"Save Small Business" (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)
The next few years in New York City will no doubt be challenging.
In a few months, a new mayoral administration and the next City Council will inherit the worst financial situation in 20 years. The path ahead will be difficult as we try to lure tourism and business back to New York, in hopes of closing budget gaps that will threaten vital social services above all else. We must learn from the lessons of the past, however, to guarantee this isn’t a recovery built off the backs of those already struggling to get by.
When New York City faced a similar budget crunch 20 years ago after 9/11 caused a mini-depression, Mayor Bloomberg turned to fines, especially around parking violations, to help meet the shortfall. These measures were as controversial then as they are now, feeding into a national trend in which monetary penalties to deter illegal behavior became a revenue stream. Research has shown, however, that fines and fees, no matter the type, disproportionately impact communities of color and immigrant populations. The thrust of our city’s recovery should not stem from regressive policies that push everyday New Yorkers deeper into crisis rather than out of it.
This also applies to small businesses, the heartbeat of our communities. The city must not look to them as an easy target to build back up its coffers. Even in the midst of a global pandemic, the city has continued to target small business owners with hefty fines for minor infractions. While finding new streams of revenue will be an important factor in dealing with the budget shortfall, onerous fines and overzealous enforcement of minor violations cannot continue to be the solution. Economic data presented last month shows that 78% of New York State businesses with fewer than 500 employees are still struggling from the impacts of covid, according to a March report from State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli.
Those numbers become even more real when you walk down Austin Street, Queens Boulevard, or 108th Street in Queens and ask business owners, many of whom are immigrants trying to live the American dream, what the last year has been like.
There are simple steps we can take to lift all boats. We must take a completely new approach that prioritizes supportive case-workers over penalty-issuing inspectors. That’s not to say a business owner who price-gouges face-masks or a restaurant owner who keeps a dirty kitchen shouldn’t be punished. But those who try to adapt to the constant change in rules shouldn’t be a revenue line in the city’s budget.
Next, the Department of Small Business Services must ramp up its outer borough outreach. The only time many here in Queens interact with the agency — or the city as a whole — is when an inspector makes an unannounced visit. The laudable efforts by SBS during covid shouldn’t go away once we declare victory on this virus. The next mayoral administration and City Council must work together to create a post-covid small business task force that allows New Yorkers to responsibly follow their dreams and provide for their families.
Third, we need to completely stop relying on fines as a first-strike warning for small businesses in their first year. Instead of fining an entrepreneur into collapse, we need to work with them to rectify the issue in a constructive way as opposed to meeting a violation quota.
These steps mark only the beginning of what needs to be a fundamental restructuring of the relationship between our small businesses and those tasked with enforcing our city’s rules and regulations. There’s a lot of work that will need to be done, but I know it’s possible to ensure that we can build Queens and New York City back stronger than ever before, with a budget that is balanced and an environment where small businesses can thrive. As we continue to recover from the pandemic, we must take advantage of the opportunity to create a fairer city that looks out for all its residents. In the City Council, I’ll make sure that becomes a reality.
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David Aronov is a Democratic candidate for the New York City Council in Queens’ 29th District. On Twitter @DavidforQueens.
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Housing (photo: Edwin J. Torres/Mayoral Photography Office)
Charged with leading post-covid New York to a more equitable future, our next mayor should increase opportunities for New Yorkers to build equity through affordable homeownership.
Historically a blind spot in our city’s, state’s, and country’s affordable housing discussions and budgets, which tend to focus on rentals, affordable homeownership is a way for low-income people to begin to build wealth and for us as a city to reduce racial and economic inequality. Homeowners are wealthier than renters at every income level, and for the majority of homeowners most of their wealth comes from their homes.
Homeownership is elusive for most New Yorkers. In 2018, the last year of available data, just 33% of residents owned their home, dipping as low as 18% in the Bronx. White New Yorkers, at 43%, are far more likely to own their home than Black (27%) or Hispanic New Yorkers (17 %), and it’s getting worse: a recent report from the Black Homeownership Project showed that the Black homeownership rate has dropped by 13% over the last two decades citywide, preventing long-term equity building and exacerbating racial wealth gaps.
Yet, expanding new opportunities for working families, especially of color, to purchase affordable homes is often left out of New York’s housing policy discussions entirely. When it is brought up, even within the affordable housing sector, the conversation is often focused on demand-side challenges like down-payment assistance, credit-building, first-time homebuyer education, and ending discriminatory practices in the homebuyer market. These issues are important, but they miss the larger crisis: there are not enough homes available at prices accessible to working-class households to move the needle.
A Center for NYC Neighborhoods analysis of ACRIS data showed that in 2019, there were approximately 9,000 homes purchased for $420,000 or less, which is considered accessible with the right financing to low- and moderate-income homebuyers. In a city of 8.3 million people and over 1 million owner-occupied homes, this number is shockingly small and makes up only 22% of all home purchases of 1-4 family homes, condos, and co-ops.
To make matters worse, homebuyers, even with the right credit, down-payment assistance, and mortgage qualifications, were beat out by cash buyers over half the time. According to a recent study from Center for NYC Neighborhoods, 52% of all low-priced homes were bought with cash, often by private equity groups, limited liability corporations, or investors rather than individuals seeking to move in.
