Mayor Zohran Mamdani: Thank you, Arturo O'Farrill and the Casa Belongó performers for that incredible performance. Today is a special day. Not only because we were just graced with apparently New York's first ever mayoral mambo, but because today we break ground on Timbale Terrace.
A 100 percent affordable housing development that will transform the lives of hundreds of families across East Harlem. It is a privilege to be joined by activists and advocates as well as our partners in both government and the private sector, all of whom work tirelessly to bring this project to life. And I'm especially grateful to our local leaders who have fought for this development since 2017 as part of the East Harlem Neighborhood Plan.
I'm proud to be joined here by my Deputy Mayor for Housing and Planning Leila Bozorg; by Lauren Connors, our SVP of Development at HDC; and by our elected officials. We may know him as the current comptroller, but he was also the former Manhattan borough president, Mark Levine. Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal. Our very own Assembly member, Eddie Gibbs. Council Member Elsie Encarnacion. Council Member Yusef Salaam. The two of us are fasting today for the first day of Ramadan. It's a pleasure to be here together. And our former [City Council] Speaker, Melissa Mark-Viverito.
I acknowledge so many of our leaders here today because we know that this is a day that was fought for for years. For years through multiple administrations. And it is a pleasure to be together at once as we embark on the next stage of this journey. Because when you think about East Harlem, you think about the exceptional art and music that has come out of this community. But that did not happen by accident. It happened because generations of New Yorkers could afford to live here. To afford to live here, is a foundation for [the] lives of joy and creativity.
Because too often we think about art and affordability, as if they are two separate concerns, when in fact they are one and the same. Let's talk about Ernest Puente, a foreman at a razor blade factory who lived just blocks from here a hundred years ago. He worked hard and he made enough to afford an apartment where his son, Tito, could bang out rhythms to the pigeons perched on the windowsill. Enough to cover rent and groceries and still send his child to piano lessons down the block. That home right here in East Harlem nurtured one of the greatest musical minds of all time, Tito Puente.
El Rey de los Timbales himself. And it proved that when New Yorkers can afford housing, New Yorkers have the stability and space to achieve incredible things. But as the working people of East Harlem know all too well, it has become nearly impossible to find affordable housing in the city that we all love and call home.
Today, as we break ground on Timbale Terrace, we are not just paving the way for new units. We are paving the way for a city where housing is plentiful and affordable. Once complete, Timbale Terrace will be a 20-story, 100 percent affordable housing development with 341 new homes. These apartments will be affordable to low and very low-income households. And 97 [apartments] will be set aside for formerly homeless New Yorkers through the NYC 15/15 Program.
To further support East Harlem residents with the most need, this development will also be home to wraparound social services focused on health, wellness, education, and employment, providing formerly homeless individuals the structure to help them rebuild their lives. It will also provide a permanent 21,000 square foot home for the Afro-Latin Jazz Alliance Casa Belongó .
Whose players have just given us a taste of the music and culture that this center will foster. Timbale Terrace is a testament to the city that we are building together. One where the working people of this neighborhood no longer need to wish the rent was heaven sent in the words of another East Harlem great, Langston Hughes. And today is just the beginning. In the coming weeks and months, you will see more initiatives like this, one as we pursue a housing agenda that balances new production with tenant protections.
This morning, my administration took another major step with the announcement of our six appointees to the Rent Guidelines Board. I trust that they will consider all the factors facing the city's rent-stabilized tenants and come to an appropriate decision. Together we are building a city where every person can afford a roof over their head. A city that fights hardest for those who struggle the most. And a city where government does more to lift the burdens of those that it serves. Now with that being said, I would like to call of Mega Group, Emanuel Kokinakis.
Emanuel Kokinakis, Principal and Development Manager, Mega Group Development: Good morning, everyone. Great to be here celebrating this great event with you all here and thank you Mayor Mamdani for your presence. It's truly an honor to share the stage with you. We have back-to-back Bronx Science speakers kicking things off here in Harlem, so I hope that's okay. So, we're extremely excited to be working under the leadership of Mayor Mamdani and his mission to deliver affordable housing here for this great city.
