Council Member Debi Rose with youth workers (photo: William Alatriste/City Council)
With New York City facing a massive budget gap and severe social restrictions because of the coronavirus pandemic, Mayor Bill de Blasio made the unpopular decision to suspend the Summer Youth Employment Program, which in past years gave tens of thousands of young people jobs over the summer. But as de Blasio faced swift and sweeping criticism for the move, administration officials testified before the City Council that an alternate plan is in the works and will be unveiled soon.
Over the last few years, at the urging of activists and elected officials, the de Blasio administration has significantly expanded SYEP, which gives summer jobs to youth between the ages of 14 and 24, many from low-income communities and communities of color. Last year, the city funded 75,000 slots in the program, and about twice as many youth applied for those jobs, which include placements in government, nonprofits, and businesses.
Facing a dire budget situation given the coronavirus shutdown and a projected $7.4 billion in lost revenue by the end of the 2021 fiscal year next June, de Blasio made the program one of the first victims of budget cuts. Suspending SYEP this year is expected to save the city $124 million, according to the mayor’s executive budget plan, which is now the subject of hearings and negotiations with the City Council.
De Blasio hasn’t completely ruled out a version of the program that can still be implemented if social distancing restrictions are still in place over the summer. “The Council cares deeply about SYEP. I care about it too. It's expanded greatly during my administration,” he said at his daily coronavirus briefing on May 5. “I've said, one, we don't have money right now. Two, we don't have a logistical framework to make it work because people can't gather and it is wholly dependent on people gathering in the same place. So I don't see a way to do it right now, but I'm always going to have an open door to the Council and budget adoption is not until the middle of June or later June. Things could change by then so don't see it now, but the conversation is open.”
The mayor’s decision was quickly greeted with outrage, especially from City Council Members who questioned the rationale behind cuts he made to various agency budgets. As several of them pointed out at a May 6 hearing on the mayor’s executive budget proposal, while the Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD) saw almost all youth programs eliminated, the NYPD, with its nearly $6 billion budget, saw minimal reductions in planned spending.
[Read: City Council Questions De Blasio's Priorities at First Executive Budget Hearing]
Council members and advocates for SYEP have repeatedly noted that de Blasio’s characterization of the program requiring “people gathering in the same place” is not necessarily accurate, given that with so many workplaces going remote amid the city’s near-shutdown, so could these summer jobs, not to mention other safe opportunities for employment like outdoor, socially-distanced work.
At the May 6 hearing, Melanie Hartzog, director of the Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget, went further than the mayor and said that DYCD and the Department of Education are actively exploring how to move forward with a remote program. “DYCD and the Department of Education are working in partnership for that and looking at different opportunities, on which there'll be more to come in the coming weeks,” she promised.
Later in the hearing, she addressed the larger spate of youth programs. “There are a number of remote learning opportunities that we're looking at as well as providing direct supports. So those plans are forthcoming. You will be hearing more from both agencies on what they intend to do,” she said.
The mayor’s office has offered little in the way of details. Siobhan Dingwall, a mayoral spokesperson, said in an email, “We are facing an unprecedented health crisis and the loss of $7.4 billion in tax revenue. Suspending SYEP this summer was a painful, but necessary, choice as we prioritize saving lives and the health and safety of New Yorkers. We will continue to work with our providers and the young people they serve to alleviate the effects of this suspension.”
The Staten Island Advance reported last month that Council Member Debi Rose, who chairs the Committee on Youth Services, was presenting the mayor and Council with her own proposal for a remote youth jobs program, funded at the same levels as the mayor’s initial budget proposal. Calls to Rose’s office for this story went unanswered.
On April 10 Rose reacted to de Blasio's "abrupt announcement" of SYEP suspension in a newsletter to constituents, saying the "program has a decades-long history of uplifting impoverished youth who would otherwise struggle to access the labor market, while providing an economic lifeline to their families" and that it would be a "devastating blow" to the students and their families, as well as the host organizations.
