Daily Politics 5/21/2007

From the Daily Politics:

WFP Turns Up The Heat On Affordable Housing

Working Family Party members will start canvassing this week in the districts of two Queens Republicans - Frank Padavan and Serph Maltese - dropping flyers that accuse the senators of "putting special interests ahead of working families" when it comes to affordable housing.

At issue is legislation that would extend rent regulations to all buildings that leave subsidy programs like Section 8 and Mitchell-Lama - a particularly big deal at the moment given the ongoing threat of the Starrett City sale.

Padavan himself is sponsoring one of the bills in question, but it hasn't moved out of committee.

Wednesday, the WFP will join with affordable housing and tenants-rights groups, labor unions and elected officials for a rally at Manhattan's Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village to call for rent reforms that would preserve the city's ever-dwindling affordable housing stock.

Organizers hope to draw up to 10,000 people and form a "human chain" around the buildings, which were sold for $5.4 billion last fall in one of the biggest residential real estate deals in history.

The number of groups smelling blood in the water and targeting marginal members of the Senate GOP conference just keeps growing.

Aside from this effort by the WFP, which was among the first to back Gov. Eliot Spitzer's gubernatorial bid and was instrumental in Sen. Craig Johnson's special election win in February, there's also NARAL Pro-Choice NY, another Spitzer ally, which is planning to push marginal Republicans on abortion rights.