And with this Timbale Terrace project, we didn't have the goal of just making this affordable. I don't know if you had the opportunity to look at the renderings on the screen, but this is a home for generations to come that families are going to be proud to come home to. And that is truly beautiful and important. And this would not have been possible without the great efforts and the intelligence of our housing agencies that are so dedicated in their work.
And under the leadership of our Commissioner Dina Levy, Leila Bozorg, Lauren Connors here on stage, some members of the team I see here. So special thanks, I see Alex Routing, Christina Clark, Tim Grogan, that just tireless effort to work through and navigate this very complicated project. These projects are not easy to finance, they're not easy to deliver. I think there were often times we looked at each other and asked ourselves, how is this going to get done? But, we made it here so thank you for all your efforts.
So, going back to how this all began, I just want to give a couple quick shout outs. So, I want to recognize our architect at UAI, Jorge Chang, who approached the Lantern team and ourselves to bring a response to this RFP together. So, this site started off as a public RFP. This is a formerly city-owned site, NYPD parking lot that went through an RFP process, brought together public, private, not-for-profit partners to deliver this great housing project. So that's a great testament to the city and what can be accomplished.
And I also want to give a thanks to Diane Louard-Michel here. Diane had a vision. We had a meeting very early on and she said, "You know, there's this group, Afro Latin Jazz Alliance, I think they'd be great." And her vision led to the Belongó Center being a part of this project and we're grateful for that. I want to run through a couple quick thank yous. There were a lot of stakeholders that made this project possible. So, if you bear with me as I say thank you to a lot of those partners.
So first I want to start off with NYSEG, who gave us our pre-development financing. Thank you to the NYSEG team. The team at Goldman Sachs that gave us our financing and our equity partners. Our neighbors at the NYPD, represented here by Captain Carrasquillo, that they're sacrificing their parking lot to make way for this affordable housing project. So, they deserve a lot of credit. Our elected officials that the mayor mentioned were critical champions of this project from early on, giving their support.
Quick shout out to our legal teams at Hirschen Singer & Epstein and Ackerman that navigated the very complicated financing and legal aspects of this project. The team at Belongó, just great partners, great to work with. Special shout out to Jim Watt, Eddie Castell, Toby Rappaport who trusted us through the whole closing process. So, thank you very much. Our design teams at UAI and DSR who are designing an absolutely beautiful building that we're going to be proud to stand in front of in a couple years. So, thank you to the design teams. So, all the community partners, the community board members, the people that worked through the rezoning process with us, our lobbyists at Constantinople and Vallone [inaudible] that made the UDAP process possible for this project to happen. And I also want to give a quick shout out to my team members in the back there, Myles Monaghan, Alexa Mendel. They did all the heavy lifting to get us to this point. So, thank you.
And we're at a groundbreaking and we often, we have the groundbreaking and we have the ribbon cutting, but there's a very important part in between. So, I want to acknowledge our construction team and the construction workers that are going to be here in the trenches to build this beautiful building, and we wish them a safe passage to completion.
And last but not least, Kathleen and Laura for putting this great event together. Let's give them a round of applause. And next, I'd like to call up to the stage somebody that was a champion of this project very early on, not just financially, but with community support. And that was our then borough president, but now comptroller, Mark Levine.
Comptroller Mark Levine: Mr. Mayor, Ramadan Mubarak, Council Member Salaam, Ramadan Mubarak, we're starting off auspiciously here.
[Speaks in Spanish.]
I have been to a lot of groundbreakings over the years. I've never been at a groundbreaking with a world-class musical icon who debuted the world premiere of a new composition. Give it up to Arturo O'Farrill and the [Afro] Latin Jazz. So, I don't know if Mayoral Mambo's on Spotify yet, but I will be downloading it as soon as it is. This little patch of land here symbolizes all of the struggles and opportunity of housing in New York City over the last half century.
This was the home of tenements that were run down, and then in the 1960s, under so-called urban renewal, they were demolished with the plan that they would be replaced with new housing. Part two of that plan never happened. This remained vacant for decades. This was a vacant lot in the heart of East Harlem for decades. Eventually, it became a parking lot for the 25th precinct, and we love the 25 [precinct], but not the highest and best use of this land. While a housing affordability crisis grew and grew and grew, it became more acute.
