New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D.) said in a new interview that if he had his way, the law would be less protective of private property and strip it away as needed to serve "socialistic" needs.
"In 2013, you ran on reducing income inequality. Where has it been hardest to make progress? Wages, housing, schools?" New York magazine asked de Blasio in a story published Monday.
"What's been hardest is the way our legal system is structured to favor private property," de Blasio responded.
The Democratic mayor continued to say that if he had it his way, the government would decide "which building goes where, how high it will be, who gets to live in it, what the rent will be."
"I think there's a socialistic impulse, which I hear every day, in every kind of community, that they would like things to be planned in accordance to their needs," he added. "Unfortunately, what stands in the way of that is hundreds of years of history that have elevated property rights and wealth to the point that that's the reality that calls the tune on a lot of development."
De Blasio said that earlier he had seen a sign on a fashionable New York street advertising condos for $2 million, and accused the owners of "flaunting" their wealth and "driving people stark raving mad."
The people of New York, he said, would "love to have a very, very powerful government, including a federal government, involved in directly addressing their day-to-day reality."