Oregon AG Rayfield will host town halls about federal oversight in Eugene, Portland, Bend
Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield participated in a March 5, 2025 town hall in Phoenix. (Photo by Jerod MacDonald-Evoy/Arizona Mirror)
Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield plans to travel the state throughout the spring and summer hosting town halls about federal oversight, his office announced Tuesday.
Rayfield has sued the Trump administration at least 10 times since taking office, including a lawsuit filed Tuesday against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for abruptly stopping $12 billion in public health grants to states.
'In my first three months in office, we've established clear priorities: challenging federal overreach, fighting back against corporate greed, and standing up for veterans, students, and working families,' Rayfield said in a statement. 'These forums will create an ongoing dialogue with Oregonians about federal accountability and how we're working to protect their rights.'
He also has joined Democratic members of Oregon's congressional delegation and Legislature at their own town halls. In March, he traveled to Arizona to gather stories with three other Democratic attorneys general at a town hall in Phoenix.
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes will join Rayfield at his second planned forum, on his 100th day in office on April 10. They'll participate in an event at 6 p.m. in Portland, at a yet-to-be-announced location.
House Speaker Julie Fahey, D-Eugene, will join Rayfield at 6:30 p.m. April 9 at the University of Oregon's Prince Lucien Campbell building.
And he'll host a meeting at 10 a.m. in Bend on May 3, with no location announced yet. Rayfield plans to host additional meetings throughout the summer, according to the Department of Justice.
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Yahoo
29 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Don't give Dan Patrick his THC ban. Here's a better way for Texas on cannabis
Sometimes, the Texas Legislature creates a mess that only it can fix. And unfortunately, the clean-up is often a mess of its own. So it is with a bill that would ban products that contain THC, the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis. It's an attempt to right a loophole in the 2019 state law that allowed a Texas hemp industry to develop. But the medicine is simply too strong. Gov. Greg Abbott should veto the bill and give the Legislature the chance to try again with precise, thoughtful regulation. How did we get here, with lawmakers wanting to dismantle something they essentially created a few years ago? In 2019, Texas needed a law to comply with new federal statutes on hemp, the non-intoxicating version of the cannabis plant. Legislators charged ahead, missing the distinctions among the chemicals that can provide a high. They also failed to ask enough questions about testing, including whether police labs had the capacity to determine the level of THC in a product and thus the difference between hemp (legal) and marijuana (still illegal). Still, a business opportunity was born, and Texas, as our leaders like to say, is open for business. Responsible retail shops boomed, but so did unscrupulous producers who offered wares that enticed children and didn't distinguish between a professional who would demand ID or a convenience store where somnolent clerks wouldn't even notice who was buying gummies and the like. Enter Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. Before some lawmakers could even settle in their offices, he declared that a complete ban on products containing THC was the only option. He suggested that he would not negotiate and that if he didn't get his way, he would melt down the whole legislative session. He never said exactly how, but Patrick, who controls all the levers in the Texas Senate, could have held back one of Abbott's priorities, such as school vouchers, or even prevent passage of the state budget, which would leave no option but a special session. Patrick was never willing to entertain the obvious solution: more precise regulation with more robust enforcement. Texas could allow for the sale of low-level THC products without embracing a full-blown marijuana culture. The experience of legalization in other states has been fraught with problems. There's increasing concern that today's much stronger, much more available marijuana is incapacitating too many people — as well as creating alarm about possible unknown long-term health consequences. Licensed dealers can sell well-tested