Councilman Bill DeBlasio has seemed to have never met a developer dollar he didn't like. Rumor has it he has admitted as much. But it is certain that he by and large sides quite proudly with any developer who pays lip service, no matter how far fetched, to affordable housing.

Purim, the Feast of Lots, the silliest of Jewish holidays is coming Thursday & Friday March 20th & 21st . It’s a raucous, drunken party holiday with costumes and funny plays. You don’t have to be Jewish to celebrate it. For non-observant people, here’s how.

Update? How can there be an update on a holiday thousands of years old? It's not. It's about the Purim party this Saturday far after the jump.

Purim celebrates a fabled victory of Jews over their enemies in Persia thousands of years ago and follows the time honored tradition: They tried to kill us. We won. Let’s Eat. For the full story, people read the whole Megillah – the scroll in which the Biblical Book of Esther is written. This is not really much a religious holiday. God appears not at all in the story which is an entirely human tale of struggle.

A bare-bones plot summary via Wikipedia:

The Drum Major Institute's Marketplace of Ideas event this morning featured Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and his reforms to turn vacant buildings into affordable housing. Menino, who is now serving his fourth mayoral term, has reformed Boston's housing market in some pretty amazing ways. During the past decade, abandoned residential properties declined 77% as abandoned buildings were turned into viable housing.

The panel discussion featured Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, Pratt Community Development Center Director Brad Lander, and Executive Director of the Parodneck Foundation Carlton Collier. DMI Executive Director Andrea Batista Schlesinger moderated the panel.

Cross posted from the DMI blog.

In 1999, Boston had a housing crisis. The waiting list for public housing units had 15,000 people on it, and rent prices had gone up 47% in the past four years. More than 50,000 Bostonians were spending more than half of their income on housing, and the number of homeless people in Boston was at a record high.

But just four years later, the statistics told a different story. Almost 8,000 new housing units had been created, and 1,000 housing units were made accessible to the homeless. The new units represented about $2 billion in public and private housing investment. The number of abandoned buildings in Boston dropped by 66% -- from 1,044 in 1997 to only 350 in 2005, and by the end of 2003, 1,079 vacant public housing units had been renovated. Suddenly, housing in Boston was on its way to becoming available and affordable.

NYC’s Housing Authority (NYCHA)has sold off property because, perhaps in part, it is being pushed over a fiscal brink by the combined defunding efforts of decades of GOP office holders at the city, state and federal level. (For a very cursory – but perhaps too long – overview of some of NYCHA’s financial and operating woes, click here ).

Those of you of a certain age who remember the War in Vietnam, may recall a puzzling Military concept:“we burned the village in order to save it.” Similarly, public housing operators across the US have from time-to-time destroyed huge public housing projects in order to save them. Forty years ago, for example, I spent a moderate amount of time in the Pruit-Igoe projects of St. Louis Mo.—a 33 building forest of medium-rise buildings so badly-built, so badly maintained so crime-ridden that they were torn down altogether in 1972. Since then, the dynamite & bull-dozer solution to public housing failures (and even some successes) has been applied in other locales (famously Cabrini-Green in Chicago and recently, in Staten Island). In general, NYCHA housing – even at its worst moments of disrepair and dangerousness – never equaled the disgrace of Pruitt-Igoe.

The right-wing idea is that the solution to the financial crisis in public housing

Something Different After Day 181. Gov. Elliot Spitzer and his NYS Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR) dramatically altered and improved the housing fate of tens of thousands of Mitchell-Lama tenants. When the owners of Mitchell-Lama projects opt out of the program, the usual rule of law had been that those tenants become rent-stabilized – no big windfall for the owner. However, some owners, seizing on language in the enabling legislation, had won a court ruling that opting out of Mitchell-Lama was itself such a “unique and peculiar circumstance” that the apartments could instantly be converted to market rate. Yesterday, the Governor and the DCHR closed that loophole. NYDN article here.

Are you, like most New York City residents a renter? Consider spending some time with other tenants this Tuesday. Advocates for actually affordable housing will meet Tuesday, June 26, 2007 at 5PM at the Great Hall of The Cooper Union. 7 East 7th Street at the corner of 3rd Ave. After the press event, you can join other tenants at a Punch & Judy show, the Rent Guildlines Board's final meeting where Mr. Bloomberg's appointees decide how much more rent you should pay. ( To register to speak at the public hearing, call the RGB at 212-385-2934.)

Take the 6 train to Astor Pl., or the R,W to 8th Street
or M1, M15, M6, M101, or M102 buses to Astor Place or Cooper Square

From Tenants & Neighbors:

There will be a press conference to present Mayor Bloomberg's HOUSING REPORT CARD. This event will take place at the final vote of the New York City Rent Guidelines Board, where this year's rent increases will be determined for one million rent stabilized households.

Although the Mayor will receive a few good grades for his

Here are some community-oriented events coming up in Brooklyn:

Now Playing: "Brooklyn Matters"

"Brooklyn Matters," Isabel Hill's riveting documentary exposé of the forces attempting to push the "Atlantic Yards" project forward regardless of the consequences, is coming to a screen near you:

May 20th, 9 p.m.
Barbés. 378 9th Street (@ 6th Avenue). Park Slope

May 21st, 8:30 p.m.
Cattyshack. 249 4th Avenue (@ Carroll Street). Park Slope
Sponsored by Lambda Independent Democrats

May 22nd, 7 p.m.
Phoenix House. 174 Prospect Place (between Carlton and Vanderbilt). Prospect Heights
Sponsored by Prospect Place Block Association (Flatbush to Underhill)

To view a trailer, host a screening, order the DVD and for more information on future screenings, please visit http://www.brooklynmatters.com.