{"id":323,"date":"2005-04-22T10:44:49","date_gmt":"2005-04-22T17:44:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/missrepresentation.com\/?p=323"},"modified":"2009-08-02T14:33:50","modified_gmt":"2009-08-02T19:33:50","slug":"lets-not-get-bogged-down-with-details","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/missrepresentation.com\/?p=323","title":{"rendered":"Let’s not get bogged down<\/em> with details."},"content":{"rendered":"

Only pennies a day from each household in New Jersey to provide temporary housing for 22 men? That’s a good deal. The same amount for working families that can’t find affordable housing? That’s socialism<\/em>. Fortunately, we got promises of both this week, to assuage our redness and blueness. As is apropos to the metaphoric interpretation of the latter, the blue promise is only a promise to fulfill a promise made fifteen years ago (yes, that’s a lot of promises), even as there’s still some talk that perhaps that money should go to another 22 semi-homeless millionaries.<\/p>\n

The Times<\/em> ran a piece today<\/a> detailing the finer points of the Giants stadium deal. Or not, since no one can seem to get their mitts on it. Well, the Times<\/em> couldn’t. And if they can’t, it can’t be got. But the talking points today are that the $6.3 million in yearly income<\/a> wasn’t net maintenance (estimated currently to be $3 million), lowering the projected direct income to $120 million over the 40 years of the agreement. Meanwhile, the current estimated expenses are $190 million (if retiring the current debt is part of the state nut). Or not, because there are things like the $720 million in lost income (the current tenants pay, you know, rent), but also the potential of $612 million in projected tax revenue. So you can see how it gets murky. But who’s counting? Asks Mark S. Rosentraub, an economist at Cleveland State University — let us note here that Cleveland is the most segregated large city in the country and has more people living in poverty than Detroit<\/em>, so they know from good planning — pointing out that the $10-20 million<\/em> a year the state might lose is ‘neglible’ when spread over the millions of NJ households. Hmmm. Maybe we could tack on a little more negligence and give everyone in Jersey a decent home?<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, over here, our own bit of reclaimed trash heap is helping out the needy as well, and Mike-Mike is trying to get you to love him the only way he knows how: buying you<\/a> (me? one-bedroom, south of 14th Street, southern exposure preferred). Well, not you, but a bunch of people who look like you (and me), except they are less white and more poor. That’s right: after 15 years, the city is going to make good on the promise<\/a> to use excess revenue from Battery Park City — excess defined as the money left over after the BPCA gets done paying the poshest park staff in the western world — to fund affordable housing.<\/p>\n

I’d go dig up the details, but affordable housing is simply the promise of love in the morning from a man trying to get you into bed tonight. Mike-Mike had four years to get this program off the ground. Guiliani had eight. Dinkins had four. Koch had a couple. You get the picture. Between subsidizing the tapis vert<\/em> at Rockefeller Park (and providing play space for kids named things like ‘Tristan’) and shoring up the general fund, it’s been a lot big talk with no action regarding that money over the years.<\/p>\n

Complicating Mike-Mike’s CYA action is that as recently as last year it was being suggested that those very same funds be redirected at the Hudson Yards project — which you should all read to mean ‘Jets Stadium’. This may have been a dream of Dan ‘the Visgoth’ Doctoroff, or simply some wonky underling looking for ways to pad the till back when the Jets were offering two tickets to The Lion King<\/em> in exchange for the entire West Side. So it’s like 4,500 units or something, and a big ‘ole pile of money — big ‘ole being a fairly specific unit of measure, equivalent to roughly 5% of what the city will need to spend in bond service and infrastucture improvements to get the stadium built. But that’s some 8,000 votes Mike-Mike couldn’t count on yesterday (maybe: as of this week, it looks like the Democrats are planning to back a tape recording of the MLK ‘I Have a Dream’ speech for mayor). We’ll get all old-school and advise to not believe the hype. Put some shovels in the proverbial ground, Mike-Mike. About 4,500 of them. Then we’ll talk about making a difference and a real housing policy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Only pennies a day from each household in New Jersey to provide temporary housing for 22 men? That’s a good deal. The same amount for working families that can’t find affordable housing? That’s socialism. Fortunately, we got promises of both this week, to assuage our redness and blueness. As is apropos to the metaphoric interpretation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/missrepresentation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/missrepresentation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/missrepresentation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missrepresentation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missrepresentation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=323"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/missrepresentation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":514,"href":"https:\/\/missrepresentation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323\/revisions\/514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/missrepresentation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missrepresentation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missrepresentation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}