Jeffery C. Mays

The effort, known as Outreach NYC, is the latest attempt from Mayor Bill de Blasio to tackle perhaps the most intractable problem his administration has faced: street homelessness. The problem was highlighted in October when a homeless man, Randy Santos, allegedly bludgeoned four other homeless men to death in Chinatown.

Workers from the departments of parks, sanitation, buildings, fire and health and mental hygiene will be trained to use 311 apps to send detailed service requests to the new homeless services joint command center.

The information will help outreach workers identify the street homeless and begin the delicate and complicated work of persuading them to accept services and shelter.

The mayor has also committed $19 million to hire almost 200 new homeless outreach workers, bringing the total to close to 600.

City officials said de Blasio was committed to the strategy as a way to reduce the number of unsheltered people as he enters the last two years of his administration. Leading the effort will be Dr. Raul Perea-Henze, who will be announced Thursday as the new deputy mayor to oversee health and human services.

“We cannot attempt to address this issue in a vacuum,” de Blasio said in a statement. “Outreach NYC is our all-hands-on-deck approach to bring even more people in off the streets.”

De Blasio has dealt with record homelessness during his six-year tenure. The approximately 4,000 street homeless represent 5% of the 79,000 total homeless people in the city, most of whom are in shelters. As of Tuesday, there were 60,479 people in the city’s primary shelter system, including almost 22,000 children.

Perea-Henze said he hoped to “accelerate” Outreach NYC during the next two years.

“I believe there is progress being made,” said Perea-Henze, who dealt with veteran homelessness, mental illness and drug addiction when he served as the assistant secretary for policy and planning in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs during the Obama administration. “But frankly, for the next two years, I will be responsible for making sure that progress accelerates.”

Perea-Henze has a master’s degree in public health from Yale University and was the first openly gay Latino to be sworn in as a sub-Cabinet secretary. A Mexican immigrant, he speaks four languages and started his career at New York City Health and Hospitals Corp., where he developed the division of infectious diseases during the AIDS epidemic. His first partner died from AIDS.

Perea-Henze is replacing Dr. Herminia Palacio, who resigned in June to become the president and chief executive of the Guttmacher Institute. He takes over an agency charged with overseeing public health, with a particular focus on helping the most vulnerable New Yorkers.

He begins his tenure amid calls to set aside and build more housing specifically for the homeless as part of the mayor’s affordable housing plan. The city has so far struggled to keep pace with de Blasio’s plan to build 90 new homeless shelters, with many meeting opposition from neighborhood residents.

Although the number of people in shelters has been flat for the first time in a while, Perea-Henze said “we still need to turn the tide” on the issue.

“Coming in to tackle homelessness is probably the best thing that I can do to help New Yorkers,” he said. Asking city employees to be trained to identify and help the homeless is a natural progression, he said.

Giselle Routhier, policy director of the Coalition for the Homeless, an advocacy group, said the city’s focus on this new effort was “frustrating” because “the problem with street homelessness is not a lack of outreach workers, the problem is they are not being offered something meaningful like housing or a low-barrier shelter.”

City officials say they have helped 2,200 people who were living on the street move into permanent and transitional housing since 2016. The number of beds in shelters with low barriers for entry, called “safe havens,” has tripled to 1,800 and should increase to 2,100 by the end of de Blasio’s tenure, officials said.

The coalition has called for the city to build 24,000 new apartments and preserve 6,000 more for the homeless and to speed up the creation of 15,000 units of supportive housing. There are not enough safe haven shelter beds because people are staying in them longer, Routhier said.

Outreach NYC follows the de Blasio administration’s “Home-Stat” strategy, a variation of the popular Compstat system that relies on daily canvassing and data to identify homelessness patterns.

Steven Banks, commissioner of social services, said the added step of enlisting city employees, who are at work across the city 24 hours per day, to identify the homeless will allow faster emergency response. The nearly 18,000 calls to 311 about homelessness so far this year matches the pace from 2018.

“It’s a force multiplier,” Banks said. “There’s no substitute for increasing the number of eyes and ears to identify people in need.” He added that outreach workers may need to have dozens of interactions with individuals living on the street before being able to gain their trust and persuade them to accept services.

Part of the issue is that many of the persistent street homeless may suffer from mental illness; de Blasio has faced regular criticism over the failure of ThriveNYC, the $1 billion plan to tackle mental health launched by his wife, Chirlane McCray, to help the most seriously mentally ill.