"Even in the midst of this crisis, this is unacceptable," Rose went on to say. She added that she had already asked de Blasio to "work with providers to explore new and creative ways to engage youth — and provide SYEP participants with some form of a paycheck. During this crisis that is magnifying glaring disparities in our city, it is even more imperative that we provide a safety net for these young people before they fall even farther behind."
Rose’s committee is holding a remote executive budget hearing on Wednesday where DYCD officials are expected to testify, though it’s unclear if they will present any plans for a remote jobs program. Dingwall, the mayoral spokesperson, did not respond when asked if those plans would be in place by the time the hearing is held.
A spokesperson for City Council Speaker Corey Johnson said in an email, “Speaker Johnson and the Council are very concerned about the proposed cuts to the SYEP and other youth programs. The Council has provided the administration with feedback on these cuts and looks forward to hearing their alternative proposals.”
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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
@samarkhurshid @GothamGazette
Mayor de Blasio & city officials in Borough Park in January (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)
[UPDATE (5/19/20): After this story was published, an NYPD spokesperson told Gotham Gazette security cameras had been installed at 30 locations in Brooklyn as part of an effort to combat anti-Semitic hate crimes. The remaining 70 cameras planned to be deployed with the input of the community have likely been put on hold due to the coronavirus outbreak, the spokesperson said.]
Mayor Bill de Blasio in January announced 100 new police security cameras and more officers on the streets in Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods as part of an effort, embraced by officials across the political spectrum, to combat a rise in anti-Semitic hate crimes in New York City and State. But officials representing those communities say the cameras were never installed and the patrols never came, and that the spirit of protection has in recent weeks been replaced with one of suspicion and "retaliation," spurred on by the mayor himself in response to large public gatherings, as the pandemic has gripped the city.
"We were calling on the city to do more and to give us additional resources when Jews were being beaten, rocks thrown at them, on a daily basis in New York City. We were begging for more help. We were begging for additional resources...we were begging for manpower," said State Assemblymember Simcha Eichenstein, who represents Borough Park and is a former aide to de Blasio, in an interview.
"At the end of the day we were basically told, 'This is all we have, we don't have additional resources,'" he said of a period late last year after a series of violent attacks.
But Eichenstein and other local leaders say Orthodox Jewish communities have recently been flooded by police officers enforcing social distancing, especially in the days following the funeral of a rabbi in Williamsburg that saw thousands of mourners gathering in close quarters. The contrast in responses points to a complicated relationship between Orthodox Jews and city government.
"The number of cops that I saw floating around in Williamsburg in the last day or two of last week far exceeded the number of cops we were begging the mayor to send us last year and in January," said City Council Member Kalman Yeger, whose district overlaps Eichenstein's, of the period immediately following the April 28 funeral. The funeral gathering itself was met with a heavy police response, with even the mayor himself arriving on the scene to make sure the crowd dispersed. De Blasio then posted a highly controversial tweet, in which he singled out "the Jewish community" for violating rules established by executive order.
In the days that followed the leaders described what Eichenstein called a "ticketing blitz [of] people off the streets" for not wearing face coverings.
"Everyone should be wearing masks when you go out, people need to socially distance, of course we all want to stop the virus. But I wish we would've seen that same response when Jews were being beaten on the streets of New York on a daily basis. We did not see the response that we saw in retaliation to the funeral," Eichenstein said.
In January, in response to a surge in anti-Semitic crimes in 2019, including a stabbing at a Hannukah celebration in Monsey, a shooting at a kosher deli in Jersey City, and a series of verbal and physical attacks mostly in Brooklyn, de Blasio and Governor Andrew Cuomo said they were taking steps to "harden security" in Jewish communities.
Crimes targeting Jews accounted for 242 of the 420 hate crimes reported to the NYPD in 2019, a 26 percent rise over the previous year and an 86 percent increase since 2015.
In January, the mayor announced 100 new surveillance cameras would be installed in Williamsburg, Crown Heights, and Borough Park -- areas home to large Orthodox Jewish populations -- and that over 150 officers had been deployed there. The plan was for the first 30 cameras to be installed by March with the remaining 70 to be sited with the input of the community.
"I'm not aware of a single one of them that has actually been installed and turned on," Yeger said.
