Harlem is
NOT for Sale
CORE PROBLEM:
Harlem is being squeezed. Renters face harassment. Homeowners face predatory deed theft scams. Small businesses are priced out by commercial landlords. Political choices have favored the wealthy and failed our neighborhood time and time again. That ends now.
HOW WE GOVERN:
We know that one Assembly seat cannot resolve every challenge Harlem faces. But here is what one Assembly seat can do: use legislative authority, budget leverage, and a mobilized community to intentionally change the conditions that keep Harlem losing ground.
To the renters, homeowners, and workers of Harlem, I want to make this promise: I will stand up for our community. As your Assemblymember, I will not just occupy a seat; I will use it to draft legislation, shape budget priorities, challenge harmful deals, and build strong majorities—inside and outside government—that prioritize our survival over outside speculation.
Harlem is not a real estate asset or a tourist trap. It is our home, built over generations by residents, workers, and small businesses. We are trapped in a geographic crisis: paying Manhattan rents on outer-borough wages. While our residents earn 36% less than the city average, the immense wealth Harlem generates is stolen by outside speculators rather than used to uplift the people who live here.
I am committed to ending political choices that treat this injustice as inevitable. Some of this work can and will be done immediately through legislation and budget decisions. Other changes will require building statewide coalitions, organizing our community, and sustained pressure. Harlem, I want to be honest—any change takes all of us. But together we are prepared for it.
The mission is simple and firm:
Harlem stays,
Harlem builds,
Harlem governs.
HOW THE PIECES FIT TOGETHER:
People in Harlem know their community’s problems are connected. When housing is unstable and too expensive, our families get pushed out. When wages are too low, our rent becomes unmanageable. When public safety systems fail, our daily lives get harder. Our campaign starts from that reality. Keeping us in our homes, making sure the money we earn here stays here, and building public safety systems that actually serve our collective interests are not separate goals. These puzzle pieces rise or fall together.
The political choice to isolate housing from wages and safety has left Harlem vulnerable to the highest bidder. We are ending the era of piecemeal promises and influence peddling; we will treat the survival of our community as a single, indivisible project to ensure Harlem stays, builds, and governs.
Housing is where stability begins. Too many Harlem families are pushed out by rising rents and speculative development. Landlords and developers increasingly treat our homes as a financial asset rather than the place where we live. This displacement is the result of political choices. Different choices can be made. Protecting residents does not require freezing neighborhoods or limiting housing supply. It requires removing housing from speculation altogether. New housing has been built in our community for years while displacement has accelerated. The problem is not growth but who controls that growth and who benefits from it. It’s time to take that control back for us: the People of Harlem.
1
HOLD OUR
GROUND
ESTABLISH THE HARLEM GREEN SOCIAL HOUSING DISTRICT
We will work to establish a Social Housing Development Authority (SHDA)with the authority to issue its own debt and bypass municipal “Home Rule” bottlenecks that historically stall local progress. This district will develop green, mixed income housing managed by residents and constructed with guaranteed union labor. This approach treats housing as a permanent public good, providing high quality homes that are insulated from market forces.
ACQUIRE WHOLE BLOCKS WITH DAY ONE RESIDENT TRANSFER
To scale our impact, we will use a Community Acquisition Fund to purchase and preserve clusters of housing simultaneously. To prevent the state from becoming a distant, bureaucratic landlord, all acquired properties will include a legal requirement for Day One Transfer to local Community Land Trusts (CLTs) or limited equity cooperatives.
ENACT THE TENANT OPPORTUNITY TO PURCHASE ACT (TOPA)
We will pass TOPA to give residents the legal right to outbid speculators who want to profit off of us. This will be supported by public capital pooling to ensure tenant associations have the immediate liquidity needed to win and build equity together on the block they call home.
INSTITUTIONALIZE RESIDENT GOVERNANCE
Social and green housing must be governed by those with a direct stake in the outcome. We will establish boards of everyday residents selected through a lottery to hold real, decision-making authority over their building’s management and maintenance. This restores the community control fights of the 1960s, linking our dignity to actual governance.
DEPLOY A ROBUST CONSTITUENT TEAM
Our Office will be a hub for organizing and professional constituent services. We won’t wait for problems to reach a crisis; our team will be in the community daily, asking neighbors how we can best serve them, helping them navigate government bureaucracy, and forcing city agencies to deliver the services Harlem is owed.
PRIORITIZE COMMUNITY SCHOOLS
The average student spends over 1200 hours a year in school. Given the amount of time our kids are spending in school, we need to ensure they have access to quality education, health services, mentorship opportunities, and more. Community schools successfully integrate social services, implement teacher residency programs, and foster partnerships with local organizations to manage neighborhood recruitment. The community school model leads to stronger outcomes which allow students to not just learn facts and figures, but explore who they are and how they relate to those around us.
