On the subway (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)

My friend and I had left the theatre on 42nd Street around 11 p.m. on a recent beautiful night. We walked peaceably to catch our usual #1 train at Times Square—the station where a young woman, Michelle Go, had been pushed to her death in front of a train by an apparently deranged, homeless man just days earlier.

The platform was packed but the train, also packed, came quickly. Almost immediately we sensed something was wrong, as people shifted uncomfortably and looked to the back of the car, where a man was yelling obscenities.

Then a lovely, trained soprano voice started singing:

“Goodnight, my someone

Goodnight, my love”

Dressed in white, she was blond, small, delicate, very slim, almost emaciated, and poised.

“Shut the fuck up,” came the man’s voice.

“Sleep tight, my someone

Sleep tight, my love

Our star is shining its brightest light…”

I pulled out a dollar, which she saw, stepping forward to take the money without pausing her song.

“Sweet dreams be yours, dear, if dreams there be. . .”

“Didn’t you hear me? I said shut up.”

Suddenly he was there beside her, big, menacing, and mean: “Once and for all shut the fuck up or I’ll do it for you.”

She whirled and lunged “Touch me and I’ll rip your fucking face off.” Shocked and silenced, he froze, as did everyone. The car doors opened, my stop. She exited ahead of me and disappeared. A survivor, apparently.

Nothing is good about this story except that it could have ended far worse.

This is what we’ve come to—our subway system, the lifeline of New York, precarious, unpredictable, dangerous. Bizarre episodes occur regularly, reflecting disorder, and far more often than in the pre-pandemic past, ending in violence.

New York Needs Its Subways to Work
"When the subways work, the city works,” said the late planner, Alexander Garvin, on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The Bloomberg administration had put huge resources and concentrated effort into rebuilding downtown and its public transportation, and New York was thriving, despite many expert predictions to the contrary.

When the subways don't work, New Yorkers worry—and neighborhoods decline. And right now, the subways aren’t fully working, and New Yorkers know it. Ridership is down by more than a third over the month of January, coinciding with Omicron and unignorable violence, Or to think of the numbers in another way, daily subway trips fell from a pandemic-era high of 3.4 million in early December to only 2.57 million trips on Jan. 31—roughly half the pre-pandemic ridership of 5.5 million.

MTA leadership is making no attempt to sugarcoat this. The MTA is suffering from “a crisis of rider confidence,” says Chair and CEO Janno Lieber: “Our riders are letting us know that they don’t feel safe. Our workforce is scared in addition to our passengers. Our workforce is scared because they’re feeling vulnerable.”

The NYPD reported 461 felony assaults in the subways in 2021, a level not seen since 1997, said the MTA. The system also had eight homicides last year, the highest number since data was first tracked.

Reported crime is up, as is the sense of disorder. Lieber says that the presence of homeless people in cars and in stations is also damaging. Their number is large – some 1,600 homeless people are living in the subway system, estimates Robert Mascali, a former city homelessness official and vice president for Supportive Housing at Women in Need.

Lieber told CBS2’s Marcia Kramer, “They are scaring our riders. They are having a disproportionate impact on not just riders’ sense of vulnerability, but on the conditions in the system.” To Kramer’s question, “How do you get them out of the subways?” Lieber answered inconclusively: “Our rules of conduct in the subway system say that if you’re engaged in erratic behavior, if you’re doing things that impact on other people you may not belong there.”

What is to be done? The MTA is in the difficult position of being forced to handle an immense social problem—homelessness—that is far outside its mission or area of expertise. Meanwhile, the responsible agency, the New York City Department of Homeless Services, has allowed the subway’s underground population to grow unchecked, said state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli. DHS and the MTA have paid the outreach contractor, the Bowery Residents Committee, an aggregate of $88.8 million since 2010. DiNapoli called the outreach services, which are supposed to help homeless people find shelter, “shoddy.” The lack of results has been obvious to regular subway riders for years, even pre-pandemic.

I take the subway nearly every day, even as friends and neighbors urge me not to, which they do partly because our #1 train, running the length of the West Side, seems to be especially vulnerable to chaos. Sometimes it’s disturbing but non-threatening—the man the other night in the frigid cold, sleeping covered by a marathon silver sheet, bare feet sticking into the aisle. More often it’s alarming—the woman sprawled across four seats, bellowing vulgarities at the entire car, selecting individuals for specific insults: “Hey fat girl, you think that you’re hot stuff in your Lululemon?”

These incidents and their seeming omni-presence these days do not leave New Yorkers feeling good about their city – or likely to ride the subway if they have other options. The Chief of NYPD Transit told the January MTA Transit & Bus Committee that prolific offenders who are repeatedly released back into the population right away are the major problem–and that “there need to be more serious consequences for crimes.” 

We’ve Been Through This Before
As Joseph Raskin showed in his book, The Routes Not Taken, the details of constructing and maintaining New York’s subways were contentious and even contrarian from the very first days. But in addition to chronic crises there were several periods of profound crises – the 1980s being one of the worst and most recent. In 1983 “New York City's subway system was in chaos, rife with crime, derailments, delays, broken doors, track fires, and graffiti,” wrote William Finnegan in the New Yorker. Ridership had declined to under a billion in 1982, the lowest number since 1917. 

Now it’s happening again but more dramatically — the system had far under a billion riders at 640 million in 2020 (official data for 2021 has not yet been released). Such a catastrophic plunge, largely due to the pandemic, has never occurred before.

Governor Mario Cuomo’s solution was to bring in Boston’s Robert Kiley as chairman of the MTA. Kiley understood his job as getting control of the system, which meant changing the culture from top to bottom, reorganizing managerial ranks, securing the yards where trains were kept overnight, and pushing zero tolerance for fare-beating and graffiti. While many of his reforms were fundamental and remain with the system today, he had one serious failure: by 1989 he still faced some quarter of a million passengers a day going over, under, and around turnstiles, said political scientist George Kelling.