There are also new concerns about overpolicing of the poor, minorities and the homeless after Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced plans to hire 500 new police officers to help deal with homelessness and crime in the subways.

Routhier said the increase in police officers and the new outreach program would add “more points of contacts without solutions.”

“This looks like mass surveillance of homeless people,” she said.

This article originally appeared in

New York to Use 18,000 City Workers to Identify and Help Homeless

NEW YORK — New York City will direct more than 18,000 of its municipal workers to use 311 to give social service workers real-time information to help them steer the almost 4,000 people who live on the streets into shelters.

“This is a Democratic Party today that’s getting more progressive, that wants to address the concerns of working people, that does not accept the status quo,” de Blasio said. “There’s no way in the world we should nominate a billionaire who epitomizes the status quo.”

De Blasio portrayed Bloomberg as being out of touch with current Democratic values and suggested that Bloomberg’s 12-year tenure as mayor of New York was a showcase for some of his worst instincts.

“I think when he was mayor he had no understanding of the inequality crisis,” de Blasio said. “He was absolutely tone-deaf to what working people were going through in this city, and there were a number of other areas where he had a chance to do something and he just did not make it a priority.”

Bloomberg filed paperwork last week to run in Alabama’s Democratic primary contest. His advisers say he is likely to enter the race and may employ the risky strategy of skipping the four early primary states to focus on big states that hold later primary elections.

“I can be objective about some of his strengths and weaknesses — I can certainly prefer him over Donald Trump,” de Blasio said Monday, when asked about Bloomberg’s nascent campaign. “But does he represent today’s Democratic Party? Of course not. Not even close.”

He added that his own mayoral victory in 2013 came in large measure because he ran as the anti-Bloomberg.

“Obviously, when I got elected,” de Blasio said, “I think it was in large measure because people wanted a very, very different approach.”

The mayor’s comments, while consistent with remarks he made during the 2013 campaign, in which he blamed Bloomberg for turning New York into a “tale of two cities,” are actually a departure from his more recent and more measured stance toward Bloomberg.

The mayor has offered occasional praise for Bloomberg’s work on public health initiatives and efforts on gun control and immigration. And he has even given his predecessor credit for starting programs that the de Blasio administration has since expanded, such as selling air rights to fix the city’s decrepit public housing.

Stu Loeser, a spokesman for Bloomberg, declined to comment about de Blasio’s remarks Monday.

But Chris Coffey, who worked as a senior official in all three of Bloomberg’s administrations, was less reluctant to weigh in — and took a potshot at de Blasio’s penchant for showing up at City Hall well past 9 a.m.

When Bloomberg was running the city, “New Yorkers knew that the mayor was going to get up at 6:15 a.m. and work really hard for six or seven days a week,” said Coffey, who leads the New York practice for Tusk Strategies, a political and strategic consulting firm. “We don’t have that now.”

De Blasio, he added, may owe some of his success to his predecessor, who “put money into rainy-day funds and was a good steward of the budget.”

Should Bloomberg be in need of advice on how to handle criticism of his stop-and-frisk policing policies as he takes steps toward entering the presidential race, he could ask de Blasio how he dealt with similar attacks.

De Blasio was protested twice on national television during his run for the 2020 Democratic nomination over his refusal to fire the police officer involved in the chokehold death of Eric Garner, a Staten Island man accused of selling loose cigarettes.

“Mayor de Blasio is right in the sense of what Mayor Bloomberg has done for low-income New Yorkers of color should disqualify him” from becoming president, said Alyssa Aguilera, co-executive director of Vocal-NY, a nonprofit that helps low-income people. “He exacerbated inequality and changed the DNA of the city.”

“But at the same time,” she continued, “Mayor de Blasio said a lot of the right things in the progressive space, but we didn’t see him being bold and taking on the police union and developers. Neither of them should be president.”

Bloomberg for President? 'No Way,' His Successor Says

NEW YORK — Mayor Bill de Blasio, not far removed from his own failed presidential bid, said Monday that there was “no way in the world” that his predecessor in City Hall, Michael Bloomberg, deserved the Democratic nomination for president.

And so it was that Loree K. Sutton found herself one morning at the Trinity Boxing Club in Lower Manhattan, where many know her as the “general.”

