BP Oddo, the author, with a group on Staten Island (photo via @StatenIslUSA)
The divide is even greater than I feared.
The chasm between how folks across this city see our world is even wider than what it seemed. As a Republican fully aware he’s in a blue city - a guy who once led a merry band of between two and five GOPers in a legislative body of 51 - I know better than most how disparate the various points on the political spectrum are in this town, and how the perceptions, reality, and everyday feel differs across New York City.
I lived that divide and operated within it when I was in the City Council. And to deliver for the smallest, least politically influential borough, one that was either ignored, neglected, or treated as fifth of five except during the Giuliani years, I figured out how to respect the divide, maneuver within it, and effectively represent my community.
So when I say the breach is even more expansive than I once feared, it truly is.
The City Council’s Criminal Justice Reform Act is intended to help New Yorkers represented by a majority of the City Council. It’s intended to address problems that are real to them and their constituents. With that said, to folks who live on Staten Island like me, and those in other areas such as Southwest Brooklyn, parts of Queens, and parts of the Bronx, this package represents a chainsaw where a scalpel is needed. We should not be encouraging people to think we don’t care about negative behavior like urinating in public or throwing trash on the ground.
Ultimately, the bills are Miracle Grow for the perception that lawlessness lurks around the next corner, a perception that we know can feel awfully similar to reality. A furthering of this ideological agenda corrosively eats away at the thin line between civilized communities and disorder.
For the love of Pete (not Pete Vallone Jr. or Sr., but man, where have you guys gone...), can’t we even agree in this town that litter is wrong and should be punished as often and in as financially impactful a manner as possible? One unified voice coming from the Council and other sectors of city government should be all of us saying to the city agencies that the guy who throws the bag of White Castle burger remnants out the window of his car and the mocha latte drinker who flings her empty plastic cup indiscriminately into a street should pay dearly.
But we can’t even agree on that. As someone who has spent too much time, energy, and taxpayer money these last 28 months as Borough President trying to change the behavior of the selfish, ignorant Staten Islanders who continue to litter, that hurts my head.
I am keenly aware that in many ways - from home and car ownership percentages to housing typology and various other barometers - Staten Island more closely resembles the rest of America than the other four boroughs. I understand this is a left-of-center town during this “progressive” era of local government, but some truths are grounded in history and history should not need to repeat itself for us to understand the consequences of actions like passing the Criminal Justice Reform Act. So-called quality-of-life offenses rob residents of the city they deserve and expect. As a city we should be doing more to discourage litterers and those engaged in public urination and other anti-social acts on behalf of the overwhelming majority of New Yorkers who don’t engage in these behaviors.
Whether folks liked or disliked Rudy Giuliani, his unquestioned, greatest and lasting legacy is that every New Yorker now has a heightened expectation of how safe and orderly New York City should be. Individually and collectively we will never tolerate a return to the “bad old days.” I am not one who embraces the screaming tabloid headlines announcing the 1970s have returned. That’s silly. I simply don’t like seeing perhaps well-intentioned, but nonetheless misguided steps, even small ones, in that direction.
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James Oddo is the Staten Island Borough President and a former Minority Leader of the City Council. On Twitter @HeyNowJO.
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photo via PHI
Nearly 175,000 New York City residents go to work each day in the homes of New Yorkers who are elderly or living with disabilities. Predominantly immigrant women of color, these aides assist with personal care, medications and other health-related tasks, meals, housekeeping, and a variety of other activities. They are crucial to keeping people who are frail or suffering from chronic illnesses healthy, safe, and independent. They have become vital to system reform efforts intended to improve the health of New Yorkers while also reducing costly and unnecessary visits to emergency rooms.
Home care workers, who may be home health aides or personal care aides, comprise the single largest occupational group in New York City. Nonetheless, they have a long history of marginalization: poverty-level wages, lack of standard labor protections, part-time hours, insufficient training and support on the job. That situation is beginning to change as policymakers recognize that the city faces a potential care crisis: a rapidly growing older population that requires a stable, skilled workforce to provide home care services.
Over the past five years, a raft of new federal, state, and local regulations - Wage Parity for personal care and home health aides, Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, and expansion of Fair Labor Standards Act to include home care aides - have been put in place to raise wages and improve working conditions. In addition, home care aides are affected by the rising minimum wage and new paid leave regulations. These measures are critical to improving the quality of home care jobs and attracting new workers, but they also have created a level of complexity that makes it difficult for employers to comply and for workers to know their rights.
The Wage Parity law requires that a home care aide be paid $10 per hour during the time she is with her client. She is paid minimum wage, currently $9 an hour, for travel time between clients. If her total number of weekly hours, including travel, is 45 hours, she must be paid time-and-a-half on her base wage for the hours over 40. The employer must calculate the base wage using a formula that accounts for hours worked ($10/hour) and paid travel time ($9/hour). How is this worker able to determine if she is being paid the right amount? What if she has an overnight shift? For how many hours should she be paid, and at what wage?
