NYC Mayoral Race: Shaun Donovan Has A Plan For That

NEW YORK CITY — New Yorkers are casting ballots to decide who will replace Mayor Bill de Blasio after eight years.

The June 22 primary features eight Democratic candidates — Eric Adams, Shaun Donovan, Kathryn Garcia, Raymond J. McGuire, Dianne Morales, Scott Stringer, Maya Wiley and Andrew Yang — looking to lead New York City.

Patch sent out questionnaires to their campaigns to give readers a chance to make a more informed choice on their ranked-choice ballots.

Here's what Shaun Donovan had to say:

Shaun Donovan

Age (as of Election Day)

55

Position Sought

Mayor

Party Affiliation

Democrat

Neighborhood of residence (i.e., East Village, Astoria, etc.)

Boerum Hill

Family

Liza, 55, Landscape Architect who helped design Brooklyn Bridge Park!
Milo, 22, Headed to Scotland soon to get his masters and play soccer!
Lucas, 19, Starting at Occidental in the Fall to study music!

Does anyone in your family work in politics or government?

No

Education

Harvard University: Bachelors (1987) Masters of Public Administration, Masters of Architecture (1995)

Occupation

Following his time in the Obama-Biden Administration, Shaun has worked on getting folks counted for the Census with ABNY and did some work with a number of local non-profits around issues related to affordable housing. During the pandemic, Shaun founded Common Table, an initiative to distribute restaurant meals directly to food insecure families.
Shaun is currently running for Mayor.

Previous or Current Elected or Appointed Office

Director of US Office of Management and Budget (2014-2017)
Secretary of US Office of Housing and Urban Development (2009-2014)
Commissioner of NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development (2004-2009)
Special Assistant/Deputy Assistant Secretary for Multifamily Housing at US Department of Housing and Urban Development (1998 to 2001)
The positions above are all public service appointments. Mayor of NYC would be Shaun’s first elected office.

Campaign website

www.shaunfornyc.com

Why are you seeking elective office?

New Yorkers deserve a mayor with both the bold vision and the experience to make change a reality for the lives of New Yorkers. I believe I am that candidate given my 30 year career in public service making real progress on issues of equality and racial justice.
My most recent positions include Secretary for Housing and Urban Development in the Obama-Biden Administration, where I managed the national response to the housing crisis, and Director of the Office of Management and Budget, where I managed the $4 trillion federal budget.
My past service taught me what it means to lead in moments of crisis, much like the one New York is facing today. I became Housing Commissioner here in New York City after 9/11, and helped rebuild our City. During my tenure as Housing Commissioner, I helped the Brownsville, East New York, and South Bronx communities build Nehemiah, one of the most successful housing efforts in the nation, responsible for creating more than 5,000 affordable homes.
Shortly thereafter, President Obama asked me to be Housing Secretary in the midst of the worst housing crisis of our lifetime, and then tasked me with leading this City back after Hurricane Sandy hit our shores. As HUD Secretary, I helped families across the country rent or buy affordable homes, revitalized distressed communities, fought discrimination, and dramatically reduced homelessness. In 2014, I was named Director of the Office of Management and Budget, charged with balancing a $4 trillion budget. Three weeks into my time as Director of the Office of Management of Budget, Ebola hit the US, and we worked to make sure that a global threat did not become a pandemic that would cost hundreds of thousands of American lives.
During my time managing the federal budget we invested in a broad range of progressive priorities, like the Affordable Care Act, while still bringing down our budget deficit faster than at any time since World War 2.

The single most pressing issue facing our (board, district, etc.) is _______, and this is what I intend to do about it.

