de Blasio family moves into Manhattan public housing

Throwing into stark detail his assertion that New York has become “a tale of two cities,” recently elected New York City mayor Bill de Blasio and his wife and teenage son are leaving their modest home in Park Slope, Brooklyn and decamping for public housing in the neighboring borough of Manhattan. Despite protestations that he would have loved to stay, de Blasio called the move “a practical choice” in a statement released to reporters, one that’s no doubt driven by Brooklyn’s skyrocketing rents.

The de Blasio family will be taking up residence in the Upper East Side’s Gracie Mansion, a 214-year-old public property that was deemed insufficient housing by New York’s previous mayor, Michael Bloomberg. The mansion doesn’t put de Blasio much closer to New York’s City Hall as compared to his previous neighborhood of Park Slope, and will increase his son Dante’s commute to Brooklyn Tech High School to over an hour, putting him in the same category of thousands of city schoolchildren.

The de Blasio family isn’t moving happily, saying that Park Slope has “come to define who we are” and promising to draw the move out “over the next few months.” The statement also promised that local supporters of the former public advocate will be able to find him at neighborhood standbys like The Purity Diner, Bar Toto and the Park Slope YMCA while the move is occurring, and that he would always consider Brooklyn his family’s true home.

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