The good news is that the conversation is changing in a significant way, and our next mayor has a blueprint from 90-group strong The United for Housing coalition with specific recommendations to expand affordable rental and homeownership housing.
It calls on the next mayor to expand and reform the city’s Open Door homeownership construction program, invest in preservation strategies that would convert rental properties into resident-owned limited equity cooperatives, and utilize Community Land Trusts as a method to keep people in their homes while creating permanent affordable homeownership opportunities for low- to moderate-income New Yorkers.
Better yet, the plan creatively challenges institutional processes like New York’s tax lien sale and down-payment assistance programs, putting forward solutions that would utilize limited financial resources to bolster household and community assets for residents and neighborhoods. In other words, the report helps arm our future leaders with the detailed policies they need to tackle this crisis – and candidates are listening.
Some of the candidates for our city leadership have addressed these disparities and put forward specific homeownership policies that expand the conversation past the demand-side solutions that place the onus on the homebuyer to break into the homeownership market. Still, the issue hasn’t been thoroughly addressed in the larger housing debate. New Yorkers deserve to hear more from candidates about how they will not just help them rent an affordable apartment but buy one and build wealth and own a piece of their neighborhood.
Affordable homeownership supply cannot be an afterthought in a sea of rental development strategies. Even in New York, the idea of homeownership cannot be a pipe dream reserved only for the rich or famous. Increasing affordable homeownership opportunities must be a central pillar of the next mayor’s vision to build the smart, progressive, and equitable city New Yorkers deserve.
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Matt Dunbar is the VP of External Affairs at Habitat for Humanity New York City, collaborator with Interboro Community Land Trust, and an Advisory Board Member of the New York Housing Conference. On Twitter @misterdunbar & @HabitatNYC.
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A teacher at work (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
I had missed the call from my son’s school because I was on yet another Zoom. When I called back, my world turned on its head as I heard words like “suspicious package” “white powder,” and “lockdown.”
When I reached my son’s school on the Upper West Side, I found the block cordoned off, flashing police cars and ambulances lining the block, people in stark white hazmat suits going in and out of the school and terrified parents like me waiting on the periphery.
This ordeal would drag on for hours but the teachers kept their cool and kept my little guy and his schoolmates fed, happy, and safe.
Teachers are heroic. We ask them to be everything to everyone, but, as a nation, we have paid a lot of lip service to honoring them. New York City has worked hard over the years to support pedagogues and partnered with grassroots organizations like March For Our Lives to advocate for change. Last week, we celebrated our teachers during Teacher Appreciation Week. Now, we are calling on our nation to commit to supporting educators and providing them with the resources to not only do the jobs they are hired to do — teach — but the critical work they end up doing: being our children’s protectors and social workers.
Schools should be havens, places where all students, teachers, and staff feel safe. Sadly, as a society we have drifted away from that ideal. At March For Our Lives, young leaders have recounted to us time and again the feelings of dread and fear they feel in their own schools, too. We were founded in the wake of a horrific mass shooting, and over the years young people have fought to lift up the great needs in our nation’s schools and communities — the real world challenges that include the threat of violence.
Nearly 40,000 people are killed by firearms each year, and in recent years firearms have become the leading cause of death in children and adolescents. Teachers are often on the front lines caring for the trauma and emotional toll that this loss inflicts on our communities and on our young people, and yet they’re too often overburdened and under-resourced. The pandemic has only exacerbated these challenges.
At March For Our Lives, as we’ve expanded our mission beyond school-based mass shootings to confront gun violence across our communities, we’ve heard time and time again that we need laws and trusted adults to look out for kids — to work to create the safest environment for all of us by investing in solutions that prevent violence from occurring in the first place like violence intervention programs, so that places like schools remain places of care and learning rather than fear.
In New York City government, our leadership has recognized that COVID-19 is taking a profound toll on the mental health of our youth. And so the city took action by increasing direct mental health support for thousands of students in the neighborhoods hardest hit by the novel coronavirus.
Spearheaded by the city’s Taskforce for Racial Inclusion and Equity, mental health workers are working with students at 350 schools in the most economically vulnerable neighborhoods. Students who have experienced trauma – whether that be a severe illness or death in the family or a parent’s job loss – now have access to group therapy sessions.
Not only are these mental health specialists providing direct services to students, but they are also providing mental health education to caregivers and school staff so that they can help address students’ mental health needs. It’s a model we believe is worth replicating across the nation.
As we look to all the ways to build back better from covid, we need to add more supports and resources for teachers into our plans for a “new normal.” There were already gaping disparities in education pre-pandemic. As a society, we are going to have to work even harder to overcome these inequities that have only grown worse in the past year.
More than a year into this pandemic, with millions of students across the U.S. still learning from home, undoubtedly parents everywhere have gained a new appreciation for all teachers do. So let’s not just talk the talk, but walk the walk.
As for my son, while I stood by helplessly outside the school with the other parents, his teacher texted to say the kids were playing, making art, and blissfully unaware of the chaos around them. Apparently, the police officers were “special guests.” He still thinks that was “the best day ever” at school. He was actually bummed to leave school – for which I am eternally grateful. Teachers are superheroes.
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Penny Abeywardena is the Commissioner of NYC Mayor’s Office for International Affairs and Alexis Confer is the Executive Director of March For Our Lives. On Twitter @PAbeywardena and @AlexisConfer.
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