Speaker Carl Heastie (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)

I’ve lived in The Bronx all my life — and all my life, our political leaders have hung our borough out to dry.

For as long as I can remember, being from The Bronx meant going to underfunded schools, surviving in food deserts, and living in overcrowded homes or crumbling NYCHA units. None of these conditions are inevitable; rather, they’re the outcome of negligence and disinvestment by lawmakers. The people of The Bronx deserve better. Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie: to deliver justice for your neighbors in The Bronx, it’s time to end tax breaks for the rich and invest in our New York.

Over the last century, a procession of politicians have made policy decisions that actively hurt the Black and brown majority of our borough, from building the Cross Bronx Expressway straight through our communities to redlining our neighborhoods. These choices led to a generational poverty that requires intentional investment — in education, in jobs, in housing — to correct. And yet, it’s 2021, and this legacy of disinvestment is as strong as ever. Tens of thousands of Bronx residents live in failing public housing; countless others are chronically rent-burdened, on the brink of eviction, or already homeless. Our schools, which serve our majority Black and brown children, are deeply underfunded. And we suffer one of the highest rates of food insecurity in the entire country.

COVID-19 made it all worse. Over 17% of Bronx residents are currently unemployed — the highest rate in the state — even as employment rates rebound statewide. Such high joblessness is a dangerous spark, setting off disruption after disruption: hungry families, people kicked off their health insurance, families evicted from their homes, and troubling child poverty. This endless cycle is fundamentally a policy failure, not a matter of millions of low-income Bronxites failing to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. And yet, in essence our leaders continue to throw up their hands as if there’s nothing they can do.

Speaker Heastie, as a longtime constituent in your district, I’m appealing to you directly: The Bronx needs tens of billions in dollars in new revenue to end this senseless suffering. That’s the kind of investment it will take to create hundreds of thousands of well-paying jobs; to finally give our children the education they need to succeed; to stop the cycle of poverty that housing insecurity creates.

To raise the funds needed to finally invest in The Bronx, we must end tax breaks on the rich. Right now, New York’s wealthiest residents enjoy enormous, unearned tax breaks on their wealth and incomes, their luxury cars and properties, and even on the corporations they own. That’s the kind of backwards policy that lets the rich get richer while The Bronx stays poor. And this year, it’s the policy that has let billionaires accumulate over $80 billion during a global pandemic while your neighbors are still out of work.

The six bills in the Invest in Our New York Act are the clear solution. By reversing these unfair tax breaks on the richest among us, New York can finally stop balancing its state budget on the backs of Black, brown, immigrant, and working class people. By passing these bills, we can fully fund our schools, hospitals, and housing. And just as disinvestment has a negative ripple effect, investment will have a positive one. Fully funding our schools will mean more opportunities for young people in The Bronx. Accessible healthy food will mean fewer comorbidities. Functional public transport will mean Bronxites can afford to travel to good jobs anywhere in the city.

Speaker Heastie: you know as well as I do that if we fail to raise this revenue by ending tax breaks for the rich, it’ll be communities like ours in The Bronx that will suffer. Property taxes will go up for homeowners; the budgets of life-saving services — from food pantries to drug harm reduction services — will be cut; unemployment will stay high. And all the while, the systemic inequality that leads to all of this pain in the first place will go unsolved.

As a lifelong Bronxite and a dedicated community activist, I have seen a lot of injustice in my time. But over the past year, I have also been hopeful that a new day for the Bronx is around the corner. From Pelham to the South Bronx, residents from all walks of life are coming together to demand more from our elected officials. The Governor is exceptionally weak, and we have a unique moment now to deliver for The Bronx. Progressive rhetoric is not enough.

We know you, as our legislative leadership, have more power than ever. As you are about to propose the Assembly’s budget for the next fiscal year, we turn to you: pass the Invest in Our New York Act and delive r the future that the Bronx deserves.

***
Curtis Robinson is an activist and life-long resident of Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie’s district in the Bronx.

NYCHA (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography)

We all know the story of deplorable living conditions and general dysfunction. Many of us were captivated by details of the wreckage and the shocking level of disrepair. We sympathized with the residents, but scratched our heads wondering what level of madness allowed such unnecessary suffering when there were ample means to alleviate it.

Although this describes the Grey Gardens of East Hampton, which became infamous in the 1970s and was depicted in films and a Broadway musical, it also describes something seemingly quite different. That is the approximately 170,000 public housing residences in New York City owned and operated by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) and the official home to approximately 381,000 New Yorkers — what I call the urban Grey Gardens.