The nickname came not because of her strong jab or command of the ring, but because Sutton, 60, the former head of New York City’s Department of Veterans’ Services under Mayor Bill de Blasio, is actually a retired Army brigadier general.

Now, Sutton wants to parlay her experience in the Army and in city government into her first run for public office, declaring Wednesday her candidacy to become the 110th mayor of New York City.

“I think it’s time for a new type of leadership, one that seeks to unite and think about old challenges and problems in new ways that benefit from the voices and perspectives of all New Yorkers,” Sutton said. “It’s not enough to have big ideas and introduce new programs, you have to set up world class operations.”

Sutton, a Democrat, said she was inspired when she saw hundreds of veterans running in the 2018 midterm elections, but did not consider her own candidacy until six months ago, when acquaintances kept urging her to run.

The most persuasive person was her wife, Laurie Leitch, the director of Threshold GlobalWorks; the couple was introduced by cartoonist Garry Trudeau, and married by him.

Her odds seem daunting: She has little name recognition or political experience, and will have to defeat well-regarded challengers who are expected to include the city comptroller, Scott Stringer, and the City Council speaker, Corey Johnson.

And although her tenure in the military and in the de Blasio administration is generally well regarded, she did suddenly resign as the director of the Defense Centers for Excellence in 2010, after news reports and congressional criticism that the military was failing to diagnose and treat soldiers with mild traumatic brain injuries.

That has not stopped some people from signing on to her campaign, which hopes to spend $7 million, the maximum allowed under the city’s matching funds program, for the 2021 primary. Tucker Green, founder of Tucker Green Consulting, and a well-known fundraiser, has signed on as a consultant.

Ken Fisher, a managing partner of Fisher Brothers, a family-owned real estate development and management firm with $8.5 billion in market valuation, is one of Sutton’s early financial backers.

Fisher said he met Sutton through his work as chief executive of the Fisher House Foundation, which houses veterans being treated for illnesses away from home, and as co-chairman of the Intrepid Sea, Air &amp; Space Museum.

“Being a general is like being a CEO: She’s good at working under pressure,” Fisher said. “She can manage the city and get along with the governor. Instead of demonizing businesses and corporations as a whole, she sees the value of bringing the public and private together.”

In her 30-year career, Sutton was the Army’s highest ranking psychiatrist, completed a tour in Egypt and then went to Iraq during the first Gulf War. She helped grow the city’s veterans’ affairs office into a full blown mayoral agency — the city’s first new agency in two decades — and advocates say she helped drive down chronic homelessness among veterans.

Unlike de Blasio, who describes himself as a progressive Democrat, Sutton, a lifelong independent who recently registered as a Democrat, is a moderate.

Kristen L. Rouse, founder and president of NYC Veterans Alliance, has worked closely with Sutton. She said Sutton took the job at the alliance when advocates were demanding the agency grow and then made strides in reducing veteran homelessness.

The agency sometimes struggled with staff turnover and having the right people to navigate a massive bureaucracy, but Rouse said that Sutton “always kept an open door to even her most frustrated critics and that is uncommon.”

Sutton has had other bumps in her career, most notably her departure from the Defense Centers for Excellence.

She says she was scapegoated by a branch of the government that was struggling to deal with a growing, complex problem of brain trauma, as she was seeking to make the changes necessary to address the crisis.

“We were dealing with the complexities of wounds and injuries that were way beyond the medical model,” Sutton said, adding that she “knew there was nothing to be gained by suing the military.”

The 2021 mayoral election is shaping up to be a crowded field. Besides Johnson and Stringer, other expected candidates include the Bronx borough president, Ruben Diaz Jr.; the Brooklyn borough president, Eric L. Adams; and a nonprofit executive, Dianne Morales.

How Sutton’s moderate stance will play in a city that gave rise to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and where the Democratic Socialists of America are a rising political force, is unclear.

“If you’re a New Yorker with a heartbeat, I’m going to earn your vote,” Sutton said.

“It’s not so much that I want to be the mayor,” she added. “I want to do the things only the mayor can do.”

Martin Snow, the owner of Trinity Boxing Club and Sutton’s trainer, concurred. “She laughed when I said we need her in politics,” he said.

“After this mayor leaves, the city is going to hit a wall,” he continued. “When things get tough, you are going to need someone like her to handle the job.”

