Dick and I just returned from a trip to Leningrad. That is, St. Petersburg, Russia. Appalling Soviet-era apartment complexes circa 1950s for the city’s five million inhabitants. Miles upon miles of urban renewal housing at its worse.
It seems New York’s Mayor de Blasio would embrace this Communist model of “what’s yours is mine.” New York magazine interviewed de Blasio recently (4 September 2017):
NY: In 2013, you ran on reducing income inequality. Where has it been hardest to make progress? Wages, housing, schools?
BdB: What’s been hardest is the way our legal system is structured to favor private property. I think people all over this city, of every background, would like to have the city government be able to determine which building goes where, how high it will be, who gets to live in it, what the rent will be. I think there’s a socialistic impulse, which I hear every day, in every kind of community, that they would like things to be planned in accordance to their needs. And I would, too. Unfortunately, what stands in the way of that is hundreds of years of history that have elevated property rights and wealth to the point that that’s the reality that calls the tune on a lot of development.
New Yorkers must be looking forward to Mayor de Blasio leading the way by donating all his property to the state.
Debbie Young
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