Both involve a need for massive repairs, but also the possession of sufficient resources to pay for them. While the owners of the Hamptons’ Grey Gardens, Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter (the aunt and first cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis), may have had family wealth in the form of stocks, bonds, and other assets, NYCHA has significant wealth in the form of land in one of the most expensive real estate markets in the world.

How much land? 2,473 acres (almost four square miles). How is it using that land? Less intensively and effectively than much privately-owned land that houses wealthier New Yorkers. The Skyscraper Museum has calculated the density of various housing developments. London Terrace in the Manhattan neighborhood of Chelsea houses 931 people per acre. Manhattan House on the Upper East Side houses 478 people per acre. NYCHA houses 154 people per acre. Clearly many New Yorkers can and do live perfectly well with much greater density than currently exists in NYCHA housing.

Increasing the density of NYCHA’s developments to the average density of London Terrace and Manhattan House would add housing for over 1.3 million people. With an average household size in New York City of 2.42 people, that would translate into approximately 537,000 new apartments. It would not take much imagination to achieve this increased density by more efficiently using NYCHA properties which often include dead zones, unused open space, and surface parking lots.

How much money could the new apartments bring in? Various configurations would raise $32 billion – roughly the full estimated amount NYCHA needs to address all of its unmet capital repair and upgrade needs. For example, making half of the new apartments affordable yielding zero profit and the other half market rate yielding a profit of $120,000 each, a modest profit for a builder in New York that incurs no cost for land, would raise the full $32 billion. NYCHA, like the owners of Grey Gardens, has the assets to address all of its needs without any contribution from taxpayers or stressed government budgets.

The new housing could also be used to provide another benefit: greater diversity. NYCHA housing is by definition reserved for people with low incomes. Government officials who regularly and enthusiastically talk about diversity seem to miss the irony that the one area of housing they completely control is among the least diverse in the city. Building new residences on NYCHA owned land could bring more economic and racial diversity to neighborhoods and provide the additional benefit of helping to reduce segregation in New York City’s public schools.

The government could even go so far as to diversify individual buildings. It could provide NYCHA tenants the option, if they wanted, to move to apartments in the new buildings at their existing rents or to receive vouchers for housing of their choice elsewhere in the city paid for by the free market rents earned on their newly renovated units. Either way, no affordable units would be lost (in fact, many could be gained), buildings would be diversified and new life brought to these communities.

The problem facing NYCHA is the problem the Beales faced at Grey Gardens. It has nothing to do with a lack of resources and everything to do with shaking off years of dysfunction and complacency to take advantage of resources they already have.

***
Howard Yaruss teaches at NYU's Shack Institute of Real Estate and was formerly the General Counsel and Executive Vice President of Radian Group Inc.

Mayor with a small business plan (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)

Ryan’s Daughter has been a staple of Yorkville since the 1970s. It’s the local neighborhood pub. There’s a pool table in the back, and the same three old regulars are always sitting at one corner of the bar. On March 15 last year, the owner of the bar made the decision to close. “When covid hit, we were really thinking first about our people,” Jim Gerding told me. “When those first reports came out, I didn’t care about the business restrictions, I cared that people were getting sick.”

In the past year, COVID-19 has had a disastrous effect on this city’s local small businesses. Businesses that were already operating on extremely thin margins have now lost most, or in some cases all, of their revenue, and have had to lay off thousands of workers. According to TrackTheRecovery.org, a research project funded by Harvard University and the Gates Foundation, there are over 40% fewer small businesses open in New York City now than there were in January 2020.

Small businesses are the lifeblood of this city — not only do they employ thousands of workers, but they provide spaces for communities to come together. We need short-term solutions for businesses dealing with the devastating effects of the COVID-19 shutdowns, but we also need longer-term solutions. Far too many small businesses were struggling long before the pandemic, and if we don’t address the root causes of their struggles, we’ll continue to see our beloved local businesses shutter.

First and foremost, we have to get direct financial relief to small businesses. Small business owners I’ve spoken to have depleted their savings and have taken out loans to keep their businesses afloat. The city should utilize federal funds to create its own grant program for small businesses, including a microbusiness assistance fund focused on minority-owned businesses. 

