The project envisions building 12,000 new affordable homes in the Sunnyside Yard area of Queens, the busiest rail yard in the city.
New York City, Feb 26 (EFE).-
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Thursday proposed historic federal investment in affordable housing in the city to US President Donald Trump in an unannounced meeting at the White House, in which the mayor used real and mock newspaper front pages as props.
The Mayor’s Office said in a statement that the proposal for the largest housing and infrastructure investment in New York City in more than 50 years represents a “once-in-a-generation opportunity to confront the city’s housing crisis at the scale it demands,” but it requires more than $21 billion in federal grants.
During the meeting, the young progressive mayor presented fellow New Yorker Trump with the project to revitalize the area which, according to the Mayor’s Office, is especially attractive for large-scale housing and infrastructure development projects given its proximity to Manhattan.
Mamdani arrived at the meeting with a mock newspaper front page with the headline: ‘Trump to City: Let’s Build,’ a reference to the historic 1975 front page ‘Ford to the City: Drop Dead,’ published by the New York Daily News during the city’s fiscal crisis, when then-president Gerald Ford initially refused to approve a federal bailout for New York. The pair held both papers up for the cameras.
The New York mayor shared a photo of the meeting on his social media accounts, and according to his team, Trump was “very enthusiastic” about the proposal, which also aims to create 30,000 jobs, as well as new parks, schools, and healthcare facilities at Sunnyside Yard.
The meeting, which had not been previously announced, reflected the apparently cordial relationship between the two despite their marked political differences.
During his mayoral campaign last year, Trump harshly criticized Mamdani, calling him a “communist lunatic,” but after his election, the two New Yorkers met for the first time in Washington, marking the beginning of a pragmatic relationship.
In addition to housing investment, Mamdani discussed other issues with Trump, such as the release of Columbia University student Elaina Aghayeva, detained by immigration agents.
According to the mayor, the president assured him that the young woman would be released “imminently,” which happened within hours. EFE
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