and Trump destroying the federal public health system. Having a first-rate health commissioner and somebody who runs H+H well is really important.

And I will be the mayor that hires the best people to run city government, both in those places I’m really focused, like affordable housing and ending street homelessness, but also in all the other places that matter. Healthcare has not been my expertise, but what I will do is hire first-rate people to run H+H and support the public health system —

Management / Campaign

Juan Manuel Benítez
You’ve been saying that you're gonna be a good manager, but are you a little embarrassed that you missed that paperwork and you’re not gonna get matching funds?

Brad Lander
I am gonna get matching funds. They’re gonna come on January 15, long before we need them. I’m eligible for the most matching funds.

Juan Manuel Benítez
But how are you going to be a good manager when you’re missing key paperwork to run your campaign efficiently?

Brad Lander
If people want to know how I've managed something, they’ll look at what we’ve done in the Comptroller’s Office, where the pension funds are at record levels. If you talk to the people that work with the Bureau of Asset Management, they will tell you it’s the best run it has been in their time. We managed to do responsible investing while having the best returns of any of our peers.

We do contract registration in the Comptroller’s Office. We’re on a deadline. We have 30 days. We’ve gotten 60,000 contracts in my tenure. Each has been registered or returned within 30 days. Our average is 19. We put up this series of outcomes-based dashboards. By the people I’ve hired and the management track record I have is visible for people to see and how I’ve done the job. I’m thrilled to be eligible for the most matching funds of any candidate in this race. They will be in my bank account, my campaign bank account, on January 15, in plenty of time.

Personnel

Ben Max
To build off what you just said about hiring first-rate people. I heard what you said earlier about Jessie Tisch — it’s too early to name names. But give us a couple, two examples of people you’d love to hire. This is not a job offer, but people you'd love to hire as a deputy mayor, commissioner. The type of people who you’d love to bring into your administration?

Brad Lander
Sure, well, maybe I'll —

Ben Max
And don’t say Maria Torres-Springer — not that everybody doesn't think highly of her but don’t say her. That’s the cop-out answer, so don’t say that.

Brad Lander
I think highly of Maria. Well, first let me first say, like there are some mayors around the country who are doing a great job. So Michelle Wu is a friend in Boston, and I think she has done a first-rate job of running that city. The mayor in Denver is doing a great job. It's like models for good mayoral leadership —

Myles Miller
Like you will fight Trump like he fights Trump?

Brad Lander
Well, the best way for New York City — it's going to be important for the next mayor to stand up when the deportation forces come, but I actually think the best way to stand up for New York City’s values is to show we could live up to them. If we can make New York City work by reducing street homelessness, making progress.

Ben Max
Alright, give us a couple of people you’d love to hire in your administration.

Brad Lander
I was, just the other night, with Rafael Cestero at the 50th anniversary of the Community Preservation Corporation. We've got this 20-year history of working together. I thought he was a great leader in city government when he was there. So many good leaders. I mean, on the street stuff, I did love working with [former Bloomberg Transportation Commissioner] Jeanette Sadik-Khan and thought she was a dynamite transportation commissioner, that was more of the “move-fast and break things” type than the “give me a dashboard for getting stuff done.” But if we’re going to make progress on bus lanes and implement congestion pricing right, that’s the kind of leadership we’ll need at DOT.

E-Bikes

Nicole Gelinas
What about the e-bikes? Do you support the licensing of e-bikes?

Brad Lander
I have a whole plan, let me get you the plan. I do not support licensing individual e-bikes. I do support licensing DoorDash and Seamless and Uber in the way that we do Uber and Lyft in the TLC [Taxi & Limousine Commission] space, so that they have accountability. And there’s upstream work to do to not let moped stores sell unlicensed mopeds, which are motor vehicles to unlicensed drivers on the streets of our city. We literally put out like a whole plan on this. I would love to talk to you about —

NYPD Commissioner

Myles Miller
Is Ken Corey your police commissioner?

Brad Lander
It's too early to talk about who, for any of these positions —

Ben Max
But NYPD insider?

Brad Lander
Well, he's somebody who has a history in the NYPD and now through the U Chicago Crime Lab, Policing Leadership Academy. Perspective on what’s happening around the country —

Ben Max
Is that ideal, some NYPD experience and not?

Brad Lander
Yes, that would be ideal.

Rank the Mayors

Josh Greenman
Last five mayors since Koch, best to worst— their performance as mayor, you can’t just say Giuliani has disgraced himself since.

Brad Lander
Best manager as mayor is undoubtedly Bloomberg, he did the best job managing city government. Most decent human as mayor is definitely, of the last five, is definitely Dinkins. Biggest advancement for New Yorkers of the last mayors is universal pre-K.

Myles Miller
Universal pre-K is not a mayor.

Brad Lander
OK, Bill de Blasio delivered it.

Ben Smith
Got to say the worst.

Brad Lander
Worst manager was Bill de Blasio. Worst all around was Rudy Giuliani.

Myles Miller
Wait, wait. Worse than Adams?

Brad Lander
No. Fair enough. It is a low bar.

Myles Miller
I don’t mean to say he’s a bad manager, I’m expecting you—

Ben Smith
Do you think Adams is the worst mayor of the last 50 years?

Brad Lander
[Pause] Yes.

Ben Smith
Well, on that note, I think we’re looking right on time….This was great. Thanks.

Brad Lander
Thank you guys.

Ben Smith
Thank you.