We should implement a grant program, similar to what San Francisco’s mayor has proposed, that would provide immediate relief to help stabilize small business operations by offering grants of $5,000 to $25,000, based on the number of employees that each employer had prior to the pandemic.

Our city also needs to do more to connect small business owners with existing state and federal programs. As we saw in the first round of PPP loans, large companies were able to navigate the complex process more easily and quickly, while many smaller companies and businesses were unable to get the relief they needed. One local business owner expressed frustration that upon signing up through the city’s site, she received no help, but found herself inundated with loan offers from various institutions, which now had her contact information.

The city’s Department of Small Business Services should work directly with local community groups, such as Community Boards, BIDs, and neighborhood associations to do direct outreach to local businesses. We must also ensure that this assistance is provided in multiple languages.

Longer term, we need to address the rising costs of owning and operating a business in this city. We can begin by passing the bill (Intro. 2007-2020) sponsored by City Council Member Keith Power that would temporarily eliminate the Commercial Rent Tax for all businesses with an annual base rent of less than $1 million. According to Council Member Powers, “this bill would help approximately 5,500 Manhattan businesses...that are currently paying the tax.”

We should also work to pass the Small Business Jobs Survival Act, which would establish conditions and requirements for commercial lease renewal negotiations, including requirements for lease renewal terms, arbitration-triggering conditions, limits on security deposits, and prohibitions on landlord retaliation. 

Delivery services have been critical during this pandemic, but we need to prioritize money going to small businesses and not to Silicon Valley. We need aggressive oversight of these delivery apps. Multiple lawsuits over the past several years have accused companies like GrubHub of charging hidden fees, refusing refunds, and including restaurants on their platforms without the restaurants’ permission. The state should pass the bill (S.8816), similar to a law that was recently passed in California, to require third-party delive ry services to have a valid agreement with a merchant before they advertise, promote, or sell the merchant's products on their platform.

Last year the New York City Council passed a bill that would limit delivery app fees to 15% during, and for 90 days after, a declared emergency that prohibits ordering food on premises. We should make this cap permanent. 

One of the biggest complaints I hear from small business owners is that the city does a poor job of communicating, especially when it comes to ever-changing rules and regulations surrounding COVID-19. Gerding of Ryan’s Daughter explained, “as the goalpost would move back further, or the regulations would change, there was never a feeling that this is being well thought-out, from the point of view of the business.”

Last year Mayor de Blasio convened a Small Business Advisory Council, but by October, members of the Council complained that there was not a steady flow of communication from City Hall. The city must convene regular meetings of the Small Business Advisory Council. The mayor should assign a City Hall point person to address concerns from the Council, and establish inter-agency coordination so that business owners are not forced to navigate multiple agencies for guidance and support.

As we slowly recover from this terrible pandemic, we must ensure that our local small businesses are not left behind. With ever-increasing vacancies, the city must act boldly, and do more to provide resources and create opportunities for local businesses to thrive.

***
Kim Moscaritolo is a Democratic candidate for City Council in Manhattan’s 5th District. On Twitter @KimMosc.

Mayor de Blasio at a senior center (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)

Vaccines are the lifeline that will get us out of this crisis. But since vaccine distribution haltingly began two months ago, New York City’s estimated 136,000 homebound seniors had been left isolated with the knowledge that while they are the most at-risk of dying from COVID-19 (eight out of 10 covid deaths nationwide have been over age 65), they have no way to obtain a lifesaving vaccine.

Their more mobile friends and neighbors — first those over age 75, then over 65, and now over 60 — can visit a vaccine site and get inoculated (assuming, of course, they are able to navigate a truly convoluted online appointment system), while many of the homebound can only watch vaccinations on TV, even as they worry that the health aides they rely on may bring covid into their homes.  

The city has now announced its program to vaccinate homebound seniors with the new Johnson & Johnson one-shot vaccine, launching in Co-op City and Brighton Beach. But there’s real concern that those good intentions haven’t resulted in a real plan beyond pop-ups, and could lead to a replay of the senior food distribution debacle during last spring’s shutdown. 

Back then, the city’s senior centers — themselves a lifeline serving daily meals to tens of thousands of seniors — were left in the dark as the city closed their doors and programs had to improvise to provide home-delivered meals to thousands of newly-isolated older New Yorkers. The city’s Department for the Aging didn’t have the capacity to handle the list-making, meal-sourcing, and delivery logistics for thousands of households, but that work is already done at the community level by senior centers, meal centers, and case management agencies. The mayor had to appoint a food czar to straighten out the problems in getting life-sustaining daily nutrition to those who needed it.