We had a vacant lot being used for parking in the middle of East Harlem, blocks of mass transit, unacceptable. And then some visionaries came along in the late 20-teens, led by, I think she was speaker then or council member, Melissa Mark-Viverito. Applause for her, because she was awesome. And then staff member and community advocate, Elsie Encarnacion, now city council member, up on stage. And then junior staffer at HPD, now DM, Leila Bozorg, and many other great leaders.
And there was resistance to this plan, because any time you take away parking in New York City, it turns out to be an epic fight. But it really got challenging when an actual project came together [with] actual developers. And in my four years of borough president, this is probably one of the two or three most difficult housing fights that we waged. And it was not a foregone conclusion that we would be standing here today. That is how serious the opposition was. Community Board 11, those of you who are here, they stood strong. Give them a big round of applause. When they came out in favor, it was one of the turning points of this project. Shout out to Council Member Salaam, who stood strong on this. Thank you, sir.
Assemblymember Gibbs, you were there every step of the way as well. We're grateful to you. And now what's coming into existence here, it is [341] units of housing. It is going to be a home for one of my favorite cultural organizations in New York City, the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance, aka ALJA. Casa Belongó, which didn't start downtown in some fancy quarters. It grew out of the incredible culture of East Harlem. It's the ultimate grassroots non-profit. They deserve a world-class theater. They're going to have it now, right here.
I cannot wait. I'm willing to bet that Arturo O'Farrill might perform on opening night, but I might have just committed him to that. And lastly, I want to say, as much as we're celebrating here today, if the usual demand for HPD Housing Connect apartments plays out here, we can expect literally tens of thousands of applications for these apartments. Literally. Maybe pushing 100k. And so, this is a reminder that this incredible success, we need to replicate hundreds of more times all over New York City.
Mr. Mayor, I know you're on board with that, right? And I know DM and your team, you are too. So, let's celebrate today and make this happen all over New York. Felicidades. Thank you.
Kokinakis: And now, I'd like to call up a long-time housing advocate and someone we're looking forward to working with in his new position. Our new borough president, Brad Hoylman-Sigal.
Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal: Thank you so much and congratulations. I'm Brad Hoylman-Sigal. I had absolutely nothing to do with this project. But, I want to say to the mayor and to his team and to our two amazing Council members and the developer and our former Borough President Mark Levine; Community Board 11; our former speaker, Mark- Viverito. I mean, this is an example of community planning at its best. And it's an example of how you can combine arts and culture with housing.
There's a lesson here, which is, I think we all knew this project was important and necessary and crucial to house homeless folks. But, right, it shouldn't take a decade to do it. And so, that's why I'm so glad that the mayor and our team behind us, along with the council members, are committed to building more housing faster than ever in conjunction with our local community.
So, congratulations and thank you to that amazing jazz quartet. I think the mayor should have them at every event. What a welcome. And let me say, I'm very mindful of the importance of arts and culture, particularly during this dark time in our nation's history. I'm committing 100 percent of my capital budget to arts and culture. Applications are due tomorrow. Thank you very much and congratulations.
Kokinakis: And now, it's my pleasure to introduce our partners on this project. Someone we've been working with from day one and has been a great partner for us and looking forward to working well into the future with Dan Kent, the CEO of Lantern Organization.
Dan Kent, President and CEO, Lantern Organization: So, for the last 29 years, Lantern Organization has been fighting to end homelessness by creating supportive and affordable housing. Yet, New York City still has one of the highest rates of homelessness in the entire nation. Across New York, many cities and neighborhoods have said no to new homes, causing a severe housing shortage that is fueling our homelessness and affordability crisis. But East Harlem chose another path.
With the East Harlem Rezoning and East Harlem Neighborhood Plan, this neighborhood said yes to new housing and yes to new supportive housing. Thanks to this rezoning, East Harlem will soon be home to 341 affordable apartments at Timbale Terrace. 84 of those homes will be affordable to households earning between $30,000 and $50,000 a year. That's your home health aides. That's cashiers who are finally going to be able to live in the neighborhood that they work in.
71 of those homes will be affordable to households earning between $50,000 and $80,000 a year. Those are the future homes of construction workers and line chefs. 88 of the apartments will be affordable for households earning between $80,000 and $130,000 a year. Nurses, dental hygienists, teachers will call Timbale Terrace home. And 97 will be permanent supportive housing. These apartments - [we] got some permanent supportive housing lovers in the room.