"I can tell you this, nobody has discussed it with me," said Eichenstein. "The only cameras that I know that were installed in my district in the last couple of weeks are speed cameras. That's the only cameras I know that were installed. They carry tickets, that's unfortunate.”
But the reality surrounding the cameras is unclear and it is possible some of them have been installed. A March 4 summary of the NYPD's proposed budget prepared by the City Council states that the installation formula of the 100 cameras had not changed and a spokesperson for de Blasio told Gotham Gazette their "gut recollection" is that the first tranche of cameras was installed and the city was aiming to begin the community engagement process for the second tranche around the time the COVID-19 pandemic hit New York. Neither the mayor's office nor the police department provided details on the cameras over the course of multiple conversations by email and phone spanning two weeks.
The camera plan was alarming to some civil rights advocates at the time, and the lack of public information about its implementation, especially in light of recent social distancing controversies, has heightened the concern.
"Once those cameras are in place in communities you are able to piece together people's entire daily movements, their comings and goings, in a way that is subject to really little oversight," said Michael Sisitzky, lead policy counsel at the New York Civil Liberties Union.
"There is very little control placed over how long the NYPD is retaining the footage, what other purposes they are using it for," he said. "So whether it is from the cameras that can be deployed as part of efforts to combat anti-Semitism, or just security and surveillance cameras in general, the same concern remains that they lend themselves to potential misuse as tools for criminal enforcement."
The police department has acknowledged using its network of cameras to monitor social distancing throughout the city. In early April, NY1 reported Chief of Department Terence Monahan saying, "We move from camera to camera to different parks around the city. We can see what the conditions are. If we see any overcrowding we will be able to send our teams out there."
There is no clear data on how many cameras, public and private, the NYPD has access to on a daily basis, including no accounting of how many existed in Orthodox neighborhoods before the mayor's announcement.
The NYPD's enforcement tactics have come under scrutiny since data was released on May 8 showing 81 percent of social distancing summonses and 90 percent of arrests related to COVID-19 have been of black and Latino people. Only 51 of the 374 summonses issued for social distancing violations between March 16 and May 5 went to white people, 42 of which were in Brooklyn, according to the data, with at least 15 of those on the night of the funeral and the morning after at synagogues in Williamsburg. And the mayor has been criticized for his decision to establish the NYPD, rather than public health officials and community groups, as the main agency responsible for ensuring people do not spread the virus in public.
In response to sweeping blowback and charges of “racist” policing, on Friday de Blasio announced a "reset" in enforcement with officers focused on breaking up groups of six or more people (who don’t live together) with warnings and summonses if necessary, and a heavier reliance on "civilian ambassadors" from other city agencies and community-based messengers to distribute face coverings and facilitate distancing.
Shea informed officers in a letter Friday that, "Moving forward...we will no longer issue summonses or make arrests for infractions related to face coverings — absent of a crime or other violation being committed."
The moves have been praised by a number of elected officials and advocates who had pushed for the reforms.
The night of the funeral of Rabbi Chaim Mertz and the day after, de Blasio said the city would be pursuing summonses for gatherings aggressively, and specifically called out "the Jewish community."
In the tweet just after the funeral, which was coordinated with the NYPD and reportedly drew over 2,000 people paying respects to the rabbi, who died of COVID-19, de Blasio wrote: "My message to the Jewish community, and all communities, is this simple: the time for warnings has passed. I have instructed the NYPD to proceed immediately to summons or even arrest those who gather in large groups. This is about stopping this disease and saving lives. Period."
The tweet received intense criticism from Jews and non-Jews alike. Eichenstein responded by condemning the gathering but stated: "Mr. @NYCMayor: it is also completely unacceptable to call out the entire Jewish community especially as a group that has been endlessly under attack in NYC."
Others called the comment insensitive but said it belied the many examples of targeted support Orthodox Jewish enclaves have received from de Blasio, who has been a strong ally throughout his career and represented parts of those communities in Brooklyn during his time in the City Council. The assertion that the mayor is anti-Semitic is "of course, absurd because the Mayor he’s been one of the most responsive Mayor’s to the entire spectrum of NY’s Jewish community," tweeted former City Council Member David Greenfield, who represented Borough Park before Yeger and is now head of The Met Council, a social service provider based in the Orthodox community.