products in packaging that's unappealing to children. The state could bar corner gas stations or other generalized stores and businesses within walking distance of schools from dealing in THC products. It could create an agency to regulate them, funded through a tax on the products, or create such a function within an existing state entity. In other words, it could treat the substance similar to the way it treats alcohol. We all know that even with a regime of rules and enforcement, teenagers sometimes drink. A few, tragically, even die as a result. Few people would say that's sufficient reason to ban beer and wine. Heck, they are venerated Texas industries. Patrick gave away the game when, late in the session, he declared that cannabis producers and retailers 'want to kill your kids, and they don't give a damn.' It's the kind of pompous, self-righteous rhetoric that Patrick frequently uses to substitute for actual debate. And if someone else made similar remarks about, say, the gun industry, Patrick would be the first to get in front of a Fox News camera and decry it. The lieutenant governor declared it 'stupid' to even raise the comparison to alcohol — though, to be fair, few are more familiar with stupid rhetoric than Patrick. Patrick did eventually agree to expanding the availability of medical marijuana under the state's Compassionate Use Program. If Abbott signs that bill — and he should — conditions such as traumatic brain injuries and chronic pain would be among those added to the list that qualifies a Texan to purchase THC products. The state would add more dispensaries, too. In other words, through specific, careful regulation, Texas is steadily finding ways to get needed relief to those who can find it nowhere else. Someone alert Patrick: It can be done! We love to hear from Texans with opinions on the news — and to publish those views in the Opinion section. • Letters should be no more than 150 words. • Writers should submit letters only once every 30 days. • Include your name, address (including city of residence), phone number and email address, so we can contact you if we have questions. You can submit a letter to the editor two ways: • Email letters@ (preferred). • Fill out this online form. Please note: Letters will be edited for style and clarity. Publication is not guaranteed. The best letters are focused on one topic.
Politico
39 minutes ago
- Politico
Playbook: The Great Un-Awokening
Presented by With help from Eli Okun and Bethany Irvine Happy Saturday. This is Adam Wren. Get in touch. President Donald Trump attends UFC-316 featuring Merab Dvalishvili vs. Sean O'Malley at 9:30 p.m. DRIVING THE DAY Ambitious Democrats with an eye on a presidential run are in the middle of a slow-motion Sister Souljah moment. Searching for a path out of the political wilderness, potential 2028 candidates, especially those hailing from blue states, are attempting to ratchet back a leftward lurch on social issues some in the party say cost them the November election. FIRST IN PLAYBOOK — NOT 2020 ANYMORE: Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, who is Black, vetoed a bill passed by his Democratic-dominated state legislature that took steps toward reparations. California Gov. Gavin Newsom called it 'unfair' to allow transgender athletes to participate in female college and youth sports. And former Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel — who sat down with our Dasha Burns for the latest episode of her podcast The Conversation, which is dropping tomorrow — has urged his party to veer back to the center. 'Stop talking about bathrooms and locker rooms and start talking about the classroom,' said Emanuel, the two-term Chicago mayor who said he is open to a 2028 presidential campaign. 'If one child is trying to figure out their pronoun, I accept that, but the rest of the class doesn't know what a pronoun is and can't even define it.' Each of these candidates are, either deliberately or tacitly, countering a perceived weakness in their own political record or party writ large — Emanuel, for example, has called the Democratic Party 'weak and woke'; Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) has said the party needs more 'alpha energy'; others like Newsom are perhaps acknowledging that they had a more socially liberal bent in the past. On diversity, equity, and inclusion, some in the party are also sending a signal they're no longer kowtowing to their left flank. Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg removed his pronouns from his social media bio months ago, and questioned how the party has communicated about diversity. 