My name’s Clarence

@EmilyAssembly @sarahana If you're in your 20s w/ a good job but still can’t find an affordable apartment in NYC, it is because your representatives in Albany have rigged the system against you. They've locked up 75% of the housing supply and you are left competing for the few vacancies that exist.

All New Yorkers deserve the stability and dignity afforded by rent stabilization. Congratulations to my friend @sarahana for passing the REST Act through committee today! We must pass it before season ends in June.

@loud_socialist Actually “overnight”? Sure. But if by overnight, you mean within a couple years, then ask Denver, Austin, Nashville and others how quickly their supply injections increased vacancy and brought down rents. The evidence is staring us in the face.

the "get rid of affordability requirements so we can build enough to bring down rents" line exhausts me, why can't we loosen zoning significantly while increasing public investment in housing & keeping affordability requirements? Supply injections don't bring rents down overnight

@claireforny She is expecting your vote to get her $174,000 salary, pension benefits and free health care. You get nothing. Her policies are meant to protect Boomers in affordable rent regulated units they have been in for decades. 95% chance you will never, ever get to rent one.

@claireforny Listen up, NY. If you are in your 20s, with a good job but still can’t find an affordable apartment - she is RIGHT. The system has been rigged against you. But not by “corporations and bad landlords”. But by the DSA that’s locked up 75% of the housing supply with bad policy.

Our first ad of the campaign — "The Good Life" — is live.

@claireforny x.com/claireforny/st… Isn’t this really your first? The one you and @NYCMayor illegally filmed at Gracie Mansion in clear violation of campaign finance law and ethics rules?

@moseskagan Scary version is that elected officials in NY, LA and SF don’t want to alleviate their housing supply problem. They have taken the phrase “never let a good crisis go to waste” to it’s most grotesque end. A continuing crisis produces endless engagement farming opportunity.

What every voter and apparently, the NY Times Editorial Board, should know about housing policy: 1. Rents reflect the balance of supply of apartments and demand for those apartments in a given area. That’s it; there’s no magic. If you want lower rents, you can hope for a recession that destroys jobs and, therefore, demand. Or you can add supply. 2. There is no amount of money that any big city government could feasibly spend that would add materially to supply. This is because, depending on the location, new apartments cost $250,000-1,000,000 to develop… building even a few hundred of those starts to stress any city budget, and many big cities need tens or hundreds of thousands. 3. On the other hand, investors (including pension funds and endowments, insurance companies, rich families, etc.) can collectively **easily** provide enough capital to build as much housing as we need **so long as they are confident they can get a reasonable return**. To get those investors to fund the creation of the housing our society needs, we must do two things: 1. Dramatically reduce the time & complexity associated with securing governmental permission to develop housing. This means reviewing and simplifying the overlapping regulations that constrain housing production: zoning codes, building codes, parking, ADA, etc. But it also means changing the cultures within the relevant governmental agencies from “default no” to “how can we help you?”. 2. Provide certainty around on-going regulation of apartment operations. The way investors get a return from building rentals is as follows: They hire managers to lease the apartments, collect the rents, pay operating expenses and any mortgage payments, and then send the investors the cashflow that remains. But governments all over the country have been restricting the manner in which apartment buildings can be operated in all kinds of ways. For example: Cities have been making it harder to screen tenants, while also making it much harder to evict tenants who don’t pay. You can see why both of those measures are politically popular. After all, who doesn’t want people to get second chances? And who wants anyone to get evicted? But, as a manager, the combination of those two regulations makes it much harder to predict, with any certainty, that the rent will get paid… and that makes it very difficult to get investors to provide capital to create more housing. Another example: Rent control. Again, I understand why renters love rent control and why politicians want to give it to them. But, if, as has been the case in NY, LA and San Francisco, city governments hold annual rent increases below the rate of growth in the operating expenses of the buildings, the cashflow payable to the investors shrinks… making them much less likely to invest capital in building more apartments. In conclusion: For ~every other good or service in the economy, we allow the market to function, and the result is that we have a surplus of choice at all price points (think of food or clothes or cars), which is spectacular for the consumer. If we want a surplus of choice at all price points in housing, we need to get comfortable with the idea of allowing the market to provide it. And that means allowing investors to build rental apartments *and* allowing them to operate those apartments in a manner consistent with making a reasonable profit. Remember: Every developer of rentals is either a landlord-in-waiting or hoping to sell to one.

@moseskagan When you look at Denver, Austin and Nashville, the evidence is obvious. Private capital plowed into these cities in the last few years to meet rising rental demand. These markets are now saturated with oversupply. Vacancy is above 10%, rents and cratered and still flatlined.

@SpencerHakimian “…as of the Effective Date….”

Trump was just given a blanket pardon from the IRS for any past, present, or future tax crimes.