"I spoke last night out of passion. I could not believe my eyes," the mayor said the next morning when asked by a reporter if he would apologize for his comments. "I spoke out of real distress that people's lives were in danger before my eyes and I was not going to tolerate it. So I regret if the way I said it in any way gave people a feeling of being treated the wrong way. That was not my intention."
"It was said with love, but it was tough love,” he continued. “It was anger and frustration and what I saw, no...it's not happened other places. Let's be honest, this kind of gathering has happened in only a few places and it cannot continue. It's endangering the lives of people in the community.”
According to the NYPD, the next morning on April 29 police issued three summonses at a synagogue in the 90th Precinct, which covers Williamsburg, after receiving a 311 call "in regards to violating New York City social distancing policy." One of the summonses was for disorderly conduct related to social distancing and two were for "doors being chained from the inside" in violation of fire code, said Sgt. Jessica McRorie, a department spokesperson. That afternoon, eight more summonses were issued at another synagogue in the same precinct by officers who didn't get a 311 call but who were "in the vicinity," McRorie said, of which six were again for having "chains on the doors" and two for "social distancing violations."
The NYPD did not provide specific information on enforcement in other heavily Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods.
"If the City of New York wants to send a thousand cops to the neighborhood to protect the people, it can do that. And if it wants to send a thousand cops to a neighborhood to terrorize people, it can do that," Yeger said. "The mayor's office has to decide which one it wants to do."
According to the Council's March budget summary for the upcoming fiscal year beginning in July, each precinct in Borough Park, Midwood, Crown Heights, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Williamsburg "will have an additional 4 to 6 officers per tour. Police presence will also be increased specifically at houses of worship and local events." It also says six new NYPD light towers would be erected in Borough Park.
The mayor's office and NYPD have both refused to share communications and guidelines issued to officers around when people should receive a warning versus a summons for violating social distancing protocols. The police department did not answer questions about what specific tools it was using to monitor social distancing in Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods.
When asked about the potential for police security cameras to be used for targeted social distancing enforcement in Jewish communities, Eichenstein told Gotham Gazette: "I think that we should share a goal of what the purpose is of all of these security measures, be it cameras, be it whatever it is. These are measures to keep a community safe. These are not ‘big brother’ tools."
"It is true that if they start using it for other -- you know monetary fines, that would be a problem," he added.
Orthodox leaders are still seeking more protection from hate crimes, which they say are not past just because crime in general is down during the outbreak. Reported anti-Semitic hate crimes are down 40 percent between January and May compared to the same period last year, according to police data. In March, the month the city's stay-at-home order went into effect, the pace at which reports of anti-Semitic crime fell more than doubled.
"Over the course of a 365-day year, upwards of 350 of them, the police department works hand in hand with the community and does a good job," said Yeger. "Here and there there is a problem. On balance, the security cameras will provide security when they actually show up. Ask me how I feel when they actually show up."
But Sisitzky, of the civil liberties union, believes there is cause for concern for Orthodox Jews and for New Yorkers in general. "I think for particular communities and for people who are just passing through communities, the more cameras that are deployed the more potential there is to create a permanent record of people's daily lives, and just submit New Yorkers writ large to constant surveillance."
Yeger thinks the civil rights concerns are overstated: "The constitution does not ban surveillance cameras from being placed in public places. Cameras provide a necessary tool to combat violence in this city."
"If I can't get a cop on every corner, I'll take a camera on every corner," he said.
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by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
@GeringerSameth @GothamGazette
The City continues to try to meet food needs amid the coronavirus crisis (photo: @NYCHRA)
The coronavirus pandemic has put a strain on food access, with unemployment skyrocketing and increasingly more people relying on food assistance, food pantries, and meals provided by the city. Additionally, as New York City is home to many different races, ethnicities, and cultural traditions, concerns have arisen about whether the city’s massive emergency food program, including food delivery, is reflecting that diversity, causing further food stress on communities.