'Is it caring for people's different experiences and making sure no one is mistreated because of them, which I will always fight for?' he said in a forum about the future of the party at the University of Chicago earlier this year. 'Or is it making people sit through a training that looks like something out of 'Portlandia,' which I have also experienced,' Buttigieg said. Buttigieg added, 'And it is how Trump Republicans are made.' Moderate Democrats are having a moment and there is a cadre of consultants and strategists ready to support them. Ground zero for the party's great un-awokening was this week's WelcomeFest, the moderate Democrats' Coachella. 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Not every Democrat is retreating from defending liberal social stances. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz called it 'a mistake' to abandon transgender people. 'We need to tell people your cost of eggs, your health care being denied, your homeowner's insurance, your lack of getting warning on tornadoes coming has nothing to do with someone's gender,' he told The Independent last month. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, too,recently said that it's 'vile and inhumane to go after the smallest minority and attack them.' This spring, Pritzker declared March 31 as Illinois' Transgender Day of Visibility. 'Walz, [Sen. Chris] Murphy, Pritzker, [Kentucky's Andy] Beshear — they're not going around talking about it all the time, but they're also not running away from their values,' said one adviser to a potential 2028 candidate granted anonymity to discuss the issue candidly. 'They're in the both-and lane.' 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The poll, conducted of 800 likely 2026 primary voters by telephone and text to web-based survey, was in the field between May 28 and June 2, and had a margin of error of +/- 3.5 percentage points. Read the full polling memo. 5 MINUTES WITH Welcome to '5 Minutes With,' a new Playbook weekend segment featuring a quick chat with a newsmaker. J.D. Scholten is boarding a bus not long before midnight somewhere in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, after pitching in relief for his Sioux City Explorers, a team part of the American Association of Professional Baseball, and losing 15-4 to the Sioux Falls Canaries. He notched one strikeout. 'I threw mop up duty at the end,' Scholten says as he waits for the bus driver to board. Five days ago, the 45-year-old Democratic Iowa state representative — who got back into baseball after two congressional races in 2018 and 2020 and realizing he could still throw 80 mph at a booth at the Iowa State Fair (and then 87 mph still after) — took on an even more unforgiving task: He launched a challenge to Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), after she told a town hall audience, 'We all are going to die.' Scholten thinks his time on the team has helped him win over swaths of red and rural America — including the men he plays with, and whom his party badly needs to win back. 'Politics isn't on their front of mind with them, like it is with myself,' Scholten says. 'And so I'm curious what they think about things, and how they word things, and different things like that. On the things I'm passionate about, I learned how to frame them in a way that gets them interested, say it in a way that speaks to them. One thing that a lot of these guys are all for is universal health care, because especially when I was their age too, they're in between, in the off season, they're just trying to survive.' Scholten launched his campaign, he said, to capitalize on the 'level of outrage' he said Ernst generated with her remarks. 'It was trying to just match that moment,' he said. 9 THINGS THAT STUCK WITH US 1. PRIDE VS. THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION: Today's WorldPride parade in Washington marks the 50th anniversary of the first pride celebrations in D.C. But the mood surrounding the parade and festivities is somewhat sour this year: The Trump administration's crusade against diversity, equity and inclusion programs broadly and transgender people specifically is rippling across the landscape, leading Pride to feel a bit downcast. Dupont Circle re-opened: Just hours before the official WorldPride parade kicks off, the National Park Service began removing the anti-scale fencing surrounding Dupont Circle park after the agency's decision to close the area sparked outrage among Washingtonians, Martin Austermuhle reports for The 51st. Earlier this week, the park service ordered Dupont Circle to be closed in order to 'secure the park, deter potential violence, reduce the risk of destructive acts and decrease the need for extensive law enforcement presences.' But to many Washingtonians, the move smacked of politics, given the Circle's centrality to the gay rights movement in the district. 