New York City food (photo: William Alatriste/City Council)
In less than six months, a new Mayor and dozens of City Council members will join their returning colleagues to chart a course for governing the city in the coming years. Even sooner, a new New York Governor will need to determine her priorities. While policy options on public safety, education, and restoring the economy have attracted headlines, food policy is another challenge that requires attention from our elected officials.
As the Delta variant jeopardizes the city’s public health, the food sector of our economy continues to struggle, and food insecurity remains far higher than before the pandemic, New Yorkers need to know how the next administration will cope with these challenges. Every New Yorker eats every day, profoundly influencing well-being. While past Mayors and City Councils have made progress on food policy, two major problems persist: high rates of food insecurity and hunger for more than a million New Yorkers and the rising burden of diet-related diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
Moreover, food is a central part of our economy. Good food jobs could put New Yorkers back to work and revitalization of the food sector could encourage community economic development and support tourism. New federal, state, and city covid recovery programs provide an opportunity to fix deep-seated problems now.
This is the time to chart food policies that build on past successes but also find solutions to persistent food problems. Based on a decade of analyzing food policy in New York City and assisting more than 20 local organizations to create and evaluate food programs, we propose six goals for the next four years.
First, the Mayor and city government should commit to making substantial progress in ending food insecurity and hunger in New York City by supporting coordination and enrollment in public benefit programs.
Last year, the number of food insecure children in the city jumped to more than 521,000 — a 39% increase compared to 2018, a shameful record for the nation’s wealthiest city. Already the city, state, and federal governments spend billions of dollars in New York City on public benefits like SNAP and WIC, emergency food programs, and school meals. But public programs are poorly coordinated, many eligible users are not enrolled, and the city often dodges responsibility to charities, which lack the mandate or resources to create a reliable system for ending food insecurity.
Second, city government should develop programs and policies that reverse increases in diet- related diseases and close the gap in health between the well off and everybody else.
Poor diet quality is the leading cause of premature deaths and preventable illness in New York City and the driver of race-and-income related health inequities. Expanding access to affordable fresh fruits and vegetables, improving nutrition education in city schools and health centers, and limiting targeted marketing of soda, fast food, and candy in the city’s least healthy neighborhoods are concrete steps the city could take.
As someone who has successfully controlled his own diabetes through dietary changes, Eric Adams, should he be elected Mayor in November, can use this experience to create policies that make this option available to more New Yorkers.
Third, through zoning, economic development, commercial rent and tax policies, the city can encourage food retailers to make affordable healthy food more available. Subsidizing farmers’ markets, making it easier for street vendors to sell healthy food, encouraging non-profits to set up food co-ops, and allowing small food businesses rent limits and subsidies to offer healthier options are practical strategies that can be brought to scale.
Fourth, New York City can use its food programs in schools, child care centers, senior programs, and hospitals to ensure that the populations served by these institutions have ongoing access to healthy, tasty, and culturally acceptable meals.
Last year, 11 city agencies served approximately 144 million meals and snacks – the largest municipal food program in the nation. New York City should find new ways to use the power of public procurement to improve nutritional well-being, reduce food insecurity and support local and regional businesses and farmers.
Fifth, New Yorkers depend on food grown and produced throughout the region, nation, and world. The pandemic, like Superstorm Sandy and the Great Recession, has shown the vulnerability of our food system to disasters. Developing a regional food plan that makes health, equity, and environmental sustainability priorities would help the city protect its future. The new Governor could play an important role in supporting such a plan.
Sixth and finally, New York City should ensure that city residents gain a voice in shaping local food environments.
For too long, the city has allowed national supermarket chains, Amazon, fast food outlets like McDonald’s, and global food companies like Coke and Pepsi to shape our city’s food choices. The sad truth is residents have no voice in deciding what stores open or close, what products they offer, or what prices they charge. Community planning boards, neighborhood food policy councils, and new user-friendly data on local food environments can help New Yorkers claim a voice.
The communities hardest hit by the pandemic, income inequality, food insecurity, and diet-related diseases are also those working class, Black, Latino, and immigrant neighborhoods that voted for the winners of recent primaries. Implementing these goals is both good policy and good politics.