BUILD OUR
WEALTH
Keeping our community in Harlem only works if we can afford to live here. The 36% income gap in Harlem is a political choice. What is more, this year, fortune 500 companies took home record profits, while workers took home record low wages. We power this city with our labor, yet we earn significantly less than the rest of New York. While our work builds the city’s wealth, we are denied the prosperity we create. Our campaign knows Harlem is a collective economic engine and insists we who power Harlem share in what we produce. Wages do not rise because politicians announce a number. They rise because standards, procurement rules, and bargaining power change. We are committed to working to bring these changes, together.
2
TAX THE RICH INVEST IN OUR COMMUNITY
While many New Yorkers struggle to make ends meet, the wealthiest have only gotten richer because they don’t pay their fair share. Fortune 500 companies made record profits this year. That’s why we need to tax the rich: to be able to pay for important services for all New Yorkers, but folks in Harlem, especially. By expanding the number of tax brackets, creating an heirs’ tax, taxing the most successful corporations, and creating a capital gains tax we can fund quality education, rental assistance, universal healthcare, universal childcare, and more to provide material changes to everyday Harlemites.
WIN UNIVERSAL CHILDCARE FOR OUR FAMILIES
Raising children anywhere is wildly expensive, but with daycare costs reaching tens of thousands of dollars a year, it is incredibly hard for parents to be able to afford having and caring for their children. Universal childcare would make it possible for parents to raise their children here in Harlem. Everyone, from Governor Hochul on down, believes we need to give parents a fighting chance. But the pilot program in the budget, while good, does not go far enough. We need to give every family access to childcare, from six weeks until kindergarten. And we can’t just pass universal childcare, we need to fight for our childcare workers–who are consistently paid some of the lowest wages in the state even as the cost of daycare has jumped by as much as 43% over the past seven years–to make not just a living, but a thriving wage. A fully funded universal childcare system with properly compensated childcare workers will provide the best care for the youngest in Harlem. It’s not enough to want to do it. We have to make sure it gets done. When I get to Albany, I will fight to see universal childcare becomes a reality.
GET BANG FOR OUR BUCK IN TRANSIT
Everyone has been late to work or even to a gathering with friends because a train wasn’t running or the bus was running ten minutes late. Being late costs Harlemites time and money. But we can have a public transit system that serves Harlem regularly, quickly, and efficiently. By fighting for a State budget that includes MTA funding specifically for repairing aging subway infrastructure, ensuring stops are accessible, and making buses free, we can have a world class public transit system that everyone can depend on down to the minute.
PASS THE NYC SMALL BUSINESS SURVIVAL ACT
We will work to pass commercial rent stabilization to cap rent increases for local shops and restaurants. By stabilizing these rents, we ensure Harlem’s corridors are anchors of community wealth rather than targets for predatory rent hikes.
MANDATE A $30 WAGE BY 2030
Us working people deserve a wage that allows us to meet all our needs and raise a family without the exhaustion of juggling multiple jobs.
FULLY FUND A TUITION-FREE NEW DEAL FOR CUNY
City College of New York, a premiere public university, is at the center of our district. Yet so many Harlemites are not able to access an education there. We will ensure Harlemites can access the professional training needed to lead the industries of the future. Public college must return to being a guaranteed engine of social mobility, not a debt trap. We will return CUNY to its tuition-free start, making public college truly public once again.
DELIVER REPARATIONS FOR BLACK HARLEMITES
Black Americans continue to endure the financial impacts of slavery, Jim Crow-era policies, and decades of redlining. According to data from the Federal Reserve, despite accounting for 13.7% of the population, Black families hold just 3.4% of the wealth. In contrast, white households hold 84.2 percent of all U.S. wealth. Harlemites intimately understand this struggle. So many of us are renters without the comfort and stability that is afforded by ownership, and we’re all constantly fighting to make ends meet. It is time to abolish the continuing vestiges of slavery and begin righting one of our nation’s original sins. In 2023, the state established the New York State Community Commission on Reparations Remedies to examine the legacy of slavery and the ongoing impacts of discrimination against people of African descent. While this represents a necessary first step towards justice, Black Harlemites deserve far more to rectify a long history of racist inequity. I am committed to fighting for real reparations for Black New Yorkers—implementing the recommendations of the State Commission’s future report, putting funds into the pockets of Black citizens, promoting homeownership by funding rent to own initiatives, preserving our sacred Black spaces, and funding small business loans and social enterprise programs for Black small businesses.
TAX WEALTHY UNIVERSITIES
Columbia University is rooted in Harlem because of public investment, infrastructure, and subsidies. Asking the university to contribute to the neighborhood it relies on is basic accountability.
