BY BEN VERDE
Brookdale Hospital executive
Khari Edwards offi cially
launches his campaign for
Brooklyn Borough President
this week, entering a growing
fi eld of hopefuls looking to replace
outgoing beep Eric Adams
in 2021.
Edwards, who came to the
public health world after a 20
year career as a public servant
that included writing health
care policy for the state senate,
says he hopes to address
Brooklyn’s growing housing
crisis through a three point
plan.
“Brooklyn is no longer
equitable for everyone,” Edwards
told Brooklyn Paper.
“It’s not just that Brooklyn is
just unaffordable, what it is is
that if I’m someone making a
six fi gure salary and I have a
wife and three children, there
is no space for me.”
COURIER L 20 IFE, NOV. 20-26, 2020
Edwards’ housing proposal
addresses homelessness,
long term housing for working
class people, and building
more appropriately sized
units for families through the
zoning process — one of the
few areas of city government
where Borough Presidents
have a direct infl uence.
To address the homelessness
crisis, Edwards proposes
building more family-structured
dwellings that would
serve as places to move working
class homeless families
out of the shelter system and
into permanent housing. The
additional units should in theory
increase the amount of
family sized homes.
“Now what we do is we increase
the availability for
families having 2 or 3 kids,
getting them out of these family
shelters and taking our existing
homeless population
which is usually formerly incarcerated
men and women,
people who are drug addicted,
or aged out of foster care,” Edwards
said. “Get them off the
streets by moving them into
now vacated family shelters,
giving them a room, giving
them a bathroom, giving them
respectability so now they
look at themselves as not just
living on the street, but they
have a place to feel like a human
being.”
In order to increase affordable
units, Edwards also
wants to work with state legislators
to revise the 421-a tax
abatement — which offers tax
credits to developers for building
multi-family buildings in
New York — to require that
new buildings be 50 percent
below-market-rate.
Edwards now joins a number
of other local pols running
for the seat, including Assemblywoman
Khari Edwards. Khari Edwards for Brooklyn
Jo Anne Simon,
along with Council Members
Antonio Reynoso, Robert Cornegy,
and Mathieu Eugene.
Edwards says he thinks
his experience in the public
health realm and as a staffer
in local government make
him uniquely positioned
to ascend to Borough Hall,
due to the hands-on requirements
of the position. His experience
addressing issues
head-on rather than dealing
purely in policy like most of
the other Borough President
candidates is more useful
for the role of the beep, he
argued.
“I don’t take anything away
from the legislators, I think
they do a great job, but I think
the borough presidency is
something different, is something
a little more front facing,
more in the weeds than
some of these other elected offi
ces,” he said.
HE’S RUNNING!
Hospital exec Khari Edwards declares
candidacy for Borough President
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