'Dupont Circle is sacred ground for the LGBTQ+ community — a place with a rich history of protest, pride and joy,' Zachary Parker, an openly gay Democratic member of the city council, told POLITICO's Michael Schaffer. 'Closing it during one of the most significant global celebrations of our community sends the wrong message.' 'Rainbow-washing' meets the Trump era: Years of complaints from voices on the left about so-called 'rainbow-washing' — that is, when major corporations publicly tout their support for LGBTQ+ people during Pride Month without taking more concrete steps to help the community — have given way to a new question as corporate sponsorships dry up under Trump: Is 'rainbow-washing' preferable to the alternative of not supporting Pride events? Booz Allen Hamilton, the federal contracting giant, pulled out of being a headline sponsor of WorldPride in February. Other companies such as Deloitte, Comcast, Darcars Automotive Group and Nissan have declined to support the event this year despite contributing funding in previous years; some, like Nissan, have cited budgetary concerns as their reason for not participating. Similar stories abound across the country, as corporations roll back support for Pride out of fear of retaliation from the Trump administration, leaving many festivals strapped for cash, as POLITICO Journalism Institute's Rachael Dziaba reports for Playbook. In Washington, two months after Booz Allen dropped out, Capital Pride Alliance, the nonprofit that manages DC Pride, launched a 'Hate Is No Joke' fundraising campaign with an initial lofty goal of raising $2 million, according to the Washington Blade. The fundraiser's target has since been lowered to $1 million. As of Saturday morning, 'Hate Is No Joke' has amassed roughly $66,000. ('This is an on-going fundraiser with no definitive end to help us continue to raise funds even after WorldPride DC is over,' a spokesperson for Capital Pride told Playbook. 'We are on track for budgeted expectations for individual donations so far.') But some of those who've railed against 'rainbow-washing' see this all as a vindication. 'As the queer community, we should have never gone to corporations and expected that money to always be there,' said Jen Deerinwater, an organizer who is bisexual, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and participated in protests against corporate involvement in Capital Pride in 2017. 'Pride cannot solely constitute a parade with Deloitte floats and a concert series,' said Jack Petocz, who traveled to D.C. to attend WorldPride on behalf of the advocacy organization Gen-Z for Change. 'We will continue with or without the support of these major corporations, and truly go back to what Pride is all about: being a protest, being a liberatory force, and fighting for ourselves.' 'It's important to note that everyone has opinions on where funding for Pride should come from,' a spokesperson for Capital Pride told Playbook in a statement. 'A question may be, 'have the LGBTQ activists that you've spoken to, and who complain about corporate sponsorship actually donated to Pride themselves?' … [T]he major funders for most events, not just Pride, come from corporations. We did experience loss of support, but also received additional support from other new companies to help bridge that gap.' 2. RECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES: As the Senate reconvenes next week to continue hashing out the details of Trump's sweeping tax bill, CBO Director Phill Swagel is defending his agency from GOP lawmakers who believe its fiscal scoring of the megabill is 'too pessimistic' and 'tilts against Republicans,' WSJ's Richard Rubin scoops: 'What CBO is doing is what it is supposed to do, said Swagel, in his first direct response to GOP criticisms. … 'The tax cut is a tax cut. Revenue goes down,' Swagel said. 'There's improved growth, but not so much as to lead to the tax cut to pay for itself.'' One thing they agree on: Though the intraparty strife continues over the president's 'one big bill' — GOP lawmakers have united behind at least one thing: 'Amid the messy ongoing divorce between the president and [Elon Musk] … Donald Trump has sole custody of the House GOP,' POLITICO's Meredith Lee Hill and others report. 