Cuomo recruited William Bratton, another Bostonian, as head of the transit police, and he quickly ordered the arrest of fare-beaters. Bratton’s analysis showed that one in seven arrested fare beaters had an outstanding warrant for a previous crime — and one in twenty was carrying an illegal firearm. The Transit Police slogan became, “Disorder, fare-beating, and robbery are one problem. Deal with one and you deal with all.”

Many of Bratton’s ideas are now out of favor, but there’s no denying that after the Kiley-Gunn-Bratton years the subways functioned far better than they had in years. By the mid-1990s they were graffiti-free, safe, and packed with passengers. And they pretty much stayed that way until covid wreaked its destruction. Today’s path back is the path taken decades ago: restore order, and assure New Yorkers they’ll be safe. The problem of homeless people living in MTA facilities is far more severe now than then, spiking nearly 45% in eight important stations just over the summer, according to MTA chief safety officer Patrick Warren. And the challenges of so many New Yorkers working from home will continue.

What Can Be Done
A serious underlying problem is not the MTA’s to solve, and that’s the scandalously substandard quality of many New York City shelters. Mascali says that the number of single adults sleeping nightly in DHS shelters increased by a staggering 154%, from 7,700 in December 2009 to 19,596 in June 2021. Releases from state prisons directly to the shelters are largely to blame for the overcrowding and increase in danger.

Homeless people have repeatedly told outreach workers and journalists that they live in the subways because most shelters are unacceptably dirty and dangerous. But not all are, as the Upper West Side learned in the summer of 2020 when DHS overnight moved some 750 homeless men into previously private hotels. Two of the hotels became targets of neighborhood complaints about men loitering, drinking, fighting, shooting up, and having public sex – but the third, run by the Center for Urban Community Services (CUCS), went uncriticized.

Then-Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer had called CUCS one of the best service providers in the city, and so they were. The manager took community calls and quickly handled complaints, which, by the end of the mens’ stay in July 2021, were almost zero. The men have returned to CUCS’ Delta Manor in the Bronx, a beautiful, new transitional facility with excellent programs, including athletics. If more Department of Homeless Services providers ran their facilities as well as CUCS, the MTA would be facing far less of a crisis – perhaps none at all.

And even though Mayor Adams can and should reorganize and restructure DHS and provide more drop-in centers, his reforms won’t happen in time to help the MTA. Instead, Governor Hochul and Mayor Adams are basically proposing two ideas: more cops and more outreach teams. On WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show, Lieber said that the first step Mayor Adams has taken was to move police officers onto the platforms and onto the trains. Lieber said there would shortly be far more mental health professionals to provide services to those now using the subway as a dwelling.

The NYPD has increased police presence, ordering cops to make at least two subway station checks during their shifts, a law enforcement source told The Post. Gov. Hochul has pledged up to 20 teams of eight to 10 workers this year, including four teams by early spring.

What isn’t clear, however, is whether cops or mental health professionals will have enforcement authority to deter objectionable behavior or move dangerous people out of the subways. What if, as is likely, homeless people want to stay where they are, living in the subway rather than a shelter? Brian Stettin, policy director at the Treatment Advocacy Center, argues that “any strategy to tackle untreated severe mental illness must unapologetically recognize the need to provide involuntary treatment to individuals in crisis.” But this isn’t going to happen so long as what he calls “a phalanx of New York interest groups” oppose involuntary treatment. The major hope is that Governor Hochul’s additional outreach workers will persuade hundreds of homeless people to come in from the cold, temporarily in drop-in centers or longer term in shelters.

As a former NYPD captain and long-time student of crime, Mayor Adams has emphasized that public safety is “the prerequisite to prosperity.” He’s trying to strike a balance between “intervention and prevention,” which won’t be easy. But his mayoralty will only prosper if the subways prosper — once again safe, vandalism-free, and overflowing with New Yorkers.

A housing line-up (photo: Governor's Office)

Governor Kathy Hochul’s commitment to a $25 billion, five-year housing plan creating and preserving 100,000 affordable homes throughout the state – including 10,000 supportive housing units designed to prevent homeessness – sends a bold and welcome signal to low-income New Yorkers still grappling with the spiraling economic effects of the pandemic. 

At a time when 4 in 10 job losses have not come back since early 2020 – especially in food service, tourism, and retail sectors populated by hourly workers – we must tackle the complexities of creating more affordable and supportive housing. Otherwise, we’ll see a deepening of the bifurcated economy that has led to greater homelessness among families, curtails children’s long-term potential, and threatens the future vibrancy of our city.

Affordable and permanent supportive housing play vital roles in keeping people housed. Affordable housing enables low-income New Yorkers to pay a portion of their income for rent – 30% for applicants with income up to roughly $25,000 for an individual and up to $36,000 for a family of four – and be protected from dramatic hikes. Provided by entities like NYCHA and the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development, most affordable housing is accessed via lottery and requires a 12-month positive rental history. This can be a high bar for individuals and families in shelter or facing homelessness.

Supportive housing is a subset of affordable housing focused on many of the most vulnerable New Yorkers. In residences built for this purpose or through subsidized apartments, supportive housing offers the dignity of a lease and key at 30% of a person’s income – coupled with counseling to enable long-term security by addressing employment, health, special needs, or substance abuse barriers.  

There are some 50,000 supportive housing units in New York – the leader in the nation.  The state and city have each pledged 15,000 supportive housing units by 2030, and have funded approximately 40%. The NYC 15/15 Initiative has funded residences including ones we have built for veterans, LGBTQ+ young adults, and families. Yet the needs are far greater.

Last year, more than 107,000 different homeless individuals, including nearly 32,000 children, slept in the New York City Department of Homeless Services shelter system. More than half of all families in shelters have at least one member with a disability.