Both employers and home care aides need an unbiased source of information and assistance to navigate these rules and regulations. That is why PHI supports the proposal to include a Division of Paid Care, with a public advocate devoted to supporting the home care and day care workforces, in the new city Office of Labor Standards. For New York City’s home care workforce, this office could offer several crucial services:
Education: Assist home care workers and their employers in learning about labor laws and regulations. For example, the advocate could spearhead public education on rules regarding compensation and labor protections. The advocate would also be available via a toll-free number to answer any questions workers had about their rights.
Tracking and Reporting: Create a system for reporting complaints, cataloguing questions, and providing timely answers to frequently asked questions. An effective system would provide workers with a supportive environment in which to learn about their rights and file a complaint, if warranted. The advocate could track complaints and issue an annual report describing type and frequency, and propose appropriate measures to reduce violations.
Assistance and Support: Help workers access state and local services for low-wage workers - for example, connecting workers to child care or health care resources. In addition, the advocate could provide information on available training programs and their costs.
To keep up with growing demand, it is estimated that New York City will need to grow its home care workforce 45 percent - more than 72,000 workers - over the next decade. To ensure quality home care services, New York City also needs to increase retention of well-trained, experienced aides. A Division of Paid Care could help to ensure quality jobs, with fair pay and adequate support, making home care a more attractive career for thousands of workers who could easily choose fast-food or other jobs over caring for the city’s most vulnerable elders.
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Carol A. Rodat is the New York Policy Director for PHI, a national nonprofit affiliated with a New York health care system that includes Cooperative Home Care Associates, a worker-owned home care agency, and Independent Care System, a managed-care organization. On Twitter @PHInational.
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Council Members Richards, left, and Reynoso, the authors, address a crowd
As co-chairs of the New York City Council’s Progressive Caucus, we have worked closely with Mayor de Blasio since he took office. It is clear that the mayor has delivered for our constituents and all 8.4 million New Yorkers in transformative ways. From affordable housing to quality jobs to expanded educational programming, New Yorkers are doing better and the scale of the accomplishments is substantial.
In partnership with our Speaker, Melissa Mark-Viverito, and the City Council, Mayor de Blasio has been helping to create a more equitable New York City. But this progress did not happen by chance, and it’s no foregone conclusion that we will be able to sustain it. We cannot allow our momentum to be derailed, destabilized, or diminished.
Under a boldly progressive mayor and Council speaker, New York is safer and public policy is more equitable than at any point in our lifetimes. We must protect our progress, join us as we launch our #ProtectProgress campaign, which includes the following highlights of this work, the Top 10 Accomplishments, by the Numbers:
1. Making Communities Safer: With two consecutive years of record low violent crime statistics, New York is the safest big city in the country.
2. Making Pre-K Universal: More than 68,500 children are getting the head start they deserve this year with full day pre-kindergarten classes for all of New York’s four-year-olds.
3. Developing and Preserving Affordable Housing: Over 100,000 New Yorkers have access to 40,000-plus new units of affordable housing. More affordable housing units were created in 2015 than in any year since the city’s housing department began.
4. Creating Economic Growth: More New York City jobs than ever before, totaling 4,296,100 across all five boroughs as of March 2016. This includes 254,900 new private sector jobs created during this administration, resulting in an unemployment rate of 6.1%, lower than other large cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia. This is in part due to new legislation preventing discrimination against job seekers based on credit scores and prior convictions.
5. Improving Police-Community Relations: Reducing unlawful stop-and-frisks, which disproportionately affect African-American & Latino New Yorkers with a 97% decline over four years.
6. Expanding Learning Time: The Mayor’s universal after-school program for 113,874 middle school students (double the number previously served) is providing quality programming during a critical time for childhood development.
7. Embracing Immigrant Communities: IDNYC enables non-citizens to participate in the civic and cultural life of the city, with 855,000-plus cardholders who have secured the peace of mind that comes from recognized government identification.
8. Extending New Yorkers’ Legal Right to Sick Leave: 3,400,000 private and nonprofit sector workers have access to paid sick leave thanks to an expansion created in partnership with the Council and the Mayor’s robust education campaign.
9. Making Streets Safer through Vision Zero: In 2015, New York City saw the fewest traffic fatalities in history, with a 22% reduction resulting from reduced speed limits and comprehensive safety plans.
10. Supporting a Living Wage: A $15 living wage is now guaranteed to every City worker and employee of nonprofit organizations contracted with the City, and the Mayor and Council have advocated for higher wages for all workers across the state.
We must be proud of these accomplishments while we also build on them. Today, we call on progressives from Bushwick to Harlem, from the Rockaways to Riverdale to step and up and #ProtectProgress. Parents: tweet from your UPK sites that didn’t exist two years ago! Bicyclists: tweet images of your new protected lanes that are helping to save lives! IDNYC cardholders: tweet from wherever you are putting your card to use!
Let’s get #ProtectProgress into the conversation, so that together we can promote real results that Mayor de Blasio and the City Council have delivered for New Yorkers.
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City Council Members Antonio Reynoso and Donovan Richards are co-chairs of the Council’s Progressive Caucus. On Twitter @DRichards13 & @CMReynoso34.
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