3. THE DOGE DAYS AREN'T OVER: The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that the Department of Government Efficiency can have 'unimpeded access to sensitive Social Security records for millions of people,' Josh Gerstein reports. In a three-paragraph ruling, the court's conservative majority lifted a lower-court order that had blocked DOGE 'from viewing or obtaining personal information in the agency's systems.' Though the White House claims that they need to access the data to root out fraud, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in her dissent that the court's decision creates 'grave privacy risks for millions of Americans.' Another legal victory: In a second unsigned order yesterday, the high court also ruled that DOGE 'does not have to turn over internal records to a government watchdog group as part of a public records lawsuit' for now, per NYT's Adam Liptak and Abbie VanSickle. And despite the president's high-profile fallout with his former DOGE chief this week, the organization is likely here to stay, with staffers 'deeply embedded' across several federal agencies, per NYT: 'Whether DOGE keeps its current Musk-inspired form remains an open question … but the approach that DOGE embodied at the outset — deep cuts in spending, personnel and projects — appears to have taken root.' 4. RUSSIA-UKRAINE LATEST: The Russian barrage of drone strikes today targeting the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv killed at least three people and injured 21, officials say. The attacks 'included deadly aerial glide bombs that have become part of fierce Russian attacks in the three-year war,' per the AP. 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Abrego Garica made his first related court appearance last night 'in the Middle District of Tennessee, answering 'Yes, I understand' in Spanish when U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes asked him if he understood the charges against him.' Abrego Garcia's lawyers claim the allegations should be ''treated with suspicion' because of the Trump administration's effort to publicly assail Abrego Garcia's character,' POLITICO's Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein report. AG Pam Bondi told reporters yesterday the 'intense scrutiny of Abrego Garcia had led to the break-up of the human smuggling ring he was allegedly involved in.' How we got here: 'Key moments that led to smuggling charges against Kilmar Abrego García,' per WaPo's Steve Thompson 6. SCHOOL DAZE: Education Secretary Linda McMahon said she is seeing 'progress' on the administration's demands from Harvard and Columbia University as Trump ramps up his pressure campaign against the nation's academic institutions, NBC News' Vaughn Hillyard and Alexandra Marquez report: 'And you know why I think we're seeing progress? We are putting these measures in place, and we're saying we're putting teeth behind what we're looking at,' McMahon told NBC. 7. BLURRED LINES: 'A Super PAC Is Encroaching on the DCCC's Territory,' by NOTUS' Alex Roarty: 'House Majority PAC is actively recruiting candidates, vetting their backgrounds and even potentially running ads on their behalf in competitive primaries … The belief among some strategists is that House Majority PAC's ramped-up involvement this cycle represents a shift in how the Democratic party approaches House races, one in which the super PAC assumes more responsibilities.' 8. MIND THE GROUP CHAT Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is at the center of an ongoing Pentagon investigation exploring whether his Signal messages, reported earlier this year, contained classified military information 'and if anyone ordered texts to be deleted,' WSJ's Alex Ward and Nancy Youssef report: 'It is unclear whether Acting Pentagon Inspector General Steven Stebbins, who is overseeing the probe, will reach a public conclusion about whether the information was classified' at the time it was shared, but the IG is likely to release his findings ahead of Hegseth's scheduled testimony before the House Armed Services Committee next Thursday. 