Lack of supportive housing is one of the primary drivers of homelessness – but its impact is felt across our neighbors’ education, employment, and health and wellness. Even as parents struggle to get or keep jobs, life in a shelter can lead to disruptions in their children’s access to healthy food, school transportation, and technology, and to increased risks of physical or mental  health issues.

That’s why supportive housing, which includes vital social services, is essential to our city’s long-term housing plan. Among Jericho Project’s nine supportive housing residences, 95% of all residents do not return to homelessness.

But there are stubborn obstacles, such as New York’s deficit in supportive housing stock and a shortage of vacant land that helps keep prices stratospheric. Those developers committed to housing equity face a gauntlet of city, state, and, often, private funding requirements. And sadly, most supportive housing units require negotiations with community boards to accept them into neighborhoods.

Converting hotels into studio apartments can be another source of supportive housing, as outlined last September in a plan by now-Mayor Eric Adams to create 25,000 total housing units from such conversions. Recently, Governor Hochul said she wants to amend a state law to allow hotels within 800 feet of a residential area to be converted into permanent homes.

Another important tool is the 15% set-aside of residential units for formerly homeless individuals and families in affordable housing projects receiving public funds, implemented by New York City beginning in 2020.

For these to succeed, we as individuals can make a difference. Housing insecure families are like any of us. They want the best for their children, but struggle with issues that can push them into homelessness: disabilities among children or adults; a lost job; caregiver demands; mental health issues, a health setback.

We all share the same backyard when it comes to the future of our city. Let’s consider our choices:

Will we fear a hotel conversion or teach our children how to live alongside others not as fortunate as ourselves?

Will we refuse to rent where apartments are set aside for formerly homeless families, or value how they transform lives?

Will we remain a city of inequality, where hourly workers – who staffed the office buildings, hotels, and restaurants that brought our city wealth – cannot afford to live?

It will take the political will of our leaders – and a choice of conscience among New Yorkers – to shape a city we can be proud of post-pandemic.

***
Tori Lyon is CEO of Jericho Project, a 39-year-old nonprofit providing housing and services to nearly 3,000 homeless and housing insecure New Yorkers annually. On Twitter @​​JerichoProject1.

Renewable energy for New York City (photo: Governor's Office)

Climate extremes in New York are on the rise, from flooding to excessive heat. The city is experiencing frequent heat waves, including three last year, when temperatures soared to 90 degrees Fahrenheit or higher for three consecutive days. Five of the hottest Julys on record occurred between 2010 and 2020.

Part of how we tackle climate change is by implementing and supporting wise energy policy that brings on more non-carbon-emitting energy. We need to prioritize how we sustain energy security and avert deadly power outages like what Texas experienced almost one year ago. Mitigating against climate change requires a deep energy transition, and for New York, that means looking up to Quebec for hydropower.

The hard reality is decarbonizing the electric grid will require supporting economically viable and socially acceptable clean energy and transmission projects. And to that point, there's a project many in New York may not have heard of but is a critical one for the city's future energy security. The Champlain-Hudson Power Express (CHPE) is a 339-mile permitted and buried transmission line that will bring clean, renewable, and abundant hydropower from Canada into the New York metro area by 2025.

Construction of the transmission line will create 1,400 construction jobs and go a long way in helping New York City and State achieve their clean energy and carbon emissions reduction targets by 2030 and 2050; without this project, the math doesn’t add up.

As of today, New York State only has 28% clean energy in its mix. And shockingly 90% of the electricity powering New York City currently comes from the burning of fossil fuels that has direct negative impacts on people’s health in frontline and disadvantaged communities.

Hydropower is a viable clean alternative to fossil fuel plants and already plays an important role in the state’s energy mix. New York has the opportunity through CHPE to build in more resilience and reliability at a time when energy insecurity is a problem for other states.

The CHPE line represents a vital interconnected and mutually beneficial economic energy relationship between Canada and the United States; an example of cross-border clean electricity transmission with our oldest ally.

Find an energy project, whether fossil-focused or clean, that requires building infrastructure, and there will be pushback and criticism; there's no project that garners 100 percent consensus. But if you want to find a project that has strong political and stakeholder support, the CHPE does it thanks to a decade of extensive community and stakeholder outreach. The process has been long and successfully inclusive. A powerful example is an indigenous leader, Grand Chief Sky-Deer of the Mohawk of Kahnawake, co-owners of the Quebec portion of the line. She calls the project a "game-changer" for her people.

What should be a slam dunk win for New York is like most energy infrastructure projects these days still a target for incumbent energy producers and a small minority of environmentalists who have been actively seeking to derail and slow down clean energy projects in the Northeast. It’s critically important for our collective good and public interest that shovel-ready projects like CHPE move forward if we are ever going to hope to address the existential threat of climate change.

Other parts of the country have successfully launched similar projects like the Great Northern Transmission Line, a 224-mile line running from Canada to the U.S. that delivers hydropower from Manitoba, Canada to Grand Rapids, Minnesota to help balance the healthy wind resources in the northern Midwest.

We are almost to the February 7 deadline of the New York State Public Service Commission public comment period to review the CHPE contract with the state. Governor Hochul announced this project as vital to the state reaching its goals and getting people back to work in our economic recovery from covid. CHPE is one of the largest clean energy transmission line projects in New York history and is critical for the city's energy security.

And let's be grateful we are getting this hydropower from friendly Canada, the United States' largest and most reliable trading partner. Look across the Atlantic to Europe and watch the cautionary tale of what happens when energy security is put at risk due to an over-reliance on Russia for natural gas; the residential energy consumer is paying a 4-5 times higher price for gas this year than a year ago. We have clean and abundant hydro from our (friendly and democratic) neighbor to the north; it's a no-brainer.

Without CHPE, we increase our window of vulnerability: offshore wind is projected to come online mid-decade at the earliest, and as important a source and the contribution it will be for New York's power mix, it remains intermittent, so we'll need to make sure we have reliable hydropower to back it up. Moving forward with this critical transmission line for New York is not really optional; yes, this is about moving to clean energy, but it is also about keeping the lights on and ensuring New York's energy resilient future.

