AOC Isn't Going To Like What Amazon HQ2 Is Doing for New Location's Economy
Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez steered Amazon away from New York, but the company’s new location in Virginia has created a housing boom.
Buyers and sellers in the Arlington housing market have been scrambling to lock up properties in anticipation of Amazon’s new headquarters, which will welcome its newest workers in June, Axios reported.
David Howell, executive vice president at McEnearney Associates, described the phenomenon as a “boomlet” since Amazon announced its new location.
“I’ve been studying this market for 35 years, and I’ve never seen a circumstance like this one,” Howell said.
Buyers have been so eager to purchase homes around Amazon’s new location that homeowners are putting up “no-solicitation” signs. A similar boom could have occurred in New York City, but Ocasio-Cortez and other lawmakers spoiled the company’s plans to build there.
In February, Amazon spokeswoman Jodi Seth explained that Amazon canceled plans in New York City because its politicians created a hostile environment. “It was that the environment over the course of the past three months had not got any better. There were some local and state elected officials who refused to meet with Amazon and criticized us day in and day out about the plan,” Seth said.
Ocasio-Cortez had celebrated the cancellation and slammed Amazon with left-wing buzzwords such as “corporate greed” and “worker exploitation.”
Anything is possible: today was the day a group of dedicated, everyday New Yorkers & their neighbors defeated Amazon’s corporate greed, its worker exploitation, and the power of the richest man in the world. https://t.co/nyvm5vtH9k
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 14, 2019
Ocasio-Cortez defended her stance during an April town hall by questioning Amazon’s jobs, according to QNS.
“We can create those jobs without marginalizing people,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “Are those the jobs that they’re giving the folks in NYCHA, are those jobs going to our community? Or are we just importing already wealthy people to displace us?”
“It’s not about, ‘Are we making 25,000 jobs’; it’s about ‘Are we creating 25,000 jobs that guarantee healthcare, that have dignified work where you’re not working 80 to 100 hours a week just to get by?'”
But the Democratic socialist’s concerns were unfounded, because Amazon said it has been hiring Arlington residents instead of “importing already wealthy people,” as Ocasio-Cortez put it.
“We plan to hire people who live here so the impact on the region will be minimal,” Amazon said in a statement.
This isn’t good news for Ocasio-Cortez.
A recent poll found that only 9 percent of Ocasio-Cortez’s constituents support her position on Amazon, while 20 percent hold a “favorable” opinion of the self-identified socialist. Forty-four percent of said voters hold an unfavorable opinion.
New poll on Ocasio-Cortez from inside her own district shows she’s in serious trouble:
-44% view her unfavorable
-36% don’t know who she is
-Only 20% view her favorablehttps://t.co/hHoSvTmPZw— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) May 18, 2019
Thanks in part to Ocasio-Cortez, New York City missed out on a significant business opportunity.
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