Dear Friends and Neighbors,
I want to thank all who attending our State of the District Address yesterday. Your presence was deeply appreciated and proves to show the increasing strength and unity of the many diverse communities within our district. As we work to improve and serve upper Manhattan, I am impressed by the level of engagement of our community shows, and I know we will successfully translate this into a brighter future for our neighborhoods and our youth.
If you were unable to attend, I wanted to highlight some key aspects of the speech. You can also view a video of the speech on my Facebook page, here. In particular, I'd like to highlight the great work being done in our beautiful parks and public spaces. Over the past two years, my staff and I have worked to allocate $9 million dollars on restoring playgrounds, open spaces and more in our parks. We have allocated funding particularly for the purpose of increasing the number of "green gyms," and were fortunate to have Mayor de Blasio add to these efforts as well with a $30 million dollar investment in restoring Highbridge Park.
When it comes to housing, we know our community is at the forefront of citywide conversation about development and gentrification. Displacement continues to devastate our community and our access to affordable housing is dwindling thanks to unscrupulous landlords and no new affordable housing development in years. To prevent landlords from displacing tenants I proposed a new census initiative yesterday that will allow our residents to be the eyes and ears in the fight against slumlords. I want our residents to notify my office immediately if they see or hear about warehoused units, landlords who withhold rent checks or harass tenants with buyout offers, fail to make crucial repairs to incentivize tenants to move, or any other despicable tactics that damages our community. We will work with HPD to hold these landlords accountable and push back against what we're unfortunately seeing every day.
As we continue to face and fight for the needs of our district, it is paramount for community leaders to unite their efforts in order to better serve our community. That being said, I would like to highlight the work of our leaders and executive directors who have formed the "Northern Manhattan Agenda," a coalition that will better coordinate services, share information and events with the community and develop into a resource when fighting for large federal grants. They will serve as a strategic planning force based on the needs of the district, beginning with the creation of a community website that will act as a primary resource for our residents. Through this, we hope to empower our residents and lift up our community.
You have and continue to play an instrumental role in all that our district has accomplished over the past year. Our successes, as well as our acknowledgment of areas in need of improvement, will serve to motivate myself, my staff, and community leaders for the upcoming year ahead.