***
Carolyn Kissane is the academic director of the graduate programs in Global Affairs and Global Security, Conflict and Cyber at the Center for Global Affairs and a clinical professor, as well as the director of the SPS NYU Energy, Climate Justice and Sustainability Lab. On Twitter @carolynkissane.

Mayor Adams discussing hotel conversions in Brooklyn (photo: @ericadamsfornyc)

Mayor Adams recently unveiled an ambitious plan to help New Yorkers living on the streets and subways by expanding access to critical social services. In the 32 years Breaking Ground has worked with this population, it has become plainly clear that our homelessness crisis is a complex public health concern that requires multiple points of service delivery to be cohesive and collaborative.

But, in order to produce the outcome we need to help the city’s most vulnerable, we must match these services with more transitional and permanent supportive housing.

There are many barriers to attaining stability for homeless individuals living on the street, including severe persistent mental illness, chronic physical health conditions, and substance use disorders. A holistic 360-degree model – which includes housing and robust social services – that meets people where they are, both physically and mentally, is time-proven to enable large numbers of homeless individuals to attain permanent stability in housing.

There is a relatively quick, smart, and affordable solution to realize Mayor Adams’ plan: convert closed hotels into transitional housing (AKA safe havens), and permanent affordable and supportive housing in as close proximity as possible to where unsheltered men and women choose to make their lives out on the streets.

Midtown Manhattan, the city’s office and tourism center, is bearing the brunt of the city’s lack of housing to address the needs of unsheltered New Yorkers. As a result, concerns over homelessness and public safety are likely preventing other New Yorkers and tourists alike from visiting these areas.

If we’re serious about both helping our most vulnerable fellow New Yorkers and also recovering economically from the pandemic, we must focus on adding more transitional and permanent housing in tandem with robust services to this area of the city. During his campaign and since, Mayor Adams has expressed support for converting closed hotels into affordable housing, but it is important that he begins to implement that plan and makes Midtown a focus area.

We’ve been here before, and we have a proven model that works to effectively address the public health and safety situation the city is experiencing today.

In the early ‘90s, Midtown was riddled with the same issues of violence and homelessness. In 1990, Breaking Ground bought and converted as-of-right the former Times Square Hotel into 652 units of affordable and supportive housing for homeless and low-income men and women.

We anchored this building with a robust on-site social services program, which has consistently delivered crucial assistance to meet each resident’s needs -- from treating their chronic issues to getting access to healthcare and helping with job placement – and that has resulted in 98% of its residents remaining housed year after year.

The result of that conversion, which is the largest and most successful of its kind to date in the nation, was a catalyst to helping large numbers of people off the streets and into safe, permanent homes. The impact of this extraordinary deal helped lead to a resurgence of the Times Square neighborhood as a global center of tourism and business.

We can replicate that model today. Right now, the opportunity to buy closed hotels in the Midtown area is ripe but will soon slip away as these assets transfer to other private for-profit owners. The Paramount Hotel and the Hudson River Hotel are just two examples of existing, vacant Midtown buildings that could quickly result in several hundred homes for those living unsheltered on the streets of Midtown and others in need of stable housing with services.

These hotels already have the existing infrastructure, such as extensive plumbing lines, needed for residential development. They represent a rare and elusive opportunity to create affordable housing at a much lower cost and 50% of the timeframe for brand new construction.

Mental health and other social services are essential to treating individuals living on city streets, but without the housing where it’s needed most, we will be missing the piece of the puzzle that brings people off the streets and inside for the long-term.

Other communities across the United States are making headway with use of shuttered hotels to address their homelessness crises. Let’s reprise New York’s leadership in the use of the invaluable, outstanding real estate opportunity to again convert closed, empty hotels so that our city and its most vulnerable residents can not only recover from the devastation of these past years, but thrive.

***
Brenda Rosen is President & CEO of Breaking Ground, New York’s largest supportive and affordable housing operator and homeless street outreach provider in New York City. On Twitter @BrGround.

Supportive housing (photo: @newdestinyorg)

As Mayor Adams wraps up his first month on the job, one of the most daunting issues he’ll have to address is the city’s homelessness crisis. Within this larger crisis, an often-unseen demographic is particularly in need of urgent action – families with children, the largest segment of people experiencing homelessness.

While there has been a dip during the pandemic in the number of families experiencing homelessness, New York City still leads the nation in family homelessness with an estimated 30,000 women, men, and children staying in a homeless or domestic violence shelter on any given night. Mayor Adams has inherited this crisis, but also a number of successful programs to tackle it head on, including a local rental subsidy, homeless housing requirements on affordable housing construction, and the right to counsel in housing court. One resource which is in drastically insufficient supply, and which Mayor Adams has specifically noted an ongoing need for, supportive housing, is needed to reach the most vulnerable of homeless families.

For decades, supportive housing  - permanent, affordable housing with onsite supportive services, has consistently proven to be the most effective way to address homelessness among some of our most vulnerable populations, including people living with mental illness, substance use history, and HIV/AIDS. However, the model has been slow to expand to homeless families, not recognizing the various social services that families need to remain stably housed. 

Supportive housing is not only significantly cheaper than shelter, but it also reduces tenants’ use of costly emergency care like inpatient psychiatric treatment and emergency rooms. In New York City, a landmark study found that, on average, supportive housing reduced tenants’ use of these services and others by more than $16,000.

Supportive housing also boasts high retention rates. Only 5% of residents housed in the New York/New York III Supportive Housing Agreement returned to shelter.

Further, communities benefit from supportive housing developments, and vice versa. Tenants can become fully integrated into their new communities, contributing their talents and gaining greater stability. In fact, a 2008 NYU study showed that property values of homes near supportive housing developments actually rose at higher rates than average.