Homelessness, which is a solvable problem, but we cannot accept the status quo nor solve homelessness with homeless programs alone. As Mayor, I will move our city from a right to shelter towards a right to housing, ensuring that all New Yorkers have the access to the housing support they need.
We can do this by creating an improved system of emergency rental assistance to help people stay housed when facing economic setbacks to avoid homelessness altogether. We can do this by coordinating better across our own City agencies to ensure that people do not fall through the cracks but instead receive the support they need. We can do this by operating a well-run homeless system that efficiently gets people into permanent housing as quickly as possible so they can rebuild their lives in the community. And we can do this by maximizing all resources available from all levels of government, especially the Biden/Harris administration and Congress.
We must make sure to expand the creation of permanent supportive housing units for those who need the more intensive support provided by this form of housing. We will aim to create 2,000 supportive housing units annually for individuals and families living with a serious mental illness, substance use disorder, or other disability, and young adults.
In order to link historically distinct City departments under singular leadership for greater accountability and consistency, we will empower a single Deputy Mayor for Housing Opportunity & Economic Development to assert clear goals and demand progress in addressing New York City’s homeless crisis across agencies including the Department of Education, Administration for Children’s Services, Department of Homelessness Services, Department of Housing Preservation and Development, and NYCHA. We will also improve targeting of homeless services by creating a 21st Century integrated data system, improving data sharing and communications across agencies, and enhancing the use of predictive analytics while ensuring racial equity.

What are the critical differences between you and the other candidates seeking this post?

As compared to the other candidates, there are three crucial ways that I standout. First, I have some of the most comprehensive plans in the field. For example, both the New York Times and the Gotham Gazette have called my education platform the most detailed in the race. I have released a 200-page book of my policies earlier in the spring and have continued to roll out new plans almost every week since. Next, I have the experience at the local, state, and national level New Yorkers needed and deserved and have been working on these issues my entire career. Last, I have the deepest relationships on both the state and federal levels to ensure that NYC gets the relief that it needs to build back from this pandemic.

If you are a challenger, in what way has the current board or officeholder failed the community (or district or constituency)

Like many New Yorkers, I am deeply disappointed that Mayor de Blasio has yet to meet this moment and hs failed to lead our city when we needed him most--our streets are mess, homelessness is at Depression-era levels, and crime is spiking due to the flow of out-of-state guns he has failed to stem.
That said, Mayor De Blasio’s biggest failure has been the handling of this pandemic. Early on, he ignored the advice of experts around him, including his own Health Commissioner, and now 30,000 of our fellow New Yorkers are dead. These errors were compounded by an inequitable and inefficient vaccine distribution, with the communities that were hardest hit by the virus being some of the last communities to get those doses they needed.
As NYC’s next Mayor, not only will I listen to the experts, but I will also ensure that equity is forefront of all my decisions — not ego— which is what De Blasio has been doing for 8 years. He has shown that he is unable to lead this city, both in times of crisis and in times of economic growth.
We need a mayor with both the progressive vision and the track record of making progress in order to clean up the mess he has made.

How do you think local officials performed in responding to the coronavirus? What if anything would you have done differently?

I certainly would have acted sooner and in partnership, rather than in opposition, with the state. While it was entirely clear that the federal government’s response was a failure from top to bottom, coordination among governments in times of crisis is paramount to saving lives. I learned this lesson when overseeing the federal response to Hurricane Sandy recovery and working with President Obama on the Ebola and Zika response, and carry it with me as a core principle to emergency management.
I also would have populated my administration with diverse world-class professionals, listened to them, and enabled them to do their job rather than playing internal political games.
The threat of COVID was already being felt well before it truly became an emergency in New York City, and with proper initiative, preparedness, and organization, we could have mitigated some of the impact of COVID in those early weeks and months.
At the start of the pandemic, I started a non-profit, Common Table, to distribute restaurant meals directly to food insecure families in partnership with philanthropy, food relief organizations, neighborhood restaurants and community-based organizations.

Describe the other issues that define your campaign platform.

The top priority for the next mayor must be the social, economic, and physical recovery of our city and its residents. The damage caused by COVID will be felt for years to come, and it will take considerable investment to not only return to what we had before, but to use this crisis to build back something better. To do this, we will need significant relief from the Federal government. My strong personal relationships with President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and members of Congress and the Senate puts me in a unique position to get the federal support that New Yorkers need and have been cruelly denied by the Trump administration. I will work to ensure we receive the necessary business and infrastructure aid, personal protective equipment, and other essentials as we rebuild and reimagine our economy as one that works for all New Yorkers.