Could the First Female Mayor of New York be a Retired Army General?

NEW YORK — The boxing ring can be a weary, but trustworthy, motif for the underdog candidate, a place where would-be mayors and governors put on the gloves to show how they would fight for constituents.

They said they are trapped by a New York City Council that has fostered an environment where misconduct, harassment and abuse are tolerated, adding that the last straw was the Council’s decision this week not to expel Councilman Andy King, despite findings that he had intimidated his staff and misused city resources.

Now, in an open letter to the Council and its speaker, Corey Johnson, 95 current and former employees are calling for sweeping changes that better protect the well-being and safety of those who work for the legislative body.

“Over the years, certain Council members have regularly mistreated, intimidated and underpaid staff, while members are given near-unlimited discretion over the treatment of their staff,” the letter said. “We have few avenues to meaningfully launch complaints without fear of retaliation or intimidation.”

The letter, which will be posted on Medium on Friday, requests that the Council allow an independent authority to investigate claims of misconduct against its members; create clear guidelines on punishment for violating the rules; and usher in changes to help employees feel they can report issues of harassment.

“It’s a political body trying to regulate itself,” said one employee, who has worked for a Brooklyn Council member for more than two years. “It does not take a genius to realize that is not functional.”

The letter was not signed by current and former staff members; they requested anonymity for fear of workplace retaliation.

But one worker involved in the letter, Chloe Rivera, a policy analyst, said that the failed vote to oust King was a vivid illustration of how improper behavior was tolerated.

“It was a reminder that no one is looking out for us and that Council members are held to a different standard,” said Rivera, who recently came forward as the woman who filed a sexual harassment complaint against King last year.

“If anything, as elected officials, the standard should be higher,” she added.

King, a Bronx Democrat, was suspended for 30 days — one of the harshest punishments in the history of the Council. Johnson hired a respected outside former federal prosecutor, Carrie Cohen, to help compile a 48-page report that detailed King’s indiscretions.

King, who had previously been punished by the City Council after a substantiated complaint of sexual harassment, retaliated against staff members who cooperated with the investigation, sending them home without pay and eventually trying to fire two employees.

The report also found that King’s actions were part of a larger pattern of abuse endured by his staff members that included threats of violence; making them answer to and do work for his wife, a union executive; and ordering them to drive him around in their personal cars without recompense. King also used Council funds to plan a retreat in the Virgin Islands at the same time as the wedding of his wife’s daughter, the report found.

Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer, a Queens Democrat, had said the punishment that the ethics committee recommended was not enough and introduced a resolution to expel King, but only 11 of his colleagues voted in favor of it.

“The behavior exhibited by Council member King is harmful and destructive to staff and morale, and calls for nothing less than complete expulsion from this body,” the employees’ letter said. “Thus, we call for the speaker and the members of the New York City Council to do what they should have done the first time this issue came to the Council floor: remove Council member King from this body.”

King has denied the charges in the report and has filed a lawsuit challenging the punishment, claiming that his rights to due process were violated.

But the behavior by King is just one example of a wider pattern of how City Council workers are sometimes treated, they said. Rivera, who still had to encounter King after filing the sexual harassment complaint against him, said she felt intimidated. Colleagues are regularly cursed at or have their intelligence demeaned by Council members, another worker said.

And many said they feel as if there is no point in filing a complaint.

“I’ve worked in stressful situations, but this was a level of stress where I felt expendable and I was treated as such,” said a former employee who worked for a Brooklyn Council member. “I felt like I could be replaced at the drop of a hat.”

Rivera said she had counseled many of her colleagues who came to her after she went public about the harassment she faced.

“There are staffers who have been harassed and who have not come forward,” she said, “because they don’t think there will be real consequences and they will be vulnerable to retaliation.”

Johnson has said that the City Council takes complaints from its staff seriously. As part of the resolution imposing sanctions on King, employees who were relieved from his office will have their employment with the city restored.

Van Bramer said that he was proud workers were “speaking truth to power” and that the legislative body must now act.

“Many of us started as activists, so we’ve got to be open to this and not be defensive,” said Van Bramer, who added the Council had already taken a powerful step by hiring an outside counsel to investigate allegations made against its members. “If we don’t, then we’re hypocrites.”