Incoming city officials have an opportunity to make New York City a national leader in setting urban food policies that improve health, reduce poverty, promote equity, and encourage sustainable community development. By pursuing these goals, the next Mayor and city government can accomplish what has eluded their predecessors.
***
Nicholas Freudenberg is distinguished professor and director, CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute, CUNY School of Public Health. Katherine Tomaino Fraser is Director of Evaluation at the Institute and Yvette Ng is a doctoral fellow there.
***
Have an op-ed idea or submission for Gotham Gazette? Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, left, & Secretary of State Rossana Rosado, right, in Puerto Rico (photo: Gabriel López Albarrán/Governor's office)
Andrew Cuomo’s resignation has historical import in potentially numerous ways. When the current Lieutenant Governor, Kathy Hochul, becomes Governor of New York in just under two weeks, she will become the first woman to occupy the executive chamber in Albany. History will also be made if Hochul decides to appoint a Latino as her Lieutenant Governor.
I suggest that is exactly what she should do. Why?
First, Latinos now make up the largest ethnic voting bloc in the entire state. Yet there is no Latino representation within leadership at the state executive and legislative levels. Hochul is a white woman from the Buffalo area. The current Senate Majority Leader is Andrea Stewart-Cousins, an African-American woman from Westchester. The Speaker of the Assembly is Carl Heastie, an African-American man from the Bronx. Our current State Attorney General is Letitia James, an African-American woman from Brooklyn, and State Comptroller is Thomas DiNapoli, a white man from Long Island.
Even among the leaders of the respective county political organizations in New York City, there is no longer any Latino representation. And this includes the Bronx, which is the only Latino-majority borough in the city. Four of the five Democratic organizations in the city are represented by African-Americans. Furthermore, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, also African-American, is likely to be our next Mayor. The current and likely continuing Public Advocate, Jumaane Williams, is also African-American and of Brooklyn. The likely next City Comptroller, another Brooklynite, is Brad Lander, a white man.
Truly, the above list shows a major feat for our African-American sisters and brothers who have fought so hard for proper and due representation at all levels of government and political party organizations. Yet, based on sheer numbers and proven ability, it would seem that Latinos should also be recognized with high-level appointments and elections.
Second, there are several highly-qualified Latino elected officials and non-elected individuals who could serve the next Governor and the people of New York well. Among the Latinos that have great public policy chops, are thoughtful, articulate, and charismatic, and could potentially inhabit this position well are the following:
Ruben Diaz, Jr.
Diaz, Jr. is term-limited out of his position as Bronx Borough President and decided not to run for mayor. He has extensive Albany experience, having served as an Assemblymember for over a decade. Diaz, Jr. has served as borough president for the last 12 years and during this time he has helped oversee and usher in advancements for Bronxites and growth in his beloved borough. He is generally well-liked and well-respected. I would not be surprised if other Latinos inside and outside government lobby hard for his selection.
Fernando Ferrer
One cannot discount Fernando Ferrer as a potential consideration. He was Bronx Borough President for 14 years, and most recently served as acting chair of the MTA. There is no doubt that Ferrer is a widely respected figure with vast experience and would serve the new governor well.
Latinas in the Mix?
There are a number of Latinas that deserve Hochul’s attention too. Some are already in elected office, and others no longer in office could also be formidable candidates for the position of Lieutenant Governor. Some that could be in the mix are the former Speaker of the City Council, Melissa Mark-Viverito, and former Council Member Margarita Lopez, among others.
There are other Latino leaders, like State Senators Jessica Ramos and Gustavo Rivera, who could be considered by Hochul but do not appear to match her politics as well as other possible appointees. While unlikely, she could look to appoint one of them as a way to reach out to not only Latinos but the left wing of the Democratic Party.
Among the appointed Latino officials who could be under consideration: New York Secretary of State Rossana Rosado.
What of the Congressional Representatives?
New York City currently has four Democratic Latino congressional representatives: Adriano Espaillat, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ritchie Torres, and Nydia Velazquez. With a House majority, and these representatives playing important roles in Congress, I don’t expect any of them to accept a position with virtually no power, other than being a heartbeat away from the executive chamber…or a resignation away from being Governor. There is also the uncertainty of the future given Hochul and her Lieutenant Governor will have to run for a full term next year.
