I’m a Baby Boomer. My generation has failed the younger ones. As Mayor, I’m making a commitment to the more than 50% of our city’s population who are Millennials + Gen Z: you help make this City great. Let’s make it work for you. 

My generation built the world in which massive amounts of college debt got you an entry-level job that doesn’t pay you enough to live. We left your generation where only miracles will enable you to afford things my generation took for granted: a home, a car, a baby. 

In many ways, my generation squandered opportunity after opportunity to fix even the most existential issues facing yours, like gun violence and climate doom. While we were in power, we didn’t prioritize equity, leaving America behind other western nations in racial equity, gender-based violence, maternal mortality, and other forms of discrimination. Worse yet, these failures are now baked into broken checks-and-balances, scotch-taped infrastructure and other failing systems. And, I’ve heard from too many of you that the downward decline feels like the melting Antarctic ice sheet, unstoppable and gaining momentum. 

In spite of the obstacles (or maybe because of them), the Millennial generation has innovated. You’ve looked at your challenges and seen them as opportunities for creativity -- transformational businesses, brands, apps, and websites that make all of our lives better. And you’re doing it all under crushing debt. 

I’m sorry. We can transform our city by applying what I’ve learned. From you. 

My Millennial Plan

1. User-friendly government

It’s time for us to design government services for you -- accessible, user-friendly and responsive. The time of outdated government websites is over. As Millennials, you watched the world transform at lightning speed before your eyes: you started Kindergarten with a floppy disk, and had an iPhone by the time you went off to college. Some of you Gen Z-ers may not remember the pre-iPhone era. Why didn’t the government keep up? 

Today, we expect you to conform to outmoded services. As your Mayor, I’ll Reboot City Hall to make it catch up to modern technology. And this goes across all sectors of the City. You should be able to report metrocard machines not working in your subway station; noise complaints; non-working elevators/escalators, blocked bus stops and other accessibility issues -- and actually get a response. 

Read my full Technology in City Hall plan here

1. NYC should be the best place to start a new business.

In a future where the City provides universal broadband & wifi-enabled devices for students, young people will have the tools they need to launch the next wave of new businesses in NYC. 

I plan on building an entrepreneur corps who can help with launching your own business. Learn more about how I’ll make NYC the best place in the country to start a business HERE

This includes Arts & Entertainment businesses, which are the lifeblood of our city. My City Hall will support arts businesses via the City’s marketing budget, and by building arts districts in every borough. If you’re a freelancer or Arts worker, also take a look at my Arts & Entertainment plan HERE. 

Moreover, Millennials have built businesses that have made our lives more convenient through innovation; city hall can help them channel this innovative energy into businesses that help our communities & support the Government’s social services work. Look how much the TurboVax site gave to New Yorkers. A private citizen shouldn’t have had to make that happen: the government failed, and a Millennial stepped up to fill the gap. 

1. Affordability

We made the city unaffordable and heading in the wrong direction. Let’s undo that. 

Student Loans & Financial Planning

As Mayor, I will put into place a sensible plan to use the scale of New York City to create a City-sponsored vehicle to refinance student loan debt, to restructure payment terms and reduce interest rates. 

• We will start with  the student loan debt of the over 300,000 City employees. 

• We will invite the private sector to offer participation to their employees.  

• We will work to open the program up to all city residents with debt. 

• We will work to establish a program for employer contributions to employees’ student loan debt payments.

Everyone in New York City should enjoy financial literacy. Working with CUNY, I will institute a free financial literacy course geared specifically toward millennials and Gen Z-ers, to be expanded to other demographics based on success. The curriculum will cover loan refinancing, financial planning, best practices for investing, saving for retirement when your job doesn’t offer a retirement plan, and navigating large expenses like mortgages or preparing for a baby. 

Housing -- Your Generation Needs to Stay in NYC

We will make the City more affordable, but it won’t happen overnight. The best way to do that is my plan to build over 100,000 units of low-income housing to alleviate pricing pressure across the market. 

In the meantime, there are steps we can take:

• Make affordable housing easier to find: We can make an app that’s a City directory of apartments built using city tax programs for affordable housing

• Make it easier to file complaints about landlords who fail to comply with City regulations. Via my Technology plan, I’ll make 311 into a customer service app, where you can file a complaint and open a customer ticket that gets followed up on. Read my full plan for updating City Hall’s technology HERE. 

Universal Childcare

Having a child in NYC is already nearly unaffordable, but when you layer that on top of the precarious financial situation Millennials are in, it becomes completely untenable. Our city can’t lose this generation to New Jersey, Upstate, and other suburbs. We have to make having a child affordable to keep Millennials in New York City. 

That’s why my keystone policy is Universal Childcare, giving free childcare to every parent in NYC. Read the full Universal Childcare plan here. 

Benefits for freelancers and gig workers

Many Millennials, seeing a lack of upward mobility in companies & corporations saturated with Baby Boomer and Gen X upper management, have had no choice but to move their careers to the freelance market, and Gen Z-ers will be faced with the same odds. At this point in time, 34% of all workers in NYC are freelancers. Arts workers, gig workers, app drivers, delivery people, etc. are the heart of our City, and we need to stop ignoring this third of the workforce. 

UI benefits: I’ll automate the process of benefits and entitlements, such as unemployment, SNAP, and EBT. The City sees your income on your tax returns, so we know who has an income that makes them eligible for these benefits, and we should be automating the process of signing you up if you qualify. It’ll all take place on a user-friendly web platform that will be flexible enough to handle the unique circumstances surrounding freelance unemployment. 

Complaints system for workplace abuses: when you’re a freelancer, there’s no union or HR department looking out for you. As a Mayor that takes workplace inequity and discrimination seriously, I’ll institute a city-run program to report workplace abuses for freelancers and gig workers.

1. Climate Change

Millennials & Gen Z-ers are going to have to bear the brunt of climate change and global warming effects. As Mayor, I’m looking forward to not only the next 4 years, but through the next century. I will make sure what we do today makes NYC still livable in the year 2100. Read my full Climate Change Policy HERE.