Permanent supportive housing provides dignified homes for people who have endured years on the streets or in our shelter system living with severe mental illness and substance use disorder. Each person will be supported by a rental subsidy and by an on-site services team dedicated to helping them stay housed. Our staff at Lantern Community Services will provide meaningful relationships with every individual.
They'll learn about their goals, and they'll collaboratively develop a plan to help each resident achieve their goals. Timbale Terrace was inspired by Lantern's supportive housing residents who have shown us time and time again that every individual and every neighborhood has a potential to thrive. Thank you. Next, I'm pleased to welcome to the stage our partner, the Casa Belongó ED, Marietta Ulacia.
Marietta Ulacia, Executive Director, Casa Belongó: Good morning, everyone. As executive director of Belongó, it is my honor to represent this organization today, this cultural institution dedicated to performing, teaching, and preserving the music of the Americas rooted in African and indigenous traditions. Today, we are proud to celebrate the beginning of something extraordinary, the building of Casa Belongó. But Casa Belongó is more than a building. It is a promise, a promise that culture, education, and community belong at the heart of our neighborhoods.
It is a permanent home for our music and for our culture right here in East Harlem, the birthplace of Afro Latin Jazz. For nearly two decades, Belongó has been serving thousands of students across New York City Public schools, mentoring young musicians, and bringing world-class performances to the stages across the city and around the world. This is the home we have been working toward, a place where music and community live together, where a young person walks in, picks up an instrument, learns from master artists, learns our history, and feels a deep sense of belonging.
And within these walls, there will be a state-of-the-art performance hall, classrooms and practice rooms filled with music and alive with possibilities, community and public spaces where all will feel welcome, and Chico's Corner, a cafe where coffee time will turn into show time, carrying the rhythms of East Harlem into the night. This is only possible thanks to our incredible partners.
We are deeply grateful to the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts for their leadership and support. You are too many for me to name, but to all of our partners who are here today, we are thrilled to collaborate with you on this transformative project. East Harlem has given so much to the world. Today, we give something back, a permanent home where music, education, and community can thrive together. Thank you.
Kokinakis: So, I want to reemphasize the complicated financing here, and I do want to add that the Casa Belongó space will be delivered rent-free for 60 years. They have great negotiators on their board, but that's going to fortify their place in this community for the generations to come. In order to make this all possible, 341 units of affordable housing, rent-free space, we needed a financing partner that understood what we were looking to achieve.
They came to the table and hit the ground running, really worked with us through all the complications, twists and turns. I can't imagine what their credit committee presentations were like, but we'd really love to thank the team at Goldman Sachs, represented here by Asahi Pompey, and I'd like to call her to the stage.
Asahi Pompey, President, Goldman Sachs Foundation: [I'm] honored to be gathered with you this morning in [East] Harlem, home to the institutions that shape not only our city's culture, but its conscience. I'll be brief, because I'm a believer in the Ninth Beatitude, blessed are the brief, for they shall be invited back. I'm Asahi Pompey. This marks my 20th year at Goldman Sachs, and I chair our urban investment group. We've invested over $23 billion focused on affordable housing and mission-driven lending across the country. Let me tell you this. I don't come to this work from a spreadsheet. I come to it from an understanding of what it means when capital shows up, and also what it costs when capital does not. As we break ground today, I remind my team our job is clear. It's to move capital towards potential.
You and I know a development can have the right location, the right partners, the right supportive services, but without capital, even the best blueprints are sitting in the drawer gathering dust. Progress is not accidental. It's financed. Projects have to pencil out on paper and hold up in reality. The funding stack has to be diversified, and investors must be thoughtful and committed to seeing projects through and through.
But let there be no doubt: capital alone doesn't build developments. It's the contractors, the architects, HPD, HDC staff, all the men and women who sweat every detail down to the last brick. After all, as our mayor mentioned, Tito Puente got his start here, and Goldman Sachs is no stranger to Harlem, honored to have financed the National Urban League and the Studio Museum of Harlem's new home just down the block. And as we all left our homes this morning, we know that it's much more than brick and mortar. It's security. It's refuge. It's dignity.