While New York City has the most supportive housing in the United States, only 11% of what the city has funded is dedicated to families and none are dedicated to domestic violence survivors.

Domestic violence is consistently cited as the number one reason for families entering shelter, with evictions the second leading cause. And while rental subsidies and other supports help many families fleeing abuse to find stability, victims of domestic violence have a higher incidence of PTSD, depression, and anxiety, leaving many with a need for support services in addition to housing. Despite this, the city’s supportive housing initiative’s eligibility requirements effectively exclude homeless domestic violence survivors.

Currently, the supportive housing program is restricted to individuals or families that are considered “chronically homeless” – defined as having spent at least a year in a Department of Homeless Services shelter, and that have a documented disability, e.g., mental illness or substance abuse. Both of these eligibility criteria are problematic for DV survivors. First, the city only counts time homeless as time spent in the primary shelter system run by the Department of Homeless Services, not the months families spend in the separate domestic violence shelters run by the Human Resources Administration. Secondly, since most survivors fear that obtaining a diagnosis would negatively impact custody proceedings, leaving their children with their abuser, supportive housing is effectively closed off as an option. As a result, there is currently less than a 1 in 1,000 chance for a family leaving an emergency domestic violence shelter to enter supportive housing.

Mayor Adams can make an immediate impact on this vulnerable population by building more supportive housing units for families and by revising these eligibility requirements. Family homelessness in New York City is a crisis requiring an emergency response. That starts with making a renewed investment in supportive housing and making it accessible to the thousands of families that become homeless each year due to domestic violence.

***
Nicole Branca is Executive Director at New Destiny Housing, a New York City nonprofit that provides housing and services to victims of domestic violence and their children. On Twitter @nbranca13 & @newdestinyorg.

A vigil for police officers Rivera and Mora (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)

Mayor Adams' Blueprint to End Gun Violence, just released with much fanfare, represents, regrettably, an old-wine-in-a-new-bottle agenda overly-reliant on punitive law enforcement tactics. The mayor seeks to roll back bail reform and criminalize more young people, and will return to our streets the notorious plainclothes NYPD units responsible for the deaths of Eric Garner, Sean Bell, and others. These measures would do nothing to prevent the shocking kind of tragic incident that took the lives of police officers Jason Rivera and Wilbert Mora. 

The main impact of such policies will be an increase in both the arrests of young Black and Latino men and the number of New Yorkers locked up in the hellish, inhumane conditions of Rikers Island, all of it unnecessarily disrupting thousands upon thousands of lives, including the families of those arrested and jailed. As Brooklyn Assemblymember Phara Souffrant Forrest posted on Twitter, specifically in regard to Adams' proposal to harden bail policy: "Locking up people because they are poor does not keep our neighborhoods safe."

The practice that the shooting of Officers Rivera and Mora should lead our city's leaders to most seriously reconsider is the daily routine of sending police officers to handle domestic disputes. How does it make sense to send a uniformed officer armed with a gun and taser to help resolve an argument between a mother and her grown son, as was the case in the fatal Harlem incident? Add to the import of this question: that the officers so assigned can be as young and inexperienced as 22 years old, as Rivera was, and that, for better or worse, but understandably, many New Yorkers of color loathe and/or deeply distrust police officers. 

Why not dispatch social workers and family counselors instead of police officers, a move that immediately helps lessen the possibility of escalation? Though it does not appear to have been the case with Rivera and Mora, we know that too many police officers approach their jobs as an opportunity to use their might to control situations, often escalating them. Why not rely on professionals whose vocation is to relieve people in stress, to use their wits and compassion to de-escalate situations and offer help, rather than officers whose training often centers on how to use force?

It is likely that had New York City had such a practice in place that the outcome last Friday night would have been different. At the very least, do we think it probable that the shooter would have thrown open the door to his room and started firing a gun had he known that it was a couple of social workers walking down the hallway in his direction? Wouldn't it be likely that Officers Rivera and Mora would be alive today? Isn't it possible that trained professionals could have calmed Lashawn McNeil, the crazed gunman, and he, too, would still be alive?

A model for this type of alternate approach has functioned successfully in two Oregon cities, Eugene and Springfield, for decades. Crisis Assistance Helping Out on The Streets, aka CAHOOTS, has teams that consist mainly of EMTs and mental health professionals trained in conflict resolution who handle mental health emergencies and domestic disputes, among other matters. Started in the late 1980s, CAHOOTS has received more public funding over the years due to its effectiveness -- by 2017 it had expanded significantly so it now responds to over 20% of all emergency calls in Eugene. 

Larger, more diverse cities in the U.S. have successfully adopted the CAHOOTS model. Austin's Mobile Crisis Outreach Team (MCOT) and Denver's Support Team Assisted Response (STAR) are two programs, for example, that have recently replicated the Oregon model. New York City policy-makers should follow suit and establish an emergency response system that replaces police officers with social workers and other trained healthcare professionals. Our great city needs an approach that results in saving lives. 

***
Robert Gangi is the Director of the Police Reform Organizing Project, or PROP. On Twitter @GangiFromProp.

Gov. Hochul presents her budget (photo: Mike Groll/Office of Governor Kathy Hochul)

Now that Governor Hochul’s State of the State address and budget presentation have been delivered, the drumbeat of advocates, interest groups, legislators and other officials seeking increased spending will grow louder. With the primary election in only six months the temptation is strong to give everyone at least some of what they want. But, flush as the state’s coffers are right now, New York cannot afford to do it all and difficult decisions that make some important groups unhappy must be made.

The State financial plan update included in the Executive Budget shows that over the five-year period of fiscal years 2022-2027, State Operating Funds disbursements will increase by almost $26 billion, an average of 4.1% annually, higher than the growth rates prior to the pandemic. Once the substantial one-time federal funds that supplement state-generated revenue are exhausted, the State will have to fund all the programs already included in the budget on its own. 