The makings are there for Latinos to have a representative at the statewide level. Will Hochul herself quickly make history again with her first major appointment? Let’s hope so.
***
Eli Valentin is an adjunct lecturer at Union Theological Seminary, a frequent guest political analyst at Univision NY, and author of the forthcoming, Reinhold Niebuhr: A Political Life. On Twitter @EliValentinNY.
***
Have an op-ed idea or submission for Gotham Gazette? Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Council Member Helen Rosenthal, the author (photo: John McCarten/City Council)
I am proud to support and fight for workers in the human services sector. The city’s 125,000-plus social service workers provide essential services to 2.5 million New Yorkers, especially seniors, children, people with disabilities, and our neighbors experiencing homelessness. Most recently, they have been absolutely central to New York City’s response to the pandemic, ensuring that the most vulnerable do not fall through the cracks.
Human services workers are predominantly women and women of color; many are single moms raising a family on one income. For the past eight years, the sector and its allies have fought to convince New York City (and State) government to fund service providers enough so they can pay their workers a decent wage, provide full benefits and a pension, and have enough overhead for programs to function. The battle is Sisyphean.
During the past 16 months especially, the City has treated the human services sector as a second-class partner. It required workers employed by non-profit providers to come to work (when many City workers did not, due to health and safety concerns); cut programs, which led to sudden layoffs during the height of the pandemic; allowed a cost-of-living wage adjustment (COLA) to expire; and failed to provide frontline workers with PPE.
Last month the City Council passed legislation that mandates that these non-profit providers abide by “labor peace” agreements in their workplaces -- in other words, providers cannot interfere with any effort on the part of their employees to unionize. I am unabashedly pro-union and voted for the bill’s passage, but the legislation obscures the real obstacle to better pay and conditions for human services workers: government.
Local government has gotten away with underpaying human services providers since they began as mission driven non-profits born from faith-based institutions. It’s been a great ride for government -- which has been able to maintain a much wider social safety net at bargain prices. The terrible truth is that both the City and State are responsible for leaving tens of thousands of human services employees in poverty.
The double standard cannot be denied. Our governor was lauded (rightly so) for backing a minimum wage of $15 an hour across New York. All businesses in the private sector complied. However, State contracts with human services providers were never increased to cover the $15 hourly wage for workers.
Similarly, our mayor has been praised (again, rightly so) for launching free universal pre-kindergarten. However, his administration continues to underfund non-profits providing UPK, making it impossible for them to pay competitive wages to match those of UPK teachers in public schools. Not surprisingly, the non-profits can’t retain UPK teachers because of the lower salaries, and children experience a revolving-door of teachers.
The legislation passed last month basically admits that we’ve lost the battle to get the City and State to support good wages and benefits for the workers who serve the most vulnerable New Yorkers. This is nothing to be proud of. Nonetheless, the legislation offers the hope of a different approach. We will build on the strength and wins of unionized labor, which has successfully negotiated higher wages for municipal workers, to bring wages up for those in the non-profit sector.
After my eight years fighting in vain to have the City fairly and fully fund human services contracts, I'm encouraged that we are bringing in the power of the union. But there are questions raised by this legislation that must be addressed.
The central issue pertains to funding. If unions are able to negotiate better wages and benefits for their new members, where does the money come from if the non-profit’s only source of income is government? Thus far, government has categorically refused to fully fund existing social service contracts, and now we are going to be asking them to increase funding for collective bargaining.
We need to make sure that this recently passed legislation does not ultimately create an unfunded mandate and more administrative burdens for providers who have already been pushed to the brink. The human services sector must be fully involved in the bill’s implementation -- and guaranteed full funding. And we need to be honest about the fact that the bill shifts responsibility for properly paying government-contracted human services workers to organized labor -- its passage is an admission our government leaders have failed these workers.
At the end of the day, government must stop taking advantage of our non-profit institutions, and providers and their workers must be paid fairly once and for all. This is the case whether they are unionized or not.
***
City Council Member Helen Rosenthal represents parts of Manhattan. On Twitter @HelenRosenthal.
***
Have an op-ed idea or submission for Gotham Gazette? Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.