THE BRONX — Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. will focus on hot-button issues like homelessness and rezoning in his seventh annual State of the Borough address this year.
The speech is set to take place Thursday, and Diaz will use the opportunity to discuss new proposals on topics ranging from education to development to tourism.
He will also focus on two issues that have recently become very controversial in New York City: homelessness and Mayor Bill de Blasio's affordable housing zoning proposals.
After denying over the summer that there had been an increase in street homelessness, de Blasio later acknowledged that it was an issue and announced several new initiatives meant to help deal with it.
However, a recent Quinnipiac University poll found that many voters still did not think the city was doing enough to help the homeless, and Diaz will recommend in his speech that the city start mandating that certain apartments in new developments go to working people who currently live in the shelter system, arguing that compassion must replace NIMBYism.
The borough president will also tackle de Blasio's Mandatory Inclusionary Housing proposal, which would require new construction in parts of the city to include affordable housing, and his Zoning for Quality and Affordability proposal, which is meant to make building affordable senior housing easier by relaxing parking requirements and increasing building heights.
Diaz has become an outspoken critic of both proposals, describing them as "tremendously flawed" and deriding them for taking a "one-size-fits-all" approach to development in the city.
He will continue this criticism in his speech, maintaining that the ideas would dramatically alter the way New York City looks and feels, and that they are not the way to ensure that New Yorkers have access to affordable housing.
Diaz's speech is scheduled to start at 11:30 a.m. in Cardinal Hayes High School at 650 Grand Concourse. He has previously used the address to call for a new gun-crime registry and new specialized high schools throughout the city.
