2025 City Council Election: Andrea Gordillo's Candidate Statement
Today's statement is from Andrea Gordillo, who is running to be District 2 City Council member.
This op-ed is part of East of the Bowery's 2025 City Council Democratic primary coverage, where candidates answer: "What specific policy goals will your office achieve within 4 years to improve the Lower East Side?"
Today's statement is from Andrea Gordillo, who is running to be District 2 City Council member. District 2 covers the East Village, Greenwich Village, Gramercy, Rose Hill, and Kips Bay.
Andrea Gordillo: A Vision For A ‘New Old New York’
My name is Andrea Gordillo, and I am running for City Council to bring bold, community-driven leadership to my home in the communities of Greenwich Village, Lower East Side, East Village, Midtown South-Flatiron-Union Square, Gramercy, and Murray Hill-Kips Bay.
I’m the proud daughter of Peruvian immigrants who came to this country with nothing but the hope for a better life. When they arrived in New York, my parents had to build a new life in America working various jobs to make ends meet. My dad, a trained doctor, worked in construction and drove taxis; my mom took odd jobs and navigated an unfamiliar city while learning English and raising a family. My parents achieved the American Dream, but that dream feels further out of reach for so many of us today.
Their grit and the opportunities they found here gave me a chance to thrive, from exceptional public schools to the vibrant arts scene that shaped me. But the community I was raised in was also a deeply segregated place. My experiences with racial and economic inequality shaped my entire life. In college, I was proud to help organize the cafeteria workers at my college to form a union. When I moved to New York, I got involved in organizing at Occupy Wall Street and eventually joined the United Auto Workers Union. In my roles at the Clemente and the Loisaida Center, I have preserved the arts, culture, and movements that have long defined Lower Manhattan. And as Chair of Manhattan’s Community Board 3, I have been proud to serve my community. I know firsthand what it means to fight for a better future—one where our voices are heard, our families are supported, and our communities are protected.
I’m running for City Council because our communities—the heart of New York’s rebellious, creative soul—are at a breaking point. Over the last decade, I’ve watched the city I fell in love with, that welcomed my family with open arms, change for the worse.
No matter what neighborhood I’m in, I keep hearing the same concerns from my neighbors: our community simply isn’t livable.
The vibrant communities that define us are eroding. Skyrocketing rents and costs are pushing working families, artists, seniors and small businesses out of Manhattan. We have lost thousands of rent-stabilized units in the last decade alone. Our streets and subways feel less safe, with COVID, the mental health crisis, and years of disinvestment compounding the issue. Floods, pollution, and record-breaking heat waves hit our most vulnerable blocks hardest, and are getting more severe every year. The closure of Beth Israel has left us without emergency care east of First Avenue. All while our arts and cultural legacies are becoming a luxury for the elite instead of the glue that bonds our community together.
Washington’s attacks, Albany’s neglect, and City Hall’s tired playbook have left us reeling. New Yorkers are frustrated, and rightly so.
But the New York I fell in love with isn’t gone – it just needs a champion to fight for it. Someone who will find ways to honor and protect the New York of the past while embracing the opportunities that the new New York can offer. I’m that fighter: someone who deeply knows these neighborhoods. Someone who isn’t a political insider, but is instead an activist and leader ready to reinvent the playbook when it comes to delivering for families.
In over a decade of leadership in Lower Manhattan, I’ve proven I can deliver results. As your City Councilmember, I’ll merge bold ideas with practical outcomes to tackle our affordability crisis, make our communities safer and healthier, fight for climate justice, and to create a more livable New York.
I’m not a career politician, I’m your neighbor, a New Yorker who’s lived paycheck-to-paycheck, gone without health insurance, and knows your struggles. And I know what it takes to deliver solutions. I’ll build on the legacy of Latina trailblazers who have led our community forward for decades while charting a bold path forward – bridging the Old New York we cherish with the new New York we deserve. Together, we can build a city where all of us thrive in a vibrant, equitable, and livable New York – and where stories like mine and my parents aren’t outliers anymore.
COMMUNITIES WE CAN AFFORD
Every month, costs go up. And every year, rents go up too. It’s unsustainable. Corporate greed and price gouging are pricing out the very people and small businesses who built this community. My vision for our city is one where housing is affordable, families aren’t forced out by skyrocketing rents, seniors can age in their community with dignity, and where small businesses have the support they need to survive.
Building more affordable housing and protecting the affordable housing we already have is critical. And in order to tackle a crisis of this scale, we need to take a multi-pronged approach that builds new permanently affordable units, expands and supports community land trusts, preserves HDFCs, and fights to preserve rent-stabilized apartments.
