NEW YORK (AP) – Mayor Bill de Blasio will bring his message of combating income inequality – and, in particular, his ambitious affordable housing plan – to a group of influential New York City business leaders whose support could prove vital.
De Blaiso will deliver a significant speech Thursday morning to the Association for a Better New York, a coalition of city elites who thrived for 12 years under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s leadership but who have been concerned that under his successor’s stewardship crime could increase and the economy falter.
The mayor offered a brief preview of his speech to reporters on Wednesday, saying he would “talk about what we have to do to continue to address income inequality,” which is the signature initiative of his young administration.
“I’m going to talk about the importance of our housing plan,” he said during an unrelated event in Brooklyn, “and some of the things that we need to do to foster job growth and better wages in this city.”
Aides to the mayor said de Blasio, a Democrat, would urge the business group to do more to uplift the city’s struggling residents, and encourage them to back his overhaul of New York’s workforce-training program as well as his expansion of the city’s living wage law. He also will ask them to support his plan to develop or preserve 200,000 units of affordable housing by 2024.