'Mistreated, Intimidated': City Council Workers Demand Changes

NEW YORK — They said they have been habitually mistreated and intimidated and have few meaningful ways to make their complaints heard without fear of reprisal.

Councilman Andy King, D-Bronx, seems committed to finding out: A 48-page report issued by the City Council’s ethics committee offered a portrait of a politician on tilt.

Investigators found evidence that King violated New York City’s anti-harassment policy and used council funds to plan a retreat in the Virgin Islands at the same time as the wedding of his wife’s daughter.

King not only refused to cooperate with the investigations into his conduct, but he also actively sought to thwart them by threatening and firing members of his staff who he believed were cooperating, the committee found.

“This is the most egregious thing I have ever seen in my six years in the City Council,” Corey Johnson, the council speaker, said. “Retaliation, a culture of fear, potential misappropriation of council resources, all of these things and not cooperating with the City Council all along, which shows total disregard for our process.”

By a 44-1 vote, the council agreed Monday to suspend King for 30 days without pay, fine him $15,000 and appoint a monitor to oversee his office for the remainder of his term. The penalties take effect immediately.

A motion to expel King for his actions was introduced by Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer, D-Queens, but was defeated by a vote of 34-12.

King sat quietly as his colleagues criticized his behavior, then delivered a rambling 15-minute monologue, explaining that he was unfairly being “crucified” by council members as “the worst person on the planet” and an “oppressor” of his staff.

“Because people say things sometimes doesn’t necessarily make it true,” King said.

The only thing he was guilty of, King told reporters as he left City Hall after the vote, was being “too nice.”

The inquiry into King’s conduct is not the first ethics investigation he has faced. In 2018, King was ordered to undergo sensitivity and ethics training after a sexual harassment claim was lodged against him by a female staff member.

Susan Lerner, the executive director of Common Cause New York, a good-government group, said King’s conduct should be examined by criminal authorities.

“I hope there would an independent investigation by criminal authorities to determine whether there was criminal activity or not,” Lerner said, adding that King’s conduct justified expulsion from the City Council.

“The council does not believe he has the ability to behave appropriately, so to ask the taxpayers to pay for a babysitter is inappropriate,” Lerner continued. “If I as a taxpayer would pay for anything, it’s a new election.”

No one has been expelled from the City Council, which requires a two-thirds vote, since the 1989 City Charter revision. Johnson and Mayor Bill de Blasio, both Democrats, have called for King to resign.

“How can you resign?” Pamela Hayes, King’s lawyer, said at a news conference Saturday. “The charges are unjust.”

Johnson, who this year hired Carrie H. Cohen, a former federal prosecutor and assistant state attorney general, to serve as the council’s special prosecutor, said that the ethics committee had referred its finding to the “appropriate” outside agencies. He declined to specify which ones.

King and Hayes had tried in court to seek a delay for the council’s vote, but the request for a temporary restraining order was denied, according to council staff members; they said that both sides were to return to court in December.

King is not the only council member to face public discipline for actions during Johnson’s tenure. The most notable case involved Rubén Díaz Sr., a Bronx councilman who resisted calls to resign after making homophobic remarks. Others were disciplined for sexual harassment and for saying that “Palestine does not exist.”

But King’s misconduct over the past two years is the most serious to be considered in recent years.

In 2017, King arranged for reimbursements for staff members to attend an annual retreat that he and his wife, Neva Shillingford-King, hosted on St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands for the Black, Latino and Asian Caucus and labor leaders, according to the council report.

The wedding of Shillingford-King’s daughter was part of the official retreat itinerary, and King also allowed his staff to do work to promote Shillingford-King, an executive vice president at Local 1199 of the Service Employees International Union, and improperly gave her authority over his staff, the report says.

She did not respond to requests for comment.

Two of King’s staff members said he also authorized one-time council payments to staff members who “claimed to have insufficient funds,” so they could pay for airfare, food and lodging costs related to the retreat. One such staff member told investigators of a $1,500 payment.

King also showed a pattern of harassment and retaliation against his staff members, the ethics committee found.

On separate occasions, King held two meetings at his home where he demanded to know which staff members were cooperating with the various investigations he was facing. When some staff members admitted that they had spoken with investigators, King retaliated, the report says.