Mayor Mamdani, thank you. And I want to thank our partners at Mega, Lantern, Casa Belongó, and all the officials here and partners here today. I do nothing alone, and I have to shout out my team. I always give credit where credit is due, as my mom taught me, right? So, Linda, Harry, Ronnie, Scott, Dan, thank you.
And on behalf of our CEO, David Solomon, we're honored to have played a small part in investing $200 million in this project. And I'll close by saying this. If history is any guide, Harlem always pays back with dividends. So, let's break ground. Thank you.
Question: Mr. Mayor, you mentioned that [in] prior administrations, that this took administrations to come to fruition. So, what challenges do you face in wanting to produce more affordable housing?
Mayor Mamdani: Well, I think, first, yes, it has taken many a year, many elected officials, many different administrations. I think for far too long, that has been a reflection of what it looks like when you want to build more housing in New York City, especially when you want to build housing that is affordable to the very New Yorkers who are being priced out of the city that they love. I am thankful, however, that we are in a different moment today.
You can see by everyone on this stage, there is a new consensus in this city about the importance of building more housing, about the importance of also intertwining the agendas of affordability and the arts. And we will continue to find obstacles, whether they be procedural obstacles, bureaucratic obstacles. But I can also say, as the mayor of our city, that I am so thankful to have a team around me, led by deputy mayor for Housing and Planning Leila Bozorg, who measure themselves on the basis of the work that they do, the outcomes that they produce. And that's exactly what our North Star is going to be in this city.
Question: Mayor, I just want to ask about your policy regarding homeless encampments. I'm wondering, two questions. What happens to individuals who receive outreach from the social services folks and still refuse to leave the street? I'm wondering if there's a policy in place in that. And my second question is, talking to homeless advocacy groups, they had a lot of hope in you, some of the promises you made during the campaign regarding [inaudible] and also ending homeless encampment sweeps. I got a sense of profound disappointment from those groups today. So, I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about that. Do you feel you are going back on some of the promises, very clear promises you made during the campaign?
Mayor Mamdani: Thank you for the question, Jeff. So, in December, I was asked about my thoughts on the prior administration's policy. And I said that I thought that that policy was a failure, and I judged it as such because of the outcomes that it resulted in over the course of the measurement of a year that it was in action. On January 5th, soon after coming into office, I made a decision with my team to put a pause on that prior administration's policy as we started to develop our own policy that would generate far better outcomes for the city. And we knew that that is a policy that we would only deliver on once the prolonged Code Blue came to an end.
Because as we know, in a Code Blue, the focus should be on getting homeless New Yorkers inside, not on the question of how we respond to structures. And so, the policy that we have developed has a number of important distinctions. The first is unlike in the prior administration, when the NYPD were being tasked with the work of responding to homeless encampments, we have made the decision to actually have this be a responsibility of the Department of Homeless Services, that this be their responsibilities in line with their work.
And so, not only will this work be housed in a different agency, [but] the work also itself is far different. And what I mean by that is unlike in the past administration, where much of the interaction with a homeless New Yorker was defined by the first day when you'd provide a notice and the seventh day when you'd initiate a sweep, in our administration, every single day of that time period will be characterized by outreach. Outreach from homeless services workers to homeless New Yorkers.
The importance of this, as we saw over the course of this prolonged Code Blue, was that by having relentless outreach each and every day, you are able to connect with homeless New Yorkers for whom their first reaction might be that of skepticism. Their second reaction might be that of wariness, given their prior experiences within the shelter system. But their third, their fourth, their fifth, their sixth reaction may be one of interest in the possibility of shelter services, programming support, supportive housing.
And so, that's why, if you see in our preliminary budget, we increased funding for specifically this kind of outreach, so that we would be able to sustain this over the course of those seven days, so that we can actually connect homeless New Yorkers with the services that they require.
Question: How does it feel being the first Muslim mayor of New York on this first day of Ramadan, and what is your message to New Yorkers who are observing the holiday?
Mayor Mamdani: Thank you very much. Well, right now I feel parched. But Ramadan is my favorite month of the year. It's a month, and the council member, two of us, are part of what some say may be more than a million Muslims in New York City. And this is a month of reflection. It's a month of solidarity. And it's a month that is so often characterized just by the fact that we are not eating or drinking from sunup to sundown, but it misses what actually drives us through the course of the day, which is a chance to actually reflect.