The city’s vaccine honchos should learn from that experience. They should recognize that the mayoral administration can’t go it alone — and doesn’t need to. 

The city can and should start with the 20,000 homebound seniors enrolled in the Department for the Aging’s Home Delivered Meals program executed by 23 community-based organizations, and leverage their logistics experience, infrastructure (refrigerated trucks!), and trusted relationships to make appointments for seniors and collect crucial advance information for the vaccinator — medical conditions (including possible dementia), language assistance, and the presence of a home health aide who might also want a vaccine. It’s one thing to have a city-paid stranger or an automated system call a 75-year-old homebound elder -- and quite another for a staffer from a senior center reaching out to her. Staff at these community-based organizations can do the hand-holding because they already know how. 

And the city can enlist hundreds of staff at senior centers, naturally occurring retirement communities, settlement houses, and organizations like Citymeals on Wheels and DOROT (that sponsor programs to help reduce seniors’ isolation).

Yet so far, nothing seems to have been planned with any of the obvious and logical senior-facing service delivery operations. 

That’s got to change if we’re going to get every homebound senior vaccinated quickly and efficiently — and in a way that doesn't create new problems. We’re ready to help. 

***
Gale A. Brewer is Manhattan Borough President and Beth Shapiro is Executive Director of Citymeals on Wheels.

Food truck (photo: New York Food Truck Association)

We love to take a bite out of the Big Apple, literally speaking. New York City’s colorful culinary scene offers some of the best food from around the world, whether at a restaurant, food cart, or one of the many food trucks offering everything from scrumptious lobster rolls to Korean style BBQ. With newly-passed legislation -- the Street Vendor Bill, Intro. 1116 -- there will finally be more than 4,000 new food vendor licenses over 10 years across the boroughs, and the real work of reforming a broken system and curbing an underground market of food vendor licenses is beginning.

But the biggest question remaining is who exactly will deliver that reform. 

The legislation the City Council passed establishes the formation of a Street Vendor Advisory Board to help set up and deliver a framework of how the licenses will be allocated, with members of the board including representatives from city government, the business community, and the street vendor community. Four of the 15 spots are reserved for members of the street vendor community.  

As a former food truck operator, I know firsthand the challenges vendors face in trying to successfully run their businesses. My first job after graduating college was selling Belgian-style French Fries with gourmet dipping sauces from my truck, The Frying Dutchmen. The hours were long and the parking tickets added up, but the satisfied looks on New Yorkers’ faces was priceless. I quickly learned that food trucks themselves offered an amazing opportunity to bring this diverse and striving community together. It’s what inspired me to form the New York Food Truck Association (NYFTA), with the mission to promote and grow our food truck community through strategic partnerships and events. 

And this is one of several reasons why one of the four spots for vendors on the Street Vendor Advisory Board should be a representative of the food truck community. Our other reasons include:

We, too, are feeling the pain. Like our friends in the food cart and brick and mortar communities, food trucks are feeling the economic strains of the pandemic. A good number of food trucks typically set up shop in front of office buildings that have largely been empty for almost a year now and it’ll be some time before those buildings are back to pre-pandemic occupancy rates. Food trucks should also be part of the recovery conversation. 

Food trucks generate thousands of jobs and provide valuable tax revenue to the city. Our 75 members, which represent over 100 food trucks, generate about $15 to $20 million in taxable revenue for the city’s coffers. And a majority of food trucks, including all our members, play by the rules.

There is precedent for city support of food trucks. When Hurricane Sandy devastated our shores, the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City provided $1.8 million in contracts to provide much needed meals to hungry New Yorkers without power and those who lost their homes. 

It’s about equity. A majority of the chatter has been around food carts, but food trucks are also included in the cap increase and are embedded in the very fabric of what makes New York City great. A lot of focus has been on allocating space for restaurants and storefronts through Open Restaurants, Open Streets, and Open Storefronts. If we truly want equity, the food truck community should legally be afforded these same opportunities as well, both on the Advisory Board and through these programs.

We can mobilize quickly during emergencies. This includes at the height of the pandemic when we donated more than 275,000 meals through our Frontline Food Trucks initiative to feed essential workers. We also partnered with World Central Kitchen and Bloomberg Philanthropies to sponsor several food trucks, delivering free food to the frontlines.  

