Voting in NYC in a pandemic (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)
The first presidential election in New York City to have both early and universal mail-in voting showed a significant portion of the electorate taking advantage of each of the new voting methods.
Across the city, roughly 42% of those who voted cast ballots in-person on Election Day, while 37% voted at an early voting site, and 22% mailed in ballots, according to the New York City Campaign Finance Board. At over 3 million votes citywide, turnout rose by close to 300,000 votes from 2016 figures, although the turnout rate among registered voters was roughly the same (55% in 2020 vs. 56% in 2016), as more people joined the rolls in the intervening four years. Reformers who have been pushing these measures for years, and in some cases decades, say the broad spread vindicates their efforts.
Advocates have sought to make voting simpler and more accessible for years by expanding the number of options to cast a ballot, along with other reforms to streamline voter registration and shore up voter protections. High on the agenda was early voting, which passed the state Legislature and was signed into law in 2019, and universal or "no-excuse" absentee voting, which has not been fully codified but was enacted temporarily by executive order and subsequent legislation during the coronavirus pandemic.
"When we passed landmark voting reforms, including Early Voting, we had no idea how critical they would be to helping more New Yorkers vote during a pandemic," wrote State Senator Zellnor Myrie, a Brooklyn Democrat and chair of the Senate's election committee, in an email to Gotham Gazette. For years, election reforms had been blocked by a coalition of Senate Republicans and breakaway Democrats known as the Independent Democratic Conference, one of whom Myrie defeated in 2018 as mainline Democrats took control of the chamber and thus all of state government.
"We expanded access for voters because it was the right thing to do. Of course, this year has been unprecedented and it wound up being even more important for people to have multiple ways, on multiple days, to cast their votes safely and ensure they would be counted," Myrie wrote.
In the general election, over 3 million people voted in New York City, a significant uptick from four years ago, driven at least in part by the atmosphere of heightened political engagement during the Trump years. Only about three-quarters of that turnout was in-person -- either on Election Day or during the nine-day early voting period that preceded it -- the rest were mail-ins.
New York has never before had universal absentee voting, making comparisons to previous years difficult. In the spring of 2020, Governor Andrew Cuomo made it an option for all New Yorkers by making the risk of spreading COVID-19 an acceptable reason for requiring an absentee ballot. The executive order led that number to explode, from roughly 335,000 absentee ballots processed in the 2016 and 2018 general elections, combined, to over 660,000 in the 2020 general election. (The figures do not include the number of absentee ballots that were rejected, which happens to roughly a fifth every election cycle, usually on technical grounds. Some of the rules that led to frequent disqualification were changed by lawmakers in Albany between the primary and general elections this year.)
In 2019, the first year early voting was in effect, roughly 60,000 New Yorkers took advantage of the option in the general election, which saw low turnout typical of a so-called off-years with no high-profile races. In the 2020 primaries in June, there was a massive increase in absentee voting amid some of the worst days of the covid outbreak and few people cast early in-person ballots. That changed drastically in the general election, when the virus was under some control, and after voting advocates and elected leaders, like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, put significant effort into encouraging voters who were able to vote early.
Some boroughs had a more even spread among the three voting methods than others.
In Manhattan, the distribution across Election-Day voting, early voting, and absentee voting was virtually even, with roughly a third of voters casting ballots through each option. The rest of the boroughs saw far smaller participation by mail, with the Bronx and Staten Island showing the least affinity for voting by post.
Staten Island had the greatest enthusiasm for early voting with 48% of those who voted in the borough casting ballots that way. The lowest early voting participation rate was in Queens, where only 32% of those who voted did so early in person.
The Bronx, followed by Queens, had the highest participation rates for voting on Election Day, with 49% and 47% of those who voted, respectively, casting ballots in person on the last day before polls closed.
"We've witnessed that flexible voting options better protect our rights and our health, eliminating the need to choose among them, particularly during an emergency. Both 9/11 and Superstorm Sandy caused election disruptions in New York that should never be repeated," said Jarret Berg, co-founder of the nonprofit Vote Early New York. Berg warned the latest figures should be viewed with caution because it is impossible to gauge the impact of factors like the pandemic, "the triumph of 'work from home' technology and culture," and reaction to the Trump administration.
