New York Mayor Bill de Blasio cited the need to attract higher-paying jobs in his annual State of the City address.
"We have to drive up incomes," de Blasio said Monday night at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. "That means actually helping people to get the kind of jobs that allow you to afford to live in New York City. Good paying jobs."
The mayor, in the final year of his first team and seeking re-election, kept his comments general.
In last year's speech, by contrast, he released plans for a Brooklyn-Queens light-rail service with an initial cost of $2.5 billion, with capital raised through a nascent nonprofit with the authority to issue tax-exempt bonds.
"The affordability crisis is a fundamental and a profound problem. It's deep but it's not complex," said de Blasio. "The math is real simple. Housing costs kept rising and rising, but incomes didn't."
The mayor repeated his running concerns about the uncertainty of Republican Donald Trump's presidency.
"There [are] a lot of people in the city right now who fear for what's happening, and they fear that Washington won't have their back, that Washington is against them," said de Blasio.
De Blasio, who three weeks ago released his $84.7 billion executive budget for fiscal 2018, repeated his call for a "mansion tax," which faces an uphill battle in Albany, where Republicans control the state Senate.
Such a levy on home sales that exceed $2 million would provide $336 million, said the mayor. The funds, he added, could provide affordable housing for 25,000 elderly city residents.
"If we speak loudly, Albany will listen," he said.
