NEW YORK — Republican mayoral nominee Curtis Sliwa on Wednesday evening called for bolstering affordable housing in the city by repurposing empty commercial real estate, and backed enforcing property taxes on places like Madison Square Garden.

With the city facing an affordable housing crisis, Sliwa in an interview on “Inside City Hall” expressed skepticism of promises from developers to allocate a portion of their projects for affordable housing, and instead called for utilizing empty commercial space.

“You see the big developers — and I know they're wining, dining and pocket-lining my adversary, Eric Adams, because they want more and more developments. They'll say, ‘Oh, I promise you 20% will be affordable, the other 80% will obviously be out there for public consumption.’ I say look at all this empty space. Look at the Hudson Yards — it’s a ghost town. Why should we be developing Sunnyside Yards or Sunset Park?” Sliwa said in his interview with NY1 political anchor Errol Louis. “Let’s take all this empty commercial space, see what can no longer be used commercially and repurpose it for housing that is desperately needed.”

Other mayoral candidates have endorsed similar plans, such as several former Democratic candidates who called for converting hotels and office spaces into affordable housing units.

Meanwhile, Sliwa said tax breaks should be scrapped for some famous Manhattan locations, echoing a proposal former Democratic mayoral candidate Andrew Yang backed.

“We’re going to hire 3,000 more police and I have a plan to do it: by taxing Madison Square Garden, and Columbia and NYU [New York University]. They pay no property taxes,” Sliwa said.

For decades, Madison Square Garden has saved hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes thanks to a state law passed at the behest of then-mayor Ed Koch in 1982. Any repeal of the tax break for the Garden would require state approval, however.

Sliwa, who’s centered his mayoral run and public life around reducing crime, has called for increasing the size of the police force to address the rise in crime in the city.

And on the topic of the ongoing crisis on Rikers Island, Sliwa sympathized with correction officers, and ridiculed Mayor Bill de Blasio for not speaking with them or detainees during his visit to the city’s largest jail.

Instead of closing Rikers Island and replacing it with borough-based facilities, which de Blasio has trumpeted, Sliwa argued the jail should be renovated.

“We’re not going to have the money to build any new community jails,” Sliwa said. “You knock down some of the older buildings, you repurpose and rehab some of the newer buildings, you’ll have more than enough room.”

Sliwa went on to argue that Rikers detainees with mental illnesses should be housed in psychiatric facilities.

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Watch the full interview above.

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