"While the capacity and design of both programs should be further optimized to meet local community needs, the inaugural rollout of early voting and mainstream vote from home was an unquestionable success," Berg told Gotham Gazette. "As the resourcing and infrastructure for these new programs improve and the public becomes accustomed to them, I anticipate the proportion of voters who are comfortable using them will continue to grow."
“More choices means more people voting," wrote State Senator Michael Gianaris, the deputy majority leader from Queens and a long-time advocate for election reform, in an email.
"This year we saw voters in record numbers avail themselves of the multitude of options given to them, which affirms Senate Democrats historic electoral reforms," he wrote. Gianaris is now setting his sights on one of the next election reform battles -- automatic voter registration. A bill that would require certain state agencies to register eligible voters when they provide the necessary personal information passed in July but has yet to be signed by Cuomo.
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by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
@GeringerSameth @GothamGazette
(photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
Eight mayoral candidates participated in a recent forum focused on public and private housing, and homelessness. The December 5 event, which was part of the 15th annual West Side Tenants' Conference, featured Brooklyn City Council Member Carlos Menchaca, former nonprofit executive Dianne Morales, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, entrepreneur Joycelyn Taylor, former city Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia, civil rights attorney and former counsel to Mayor de Blasio Maya Wiley, City Comptroller Scott Stringer, and former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan. Gotham Gazette editor Ben Max moderated the discussion.
The discussion was one of an initial series of candidate forums this year as the mayoral field continues to expand ahead of the June primaries and fall 2021 general election.
The next mayor of New York City — whether it’s a candidate who appeared at this forum or one of the several who didn’t — will inherit many long-standing housing challenges, some of which have been exacerbated by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the next inauguration on January 1, 2022, the city will, hopefully, also be recovering from a recession that saw employment and tax revenue take historic plunges while many small businesses collapsed.
Though at times details were lacking, the candidates at the forum did have a number of ideas for how to fund NYCHA and tackle crumbling public housing, incentivize private building upkeep and development, reduce homlessness, leverage community partnerships, and more. And key differences among the candidates emerged on several programs and potential solutions to some of the city’s most intractable problems.
Funding and Saving NYCHA
Mayoral candidates at the forum had some overlapping but several different thoughts about how to infuse the city’s public housing authority with the tens of billions of dollars it needs to get buildings to a state of good repair. One clear dividing line is the federal RAD (rental assistance demonstration) program that incentivizes the use of housing vouchers by having public housing authorities hire private management companies to run properties. Those companies get to collect rent but also must invest in the properties.
“The system today is just in total disrepair, and we need to be able to move back to what it used to be,” Morales said, reflecting on her parents’ experience with public housing. “NYCHA is the home to more than 400,000 New Yorkers, and they have every bit of right as everyone else to live comfortably and safely.”
Everyone agreed that the federal government, which they hope will be more sympathetic to New Yorkers once President-elect Joe Biden enters office, should contribute much more toward public housing. But most seemed to also agree that the city needed to find other ways to fill NYCHA’s immense needs.
“We can decrease the budget expenses by defunding the NYPD dramatically,” said Menchaca, who also called for expanding the city’s capital budget commitments to NYCHA and other top priorities.
“I’m going to look at selling the air rights of NYCHA to local community developers,” said Adams.
“One idea that I think we should put forth immediately is to take $40 million a year over 10 years from the Battery Park City Authority,” said Stringer of his long-standing proposal to infuse those funds to NYCHA from the state authority. The plan needs support from both Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio but only the former has agreed to it.
“One of the things that we can do for the tenants is we can give them ownership opportunities, which would allow them to have the ability to not just have stable housing, but it will also generate revenue for the city,” said Taylor, who said she grew up in public housing. Selling apartments to a portion of public housing tenants would raise tens of millions of dollars, she said.
Morales suggested charging taxes and fees to private property owners and landlords in order to generate revenue while also discouraging certain behavior. “I think we should be looking at land-value taxation,” she said. “We should be disincentivizing landowners from being able to sit on privately-owned vacated or blighted land while they wait for it to rise in value. Finally, I’d say we need to take a really hard look at expanding fees for luxury developments and for vacancies, and assessing fees for displacement as well.”