New York City established the GetFoodNYC hub, where New Yorkers can access various resources and information, including access to SNAP (food stamp) benefits from the Human Resources Association (HRA), a map of food pantries and Grab & Go meal sites in the city, and food delivery assistance.
Even before the pandemic and its fallout, the city was home to more than 1 million food insecure individuals, while hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers have lost their jobs since mid-March, drastically increasing the need for emergency food. New York City is home to over 1.1 million seniors, according to a 2017 report by the City Comptroller, many more of whom are homebound due to social distancing restrictions and senior center closures, increasing the need for meal delivery.
While the city has put an immense new food access program into effect, led by “food czar” Kathryn Garcia, the city’s sanitation commissioner and one of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s most-trusted aides, to serve more than 10 million free meals in April alone, challenges have emerged. One, particularly with home delivered meals, is access to culturally appropriate food such as Halal, Kosher, or Pan American meals. After some outcry, the city has taken several steps toward meeting more of these diverse food needs.
“We've been making sure there's food for every New Yorker and we've tried to also make sure that for those with a special food need that we could be responsive,” de Blasio said during an April 23 press briefing. “So, we've been creating Kosher food programs and Halal food programs to recognize that we're all in this together, we want to respect all the people, all the faiths of New York City. This is part of what makes New York City so great, that we have that mutual respect and we understand that we all come together to create something greater than the sum of the parts.”
De Blasio reiterated his promise that “no New Yorker will go hungry, any New Yorker who needs food, it will always be there for you during this crisis, your city will provide, there's no question.” He announced “there will be 400,000 Halal meals available at 32 specific Department of Education sites, remember overall we have 435 sites and I'll keep reminding people, anyone that needs food, whether it's to go to one of those DOE sites or home deliveries, whatever you need, call 3-1-1 or go to nyc.gov/getfood.”
The 32 sites would be “where there are large Muslim communities” while “another hundred thousand [Halal meals] will be distributed through partnerships with community-based organizations, food pantries, soup kitchens. So, over half-a-million meals will be distributed during Ramadan and it's a reminder, this is a place that truly believes in equality and it's something that is a profound New York City value.”
New York City is of course well-known as home to an extremely wide variety of cultures, religions, languages, immigrant populations, and cuisines, making food choice an ongoing concern when it comes to government programs, including school meals, even during non-pandemic times. Those concerns now overlap with emergency measures, and additionally so for those who require meal delivery.
“There are a number of meal types available through both the Emergency Home Food Delivery program and the Grab & Go meals at DOE sites, including Kosher, Halal, and vegetarian,” said Joshua Goodman, a spokesperson for the city’s emergency food operations, in an email to Gotham Gazette. “As we continue to grow and expand these emergency food efforts, we hope to continue to offer more. It's important to remember that this is an enormous operation, involving hundreds of staff across City agencies, dozens of contractors, hundreds of sites - we're proud to have gotten it up and running quickly, and are now seeing what we can do to continue to expand and meet the needs of more food-insecure New Yorkers.”
Kosher meals are available at 18 schools, according to the Department of Education website.
The complex needs are staggering, according to city officials. “The amount of food that’s needed to be home delivered so we can be observant of, certainty the nutrition standards, but also the cultural and ethnic needs that we have is very overwhelming,” Kate MacKenzie, director of the Mayor’s Office of Food Policy, said during a recent digital discussion hosted by Hunter College Food Policy Center.
In terms of delivery of specialty meals, new protocols have been put into place, according to City Hall, but they require in-person sign-up.
“This is self-identified at sign up, in the case of Emergency Home Food Delivery, and it is based on request at the DOE sites,” Goodman said. “We do not ask people to prove they keep Kosher or Halal, for example - people request what they need and the City provides it at no cost. Halal meals are available at every site, and the list of Kosher sites was developed in consultation with community advocates.”
During the initial rollout of the DOE program, Kosher meals were particularly hard to come by, prompting criticism from representatives of communities that need them.