My second, longer-term priority is to address the systemic lack of equal opportunity and access to services that many New Yorkers face. In order to help families across New York City build economic mobility and generational wealth, I will launch Equity Bonds, which will provide $1000 to every child in New York City and up to an additional $2,000 based on family income. Through this program, the parents of a baby born in poverty will be able to send their child to school knowing that roughly $50,000 will be waiting for them if they graduate.

Another landmark policy in my platform is 15 minute neighborhoods, whereby every New Yorker will have access to a great public school, fresh food, rapid transit, a good park, and a chance to get ahead within 15 minutes of their front door. We will make the necessary investments in neighborhood business corridors to support local business owners, and invest in expanding local primary care facilities so people have access to high-quality care near their homes.
I will also focus on improving our housing stock and work toward ending the homelessness crisis in the city. This would include adopting United for Housing’s call for $4 billion per year in capital funding for affordable housing production and preservation. This involves making a historic commitment of up to $2 billion per year in City capital dollars to accelerate repairs across NYCHA’s portfolio to ensure that tenants have safe homes they can be proud of. NYCHA’s housing represents the single largest portion of our city’s deeply affordable housing stock that cannot be replaced, and which currently serves over 400,000 low-income New Yorkers. This funding will help fill gaps and speed the process of making critical repairs and upgrades to tenants’ homes as we continue to work with our federal partners.
The other $2 billion annual investment would provide the resources for HPD to create new affordable housing programs and to expand existing programs. While production has been at peak levels over the last several years, in order to meet demand and address the need for deeply affordable housing, overall production goals should be 30,000+ units per year
My extensive plans for addressing issues of inequity across Education, Climate, Housing, Transportation, Criminal Justice, Economic Development, and the Aging can be found on my website.

What accomplishments in your past would you cite as evidence you can handle this job?

As I hope I’ve articulated throughout, I have shown up again and again when called upon to repair after a crisis. I’ve dedicated my career to addressing issues of housing and homelessness. I grew up in a time of crisis not unlike the one we’re living through right now.
I watched homeless people sleeping on the streets and saw neighborhoods burn to the ground.
I asked myself how the wealthiest city in the world could allow so many of its residents to suffer.
This lit a fire in me to go to work, rebuilding our communities and helping those that the city turned its back on.
In college, I volunteered in a homeless shelter and after graduating, went to work for the Community Preservation Corporation in the Bronx helping communities across the city rebuild.
From there, I partnered with Bishop Johnny Ray Youngblood to build Nehemiah homes in Brownsville, East New York, and the South Bronx, creating more than 5,000 affordable homes as part of one of the most successful housing efforts in the nation.
I created the Center for NYC Neighborhoods, the nation’s first response of its kind to the foreclosure crisis, aimed at saving New Yorker’s homes and preserving Black and Brown wealth and the communities that depended on it.
I am also proud to have served as Commissioner of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development for Mayor Bloomberg, where we reduced individual homelessness by 30%.
As HUD Secretary I led us through the worst housing crisis of our lifetimes, reduced chronic homelessness by one-quarter and eliminated veteran’s homelessness in more than 80 cities and states.
And as OMB Director, I made sure that our government’s investments reflected the importance of providing good, safe, affordable housing to all Americans

The best advice ever shared with me was:

President Obama would often tell us that we cannot let a crisis go to waste, and I believe that as we recover from this current crisis, we have a once in a lifetime opportunity to not only reimagine our city’s health care system, but to finally address the underlying inequities in our neighborhoods that led to such disproportionate damage to our most vulnerable communities.

What else would you like voters to know about yourself and your positions?

This is the moment to rebuild — from a health pandemic, an economic pandemic, a pandemic of inequality. This fight isn’t new to me. I’ve spent my entire career improving the lives of New Yorkers. I started rebuilding neighborhoods in the South Bronx and central Brooklyn 30 years ago.
In the depths of the Great Recession, President Obama asked me to keep people in their homes and rebuild our economy. When Hurricane Sandy hit our shores, he asked me to lead the recovery. And when Ebola and Zika hit, I worked side-by-side with Dr. Fauci in the Situation Room to prevent a pandemic that could have cost 30,000 of our neighbors their lives.
This moment calls for a leader with bold ideas, and the track record to make those ideas real in the lives of New Yorkers. That’s why I’m asking for your vote for Mayor.