Candidates offered differing opinions on RAD as part of a NYCHA rescue plan. The de Blasio administration has expanded its use after some initial hesitation, while also proposing several other large-scale efforts to bring in tens of billions of dollars for NYCHA, like selling air rights and leasing underused space for private housing development, including both market-rate housing and rent-regulated apartments.
Adams, Garcia, and Donovan expressed support for RAD while acknowledging room for improvement. “When I went and saw developments that had gone through the RAD process at Ocean Bay or at Campos II, the tenants were extremely happy,” said Garcia, who served as interim chair of NYCHA for less than a year when de Blasio asked her to step in amid controversy, which eventually led to the appointment of a federal monitor and the hiring of current chair and CEO Gregory Russ. “They were very enthusiastic about what their new home looked like,” Garcia continued.
“As this forum shows, there is deep misunderstanding about RAD,” Donovan said. “RAD does not require privatization; it is a way to get Section 8 resources into public housing just like the preservation trust idea, so we need a reset on RAD.”
The candidates who expressed support for RAD said that communication with tenants needs to improve but that the program is worth expanding.
But other candidates said that tenants did not like RAD and warned of it as a step toward privatizing public housing. “Beyond the incredible removal of agency from NYCHA residents that transforms their relationship with housing, I think that this continues to push conversations around privatization of our public housing, which would be a big mistake for the City of New York,” Menchaca said.
Wiley and Stringer expressed concern about what RAD means for tenants’ rights and a move toward privatization of public housing. “They’re not given that transparency, they’re not given that voice, and therefore they don’t have the options to say what it is they want,” Wiley said. “The principles have to be about keeping public housing public.”
Some candidates also spoke briefly about improving health conditions and making NYCHA part of efforts to fight climate change and to create jobs. “We know that housing equals healing, and that health and housing are linked,” Garcia said, citing rat-infested buildings and broken elevators.
“We should invest in a Green New Deal for NYCHA,” Morales said. “We’ve got to focus on retrofitting our buildings” to make them more energy efficient “and investing in capital repair,” she explained.
“Why shouldn’t we have solar panels on every roof in NYCHA?” asked Donovan. “That could not only lower utility bills, but put capital back into public housing.”
Candidates were divided over the issue of “infill” housing development on underused NYCHA land, a proposal dating back many years that has stalled due to pushback. Such development could take many forms, including different combinations of market-rate and affordable housing, with the idea that certain property-leasing revenues are funneled into making repairs at NYCHA buildings.
“Universally, [tenants] are against this idea,” Morales said. Taylor and Menchaca agreed. Meanwhile, Adams, Garcia, and Donovan expressed support for new housing development on NYCHA land, with Garcia saying it would generate money and Donovan saying those new housing units could go to senior citizens.
“When we have a desperate affordable housing shortage in this city, we need to look at these types of options,” Donovan said.
Wiley and Stringer said that in-fill development is an option, but tenants must be involved in the decision-making process.
Protecting the Private Housing Stock and Preventing Evictions
Candidates suggested that in order to mitigate the pandemic’s adverse effects on private housing, the city should create more public and non-profit-run affordable housing.
“We have a homeless crisis that’s a historic one in size and it’s because we need to understand it as an eviction crisis,” Wiley said. “The eviction crisis is also an affordable housing crisis.” The city, she argued, should buy shuttered hotels and other commercial housing to create affordable housing and generate revenue through rent.
“We see a lot of vacant commercial space and a real estate market that is facing foreclosure,” Stringer said. “We should take advantage of this by using land banks and community trusts to purchase these buildings, turn them into affordable housing or limited equity co-ops.” He agreed with Wiley about purchasing vacant hotels, adding that not-for-profit organizations should be encouraged to buy buildings and create affordable housing.
To protect people against evictions, candidates suggested suspending rent, ceasing evictions, and making sure those facing eviction have access to lawyers so that units don’t end up vacant and New Yorkers don’t end up homeless.
“Nothing is more important than giving those who have to go to the various housing courts the legal assistance that they deserve,” Adams said. “It’s intimidating to go into a courtroom and find yourself losing your home based on a decision that you don’t quite understand.” Wiley and Menchaca also emphasized the importance of legal services for tenants.