Eating safely during a pandemic. Our food trucks primarily cater to New Yorkers who are hungry for safe, social interactions including outdoor dining. Food trucks have the logistical capability to support socially-distanced outdoor events as more people get vaccinated.

Survey the needs. We are happy to hear that the New York City Department of Transportation is currently conducting a survey about food truck zones. It’s important to get this right and create a fair and equitable opportunity for food trucks to sell their food without having to arrive at 3 a.m. to secure a prime spot. We can also service neighborhoods with parking capacity and that are food deserts in their own right. 

New Yorkers are hungry for opportunity. It’s something many of us have been craving the last year. As the city begins to come back to life, food trucks offer tremendous value in opportunity, resiliency, and accessibility to gourmet food at reasonable prices. Members of this new board who will help dictate street vendor reform should hear the challenges our vendors and their staff face on a daily basis. This includes one driver, Dom Tesoriero, the owner of The Mac Truck and an NYFTA member. For him, “New York City is the best place in the world to be, but also one of the most challenging environments to operate. Something has to be done to help us recover after this pandemic or our industry will be in big trouble.”

To deliver true vendor reform, everyone must have a seat at the table, including food trucks.

***
Ben Goldberg is President and Founder of the New York Food Truck Association. On twitter @NYFTA1.

Henry Garrido, the author (photo: District Council 37)

[Update: two days after this op-ed column first published, CD37 announces its support of Eric Adams for mayor]

On January 1, a new Mayor will take on what is — even under normal circumstances — one of the most important and challenging elected offices in our nation. New York City’s next executive leader will inherit a city ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic and resulting citywide shutdown. The events of the last year devastated our communities, shuttered businesses, and took tens of thousands of lives. Whoever takes the city’s top job next must have the strength to confront this historical crisis and be decisive in action.

District Council 37 is New York City’s largest public sector union. We represent 150,000 city workers and 50,000 retirees. We’re the people helping your kids cross the street to school safely; we’re the paramedics who race around this city night and day transporting New Yorkers to care; we’re the ones working in your libraries and planting trees and flowers in your parks. Recently, we’re among those who you refer to as “essential.”

During this pandemic, our members suffered greatly. Some paid the ultimate price, doing their duty as essential workers, while thousands more were struck by COVID-19 yet thankfully recovered, although some with lingering effects. Even still, throughout this pandemic our members remained steadfast in providing services to the public. As we approach one of the biggest decisions we’ll make as an organization this year – which candidate to support for Mayor – we do so with the commitment and sacrifice of our members in mind. 

The challenges our next Mayor will face are vast: closing a huge budget deficit, working with state and federal leaders on proper funding for our frontline workers and institutions, reaching out to the communities hardest hit by the pandemic, and daring to go beyond slogans and gestures by addressing the social and economic inequalities that plague our city. Ultimately, the person we elect to lead us must maintain the vision and strength necessary to push responsible public policy in a bold, new, direction.

Taking a new direction is often difficult — and it will be here — but this city demands a leader who has a firm grasp of the issues that will shape our future. We seek a mayor with the foresight to look beyond recovery and move New York City forward.

Strong leadership is required to improve and expand the city’s infrastructure, in making green initiatives a permanent priority, by taking up the fight to shore up our social safety net through ensuring equal access to the city’s social services to all New Yorkers, and to develop long-term reforms with non-negotiable goals for how our children are educated from preschool to our city university system.

We want a Mayor who isn’t afraid to fight and has the courage to not back down under pressure. A leader unafraid to stick by their principles is one who inspires.

The next Mayor must be someone who understands the needs of those who suffered and sacrificed the most during the pandemic, someone who respects and values their hard work, their heritage and civic culture. Our next Mayor must be someone who follows words with action in decisions regarding future budgets, contracts, and enforcement.

When it comes to the city budget, our view is simple: A budget is a statement of principles. If you value essential workers and services, you will make sure they are funded and provided for. 

Tens of thousands of frontline workers have spent the last year staring down the fear of being laid off. Only after weeks of tough negotiations were unions able to hammer out an agreement that held off – at least for now -- 22,000 layoffs of essential city workers. But the threat still looms.

An austerity budget is not the answer and our next Mayor must commit to find another way. Next year, we expect a Mayor who backs up this year’s campaign promises of valuing the people who make this city run and understands that investing in city services is critical to New York City’s recovery.

