Hi dear New Yorkers, I'm not eligible to vote, but I want to take my kids to some campaigns or voting sites for citizen education. Probably both parties don't really care about the NYC that much. Do you think if there's any good place we can go to that's subway accessible?

Also, on the election day, where would you suggest us to go to witness this historical event?

Thank you so much.

The other day it occurred to me that I couldn’t remember a president that ever served on another president’s cabinet. When I looked it up the reason was clear.

The last president to have served on a cabinet was Herbert Hoover. That’s a hundred years ago. In the hundred years prior to that there were 5 if you include Hoover.

While it’s difficult to empirically find the reason or reasons for that, what do you think they are? And does that make you wary of AOC getting one?

Insert joke about future Buttigieg presidential bids here.

I used to think there were some lines the Democrats would not cross.

Welcoming Dick Cheney, openly stoking war with Iran…

It seems like AOC either shuts up and becomes complicit or goes Independent like Sanders or starts a new party.

I think she is the only one who could successfully start a new party and I think the Democrats seeming goal of becoming the new Conservative Party makes that inevitable.

How can housing be made more affordable, and also keep appreciating in price? It cant. Homeowners need to stop being sold the idea that their house is their biggest investment, and that it will appreciate over time. Their retirement savings needs to be their own savings and investments, pensions/401ks and social security. Artificial arrangements done to make houses appreciate, such as single family zoning, minimum lot sizes, among other things need to be undone.

Also, I wonder, even for the same supply of houses, how much more are higher-income homebuyers willing to pay for houses based on the idea that they'll appreciate? Not how much do they appreciate after buying them, but how much of a markup is there on home prices based on the idea of appreciation in the first place? If we treated our houses solely as homes and not investments, would they be immediately cheaper, even without an increase in supply?

That'd be a pretty good way to fight inflation.

All quotes from: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/18/opinion/aoc-tina-smith-housing.html although, it's an excellent essay and I suggest you read all of it.

For decades, thanks to restrictive zoning laws and increasing construction costs, we simply haven’t built enough new housing.

There is another way: social housing. Instead of treating real estate as a commodity, we can underwrite the construction of millions of homes and apartments that, by law, must remain affordable. Some would be rental units; others would offer Americans the opportunity to build equity. These models of rent caps and homeownership are already working around the world, such as in Vienna, and in some parts of the United States.

In Congress, the two of us represent very different parts of the country, but New Yorkers and Minnesotans have both benefited from social housing.

And

Because we believe that housing is a human right, like food or health care, we believe that more Americans deserve the option of social housing. That’s why we’re introducing the Homes Act, a plan to establish a new, federally backed development authority to finance and build homes in big cities and small towns across America. These homes would be built to last by union workers and then turned over to entities that agree to manage them for permanent affordability: public and tribal housing authorities, cooperatives, tenant unions, community land trusts, nonprofits and local governments.

Our housing development authority wouldn’t be focused on maximizing profit or returns to shareholders. Rent would be capped at 25 percent of a household’s adjusted annual gross income. Homes would be set aside for lower-income families in mixed-income buildings and communities. And every home would be built to modern, efficient standards, which would cut residents’ utility costs. Renters wouldn’t have to worry about the prospect of a big corporation buying up the building and evicting everyone. Some could even come together to purchase their buildings outright.

To fund social housing construction, our development authority would rely on a combination of congressional spending and Treasury-backed loans, making financing resilient to the volatility of our housing market and the political winds of the annual appropriations process.

Our bill would also invest in public housing and repeal the Faircloth Amendment, which prevents the construction of new public housing. Passed in 1998, with the support of both parties, the amendment helped entrench a cycle of stigmatization and disinvestment. Our legislation would reinvest federal money in local public housing authorities to fund the backlog of much-needed repairs.

We know that housing looks a lot different in Bemidji, Minn., than in the Bronx. It shouldn’t be a one-size-fits-all approach. That’s why our bill would task local governments, unions and established local nonprofits with developing homes that blend seamlessly into the landscape of the town and fit the needs of the people living in them.

Research from New York University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the Climate and Community Institute estimates that our bill could build and preserve more than 1.25 million homes, including more than 850,000 for the lowest-income households.

What's in this comment is what I remember, my opinions, etc.

One of the things that's absolute garbage about the housing plan that VPOTUS Kamala Harris discusses in speeches and in interviews is her plan is based on private investment and real estate developers. And that's simply garbage. It's the problem in California that 'affordable housing' is always effectively a multi-billion dollar gift to real estate developers and 'affordable' units somehow end up cost around $1MM each.

AOC's plan is not only far better, it's far more affordable.