Shaun Donovan, the former Secretary of Urban Housing and Development and budget director under the Obama administration, launched his campaign for New York City mayor on Tuesday, Fox News informed.
In a Zoom event at the Bronx’s Via Verde Housing Development, which was timed with the release of a promotional video, Donovan said that mayors are what make America run.
The Democrat promised viewers that he would take the subway to work every day, proposing so-called “15-minute neighborhoods” where residents have no more than a 15-minute walk in any direction to access fresh food, schools, transit, and a public park.
Donovan, 54, also told reporters that the city was asking the police department to do too much and said he supported an appeals court decision to let more than 200 men continue to stay at the Lucerne Hotel on the city’s Upper West Side.
Donovan, who was also previously former Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s housing commissioner, focused on inequality and highlighted the plight of the disenfranchised in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic during his more than two-minute campaign ad.
“While this pandemic has hurt everyone, it’s disproportionately devastated our most vulnerable communities,” the native New Yorker said. “Growing up here, I remember watching neighborhoods burn. Shocked and angered that we could allow such extreme poverty in a city with so much wealth.”
Nearly one in every 106 New Yorkers in a city of more than 8.3 million is homeless, and nearly 4,000 people sleep in public spaces, according to The Bowery Mission.
Donovan said he had entered a life of public service hoping to be a part of the solution, to fight for affordable housing, and to narrow inequality.
“President Barack Obama asked me to serve as his secretary of urban housing and development. And later, to manage the $4 trillion federal budget,” he said. “We worked side-by-side to deal with some of the greatest crises our nation has ever faced.”
Under the Obama administration, the homeless crisis waned, seeing double-digit drops in homeless families, people and veterans since 2010, according to the 2016 Annual Homeless Assessment Report.
Be the first to comment