In July, he sent one staff member home and ordered that individual to wait for a call before returning to work. The staff member, whose email access was terminated, waited at home for five weeks, “too fearful of losing their job to speak to anyone” from King’s office or from the council’s legal and human resources staff, according to the report.

In August, when the ethics committee voted to open a disciplinary matter against King, he sent another staff member home and terminated that person’s email access. In September, King tried to fire the two employees, claiming that the purpose was “staff reorganization.”

Investigators also found that King had violated city harassment policies at a staff meeting when he referred to a photo from the Pride March that a staff member had posted on Twitter, likening it to “child pornography.”

The ethics committee chairman, Councilman Steven Matteo, R-Staten Island, said before the vote that the proposed discipline for King’s actions might not have been as severe if he had cooperated with the investigation, even in an attempt to defend himself.

Instead, King made a “mockery” of the process, Matteo said at a hearing last week.

Van Bramer, who introduced the motion to expel King, said King’s remarks about gay people were just as bad as his treatment of his staff.

“I believe Andy King is unfit to serve in the City Council and believe he should resign,” said Van Bramer, who is gay. “I also believe that what is included in this report is worthy of expulsion.”

Chloe Rivera, a policy analyst for the City Council, identified herself in an op-ed in The Daily News on Monday as the woman who filed the sexual harassment complaint that resulted in the disciplining of King last year. She said she was disappointed with the outcome.

“The sanctions don’t address the root of the problem, and that’s power dynamics,” Rivera said.

'Retaliation, a Culture of Fear': Councilman Is Suspended for 30 Days

NEW YORK — Just what do you have to do to get kicked off the City Council?

It was Mayor Bill de Blasio, hitting up the developer for a donation to his political nonprofit group, the Campaign for One New York.

The developer, Toll Brothers, donated $25,000 to the mayor’s nonprofit in April 2015, a month after the mayor’s call.

Around the same time, two other developers with business pending before the city, Brookfield Financial Properties and Greenpoint Landing Developers, were also urged by the mayor or his representatives to donate money to his nonprofit. The companies gave $50,000 each.

The donations were examined as part of federal and state investigations into de Blasio’s fundraising practices. Those inquiries ended with no criminal charges filed against the mayor, who is now a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president.

But the donations and the mayor’s fundraising practices are also the basis of an inquiry by the Joint Commission on Public Ethics, a state body that Thursday announced that it had reached settlements with the three developers for potential violations of New York’s Lobbying Act.

The regulation precludes lobbyists and their clients from “giving gifts to a public official or to third parties on behalf of or at the designation or recommendation of a public official,” according to the commission.

All three companies had hired lobbyists to lobby New York City at the time of the donations.

Toll Brothers agreed to pay $15,000; Brookfield Financial Properties agreed to pay $30,000; and Greenpoint Landing Developers, a limited liability company affiliated with Park Tower Group, agreed to pay $20,000.

The penalties came after the commission reached related settlements with James Capalino, one of the city’s top lobbyists, and New Yorkers for Clean, Livable and Safe Streets, an animal rights organization.

“The commission’s investigation relating to donations to CONY is continuing,” the commission said in a statement.

Freddi Goldstein, the mayor’s press secretary, said that the Campaign for One New York’s fundraising had been “thoroughly investigated” by the state ethics commission, and that the panel had yet to find that de Blasio “violated the law.”

The project in Brooklyn Bridge Park had been halted because it had exceeded the height limit; a lawsuit challenging the height of the development, called Pierhouse, was unsuccessful.

Kira Sterling, the chief marketing officer for Toll Brothers, said the company agreed to the $15,000 payment because the ethics commission “determined that our contribution did not comply with its regulations.” Sterling said the company cooperated with the investigation.

The two other developers did not respond to a request for comment.

The Campaign for One New York, now shuttered, was created by de Blasio and his supporters to push for universal prekindergarten; it was later used to support his political agenda.

According to a report from the New York City Department of Investigation, de Blasio and his intermediaries solicited donations from individuals and companies with business before the city.

The mayor and his chief fundraiser for the nonprofit met in person for 20 minutes with a developer from Park Tower Group in early 2015, as the company was negotiating details with the city for a large housing development in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

The mayor’s fundraising efforts for his presidential campaign have also come under scrutiny. Many of de Blasio’s donations have come from the Hotel Trades Council, a labor union that endorsed the mayor. De Blasio has endorsed the idea of a special permit for hotel development, one of the group’s top priorities, calling it a “very community-friendly policy.”