While Budget Director Robert Mujica asserts that this can be done with no deficits all the way through fiscal year 2027, he concedes that the optimistic projections for state revenue growth could change because of the continued impact of the pandemic or for other unforeseen reasons. And the generous spending included in the governor’s budget depends on the ‘temporary’ multi-year tax increases on high-earning residents and corporations adopted last year that, notwithstanding Mujica's recent assurance to the contrary, could be incentivizing wealthy businesses and individuals to leave the state. 

It is noteworthy and wise that Governor Hochul proposes to set aside $5 billion in each of the next two fiscal years in reserves in case of a ‘rainy day.’ But it is difficult to believe that the Legislature will go along or that the Governor will be able to resist contentions from legislators, advocates, and others that the money is needed for a variety of worthy causes, even though she has already set aside $2 billion for covid-related needs to be allocated in consultation with the Legislature.

Some actions the governor has already taken are cause for concern. She announced that the state will fully implement the exorbitant and poorly-targeted increases in school aid required by the lawsuit filed by the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, giving all school districts increases even though over $2 billion a year is already provided to districts that have enough to fund a sound basic education for all their students. And she recently signed 16 bills passed by the Legislature that ‘sweeten’ pension benefits for public employees, the type of bills that were routinely vetoed by Governor Cuomo because of their long-term costs. 

An example of the kind of well-intentioned but costly and unwise initiatives that should be avoided is the “New Deal for CUNY” campaign to make all the community and senior colleges in the CUNY system tuition free for all New York residents. A bill to implement this policy was introduced in both the Senate and Assembly and has the support of a number of members as well as student groups and the union representing CUNY faculty. 

The amount of state support to CUNY (about $1.7 billion before the new additions) is two times the operating spending of the State Police and four times more than operating spending on parks and the environment. The governor’s budget adds approximately $350 million in additional operating subsidies to SUNY and CUNY as well as funding tuition assistance grants for part-time students.

Most resident CUNY students pay no tuition because of their eligibility for city, state, and federal grants. Tuition only covers about one quarter of CUNY’s costs; to eliminate this source of revenue would make the 23 campuses even more dependent on the state of New York’s economy and political calculations than is already the case. That is why legislation was enacted in 2020 to allow for regular, small increases in tuition. It should not be undone.

I am an ardent believer in the power of CUNY — I helped to launch CUNY ASAP, the most successful community college completion program in the country — and fear that eliminating its relatively small tuition payments will make its financial status more precarious. 

Nor should the similar, smart practice of regular, small fare and toll increases to help the MTA keep up with inflation be discontinued. Adopted in 2009, the policy ameliorated the prior pattern of periodic significant fare and toll increases that were fiscally and politically wrenching. The 2020 increase was postponed due to the pandemic and, thanks to a $6 billion aid infusion from federal relief funds, the governor’s budget postpones the 2022 increase as well. Several types of discounts for multiple rides have also been instituted. 

As ridership grows back towards pre-pandemic levels, the regular fare increases should be resumed. To maintain affordability for those with lower incomes, New York City should continue robust efforts to promote its Fair Fares program, which provides half-price transit service to lower-income residents. As with CUNY, our public transit system needs reasonable user fees to provide some level of fiscal stability. 

There are a number of other steps that should be taken to put the state on a firm financial footing, such as shifting economic development efforts away from the billions spent on tax incentives and business subsidies, and rightsizing and better managing capital spending.

Saying no to seemingly attractive policies that increase state spending is going to be very tough when the state seems awash in money and there is an election imminent. It may be easy and expedient to provide as many ‘free’ services as possible now, but it will be extremely difficult to undo these policies down the road when trade-offs between these and other services for the neediest New Yorkers, like the growing Medicaid program, become necessary. For everyone’s sake and the future of New York, the governor needs to hold the line on building up reserves.

Mayor Adams and Chancellor Banks at a school (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)

In an interview late last year, New York City’s new schools chancellor, David Banks, vowed to “transform the lives of…[New York City] children, but particularly Black and brown children who have struggled the most in this system.” While all students have struggled during the pandemic, multilingual learners, students in the foster system and in temporary housing, and students with disabilities—who are disproportionately Black and brown—have faced additional challenges, as the pandemic has exacerbated enduring opportunity gaps and academic disparities.

At the same time, the city has more resources for education than ever before. For Chancellor Banks to deliver on his promise, he must focus on targeting and increasing resources for these special student populations.

Data available from the New York City Department of Education (DOE) make it clear that many special student populations fail to receive the support they need. Students in the foster system were approximately 3.5 times more likely to repeat a grade than all other DOE students, according to data from the 2015-2016 school year (the most recent available). In 2019, less than one in five multilingual learners were proficient in math. And January 2021 data reveal increased absenteeism during the pandemic for multilingual learners, students with disabilities, and students in shelter.

With increased funding, the new city administration, working with the City Council, has a historic opportunity to invest in ambitious and equitable programs that focus on the unique needs of students from special populations, and ensure students’ access to fully participate and thrive in them.

Throughout the pandemic so far and over the next several school years, the DOE will have received immense sums of federal covid-related education aid, including $7.3 billion for elementary and secondary education (on top of regular federal funding for education) and a significant portion of the nearly $59 million in federal aid awarded to New York State for students in temporary housing. State funding is also increasing, notably through the state’s commitment to finally fully fund Foundation Aid in the coming years. This school year, the DOE is receiving $11.8 billion from the state, including $8.6 billion in Foundation Aid. With these investments, the DOE’s 2021-2022 budget is $38 billion, which includes departmental allocations toward expanding early literacy, special education, 3-K, culturally-responsive curriculum, and other priority programs.

However, some of the DOE’s programs that were funded by covid-relief dollars—such as Summer Rising—were difficult to access for many vulnerable populations, exacerbating the challenges for students who had already faced more barriers to school early in the pandemic. Some advocates attributed access challenges to limited busing options, outreach failures, and communication gaps.

