Better Blocks NJ, a new Jersey City-based housing advocacy organization, is endorsing Hudson County Commissioner Bill O’Dea (D-2) for mayor, citing his knowledge and experience building housing.
By John Heinis/Hudson County View
“Housing affordability is the most important issue facing Jersey City, and I’m the only candidate with the experience and understanding of the intricacies of housing policy necessary to make our community more affordable,” O’Dea said in a statement.
“I’m grateful to the volunteers at Better Blocks for their support and their recognition of the strength of our housing plan. As Mayor, I’ll get to work on day one to build 2,800 new affordable housing units and ensure that developers are delivering the housing supply, job creation, tax revenue and community givebacks that our residents deserve.”
Better Blocks released their Voter Guide this morning and said that former Gov. Jim McGreevey gave “contradictory” answers when it came to housing, while Ward E Councilman James Solomon’s approach was “deeply misguided.”
They also noted that ex-Board of Education President Mussab Ali “might be the most ‘YIMBY’ and ‘abundance-minded’ candidate in the race, calling for R-1 zoning to be replaced with R-2,” but felt his ideas for transit and Vision Zero fell a bit short.
Ultimately, they went with O’Dea, who is the deputy executive director of the Elizabeth Development Company, due to decades of experience building housing first hand.
Better Blocks wrote that he “knows the details of real estate finance and the costs of funding affordable housing better than any other candidate in the race” and that he has an “unparalleled understanding of development and its impact on municipal budgets.”
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These are bunch of nobody nerds who have zero money, zero volunteers, and clearly zero sense. Any group of randos can waste their time on politics by filling out some paperwork to make their little friend group into an “organization” and smugly pontificate about how they know what’s best because they’re special smart boys with fancy degrees from places with fancy names without doing anything actually impactful for actual people.
Their little cult leader Eric is a just some random social media troll with a nice Downtown brownstone who clearly has a lot of time to waste with all the heaps of money he has and can’t think of anything more productive to do than to spout technocratic non-sense a few weeks before election day.
“Better Blocks NJ” isn’t a community organization, it’s not a group of community organizers, it’s not really even a community advocacy group because they do nothing other than publish silly, Ezra Klein abundance addled screeds come election time rather than do anything that actually impacts the state of politics.
Congrats, Bill, for the 10 likes you’ll get on social media; too bad it literally changes absolutely nothing about the state of the race since this “endorsement” is just three nerds in a trenchcoat.