Our city survived thanks to essential workers in our public institutions, our first responders and workers in municipal hospitals tending to the sick, and school workers providing hundreds of thousands of meals to children and the elderly even though schools were closed. Public library workers went to great lengths to provide services. Parks workers and highway maintainers kept working. Workers in social services, 911 and 311 operators remained on the job in dangerous work conditions giving vital services to people in need.

The Mayor our union shall support will be someone who understands that if you value these institutions you first must also respect and value the workers who allow them to function, and not set them up to be the scapegoat for every budget crisis.

The city’s public workers did their jobs, even under the most exhausting and stressful conditions. We certainly expect the same from the candidate we choose to be our next Mayor.

***
Henry Garrido is Executive Director District Council 37. On Twitter @DistCouncil37.

Gov. Cuomo at an MTA announcement (photo: governor's office)

This budget year for New York State is like no other due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but one thing remains business as usual in Albany: The Governor is once again filling state budget holes with funds that are supposed to be dedicated to supporting mass transit and fighting climate change—hitting disadvantaged communities especially hard.

Governor Cuomo intends to take $240 million in dedicated taxes from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), and $23 million from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). Fortunately, the State Legislature has the opportunity to reject these raids in their budget resolutions, and in the final adopted budget due April 1.  

The MTA has long been a piggy bank for the state. Governor Cuomo and his predecessors have raided hundreds of millions of dollars from dedicated funds that are intended to be used by transit agencies to effectively and safely run bus, subway, and commuter rail services for the public. 

Raids of dedicated transit funds are a highly regressive backdoor tax which disproportionately harms low-income riders and essential workers. The Governor’s raids also come at a time when the MTA seeks to make riders pay more for less service. The MTA has temporarily postponed fare hikes, but hikes will come sooner if the state takes $240 million in transit funding.

The MTA’s budget has been hit much harder than the state’s by COVID-19. Ridership is still hovering at only 30% of what it was before the pandemic ravaged its finances. In good times, fares and tolls brought in nearly 40% of the MTA’s budget. Fortunately, federal funding helped fill some of its massive budget gaps. The bad news, however, is that the Governor has made this aid less meaningful by taking hundreds of millions away from the MTA when the authority and its customers needed that money the most. The MTA is still asking Congress for $8 billion to close its budget gaps through 2024, but the likely receipt of federal dollars is not in any way an excuse for the state to divert dedicated funds to its general fund.

Raiding dedicated funds breaks trust with the public, who pay these taxes with the understanding that they will fund specific programs and agencies — not other state purposes.

Mass transit funds, like RGGI, are crucial for the state to meet its climate goals.  

The RGGI program has brought over $1.4 billion to New York by charging polluters for the emissions they produce. In turn, these funds are used to support projects that help communities fight climate change, reduce air pollution, and create good green jobs. Or at least that is the way it is supposed to work. Unfortunately, throughout the life of the program, almost 15% of the total amount raised has been swept away to plug budget holes elsewhere. This year is no different, with the Governor’s budget again skimming $23 million into the general fund and away from their intended use—that’s 16% of the overall RGGI budget for the year missing on day one. 

The RGGI raid is even more egregious this year as these clean energy funds have taken on greater importance under New York’s new climate law, which now requires that at least 35% be invested in communities on the frontlines of climate change to help them transition away from fossil fuels. Sweeping $23 million of RGGI funds means that disadvantaged communities will be deprived of millions of dollars that are supposed to be there to improve their environment and create jobs. We cannot continue to shortchange the fight against climate change and communities cannot afford to lose millions more this year. 

The Legislature can finally put a stop to these budget games. The first opportunity is to stand against MTA and RGGI raids by rejecting them in their one-house budget resolutions, which typically come out in mid-March. They must also stand firm and make sure these funds aren’t on the chopping block during budget negotiations. Our state’s future is worth the fight, and this is a good opportunity for the Legislature to flex their supermajority muscles.

***
Rachael Fauss is Senior Research Analyst at Reinvent Albany and Conor Bambrick is Director of Climate Policy at Environmental Advocates NY. On Twitter @RachaelFauss of @ReinventAlbany and @conorbambrick of @greenwatchdogNY.

March against domestic violence (photo: William Alatriste/City Council)

As President Biden begins to make good on his promise to reverse some of the Trump Administration’s most heinous immigration policies, I welcome the changes but hope he is able to dig deeper. Because for every horrific Trump Administration immigration policy that was announced and grabbed headlines, there were others that were discreetly implemented, effectively creating an “invisible wall.”