And it is a month also that I look forward to because of what it means for a sense of community. And I can tell you that, for me, there is no better way to start this month, to start our fasts, than to be here together today. Because this is a moment that nourishes the soul. It is a moment that reminds us of what public service can deliver for New Yorkers. And it is a joy to begin our Ramadan together.
And I look forward, over the course of this month, as the first mayor to ever be practicing and participating in Ramadan, to have a chance to connect with Muslims across the city, whether they be waking up in the morning for suhoor as they start their jobs, or whether they be working through the night and pausing for one moment to have a date to break their fast. I look forward to meeting them and being there with them. Thank you.
Question: Two questions. On the Rent Guidelines Board, which you mentioned, you said you trust them to make the appropriate decision. What is the appropriate decision, sir? And then on your notion to potentially raise property taxes if millionaires and corporations are not taxed at a higher rate. Swift pushback, including from people you're sharing the dais with today. Any chance you're backing off on that potential of raising property taxes?
Mayor Mamdani: So, I'll start with the second and then I'll go to the first. I want to be very clear in yesterday's announcement of our preliminary budget. We are required by law to balance the budget. That means we face a $5.4 billion fiscal deficit, a generational fiscal deficit, and have to bring it down to zero. So, what we put forward was what we characterized as actions of last resort. I described them as last resort because we have a broken property tax system in the city. We have one that can barely stand up in court. And my goal is to reform that system to work with partners in state government.
We have our Assembly member here, Eddie Gibbs. We have many other Assembly members and senators who have spoken for years about the importance of having a system that is fair. What we are hoping for, what we will spend every day looking towards, is working with Albany to increase taxes on the wealthiest and the most profitable corporations, such that a fiscal crisis is not resolved on the backs of working- and middle-class New Yorkers. And that's what we're going to spend every day working towards because we want to build a city that makes this one where working people can not only live but can also dream. And what that means is we have to work together to ensure that they are not stuck with the bill of a fiscal crisis they had nothing to do with.
To your first question on the Rent Guidelines Board. So, I continue to believe that this city is more than 2 million rent-stabilized tenants deserve a rent freeze. We cannot respond to a crisis by simply rotating who suffers from it. And of course, I also understand that the RGB is an independent board, and they will consider all of the evidence we are working to lower costs for property owners across the city. As I've said, the question of raising property taxes is that of last resort one that we are deeply hopeful of avoiding.
Question: [Inaudible.]
Mayor Mamdani: I am confident in the team that we have put together and in the focus that they have on delivering a new set of outcomes. Over the course of the prolonged Code Blue, our administration expedited the opening of additional shelters safe haven sites and started to look towards also the medium- and long-term issues that has plagued our city's response to homelessness. One of those issues also is how to bring supportive housing units that are vacant online. That continues to be a focus for us, because any vacant supportive housing unit is an opportunity for us to connect in New York or with that same unit of housing.
Additionally, what is distinct about this approach is that outreach and connection to support services and shelter is the driving motivation throughout all of this. So, whereas previously, a homeless New Yorker might have only two points of interaction with City government. The first day they're served a notice and the seventh day when that notice comes to an end. Our administration will meet those homeless New Yorkers every single day, and we will meet them looking to connect them with shelter looking to connect them with services looking to connect them with a city that wants them to be sheltered and indoors and warm and safe. And that is something that I believe will yield far better results because it hasn't even been the driving directive of these policies before.
And what we've seen is in the prolonged Code Blue [was a] directive [that] yielded more than 1400 placements over the course of those weeks. And those are placements that ensured that New Yorkers were safer, that they were warmer, and I had the privilege as the mayor of our city to meet a number of those homeless New Yorkers. The lives that they have had to live, the stories that they can tell you of the struggles they have had to go through.
I met a man who had lived in the airport for five months prior to that moment. I met a man for whom he lost his wife. He was heartbroken he had to leave the apartment they had shared for decades. And so, he was there in a warming shelter. And I met so many New Yorkers for whom they are looking for someone to see them for what they are, which is New Yorkers who deserve humanity, who deserve dignity, who deserve a response and an interest in connecting them with the services they should be using. And so that's what our administration is going to do. Thank you very much.
