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Former New York mayor Ed I. Koch has been called a showman, a campaigner, an irrepressible icon and, by the current mayor Michael R Bloomberg, “a great mayor and great friend.” His impact on the politics he ran, the city he loved, and the New York City apartments he so cherished will not soon be forgotten.
Born and raised in cramped New York and Newark family apartments himself, Ed Koch was always deeply in touch with the working man in his city. Some of his earliest political moves focused on antipoverty programs and rent-controlled apartments across the city. As a three term mayor he saw New York out of an era of bankruptcy in the 1970s to one of great prosperity in the 1980s.
After 12 years of mayoral office holding he would likely be rated as an okay to fair leader of the city when considering the city he inherited, the challenges he faced, and how he used the resources available to him to address said challenges. But reputation is about so much more, in the long run, than what actually happened.
Mayor Ed Koch and New York City Apartments
Koch had a massive effect on the prices of New York City apartments through his many housing initiatives. He began an ambitious project to revitalize previously downtrodden and low-income neighborhoods that continued long after he left office. It rehabilitated more than 200,000 units, many of which are apartments to rent in New York to this current day.
Campaigning for liberal causes and working to keep the lower and middle classes afloat were passions of Ed Koch’s. He focused on antipoverty movements, balancing the city budget, and issuing laws to prohibit hiring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
Koch was once quoted in an interview as calling the suburbs “sterile” and “a joke.” A real city boy at heart, the former mayor had Big Apple pumping through his veins his entire life. No stranger to controversy in her political or personal life, Koch frequently battled for what he thought of as the greater good. He always looked out for the little guy.
He leaves behind a legacy of rehabilitated and rent-controlled New York City apartments that last to this day. A supporter of housing, education, and welfare reforms, there was little that the former mayor believed he couldn’t do. “The city was his family” former press secretary Maureen Connelly remembers, and you always do right by your family.