One immigrant parent of two multilingual children told us that she feels like her children are excluded from new DOE programs because of language barriers. “My daughter’s school always sends me those robocalls in English and never uses a translator except for IEP meetings. They send me papers in the mail, but they are in English. I have to talk to somebody to figure out what they’re saying,” she said in Spanish. “More than anything, I want [my children] to achieve their goals.”

Children like hers, and so many others across the city, deserve better. Chancellor Banks can deliver on his commitment to transform the lives of Black and brown children by taking the following steps: 

1. Utilize existing outreach structures—and create new ones—to reach special student populations and their families.
The DOE should mobilize existing staff (parent coordinators, social workers, recently-announced central foster care staff, and others) to ensure that students and their families have access to new programs. Additionally, the DOE should develop new outreach strategies with input from parents, students, and other key stakeholders who are members of historically-underserved communities, including partnering with community-based organizations that have trusting relationships with these families. 

2. Create targeted academic programs and provide necessary services to enable full participation.
Students in special populations need targeted academic support provided by appropriately-trained staff to address ongoing challenges and ensure unencumbered access to programs (whether they are offered after school, in school, or on weekends), including transportation, paraprofessionals, and quality translation and interpretation services.

3. Collect and share participation data for new programs targeting special student populations.
The DOE should gather and publish this data for individual special student population groups and disaggregate by race, ethnicity, gender, and geographic district to better understand who has access to city programs and address gaps.

4. Develop trauma-informed programming that targets the whole student.
Supports must help students in special populations process their emotions and help them to persist through their education. School staff must be trained to understand the effects of trauma and adverse childhood experiences, how they manifest in the classroom, and how they can encourage positive social-emotional interactions.

The pandemic has highlighted systemic challenges within our schools that impact all students––especially the most underserved. Students in special populations need targeted supports and transformative change. Mayor Adams and Chancellor Banks have a historic opportunity and unprecedented funding—including Governor Hochul’s proposed future increases in state aid—to ensure these students have the opportunities they need to succeed. They must make good on their promise.

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Alejandra Vázquez Baur and Chantal Hinds are Policy Entrepreneurs at the Next100 think tank, where they work on issues related to educational equity, students involved in the foster system, and immigration justice. On Twitter @TheNext100.

Cunningham Park, Queens (photo: @NYCParks)

New York City’s parks literally saved lives during the pandemic. In my community of Jackson Heights and Elmhurst, our open spaces allowed us to escape the physical, mental, and social constraints of quarantine into fresh air. Today, our parks, pools, playgrounds, and plazas are places of reconnecting and healing for a community pushing forward from its days as the epicenter of a global crisis.

Across our city, parks and public spaces will be essential to meeting the multiple challenges we face, from health care to climate change and more. We must recognize the extraordinary value of our park system and deepen our investment for all neighborhoods, and for future generations. Every community needs and deserves the space to thrive.

Beautiful, functional parks are not luxuries only for certain neighborhoods to enjoy at the expense of others. They are part of our critical infrastructure. But, like so much other infrastructure, poor communities of color lack access to high-quality parks. On average, neighborhoods of color have 33% less park space per person than predominantly white neighborhoods. In an extreme example, the historic Upper West Side is sandwiched between 840 acres of Central Park and 310 acres of Riverside Park, while NYCHA playgrounds are in disrepair and have been neglected for decades. In my district, the immigrant communities of Jackson Heights and Elmhurst, we have fewer than 12 acres of public parks, some of the least park space per person in all of New York City.

This uneven distribution of park space and playgrounds is no accident. Federal maps of New York City from the 1930s show neighborhoods where the government decided not to invest at all due to the “infiltration” of Black people and immigrants. Now, these same communities are “urban heat islands” where sparse tree cover and exposed asphalt cause temperatures to soar to deadly highs each summer. In so many ways, the lack of green space caused by disinvestment causes real harm to the most vulnerable New Yorkers and exacerbates the impacts of the climate crisis on communities of color.

Our parks are also deeply connected to our city’s civic health. From Diversity Plaza in Jackson Heights to Maria Hernandez Park in Bushwick, New York City’s parks and public spaces have been focal points of political organizing and mass movements. In 1970, Stonewall activists seized Christopher Street for the first Pride. The occupation of Zuccotti Park mobilized a generation of activists. In 2020, Union Square, Foley Square, and Grand Army Plaza were gathering points for the response to the police murder of George Floyd. To deprive people of public space is to restrict their political power.

And this only scratches the surface of how parks impact our city. Bioswales and planter boxes absorb stormwater to prevent flooding. Street trees reduce temperatures on hot summer days. Open streets, playgrounds, and gardens provide places for social interaction, for our youngest kids to our elders and everyone in between. Pedestrian plazas drive foot traffic to local businesses. Public spaces can help reorient our city towards people and our needs – here in Jackson Heights, we cherish 34th Avenue, the city’s “gold standard” Open Street, which we should further transform into a linear park.

In short, our parks and other public spaces are a matter of social justice. As the new Chair of the City Council’s Committee on Parks and Recreation, I believe we must use our resources and our vision to create parks where none exist, and systematically invest in green spaces in neighborhoods that have long been ignored. Our parks have the power to heal and transform our city.

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Shekar Krishnan represents Elmhurst and Jackson Heights in the New York City Council. He is the Chair of the Committee on Parks and Recreation. On Twitter @voteshekar.

NYC CTO Matthew Fraser with Mayor Adams (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)

The de Blasio administration acknowledged that New York City desperately needs a Digital Service Organization (DSO) when it announced less than a month before the mayor left office that it wants to hire people for a new “NYC Digital Services” unit that would apply best practices in modern, open-source software development to New York City’s many software and technology challenges. Within two weeks of those first job postings going out, the inevitable happened: Mayor Adams announced a new Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for the start of his administration on January 1.

