One Arrested As Hundreds Protest Cuomo’s ‘Master Builder’ Award

MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NY — A tenant advocate was arrested during a mass protest in New York City Thursday evening meant to disrupt the ceremony where Gov. Andrew Cuomo was being honored as a "master builder."

Gubernatorial hopefuls Cynthia Nixon and Jumaane Williams addressed hundreds of protesters who gathered outside the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue to demand Cuomo take action against what they called a state-wide housing crisis.

"[Cuomo] has made his choice, he has picked his side," Nixon said Thursday. "He has surrounded himself with real estate developers, corporate landlords, Wall Street hedge fund moguls who are some of his biggest campaign contributors.

"It's hard to do the right thing when you're getting millions of dollars to do what's wrong."

The tenants advocates blamed Cuomo, who is up for reelection this year, for the 36 percent increase in homelessness, up to nearly 90,000 people statewide since his Cuomo 2010 campaign. Advocates for tenants also pushed for stronger rent stabilization laws that end loopholes that have allowed landlords to deregulate 75,000 rent-stabilized apartments since Cuomo took office.

Nathylin Flowers Adesegan, who currently lives in a homeless shelter in Long Island City, said that Cuomo's housing policies have amounted to "false promises."

"The big landlords and the Real Estate board of New York they've like got him in the palm of their hand, they got him by the neck," Adesegan said. "They just give him so much money. So yeah we blame Cuomo because he said he was going to solve the homeless crisis. I'm the face of the homeless crisis and he's done diddly for me."

Williams told the crowd that Hochul and Cuomo didn't come to the rally because there weren't enough "billionaires, millionaires and developers in the crowd" and Nixon said she was proud to stand with "renters not developers, with people not with wealthy corporate donors."

Nixon then plugged her Rent Justice For All platform, which would create affordable housing for three million households, end allowances that result in landlords deregulating rent-stabilized apartments and extend rent stabilization to apartments with six or more units statewide regardless of when they were built.

After the rally, protesters marched en mass from the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on Fifth Avenue and East 41st Street to Park Avenue. The original plan was to march to Cuomo's district office, but organizers instead led hundreds of people up Park Avenue to a building on East 63rd Street where Cuomo was receiving a Robert Moses "Master Builder" award from the Building Trades Employers Association.

It was at the corner of East 63rd Street and Park Avenue where one man decided to sit in the intersection and block traffic. After some verbal warnings, police officers quickly surrounded the man, put him in handcuffs and took him to a nearby police van.

Protesters remained on the corner of East 63rd Street and Park Avenue, attempting to goad Cuomo out of the building with chants such as "Cuomo! Cuomo! You can't hide! We can see your greedy side!" In a quick flurry of activity the governor exited the award ceremony, got into a black SUV and sped up Park Avenue without addressing protesters.

Patch has reached out to Gov. Andrew Cuomo's office for comment on the protest. We will update this article when they respond.

Photos by Brendan Krisel/Patch