“We need to think about how we’re going to cancel rent for tenants,” Morales said, but adding that small landlords like herself must also be protected. She said that the eviction process should be ceased for the duration of the pandemic and the banking industry should be pushed to forgive mortgage payments. Donovan also expressed support for an eviction moratorium and rental assistance.
Candidates also spoke about preventing landlords from warehousing empty units or keeping them vacant through taxation and enforcement. Morales restated her support for changing tax incentives and said the city should exercise eminent domain to repurpose vacant commercial spaces.
Menchaca, Wiley, and Taylor also expressed support for a tax on vacant units. “If you want to keep it off the market, you’ll have to pay to do it, and that creates the incentive not to,” Wiley said.
Helping Homeless People and Creating More Affordable Housing
“I know what housing insecurity is about,” Adams said. “I remember as a child, going to school every day with a garbage bag full of clothing because we thought we were going to be thrown out of our home, and my mom did not want us to not have a change in clothing. So this is real.”
Candidates emphasized the importance of making sure homeless people are able to access permanent housing and not spending long periods in the shelter system. “Our system is fundamentally flawed,” Morales said. “It is focused solely on moving people out of the shelter system and not actually providing them with the support that they need in order to be able to attain and maintain stable housing over the long term."
One way to do that, candidates agreed, is by creating more affordable housing — both buying commercial units and making sure that the lowest-income residents are able to access them.
Several candidates agreed that current affordable housing isn’t really affordable. “No more building unaffordable affordable housing,” Stringer said.
“I too think that we need to be focused on the very-low income,” Garcia said, saying that those who make less than 30% of the area median income should be prioritized. Donovan said the city must make “truly affordable, permanently affordable housing.”
Two candidates spoke about rezoning neighborhoods and how those changes in land use rules could impact affordable housing. “We…have to stop rezoning only in communities of color,” Stringer said, “and recognize that if we’re gonna integrate our city and build out a new generation of affordable housing, we have to look at as-of-right development. And I’ve proposed that 25% of the units in as-of-right development be set aside for affordable housing.”
Menchaca called for “a moratorium on all rezonings until we have racial impact studies for all of them.” He also said 25% affordable housing isn’t nearly enough. “We need to get up to 50, to 100% affordable housing projects across the city.”
Menchaca also spoke about what appears to be a central proposal of his early campaign, a form of universal basic income, an idea popularized by former presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who is rumored to be leaning toward joining the mayoral race himself in January. “The Universal Basic Income’s gonna help people get to those apartments,” Menchaca said of his plan to implement a pilot UBI. Asked what he’d do immediately as mayor to ease burdens on homeless people, Adams also said he would look into “some version” of UBI.
Asked the same question, Garcia said “for a homeless family, I’d immediately give them the money to go and rent an apartment.” She said the city should be converting office towers into housing units and making sure that vacant public housing units are fixed quickly so homeless families can move in.
Adams also called attention to technology challenges at homeless shelters. “It is embarrassing that we had almost 70,000 children who did not have iPads and a countless number who didn’t have Wi-Fi,” he said. “In the 21st century, the inability to put in high-speed broadband is a crime.” He said that as mayor, he’d get students in shelters the technology they need.
Wiley, Stringer, and Donovan all said that the homeless men of the Lucerne hotel on the Upper West Side should be able to stay there despite hostility from some members of the local community there.
Taylor said it’s important to make sure homeless people have resources besides housing. “Make sure that, when we’re talking about putting them in hotels, we’re not just dropping them in hotels and that’s it. That’s just not enough,” she said. Garcia suggested changing laws around hotels being used as shelters to make sure there are services for homeless people staying in them.
“The problem is we have a mayor who has a shelter-first strategy, who thinks we can solve homelessness with homeless programs,” Donovan said. “Instead, what we need is permanent supportive housing that brings the services we need, and we need to make sure that every time somebody leaves Rikers, every time someone leaves the mental health wing of a public hospital, the city has a plan to get them the housing and the resources that they need.”
[WATCH: Democratic Mayoral Candidates Talk NYCHA, Housing and Homelessness at Forum]
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by Lauren Hakimi, Gotham Gazette
@lauren_hakimi @GothamGazette
Top (l-r): Loree Sutton, Shaun Donovan, Kathryn Garcia, Carlos Menchaca, Eric Adams
Bottom (l-r): Dianne Morales, Scott Stringer, Joycelyn Taylor, Maya Wiley, Zach Iscol
The NYPD’s involvement when responding to mental health crises took center stage at a forum featuring ten of the 2021 Democratic mayoral candidates Thursday night.