These more subtle shifts in policy have been devastating, and unfortunately, only become obvious to the public after thousands have already been impacted. A particularly unjust one impacts domestic violence survivors like me. 

Born and raised in the Caribbean in Kingston, Jamaica, I immigrated to the U.S. in 1998 and have lived here in New York City since. A single mother to my daughter, a natural-born U.S. citizen who is now age 13, I work as a home health aide and am also a certified chaplain of my church, after graduating with a bachelor's degree in theology.  

But this part of my story began in 2009. I started dating someone and it was going well in the beginning. But then he began to behave in ways that made me not trust him and so I tried to end the relationship. He would not leave me alone until he convinced me to meet up with him at a hotel one day. That is when he raped me.  

My world was shattered. I was terrified of him but even more terrified of reporting this crime to law enforcement because of my immigration status. He was a U.S. citizen and he knew I was undocumented. I only told one person, a family friend.

Then in early 2011, the father of my daughter, Keith*, threatened to shoot me during an argument we had. Fearing he really had a gun, I grabbed my cell phone and called the police. By the time the police arrived, Keith had fled the apartment we shared, and so the officers asked some questions but left without filling out a police report. The next morning, however, the same officers returned to arrest me because Keith had filed a report accusing me of assaulting him—with the cell phone I used to call the police when he threatened me! I ended up being charged with assault with a weapon. I had to appear in court a couple of times but the case was ultimately dismissed as Keith did not appear. The records were then sealed. 

I tried to move on with my life until one day, later that year, I got a call from my sister, who mentioned that she saw in the news that someone we both knew was arrested and charged with several counts of rape. She said she did not believe it was true and so I opened up to her—I told her I knew it was true because he did the same to me. 

With my sister’s encouragement, I came forward to the detective handling the case and reported the crime committed against me. That’s when I learned I should be able to get humanitarian immigration help as a crime victim.  

I was introduced to Safe Horizon, a non-profit organization, by the detective. At this point, fear and paranoia took over since my rapist knew where I lived and my immigration status. I received counseling from Safe Horizon and its Immigration Law Project attorneys helped me apply for legal status in the U.S. through the U visa program. 

This special visa is available to victims of certain serious crimes who are helpful to law enforcement in the investigation or prosecution of the crime. I applied in 2012 and I was granted a U visa in 2013, which allowed me to live and work in the United States lawfully, and three years later, to apply for permanent residence, or a “green card.” In 2017, again with the assistance of the Immigration Law Project, I submitted my application for a green card. 

I was shocked to receive a request from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for details about my arrest in 2011, even though I had already disclosed my arrest in my U visa application and explained that the records were sealed. DHS demanded unsealing of the records to determine what kind of weapon was involved and whether I was indeed a threat to public safety.  

According to my attorneys, this was a noticeable shift from previous DHS policy. Before the Trump Administration, DHS would not demand unsealing of records because arrests that resulted in dismissed charges and/or sealed records typically did not warrant additional scrutiny. Moreover, sealing statutes, such as the one in New York, are designed to protect individuals in situations like mine. It allows us to essentially start over without the stigma that usually comes with an arrest. My attorneys refused to ask for unsealing of the records. Consequently, my “green card” application was denied.

My heart sank. My work permit was also denied, which has impacted me severely, especially during this pandemic as I struggle to keep a roof over my family’s head. I feel victimized all over again. And I am not the only one. Sadly, I learned that countless others like me have suffered similar fates—domestic violence survivors falsely accused by their abusers have had their U visa or “green card” applications denied.

My attorney helped me file an appeal, which was dismissed, and then a motion to reconsider, which is currently pending. They have also demanded that DHS turn over any records related to this unannounced shift in policy.

Awaiting the outcome, I hope that the Biden Administration will step in and protect domestic violence survivors. I hope that my story sheds light on this invisible policy change and that it finall y comes to an end.

 *Names changed to protect identity.

***
Angela Harriett* is a domestic violence survivor, immigrant, mother, and resident of New York City.

Hospital workers (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)

The current process to secure a COVID-19 vaccine is, to put it frankly, a logistical nightmare. Appointments have been cancelled by testing sites due to supply shortages, and vaccines were frequently being defrosted and then thrown out due to missed appointments and limited eligibility criteria. This was expected.