“Thursday was a disaster. Friday was a disaster,” State Assemblymember Simcha Eichenstein told The Forward. “It is not acceptable to have 100 people in line, and just turn them away without food — that cannot happen in 2020 in the city of New York.”
The Middle East Eye reported that some of the initial Halal meals delivered and provided as part of Ramadan were described as “mush” and a “pile of goop,” prompting concerns about the quality of the culturally-appropriate food.
This is particularly a problem for seniors, who are receiving the bulk of home delivered meals. Seniors are likely to be homebound and under stay-at-home orders for a long time, making food access hard, given that deaths due to COVID-19 have predominantly occurred for people over 65 years of age.
“In the prepared meals for seniors, we are trying to make it so we have identified who needs Kosher, Halal, who needs Pan-Asian,” Garcia said May 7 on WNYC radio’s The Brian Lehrer Show. “In the senior center, particularly if they go through their senior center, they are able to designate more types. If you go through 311 the two options are Kosher and Halal, and then regular.”
Some seniors have struggled to attain their culturally-appropriate meals, while others have said that delivered food is a collection of snacks, rather than a meal.
“The most frequent complaints we have about the ‘meals’ are from seniors who receive a package of shelf-stable products like applesauce and granola bars, instead of an actual meal,” said Ben Thomases, the executive director of Queens’ Community House, which offers a broad network of services at 32 sites in 14 Queens neighborhoods, including meal delivery, which has increased in response to COVID-19.
“The things that are in the food boxes, they are emergency food boxes,” MacKenzie said during the Hunter event. “The contents of those boxes still adhere to the city’s nutrition standards, but they might be cans of tuna, yes there are granola bars, yes there are raisins and mixed nuts, these are intended to be emergency meal kits.” She added there would be a conversation about “the future” of the meal program, “But currently we are still feeding people emergency provisions.”
That conversation has moved ahead to some degree as the city has expanded its culturally-appropriate meal offerings.
The city is also training staff of the dozens of shuttered senior centers to enroll their members in home meal delivery. Tara Klein, a policy analyst for United Neighborhood Houses (UNH), said this could improve service, and “things are moving in a more positive direction.”
“It allows senior center staff to go in and enroll somebody directly,” she said. “It makes it a little easier for older adults to get registered and get their food. They’re also making it a little easier just to check on individuals, and see when meals are scheduled and all that.”
Thomases said differently. “The city has chosen to create a brand new food program for seniors, rather than working through its existing network of providers,” he said. “We have the capacity to further expand our meal production and delivery, but instead the city has instructed us to enroll people in the new centralized system. This system has been plagued with problems including difficulty enrolling new people, inaccurate addresses, missed deliveries, and inconsistent food quality. These types of problems are to be expected for a massive new system, which is why the city should have used its network of existing providers.”
“On [May 1] we issued an RFI, request for information, from nonprofits who might be interested in and capable of supplying that system, that GetFood system, so we can be even more responsive, particularly to different cultures and ethnic needs that we’re always striving to do better at,” MacKenzie said. She added that if a nonprofit is able to supply at least 1,000 meals per day, the city will consider doing business with it to help ease supply.
“There have been gaps in getting cultural meals, I think Kosher meals in particular were very slow to roll out, and at first some of the meals were not good quality,” Klein said. “But I think now as the city is focusing more on using nonprofits and they are attuned to the fact that there are culturally specific meals needed, things are getting a little better.”
Thomases’ organization will be answering the RFI, he said, arguing that using nonprofits will help improve outcomes. “New York City has an outstanding nonprofit sector with talented and committed leaders and staff. During ordinary times, the city relies on nonprofits to serve our communities and meet the needs of the most vulnerable New Yorkers,” he said. “All the more so, during this crisis, the city should be including non-profits in planning the rollout of new services, and relying on non-profit expertise in service delivery.”
“The city‘s response has been really impressive,” Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America, said during the Hunter event of the overall emergency food response. “They have done in a few weeks what normally government would take a few years to do. There have been bumps. I’m an advocate and it's my job is always to say thank you, next, what more do we need to do.”
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by Katie Kirker, Gotham Gazette
@GothamGazette