The event, which was hosted by Citizen Action of New York, a grassroots nonprofit advocacy group, and a consortium it is part of that seeks to reform mental health and other social services, especially for low-income New Yorkers, people of color, and other often marginalized communities, and to overhaul treatment of mental health emergencies.
The ten participating candidates -- Eric Adams, Carlos Menchaca, Dianne Morales, Loree Sutton, Karthryn Garcia, Maya Wiley, Shaun Donovan, Scott Stringer, Joycelyn Taylor, and Zach Iscol -- were asked a series of questions about what they would do as mayor to improve the quality of mental health services offered in New York, including related to how police are involved, criminal justice reform, and more.
The pandemic has been hard for all New Yorkers, but for those who suffer from mental illness, the isolation of quarantine has made it particularly difficult. Citizen Action and the Correct Crisis Intervention Today (CCIT-NYC) coalition put together the panel to hear what the candidates would do as mayor to help those who are suffering and where they stand on a number of issues, including the NYPD’s use of tasers and overall involvement in responding to mental health crises.
Due to the large number of panelists, the candidates were not given the opportunity to answer every question. Cindy Rodriguez of WNYC radio moderated the Zoom event, which was organized in large part by CCIT-NYC's Christina Sparrock and Carla Rabinowitz.
The discussion opened with a question about expanding supportive housing for people with mental illness, particularly those who are homeless. Of the over 90,000 people that are homeless in New York at least 40% live with a mental illness, it was said.
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams said he wants to modify the 15/15 Initiative, the city’s plan to create 15,000 units of supportive housing over 15 years, and cut the time it would take down to 10 years. He said that currently, there isn’t enough supportive housing in New York, citing that there’s only one unit available for every six eligible applicants.
“That's not sufficient. We are failing vulnerable families and individuals who need affordable housing that can offer substance abuse and mental health assistance,” he said.
Maya Wiley, a civil rights attorney and former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, proposed turning vacant hotels into permanent affordable housing, saying the pandemic has presented the city with a unique opportunity to help thousands of people.
“We also have to look at properties that are in distress that we can actually use much more quickly and rapidly create supportive housing that's truly affordable,” she said.
The major topic of the night was the NYPD’s involvement when responding to mental health crises. Advocates say police don’t need to be involved when responding to these calls, and social workers and community activists should be deescalating the situations instead. There have been instances where police involvement in responding to mental health episodes has turned fatal, as was the case with Daniel Prude in March.
When asked if police should no longer be responsible for responding to these calls, four (Wiley, Morales, Stringer, and Taylor) out of five candidates asked said yes. Adams was the only candidate to disagree, saying that there are times where these calls can turn violent based on the actions of the person having an episode. Only when it is determined that the individual having the crisis is not a danger to themselves or others is it OK for the police to be removed and a response team to go in to provide assistance, he said.
“I will never put a city employee, psychiatrist, family members or anyone else in a situation that could endanger the lives of innocent people or the person who's going through a mental health crisis,” he said. “So no, I will not just openly state, ‘under no circumstances should a police officer respond.’”
Dianne Morales, the former CEO of Phipps neighborhoods, a nonprofit social service provider in the Bronx, disagreed, citing her first-hand experience with being around someone who was having a mental health crisis. Her daughter has struggled with suicidal ideation, depression, and anxiety and Morales has had to navigate the state’s mental health system in order to seek care for her, she explained.
Morales has called to ‘defund the police’ and remove them from responding to these calls. Instead she wants to connect vulnerable New Yorkers to the programs that would best suit their needs, something she says is entirely possible without the involvement of the NYPD.
“Mental health is criminalized in this city,” she said, adding that the city should “provide the appropriate interventions and services and supports at the time, in the moment, not sending an armed individual to respond to a mental health crisis.”
New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer agreed, noting that Black and brown communities are disproportionately affected by NYPD involvement, and said that the police department hasn’t properly trained its officers to respond to a mental health crisis.