Housing affordability is part of the equation, but it’s not enough—we need policies that find creative ways to lower the skyrocketing cost of living for families, seniors and small businesses. I’ll work to ease these costs by pushing for affordable child-care, tax relief, commercial rent regulations, and anti-price-gouging measures.
SAFER, HEALTHIER NEIGHBORHOODS
Too many of us feel unsafe in our neighborhoods, on our subways, or in our parks. Decades of divestment have worsened our mental health and addiction crises, and rising hate crimes and homelessness demand urgent action.
We need to invest in community-based policing strategies like increasing foot and bike patrols to build trust, collaboration, and accountability between officers and residents. These programs are proven to create safer communities by addressing public safety issues before they become crises – and we must pair this type of community-based policing with real accountability from the NYPD. While this kind of policing is important and serves a critical role in the safety of our neighborhoods, we also have to recognize that not every emergency requires police. As your Councilmember, I’ll make sure that the City invests in increased mental health and addiction services and social workers to de-escalate situations. Our neighborhoods can be safe and well-policed without being over-policed.
Being safe on our streets also means e-bike and pedestrian safety. To protect everyone on our streets, I'll promote education, fair enforcement, and infrastructure improvements from wider sidewalks to redesigned intersections. My work convening public safety task forces as Chair of Community Board 3 proves I can deliver compassionate, effective solutions that will ensure safety for every person on our streets.
There are multiple crises that compound each other when it comes to the safety of our communities. Public health, education, and economic investment are all foundational to a safer city. I’ll fight to restore healthcare access and to expand mental health and addiction support. This is especially critical at a moment when our hospital was closed, leaving a community reeling without adequate access to care.
We need to ensure economic opportunity and investments in every neighborhood. We also need to ensure that every student has access to a strong education and stellar after-school programs. And we must provide more housing with wrap-around services for the unhoused, as well as single-occupancy shelters, all while expanding Right-to-Counsel programs to keep people in their homes to begin with.
We cannot create safe communities without also creating healthy and educated communities. And together, we can build a New York where safety and health mean real community support and long-term, upstream solutions – not just short-term responses that don’t address the heart of the problem.
ENVIRONMENTAL RESILIENCY & JUSTICE
The climate crisis is here, and we cannot build a more resilient Manhattan without investing in climate justice. Every New Yorker deserves clean air, safe water, and access to green spaces, regardless of their zip code. As your City Councilmember, I’ll champion environmental justice and resiliency and push for a true Green New Deal for NYC.
I will advocate for resilient infrastructure, installing bioswales, increasing permeable streets, and expanding the tree canopy with additional street trees, especially in flood and heat vulnerable corridors. To improve noise and air pollution, I will fight for a tax-credit program for street vendors and ice cream trucks to transition from gasoline to electric generators. And by investing in and enhancing the community gardens and green spaces that make our city livable, we also can help protect our neighborhoods from the realities of our changing climate.
But resiliency isn’t just about infrastructure—it’s also about justice, and ensuring every New Yorker benefits from a cleaner, healthier city. These investments create good, union jobs and they improve our public transportation and infrastructure. By bridging the gap between environmental policy and economic opportunity, we can build a Manhattan that’s prepared for climate challenges while investing in the communities that have historically been left out of our city’s economic growth.
A LIVABLE NEW YORK
I’m fighting for a city that honors our vibrant past while building an affordable, safe, and sustainable future.
My leadership across Lower Manhattan has shown me how housing, climate, safety, health, and cultural vibrancy all work together to foster belonging and resilience.
I’ve seen the way expanding affordable housing, guaranteeing healthcare, expanding and ensuring safety supports our community. That has a cascading impact. It decreases stress, increases happiness. When seniors, families, artists, and workers are afforded stability, they have more time and energy to pour into our City: beautify our streets, to support their neighbors, and to make our communities more cohesive, vibrant, and livable places.
In four years, I envision a District 2 where everyone lives in affordable homes, where our streets are safe and cared for, where green spaces and smart investments shield us from the impact of climate change, and where the arts pulse through every block.
This is the ‘New Old New York’—a place where my parents’ story can still happen; where affordability, safety, care, resilience, and culture unite to create a truly livable city, where no one is left behind and where we can all thrive together. That’s the vision I’m ready to fight like hell to deliver—starting on Day 1 and every day after.
Join me in this fight, sign up at www.andreagordillo.nyc and together, we’ll build a neighborhood that’s truly livable—for all of us.
If you like what you see, you can follow Andrea's work and advocacy on Instagram and her website. Thank you Andrea for participating!