“This is exactly why we have been hammering ad nauseam that people with business before the city should have limits as to what you can give, not only to the campaign but for nonprofits,” said Betsy Gotbaum, the executive director of Citizens Union, a good government group.

The City Council passed limits in 2016 on how much money individuals with business before the city could donate to political nonprofits.

Simeon Bankoff, executive director of the Historic Districts Council, a preservation group, said the Toll Brothers building in Brooklyn Bridge Park has had a “visible impact” on the views of the bridge.

“Any instance of graft sends a message,” he said. “It is the clearest expression of inequality.”

De Blasio to Developers: Donate to My Nonprofit. $125,000 Came.

NEW YORK — Soon after a stop-work order had been lifted on a hotel and condominium project in Brooklyn Bridge Park, a developer got a phone call.

De Blasio announced his decision as it became clear that he was unlikely to qualify for the fourth Democratic debate next month, cementing the reality that he lacked the political and financial support to sustain his bid.

“I feel like I’ve contributed all I can to this primary campaign, and it’s clearly not my time,” he said during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program. “I’m going to end my presidential campaign, continue my work as mayor of New York City, and I’m going to keep speaking up for working people.”

De Blasio had focused his run on trying to improve the lives of that constituency, proposing a “workers’ Bill of Rights” to guarantee Americans paid time off and medical leave, and vowing to “tax the hell” out of wealthy people to pay for his plan.

He tried to position himself as the most suitable Democrat to take on President Donald Trump, given his familiarity with Trump as a New York real estate magnate. De Blasio branded the president “Con Don,” and highlighted how, as mayor, he had fought the Trump administration on issues like climate change and immigration.

De Blasio’s campaign, seen as a quixotic, 100-to-1 shot from its inception, never gained traction, even in New York. Flyers appeared at the gym in Park Slope, Brooklyn where he works out, urging him not to run (and to wipe down the equipment after he finished using it).

A recent poll of registered New York state Democrats by Siena College found that fewer than 1% favored the mayor as the Democratic nominee.

Trump greeted the news with sarcasm, characterizing de Blasio’s withdrawal as “really big political news, perhaps the biggest story in years!”

“NYC is devastated,” the president wrote on Twitter. “He’s coming home!”

At a news conference in the Oval Office, Trump continued to needle de Blasio, calling him a “part-time mayor” who could now “work a little bit harder.”

“He dropped out of the presidential race a little while ago,” Trump told reporters. “Too bad, he had tremendous potential. He only had one real asset. You know what it was? Height. Other than that, he had nothing going.”

De Blasio’s initial campaign finance filing showed that he had raised only $1.1 million, with much of the money coming from the sole city union supporting him. The union — like some of de Blasio’s other donors — had, or could have, business before the city.

In one fundraising period, another Democratic presidential hopeful, Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, raised twice as much money from New York City residents as de Blasio raised nationally.

Even as better-financed rivals like Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York dropped out of the race after concluding that it was “important to know when it’s not your time,” de Blasio held on and argued that one viral moment on social media could give his campaign a lift.

“People go from unheard-of to totally famous in 72 hours in America now,” de Blasio said at a news conference in September, when he first acknowledged that the end of his candidacy might be in sight.

But it soon became apparent to the mayor that he would not qualify for the debate next month.

“As we went over the last few weeks, every day that passed, it got tougher,” de Blasio said at a news conference outside Gracie Mansion on Friday, standing next to his wife, Chirlane McCray. “There wasn’t more progress. We were watching the polling to see if anything was moving. It just wasn’t moving.”

Combative interviews with the Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson did not increase his standings in the polls or his ability to raise money. Protesters, upset that de Blasio had refused to fire the police officer who placed Eric Garner in a chokehold before he died, interrupted both a national debate and a CNN town hall where the mayor was a participant.

“This is what democracy looks like and no one said it was pretty,” de Blasio wrote on Twitter in response to the protest in July at the second Democratic debate.

Even de Blasio’s successes on the campaign trail were marred by mishaps. After being praised for his performance at the first debate, in Miami, de Blasio quoted the Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara during a union protest the next day, angering members of the local anti-Castro Cuban community.

