CM Avilés questions Comptroller on AI in schools, CityFEPs curve-bending, and pension housing guardrails

Councilmember Revelez.

Hi, Mark.

Hi, Alexa.

I'm not going to engage in the other conversation, but thank you so much for your testimony.

I want to jump around on a couple of things.

Interestingly enough, I was sitting next to a hedge fund individual who was really expounding the excitement around AI, and I said, so do you think kindergartners should be using AI?

And he said, absolutely not.

It does beg a question here that I think our cities should certainly lean into those, but there is a growing movement of profound concern with how AI is

unregulated in our public school systems that doesn't acknowledge the bias of AI,

digital inequities across the city, and how some students have the tools and others do not, and how that will exacerbate inequity in our city.

So I guess just as a general matter, I think we really need to look very, very seriously at the use of AI in our public schools and develop some real guardrails

because ed tech companies are staying with our dollars.

And I'm not sure.

they're harming our children more than they're supporting them.

So that is not my line of questioning, but I couldn't help but to say that.

In terms of city faps, you mentioned a couple of times bending the curb.

And we know that the growth has been exponential.

The crisis has been exponential.

And this has much been your life work as any others, right?

Affordable housing, truly affordable housing.

But so has the growth of shelter costs.

The council has been trying to find a, meet us in the middle.

Do you have a recommendation of how we can bend the curve but still continue to provide

the much needed housing to this community of folks that continue to grow every year.

I agree this is an essential program and it's definitely kept families out of homelessness and I don't want any family to lose their voucher.

I really don't.

I don't think we need to even consider that.

But Section 8

There's an annual budget for that, the federal government has, and you can't spend beyond that.

Now, unfortunately, that can mean there's a waiting list.

But the federal government can print money, literally.

The federal government can run a deficit.

So I think it's very hard for the city to have a multibillion-dollar program.

That has no budget limit.

And I would like to see this

Incorporated into the budget with a fixed price tag.

Yep.

And that's what I mean by putting in some guardrails on the growth.

And that's going to entail some trade-offs.

I get that.

Sure.

But to me, that would be the way to make this sustainable for the long term.

Great.

I think we want a number that we can work with.

It's not the big number we'd love, but I think we need to get to a point where there's actual negotiation around a number.

In terms of the pension funds that you noted in...

To finance projects.

Sounds eerily familiar to public bank, which we love.

I was curious if that commitment includes a commitment to very low income

housing, or is it just like use our financing money to do a lot of market rate and a little

actual affordable housing?

Like what kind of guardrails are you going to be using for those pension financing funds?

Look, we absolutely need housing for people at the lowest rung of the economic ladder, including people who are at risk of homelessness.

And we do have some good programs like that in the city, like ELA, which should get more funding so we can build more units.

But also, we have an affordability crisis at pretty much every rung.

A bus driver in New York City.

Is having a very hard time finding housing, a social worker, a construction worker,

a nurse even, are finding it very difficult to secure housing they can afford, and we're losing those families as well.

So I think we view the best housing model as one that has options for people at every rung of the ladder, potentially in a single development even, where you have mixed-income housing, which has all the benefits of families from different backgrounds being together.

And look, I believe that we just need to expand the supply overall.

We probably have a $500 million, a 500,000 unit shortfall in New York City.

That's a very big number.

We're only building about 25,000 units a year, so it would take decades to get there.

And to do that, we're also going to need to mobilize the private sector.

So we just need more housing built of all kinds, and we want to help with that.

But again, we are very, very focused on people who are at every level of the income ladder, including those who are earning minimum wage or in danger of homelessness.

Thank you.

I'll just say to close, I think using our pension dollars, like JPMorgan Chase uses our pension dollars that don't benefit our most vulnerable community members, but kind of trickles the money at that.

Is interested in making the most money it can with our money.

I would be a little uncomfortable with using public dollars again to do private financing for private companies to max out their profit on our dollars in another way.

I think there needs to be some real guardrails and make sure that, you know, Sarah and Ella.

You still take too long.

There's not enough money there to develop those units.

And getting them 10% at a clip is not going to reach the need.

So I would encourage guardrails on that use.

This is a huge discussion which we can't do justice to here because we're over time.

Look, my solemn obligation is to protect the pension fund and to make sure that the three quarters of a million New Yorkers who have worked for the city or are still working for the city have a safe retirement.

I wake up every morning thinking about how I can make sure I live up to that.

That doesn't mean we can't also, while

maximizing risk-adjusted returns, do some good in the world.

And we're looking for win-wins, especially win-wins in New York City.

But it's a narrow path where we can get good returns, we can have a good impact, and I'm confident that we're going to have some great announcements on housing projects in the five boroughs, which you're going to love,

which are going to meet those two standards.

So stay tuned.

Thank you.

You got it.