“We've approached public health and public safety too narrowly for too long and it's been an enormous cost to the Black and brown New Yorkers,” he said. “The NYPD’s responsibilities have ballooned and now include a host of social challenges, none of which our officers are properly trained to handle.”
Stringer also said he wanted to create a system similar to the one in place in Eugene, Oregon. The Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets (CAHOOTS) program was established over 30 years ago and has a trained crisis worker responding to calls with a medic and no police involvement. Of the 24,000 CAHOOT calls in 2019, only 150 required police backup, Stringer said, as part of a back-and-forth of sorts with Adams, who had called the system into question.
Joycelyn Taylor, founder and CEO of TaylorMade Contracting LLC, echoed Stringer in her response, saying she wanted to expand a program proposed by Correct Crisis Intervention Today - NYC in which an EMT is paired with a peer de-escalator to respond to calls about mental health. The de Blasio administration recently proposed a pilot that is almost identical to the one advocated by CCIT-NYC. The city’s proposed program would be piloted in two police precincts. The city made this plan only after a number of people in mental health crises were killed by responding NYPD officers and years of criticism of Mayor de Blasio for not taking a different approach to emergency mental health calls.
“We cannot continue to be so risk averse that we come up with every reason why we can't create change,” Taylor said. “I think it was an excellent recommendation for a peer program to address the issue. So yes, we should take policing out of mental health issues.”
Candidates were also asked about allowing police to use tools such as tasers and hoods when subduing people suffering from a mental health crisis, a tactic that is considered to be inhumane by the mental health community.
Loree Sutton, a retired brigadier general and Army psychiatrist who most recently ran the city’s Department of Veterans’ Affairs, said that she believes that it’s important to try to defuse a situation and establish a relationship with the person who is having the crisis with as little force possible, but she said that there are some situations where that can’t be avoided.
“It's difficult if someone is throwing feces at you, if they are spitting at you, if they are resisting arrest. Our law enforcement officers do need tools and the non-lethal tools that have been mentioned tonight have their place, they should not be overused, but I would not remove them from the toolkit of the NYPD,” she said.
Kathryn Garcia, former city sanitation commissioner, agreed to an extent, saying that hoods should not be permitted but that tasers should be kept as long as they are not overused, and if there is a serious threat that people involved should be protected.
“I believe that we need to pair police with mental health professionals when they are dealing with someone where we don't have a predictability of what's going to happen and there could be violence involved,” she said.
Adams was asked directly about his proposal of implementing the use of a BolaWrap, a kevlar rope that is fired when subduing an individual and wraps around their body to restrain them. "I do not support the overuse of tasers, hoods, I do not support using those devices," he said, but that the BolaWrap is a better way to restrain someone who poses a danger to themselves or others.
“It is a proper tool that’s been used that's non-lethal, instead of using those methods that are lethal and causes serious bodily injury or death. But we have to be extremely careful when it's time to respond to someone who's going through a serious, dangerous emotional stress,” Adams said.
ThriveNYC is the de Blasio administration’s overarching mental health roadmap, spearheaded by First Lady Chirlane McCray, and aims to bring mental health services to all New Yorkers who need them. The roughly $225 million per year program, which both spends money itself and seeks to coordinate ongoing mental health services, and management of it by de Blasio and McCray have come under a great deal of scrutiny, especially as they have struggled to show its impact and have provided limited evidence for how it addresses people with the most severe mental illnesses.
When asked about bringing universal mental health care to all New Yorkers, Wiley directly referenced the program, calling it a “$1.25 billion mistake,” because the program was created without community input and because it was not implemented well.
“It wasn't a mistake because its effort was to address mental health issues. Its mistake was it was trying to do too much that was not central to what communities needed,” she said.
Stringer also criticized the program and de Blasio’s approach to mental health care, saying that the program is all about the mayor, not the people who need help. Stringer said that in order to better serve New Yorkers, he will work with communities to create programs that are effective.
“It's not about real mental health services in the streets, it's ballooned to its own inadequacy. I'm going to take that program, and I'm going to redistribute those resources to the programs that work,” he said.
Adams was asked if he would change ThriveNYC but didn’t address it directly, instead saying that he would work towards providing better access to healthy food because of nutritional psychiatry, or the connection between what people eat and the impact it has on their mental health.