New Yorkers repeatedly questioned whether de Blasio should travel from rural Iowa to the Nevada desert to address small groups about the travails of working people when the largest city in the United States was facing serious problems like rising homelessness and a public housing crisis.

The mayor’s whereabouts became an issue in July, when a 13,000-volt cable fire caused 72,000 New Yorkers to lose power in Manhattan. At the time, de Blasio was delivering a stump speech at a union hall in Waterloo, Iowa, and fretted about returning to the city.

He offered a live update on CNN, and allowed Corey Johnson, the City Council speaker and a would-be successor to de Blasio, to provide New Yorkers with constant and precise updates via social media. The mayor was unable to return to New York until the next day, hours after power had already been restored.

“New Yorkers want their mayor to be a national figure, but they want him to do it from the steps of City Hall because they want the garbage picked up,” said Sid Davidoff, a supporter of de Blasio’s who was deputy campaign manager for John V. Lindsay, the last person to run for president while being New York City’s mayor.

Scott M. Stringer, the New York City comptroller, said that de Blasio’s presidential candidacy had damaged his mayoralty.

“I think it’s a genuine setback,” Stringer, who plans to run for mayor in 2021, said in an interview. “He was chasing this notion of being a national progressive political icon but that shipped had sailed in the name of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. He has the greatest job in the greatest city in the world. He needs to come back and just govern the hell out of New York City.”

Peter Ragone, a former top aide to de Blasio who is now an informal adviser to the mayor, said that the presidential campaign had not been in vain.

“It has helped New York be seen as a progressive leader in the country,” Ragone said. “Many of the issues and solutions that are driving the Democratic Party primary have already been test-driven in New York.”

De Blasio expressed no regrets over his failed campaign, asserting that he was one of a few progressive candidates who had helped move the Democratic agenda to the left.

Jon Paul Lupo, de Blasio’s campaign manager, said that the mayor would continue to try to influence national politics. Lupo said he would now lead the mayor’s federal fundraising entity, Fairness PAC, as de Blasio sought to raise money for progressive Democrats. It was unclear whether the mayor would still travel the country.

On Thursday, the Federal Election Commission sent de Blasio’s campaign a letter asking for an explanation of its use of money from his state political action committee, NY Fairness PAC. A New York state ethics panel is also investigating the mayor’s fundraising practices.

As for this campaign, de Blasio said that if he had it to do over, there was only one thing he would do differently: Enter the race sooner.

“I wish I had more time,” he said. “I wish I had more resources. I think that would have made a difference. Earlier is better.”

De Blasio Quits Presidential Race; Trump Gloats

NEW YORK — Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City, who entered the Democratic presidential race on the premise that his brand of progressive urban leadership could appeal on a national scale, said on Friday that he was ending his candidacy.

On Thursday, Corey Johnson, the gay, HIV-positive speaker of the council, said that the council would act swiftly to repeal the ban.

The move is a gambit designed to neutralize a federal lawsuit filed against the city by a conservative Christian legal organization; if the case were to be heard by the Supreme Court, advocates for the LGBT community fear that the panel could issue a ruling that could severely damage attempts to ban or curtail conversion therapy.

This is not the first time New York City officials have sought to change a regulation to avoid a Supreme Court challenge. In July, the Police Department amended a regulation that had limited residents from transporting their guns outside their homes, after the Supreme Court had agreed to hear a case challenging the city rule.

Supporters of repealing the conversion therapy ban said that it is a regrettable but necessary step given the Supreme Court’s conservative makeup under the Trump administration.

“Obviously I didn’t want to repeal this. I don’t want to be someone who is giving in to these right-wing groups,” Johnson said in an interview. “But the Supreme Court has become conservative; the 2nd Circuit, which oversees New York, has become more conservative.”

Johnson was to introduce a bill Thursday to repeal the ban; once the full council approves the measure and Mayor Bill de Blasio signs it, the city would then be governed by a less restrictive state law, which applies only to minors.

“We think this is the most responsible, prudent course,” Johnson said.

The city’s law, passed in December 2017, was sponsored by Melissa Mark-Viverito, then the council speaker. It prohibited consumers from being charged “for services intended to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity,” and created a $1,000 fine for each violation.

NEW YORK — Nearly two years ago, the New York City Council celebrated when it passed a far-reaching ban on conversion therapy, a discredited practice to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

Jeffery C. Mays

Articles written by the author

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