So, just in case anyone doubted that this thread is needed...
(January 2, 2014) — Bill de Blasio, the newly inaugurated mayor of New York City, is moving forward with his plan to allocate $1 billion of pension assets to affordable housing—a massive increase to the funds' prior investments to this space.
His plan calls for creating 11,000 units over eight years with the additional $1 billion input from the city’s $144 billion pension funds. It also includes contraction of 50,000 new units through "inclusionary zoning"—a requirement that developers build affordable homes for low- and middle-income families.
This is hysterically funny. You just get elected mayor of the nation's largest city (for now) and what is your first official action?
That's right, create public housing. You just can't get more retro stupid than that. Well, I suppose you can and he is just the mayor to prove it so perhaps I should hold my tongue on that one. (Reason, logic and a basic knowledge of statistics and probabilities would tend to lead one to believe that all of his moves can't be this bad. Seriously, law of averages and all that stuff says that he just has to have a few days when he isn't this f**king stupid.)
And what makes it especially funny is that he is paying for this guaranteed-can't-possibly-succeed-in-a-million-years boondoggle with money appropriated from the NYC pension fund. Quick, someone do a payback or ROI analysis on throwing $1 billion into a near literal rathole Yep, I'm laughing on this one. I think you could get a better ROI by taking a billion dollars in $10's and $20's, feeding them into a shredder, bagging the stuff and selling it as cat litter.
Plus, I predict (and this one is really a total can't miss prediction but, hey, someone has to say it) that the $1 billion will 1) end up largely going into non-construction graft areas and that 2) they will need to go back to the pension fund to raid it again when they don't have enough money to finish these new housing projects. It's a low hanging curveball.
I suppose that David Dinkins will at least get the benefit of knowing that he will no longer be remembered as the stupidest idiot to ever be elected mayor of NYC.
How long before he disarms the NYPD? Don't laugh at that one. It is almost certainly on the list.