9. MARK YOUR CALENDARS: U.S. and Chinese trade officials will meet in London on Monday for another round of trade talks amid rising tensions between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, AP's Seung Min Kim reports: 'Speaking to reporters on Air Force One yesterday Trump 'said Xi had agreed to restart exports of rare earth minerals and magnets to the U.S. which China had slowed, threatening a range of U.S. manufacturers that relied on the critical materials. … Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer will represent the U.S. side in the trade talks.' CLICKER — 'The nation's cartoonists on the week in politics,' edited by Matt Wuerker — 16 funnies GREAT WEEKEND READS: — 'A Bizarre PTSD Therapy 'Seemed Too Good to Be True,'' by The Atlantic's Yasmin Tayag: 'What if overcoming trauma can be painless?' — 'The War on Trees,' by Foreign Affairs' Justyna Gudzowska and Laura Ferris: 'How illegal logging funds cartels, terrorists, and rogue regimes.' — 'How Tech Company Recruiters Sidestep Trump's Immigration Crackdown' by ProPublica's Alec MacGillis: 'I had entered one of the most overlooked yet consequential corners of the United States immigration system: the process by which employers sponsor tech workers with temporary H-1B visas as a first step to getting them the green card that entitles them to permanent residency in the U.S.' — 'How measles tore through a remote West Texas city,' by NBC News' Brandy Zadrozny: 'Anti-vaccine activists seized on a deadly outbreak in Seminole, setting off a battle between fringe doctors and mainstream medicine.' — 'Musket vs. AR-15: Judges Are Throwing Out Gun Restrictions Because of Antiquated Laws From America's Founding,' by Chip Brownlee for The Trace: 'A 2022 Supreme Court decision that gun laws should align with the nation's 'history and tradition' has sown confusion in courtrooms and weakened longstanding limits on firearms.' — 'A Professor Was Fired for Her Politics. Is That the Future of Academia?' by Sarah Viren for NYT Mag: 'Maura Finkelstein is one of many scholars discovering that the traditional protections of academic freedom are no longer holding.' TALK OF THE TOWN OUT AND ABOUT — SPOTTED yesterday morning at the Swiss ambassador's residence in D.C. for a gathering of the intellectual community in which Matt Kaminski moderated a conversation on China, AI and Europe: Sen. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), David Petraeus, Mike Gallagher, Rolf Dobelli, Corinna Hoyer, Ralph Büchi, Anne Neuberger, Julius Genachowski, Paul Nakasone, Heather Podesta, Juleanna Glover, Alan Fleischmann and Dafna Tapiero, Dmitri Alperovitch, Bruce Andrews, Anne Brady Perron, Sheel Tyle, Mark Vlasic, Jonathan Silver, Tomicah Tillemann, Raj Kumar, Ed Luce, Gary Knell, Afsaneh Beschloss, David Bohigian, Doug Rediker and Heidi Crebo-Rediker, Peter Cherukuri, David Feith and Amy Dacey. — SPOTTED last night at Elephant and Castle at Article III Project's 'Bold and Fearless Judges' event hosted by Mike Davis, who did a hit on Fox News in the middle of the event, and Otto Heck: Todd Blanche, David Warrington, Harmeet Dhillon, Andrew Ferguson, Emil Bove, Michael Thielen, Mia Heck, Ryan Giles, Lanny Davis, Gene Hamilton, Gary Lawkowski, Mark Paoletta, Steve Kenny, Gineen Bresso, Bill McGinley, Tom DeMatteo, Stanley Woodward, Patrick Davis, Lee Holmes, Kat Nikas, Aakash Singh, Sam Adkisson, Gates McGavick, Chad Gilmartin, Don McGahn, Terry and Katie Schilling, Bill and Katie Lane, Judge Jennifer Choe-Groves and Ted Groves, Arthur Schwartz, Jessie Jane Duff, Derek and Liz Lyons, Derrick Anderson, Megan Owen, Alida Kass, Graziella Pastor, Stuart McCommas, Brendan Chestnut, Dan Burrows, Kenny Cunningham, Jeff Clark, Lee Holmes, John Bachman, Mike Carter and Alex Swoyer. — SPOTTED at the Picnic Theatre Company's performance of 'Heaven Can Wait' at Tudor Place last night: Steve Rochlin, Christina Sevilla, Sara Cook, Bruce Kieloch, David White, Kimball Stroud, Michael Isikoff, Mary Ann Akers, David Corn, Amy Argetsinger, Indira Lakshmanan, Raquel Krahenbuhl, Riikka Hietajarvi, Nancy Bagley, Soroush Shehabi, Erica Payne, Gene Haigh, Julia Cohen, Neil Barrett, Puru Trivedi, Nova Daly, Kevin Rooney, Antonio Olivo, Amirah Sequeira, Chris Fowler, Alexa Newlin, Jennifer Grinspoon, Daniela McInerne, Dan Burrows and Hugo Verges. 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NewsNation 'The Hill Sunday,' guest-anchored by Blake Burman: Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) … Rep. Sarah Elfreth (D-Md.) … Neil Bradley. Panel: Kellie Meyer, Tyler Pager, Jason Willick and John Tamny. FOX 'Fox News Sunday': Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) … Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas). Panel: Mary Katharine Ham, Josh Kraushaar, Marc Thiessen and Juan Williams. CNN 'Inside Politics Sunday': Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.). Panel: Astead Herndon, Olivia Beavers and Jeff Mason. Send Playbookers tips to playbook@ or text us on Signal here. Playbook couldn't happen without our editor Zack Stanton, deputy editor Garrett Ross and Playbook Podcast producer Callan Tansill-Suddath.