The new CTO is Matthew Fraser, and thanks to Adams’ Executive Order #3, he will be in charge of a newly-created Office of Technology and Innovation that will consolidate nearly a half dozen existing technology agencies and units under its leadership, including the Department of Information and Technology (DoITT), Cyber Command, 311, and the Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics (MODA).

So who is Matthew Fraser and what does he need to do?

A simple search for “Matthew Fraser New York City” on Google turns up Linkedin and Twitter profiles that give us some clues that can help us answer the question City & State New York flatly asked, “Could Eric Adams’ new tech chief bring NYC out of the dark ages?”

Fraser’s Linkedin shows that he was Deputy Commissioner and Chief Information Officer of the NYPD for nearly two years. Before that he worked at Gartner, a technology consulting corporation, as a Director of Consulting Services. And before that he served for four years at NYPD doing technology strategy and nine years doing technology project management for “the City of New York.”

To my knowledge, the NYPD has not adopted any of the DSO-style practices for which I and many other technologists frequently advocate. The NYPD has no presence on Github, which is a popular code sharing platform where many prominent DSOs such as the federal government’s 18F and the United Kingdom’s Government Digital Service publish code, gather user feedback, and recruit technical talent. Indeed, NYPD clearly doesn’t care about Github as the github.com/NYPD profile is owned by someone with an anime avatar. From the perspective of the DSO community, which views posting code and issues to Github as a core tool in their workflows, NYPD’s Github situation is one degree more embarrassing than DoITT’s empty Github profile. At least DoITT has secured a decent screen-name!

Gartner is well-known as a technology research company, but also one of the guardians of the existing technology status quo and a primary pusher of the type of expensive proprietary corporate software that has failed New York City government agencies and residents over and over and over again.

Gartner and its big corporate IT software vendor peers view the open source-based DSO movement as a threat to their core business. They know that if New York City gets good at using open-source software to build its own solutions, then proprietary IT vendors can kiss hundreds of millions of dollars of contracts goodbye. Don’t take my word for it. Look at how the "Gov Tech" industry lobby groups reacted to the success of 18F, the country’s largest DSO. It aggressively lobbied Congress to undermine 18F’s ability to compete with corporate vendors!

But just because Fraser worked for Gartner and the NYPD doesn’t mean he’s beholden to the IT vendors that orbit those entities or that he won’t be able to deliver modern digital services to New York City residents. Let’s look to Fraser’s Twitter profile for more insights.

On Twitter, as of January 20th 2022, the @NYPDTECH handle still carries Matthew Fraser’s name and picture, and a banner image displaying CompStat, the police department’s data-centric crime-reporting tool. The content of the feed is generic NYPD stuff – nothing particularly tech focused. We do get this short but kind of charming video of Fraser talking about his work and perspective. But we can also read between the lines.

Fraser, in this Twitter profile, is the embodiment of NYPD technology. And if there is one thing Mayor Adams has made clear about his plans for the city, it’s that he wants to CompStat New York City.

CompStat is a system for collecting, analyzing, and visualizing policing data, first pioneered and launched in New York City in 1994 and now utilized throughout the world. It’s not a specific computer program but rather an approach to using databases, GIS, and data analysis tools to organize information about crime and policing, which is then used for situational awareness, success metrics, commander assessment, accountability, and more. The NYPD, and Adams, are extremely proud of CompStat.

From the New Yorker article:

Adams was part of a team that helped put together the early versions. “I was just this computer geek,” he said. “We were building out the first layers of this new form of thinking. We had no idea we were going to make this impact. Trust me, it was unbelievable.”

Indeed, the NYPD loves data reports and dashboards, and if Fraser’s Linkedin Activity is any indication, putting them together is a big part of his work. A quick analysis of the reports and dashboards section of the NYPD website reveals they’re relying on proprietary Microsoft technology, not the open-source technologies that a DSO would use to build the same type of interfaces.

It’s probably fair to say that Fraser isn’t as familiar with open-source solutions as many civic technologists would like him to be, but that’s also OK. Anyone who builds real systems that have real users knows that you’ve got to build with what works. And if Microsoft is delivering for the NYPD, and they’re doing so for about $2 million per year worth of contracts, then so be it. But the challenges he’s about to face will require far more complex work.

As head of NYPD technology, Fraser has had the benefit of working within a single agency, controlled by a central bureaucracy with a (somewhat) unified system of contracting and assembling technology solutions. In his new role he has a mandate to integrate the city’s main cross-agency technology programs into a coherent strategy, and he will inevitably come up against many of the same problems that arose when the Obama administration first attempted to launch their HealthCare.gov program, which ambitiously attempted to tie a lot of proprietary software made by different commercial vendors together. It failed massively.

A tremendous amount of ink has been spilled about why healthcare.gov failed initially and the crack teams that emerged to fix the problem using open-source components and startup-style development strategies. After fixing HealthCare.gov, those people went on to organize the federal government's first DSOs: the US Digital Service and 18F.

Now, 10 years later, there is a tremendous wealth of books, best practice manuals, organizational models, and open source code available to help overcome the difficulties of building modern digital services inside government. Thanks to all these advances, it has never been easier, technically-speaking, to fulfill the ambitious, reasonable (and dare I say essential) dream of CompStat for the city.

But to access this wealth of knowledge, Fraser will have to venture out of the comfortable world of proprietary software vendors and monolithic contracts and into a less familiar — but very friendly and collaborative — open-source ecosystem of government digital services. If he and Adams are truly guided by the higher purpose of revolutionizing municipal government in the vein of how CompStat revolutionized policing, then they could be a massive success.

Technologists all over this city are rooting for Fraser and Adams, and I have no doubt many would be willing to roll up their sleeves and get to work on the city’s behalf if Fraser indicates he is ready, willing, and able to adopt DSO practices.

A good first step: organize a presentable Github profile for his new office.

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Devin Balkind is a civic technologist, software producer and nonprofit executive passionate about digital government reform. He leads the WeGov.NYC project. On Twitter @DevinBalkind.