PROTECT OUR
PEOPLE
Public safety determines whether stability lasts. We know what it feels like when government safety systems show up too late or make a crisis worse. Real safety is an institutional responsibility that requires the right response at the right time. While some situations will always require enforcement, the current system’s failure is enforcement as the first response rather than the last.
We want fewer emergencies that spiral and faster responses when help is needed. We are building a neighborhood where safety feels real and consistent because it is on our terms.
3
LEAD WITH PROFESSIONALS FOR MENTAL HEALTH CRISES
When a neighbor experiences a mental health crisis, we will ensure that trained professionals respond first. We will work to pass Daniel’s Law to provide faster help and fewer traumatic encounters.
ABOLISH REMNANTS OF SLAVERY, THE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
Predominately Black and brown neighborhoods like ours experience disproportionate policing, resulting in higher rates of arrest and incarceration. And, corporations profit off of our incorporation — resulting in a system, where our bodies and labor are still used to build profits for other people. In New York City, Harlemites experience some of the highest incarceration rates. Our criminal legal system often locks people up and doesn’t look back — it doesn’t truly take into account an individual’s rehabilitation, the efforts and activities they have undertaken since being incarcerated, the likelihood of recidivism, their age, or their health. It decimates communities, separates families, and inflicts generational trauma. We must address the broken system and recognize the humanity of our neighbors by improving opportunities for an individual’s sentencing to be revisited by passing Fair and Timely Parole, Elder Parole, Second Look Sentencing, and the Earned Time Act. Further, we must allow the circumstances of an offense to be taken into account at sentencing through the passage of the Marvin Mayfield Act. We must ensure that those who are imprisoned in New York facilities are not subject to abuse or inhumane conditions. In Albany, I will work to pass Rights Behind Bars to improve conditions for individuals who are incarcerated, and address New York’s unjust prison labor system. Currently, people in New York prisons are forced to work–often in unsafe conditions–for as little as 10 cents an hour and, if they refuse, they can be subject to loss of visitation, lengthened sentences, or solitary confinement. Our state must pass the No Slavery in New York Act, to prohibit individuals from being punished for refusing to work, the Prison Wage Act, to increase the wage of workers who are incarcerated, and theFairness and Opportunity for Incarcerated Workers Act, to guarantee people who are incarcerated health and safety protections and provide job opportunities that set people up for success upon release.
STREET-LEVEL INVESTMENTS TO ENSURE NO BLOCK IS FORGOTTEN
Safety will be bolstered through non-police investments in street lighting, sanitation, and transit infrastructure. This addresses quality-of-life grievances while restoring order to public spaces without increasing incarceration rates.
END ICE COLLABORATION
Local resources must never be used to tear families apart. We will pass New York for All to ensure residents can seek help and report crimes without fear of deportation. We will also guarantee that every neighbor facing the deportation machine has access to a lawyer so they have a real chance to stay home.
GUARANTEE DIGNITY FOR ALL NEIGHBORS
Every Harlem resident deserves respect in our public institutions. We will mandate that trans and queer neighbors have access to affirming healthcare and are treated with dignity in every city system. Safety is not real unless it is consistent and follows the respect our community has earned.
END THE SCHOOL TO PRISON PIPELINE
Black and Brown students are too often subjected to disciplinary measures that disproportionately impact their futures. Suspensions lead to learning loss, more suspensions, and increased contact with the criminal legal system. Suspensions have a detrimental effect on the students who are suspended. Students are more likely to be suspended again, and, compared to their peers who have not been suspended, are more likely to end up trapped in the criminal legal system. We need to drastically drop the number of suspensions given to students and replace them with restorative options that escape the punitive and carceral mindset represented by suspensions. I would do that by working to pass the Judge Judith S. Kaye Solutions Not Suspensions Act.
PROTECT THE RIGHT TO CARE FOR OUR TRANS AND QUEER BROTHERS AND SISTERS
Right now, in addition to a push to erase black history, there is a push to erase the history, struggle, and way of choosing to live for our Queer and Trans siblings. And, our Trans siblings — especially our Black Trans siblings are at the intersection of every struggle that divides the power of the working class. Every single Harlemite deserves to be able to lead a dignified life. And, we have to protect the rights of Queer and Trans siblings to be able to do so. I will fight fight to Decriminalize Sex Work, Pass the GIRDS Act, and Fight to prohibit New York from contracting with organizations that fail to provide health insurance covering services for transgender, and non-binary, individuals. Our trans siblings deserve care that affirms their identity. Services that allow people to transition, regardless of whether those services are surgical, hormonal, or involve other treatments, are healthcare. Our trans siblings deserve healthcare that addresses their needs. And I will support requiring all insurers to cover that care.