“The new science shows that a diet, changes in consumption of healthy food can really prevent and treat many of the issues we're dealing with,” he said. “We're not doing enough on a nutritional level to deal with the mental health crisis.”
The impact that the uncertainty of the pandemic has had on CUNY students was also discussed, with Rodriguez mentioning that students are experiencing mental illness at unprecedented levels with little support from their schools. Candidates were asked to talk about what kind of program they would have to bring mental health services to these students, who often can’t afford to go to therapy or seek other help.
Garcia suggested expanding telemedicine and having virtual therapists reach out to students, saying that one of the challenges during the pandemic was the students having “very little income and social safety net” on top of worrying about the virus.
During a lighting round where candidates could only answer with yes or no, the majority of candidates seemed to be on the same page about a variety of topics ranging from ending solitary confinement in city jails to taxing the rich. Sutton was an outlier, disagreeing with the majority about those two issues and saying that neither should be implemented. Zach Iscol, a military veteran turned entrepreneur, was displeased with having to state a hard yes or no, but came around to say he was against raising taxes and that the city should “move toward” ending solitary confinement. Adams was the only other of the ten who wasn’t for a complete end to solitary confinement, saying it should be ended only for non-violent detainees.
Given the high percentage, about 40%, of people being held in city jails who suffer from a mental health issue, candidates were asked about what kinds of investments they would make in mental health care to prevent people from entering the criminal justice system in the first place. Shaun Donovan, the former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Obama, said he would reorient the parole system and create a pretrial system so people can get the help they need before appearing before a judge.
“We need to completely reorient our system to create a pretrial agency so that before anyone suffering with mental health challenges ends up in front of a judge, we are looking at alternatives,” he said.
Donovan also proposed giving housing vouchers to people who were just released from jail, citing something he did (and was criticized for, he said) when he was housing commissioner under Mayor Bloomberg. He said that 95% of recipients had not reoffended a year after being given the voucher, and that most had jobs and were in a stable household.
“Think about what we could do if we reorient our system to not only provide housing vouchers, but the kind of job training and investments in mental health that we ought to have,” Donovan said.
City Council Member Carlos Menchaca wants to reallocate funding from agencies like the NYPD and also stop the construction of four new jails to replace Rikers Island facilities, something he said he’ll do in his first 100 days as mayor. He said the jails plan is not worth the $9.2 billion that it is budgeted for when that money could be used to keep people out of jail, invested in communities.
“Communities can make a decision through a participatory budgeting model where our boroughs can make decisions about how they want to bring the infrastructure and begin this municipal green new deal to bring jobs on board,” he said.
On a question about the impact the pandemic has had on Black and brown communities, Stringer talked about how communities of color have been hit hardest and that 75% of essential workers are people of color. He said it is essential to invest in these communities, saying that the economy we had before the pandemic cannot be the economy we return to, because it puts people of color at a disadvantage.
“They were the ones who went out without protective gear. The government failed them. But they saved our city and they saved our lives, and we owe them a better deal than what they're getting,” he said.
“This is 2020. We should not be having conversations about children not having access to technology, because we live in a technological world,” Taylor said, stressing that all students must have access to technology, and pledging to hand students a device when they enter first grade, another for middle school, and another for high school.
Donovan touted a career in public service, saying that he has the most experience dealing with crises, ranging from work he did under President Obama after the housing market crash that devastated communities of color in southeast Queens to efforts in the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans.
“In every single crisis, the communities that are most vulnerable before that crisis hit, get hurt the worst by it. So I was shocked, but I wasn't surprised to see COVID take a disproportionate toll on our Black and brown communities,” he said.
If elected, Donovan said he will appoint a Chief Equity Officer on his first day as Mayor, something he says will help him begin to dismantle how “structural racism affects our work in the city." (After years of pressure from Stringer, Mayor de Blasio recently announced he was appointing a Chief Diversity Officer.) Donovan said once Rikers Island jails are closed the island should be used for environmental justice because communities of color are often disproportionately impacted by climate change.
“Equity is in every decision a mayor makes,” Donovan said, “and has to be at the forefront.”
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by Caroline Leddy, Gotham Gazette
@caroline_leddy @GothamGazette
Note: this story has been updated with more clarity around the city's proposed pilot program to change how some mental health emergency calls are responded to.