New York Post
an hour ago
- New York Post
Why the Democratic NYC mayoral candidates have housing all wrong
The Democratic primary candidates for mayor all agree: the city faces a housing cost crisis. Brad Lander says it requires declaring a 'state of emergency.' Andrew Cuomo fears losing the 'soul of our city.' Scott Stringer insists 'the housing system is broken.' Unfortunately, the solutions which they — and especially Queens Assembly member Zohran Mamdani — offer will only make matters worse. They're ignoring the financial distress of private residential property owners, many operating at a loss, which could lead them simply to walk away from their buildings and bring New York back to the 1970s days of 'the Bronx is burning.' 6 Democratic mayoral candidates Andrew Cuomo and Zohran Mamdani (second from right) present arguments as Whitney Tilson and Michael Blake look on during a Democratic mayoral primary debate this past week. AP What's more, they overlook the damage and high costs of their preferred solution: still more subsidized, rent-regulated 'affordable housing.' By far the most potentially dangerous idea is the centerpiece of the Mamdani campaign: a freeze on all rent-stabilized rents. A rent freeze would be a quick way to drive those struggling small landlords out of business altogether. That's what the city's Rent Guidelines Board, which sets the rents for nearly a million rent-stabilized buildings, heard at its April 10 meeting. They were told by Mark Willis of the Furman Center on Real Estate at NYU that owners of rent-stabilized properties in The Bronx are, on average, losing a stunning $120 per month on every apartment, such that 200,000 units, concentrated in that borough, are under 'severe distress.' Their income has simply not kept up with rising costs — property taxes and utilities, whose prices are definitely not frozen. They've been hit hard, too, by the 2019 state Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act, which limited any rent increases even for building improvements. Yet Mamdani asserts that 'our government works for the landlords.' 6 Brad Lander says NYC housing requires declaring a 'state of emergency.' AP 6 Mayor Eric Adams has recently acknowledged the tension between tenants' costs and building maintenance. Luiz Rampelotto/ZUMA / Ann Korchak, who heads the Small Property Owners of New York, disagrees. 'The costs of everything are rising. We're not in a vacuum. A freeze would crush us. You'd see foreclosures and abandonment.' A squeeze on operating income also decreases the value of a building, and makes banks unwilling to make loans for repairs. It's a vicious downward spiral — that's already left rent-stabilized buildings in bad shape. In its 2023 New York Housing and Vacancy Survey, the Census Bureau found that rent-regulated buildings had higher rates of rodents, leaks, mold, and heating breakdowns than market-rate units. These are the real housing emergencies. Eric Adams has at least acknowledged the tension between tenants' costs and building maintenance. He's defended a potential 1.75 to 4.75% rent increase approved by the RGB as 'protecting the quality of rent stabilized homes as costs continue to rise without overburdening tenants with unreasonable rent increases.' Instead, Democratic Socialist Mamdani proposes to 'unleash the public sector' and build 200,000 new units of public housing — despite the fact that NYCHA has struggled to maintain its existing 177 properties and faces a multi-billion-dollar repair backlog. Nationwide, public housing authorities, including NYCHA, are turning to the private sector to renovate and manage their buildings, not returning to Mamdani's Stalinist housing socialism. The debt financing he'd use would drain city funds from schools, parks, and police. Even less extreme Democrat proposals threaten to perpetuate housing problems. Cuomo, Lander, and Stringer all advocate building hundreds of thousands of costly new 'affordable' units, which, in exchange for property tax abatements, will be rent-stabilized. 6 Mamdani is proposing both a rent 'freeze' and the construction of hundreds of thousands of affordable housing units. Paul Martinka As those units age, they'll face the same revenue problems as older buildings in The Bronx. And they'll distort the city's housing market in a way that locks out talented newcomers the city needs. The proposed units are also costly, at least $500,000 a piece. Per Census data, turnover in rent-regulated units is half that of market-rate units, one of the reasons the city's overall turnover is 46% lower than the national average. 6 New public housing might sound logical, but NYC can barely manage and maintain the 117 existing public housing buildings already in operation. OLGA GINZBURG FOR THE NEW YORK POST That helps explain why the city's vacancy rate is so low and young adults must double and triple up in small apartments while Boomers age in place with empty bedrooms. Then there's 'inclusionary zoning' — a centerpiece of Council Speaker Adrienne Adams' housing policy. It actually drives up rents. Requiring that 20% of units be 'affordable' means that rents must be higher for the market-rate units for construction to make financial sense. 6 Supporters were seen holding signs in Bedford Stuyvesant during Zohran Mamdani's campaign rally. MediaPunch / BACKGRID Smart Democrats are backing what's been dubbed the 'abundance' agenda, which emphasizes the importance of building, not just redistribution. They should realize we need to encourage the construction of any and all housing. More supply will bring down the price of new housing and old, and help to meet demand. That would actually solve the housing crisis. Howard Husock is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
