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NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Mayor Bill de Blasio defended his record on making New York more affordable and fighting for the city’s residents in the first Democratic mayoral debate Wednesday , while opponent Sal Albanese said de Blasio has failed at handling the homelessness crisis and mass transit woes . The debate was held Wednesday at Symphony Space, at 2537 Broadway on the Upper West Side . Albanese was the only other Democratic contender who raised enough money to qualify for the debates. De Blasio defended his record on numerous fronts – including his pushes for affordable housing , pre-kindergarten for New York City children , and community policing . The mayor said more than 2 million New Yorkers have benefited from a rent freeze on rent-stabilized apartments since he took office, and many have also benefited from free lawyers in the case of possible evictions. But Albanese, who served in the City Council from 1983 until 1988 and also ran for mayor in 1997 and 2013, said de Bl...

Manhattan skyline view from the roof deck of a Park Slope building ." /> Manhattan skyline view from the roof deck of a Park Slope building . View Full Caption Corcoran Group MANHATTAN— Yes, New York City is way less affordable now than seven years ago. Case in point: An apartment going for $2,000 a month for rent in 2010 would now get $2,657 a month, a report published Wednesday from real estate search engine StreetEasy reveals. Compounding the city’s affordability crisis: rents in the city rose twice as fast as wages, according to the analysis, which compared the StreetEasy Rent Index with wage data from the city’s Department of Labor. While median rents increased 3 .9 percent a year since 2010, wages increased by 1.8 percent over the same period. Those working in the city’s lowest wage jobs were hit hardest. Low- wage earners — those in the bottom 20 percent of the workforce, which represent a little more than 800,000 of the roughly 4.1 million employed New Yorkers ...