@claireforny These workers have been getting raises every year. While 45-50,000 commuters who depend on the LIRR to get to THEIR jobs will spend at least $25 per day in gas & parking. That's if they decide to take the subway from the edge of Queens. I guess no solidarity for those workers?

On the picket line with LIRR workers at Penn Station. Three years without a raise is a pay cut. Gov. Hochul and the MTA need to come back to the table and negotiate a fair contract now. The workers who run the busiest commuter rail in North America have waited long enough.

@EmilyAssembly @SalazarSenate No. NYC has a property tax problem. Make it more equitable for multifamily buildings and commercial tenants will not have to share the burden of high property taxes. Yes. It’s that simple.

NYC has a commercial rent crisis. Our most beloved businesses are closing, replaced by big chains or empty storefronts. @SalazarSenate and I are working to bring commercial rent stabilization to NYC, so the businesses that make our city great can thrive. citylimits.org/opinion-commer…

@erik_engquist Since Good Cause Eviction (which Cea Weaver called “Universal Rent Control”) appears to be working, can we dump Rent Stabilization now?

Good cause eviction has not been a big topic in NYC since the law passed in 2024. But one real estate exec believes it is causing more tenants to stay put, which means fewer units opening up and higher rents for those that do. Anyone else seeing that? therealdeal.com/new-york/2026/…

@NYCMayor Mr. Mayor, would you be willing to testify to your assessment of high inflation at the next RBG hearing?

Inflation is at a three-year high. Everything costs more — groceries, gas, healthcare, a plane ticket. The math is simple. Every American dollar spent overseas on war is a dollar that could’ve been spent here at home to pay for a dignified life. It's time we change the equation.

@erik_engquist Yes. 100% true.

@claireforny So if you manage to get elected by a small percentage voters (as always seems to happen in NYC elections), you will instead commit to fight every day for the interests of the majority of your constituents? Not just the very small number who actually subscribe to your DSA agenda?

By this logic, none of the following New Yorkers are anyone's constituents: - Every kid under 18 - Every green card holder - Every other lawful permanent resident - Every undocumented immigrant - Every person in prison - Every out-of-state college student Elected officials represent residents, not just voters.

@claireforny @NYCMayor Your cognitive dissonance is astonishing. A state bailout and pension gimmicks will be the burden of working people in New York for decades.

When @nycmayor inherited a fiscal crisis, he refused to put austerity on the table. That refusal moved billions in the state budget. There's work to do in Albany. We can tax the rich far more. But this is what it looks like when you refuse to turn your back on working people.

@claireforny Seizing private utilities would cost billions and result in higher taxes and utility costs on EVERYONE. Renewables lack "baseload" consistency and risk dangerous blackouts and grid failure. Older buildings can't afford current green retrofits without massive subsidies.

AI. Fossil fuels. Private utilities. The same oligarchs creating an affordability crisis are burning the planet. The solution must address both problems at once. Read our new climate platform. clairevaldezforcongress.com/issues/memo/cl…

There's a lot of consternation among New York City's real estate cognoscenti over the upcoming RGB increase: will it really be a zero or perhaps slightly less confiscatory at 1%? The hard, sad truth is that it really doesn't matter either way. Whether the legal increase is 0 or up to 2%, heavily rent stabilized buildings will still have neither the financing nor the potential returns to replace aging roofs or heating systems. They will still lack the enormous money needed to comply with perverse and absurd local laws 10 + 11 or the new costly requirements of local laws 97 or 126. They will still lack the funds or incentive to return 80,000 out-of-order apartments to market and meanwhile another 10,000 - 15,000 destroyed-by-tenancy units will vacate next year and become unrented, uninhabitable. And to top it all off, as in every year, a handful more buildings will collapse, be flooded or catch fire, causing all of their apartments to go permanently out of existence. Meanwhile there will be yet again less new home construction delivered than the total number of apartments removed from supply, placing ever more upward pressure on the quasi-market good-cause-eviction units. Rent freeze? Who cares.....

@claireforny You really don’t know who Steven Roth is? Do you know how many union jobs he has created? And will create? Aren’t you an “union organizer”?

According to this “big-time” real estate developer, New Yorkers asking the wealthiest people on earth to pay higher taxes is the same as “disgusting racial slurs.”

@claireforny Which polls are you referencing?

Holding the line…against the thing a majority of New Yorkers want.

@claireforny What do you mean by “ALL leases”? The RGB only determines rent increases for rent stabilized leases. You appear to be advocating for the interests of a small portion of the constituents you hope to represent - at the expense of many more.

Landlord profits are up while New Yorkers choose between paying the rent and paying for food. The RGB must freeze the rent on ALL leases. And I’ll fight alongside tenants across NYC to make sure it does in June.