Contributing to the problems with vaccine distribution is the inaccessibility for seniors, especially in parts of eastern Queens. Successful vaccination often requires digital fluency and a mode of transportation – two large barriers that complicate a speedy rollout to our most vulnerable neighbors. One of our parents (ages 71 and 74) struggled tremendously navigating the highly decentralized systems to find an appointment despite not facing these technical and logistical barriers.

Vaccine distribution spotlights fundamental problems in our city’s health-care infrastructure that disproportionately impact elders. However, these issues date back to far before the pandemic. A series of management mistakes and a lack of political will to support investing in our health-care infrastructure permitted three major Queens hospitals to close in 2009.  This has led to a borough that is uniquely unprepared to handle the coronavirus pandemic.

One of the most impactful closures was St. Vincent Catholic Medical Center, which served Forest Hills, Rego Park, Maspeth, Glendale, and Corona. The medical center’s bankruptcy was partially fueled by slow reimbursements from the government to support health care for the elderly, like Medicare. The city should heed the lessons from the last recession, we cannot divest again from preventative care or health-care infrastructure when city finances tighten. We must choose to have a moral budget that prioritizes our health and wellbeing.

Increasing hospital bed capacity in Queens needs to be one of the top priorities as we rebuild from the pandemic. Queens currently has 1.7 beds for every 1,000 residents, whereas Manhattan has three times that capacity. Unsurprisingly, bed shortages led to hospitals like Elmhurst being overwhelmed during the pandemic. Post-pandemic, we must focus on investing in new infrastructure to replace institutions such as St. Vincent. We must fight to maintain and buoy existing capacity in hospitals and health centers.  New York City has left Parkway Hospital in Forest Hills empty and idle for the past 10 years, but with some effort it can be rehabilitated into a useful place to deliver wellness services for our community.

We have an obligation to support our seniors in Queens. It is a vulnerable group, most reliant on and hurt by the diminished accessibility of health services in the borough. Demographically, the communities of Rego Park, Forest Hills, Kew Gardens, and Richmond Hill (City Council District 29) form one of the oldest areas in the city. We must take the initiative to increase our ability to care for our parents and grandparents.

A new mayoral administration and a new City Council presents a tremendous opportunity to commit to a moral budget that protects the most vulnerable and elderly. New leaders must also accept the radical responsibility to truly address social determinants of health, such as food insecurity, affordable housing, and economic instability.

This past year has reminded us that there is nothing more important than our ability to stay healthy – our overall physical, emotional, and social wellbeing. Nothing can fix the social-emotional toll of partial or full isolation from friends and family, or of the loss of loved ones. We are collectively suffering from a trauma exacerbated by racial and economic inequality.

As Mahatma Gandhi famously said, “The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.” Now more than ever our city must commit to ensure a robust health-care infrastructure. So let’s support our seniors. Let’s restitch our social safety net and ensure we have the capacity to repair what is not yet broken. Let’s heal together.

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Douglas Shapiro is a candidate for New York City Council in Queens, Council District 29. Reva Singh is an undergraduate at Princeton University. On Twitter @Shapiro4NYC.

(photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously said. Nearly 53 years since his death, the causes for which he is most famously remembered – civil rights and social justice – remain just as urgent and relevant today. While it has long been true, this reality crystalized for many Americans over the past year as a result of high-profile police killings of unarmed Black men and women, including the brutal murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor. These events made it clear that there is an urgent need to address systemic racism in our society. An open, honest reckoning about racial justice must happen and we cannot make lasting progress without it. 

That is why the City of New York is taking action to invite difficult conversations among employees about race equity. The New York City Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) recently launched the Race Equity Initiative (REI), a model that offers a sustained focus on educating, engaging, assessing, and taking action. 

REI takes a multi-faceted approach to promoting race equity through: 

Inviting employees to participate in an employee-led learning series that features books, news articles, essays, podcasts, and other content focused on understanding race equity and its impact on all races. The learning series includes monthly selections that all employees are encouraged to discuss.

Offering unconscious bias training to all supervisors and managers across the department to ensure that agency leaders are aligned and cognizant of their actions, which inform workplace behaviors and decisions.

Hosting roundtable discussions to provide all employees with a safe space to engage in dialogue on an array of topics related to race equity, including but not limited to navigating racism in their personal and professional lives.

Enlisting outside facilitators to conduct voluntary and affinity-based focus groups so employees can share their experiences and thoughts on how DCAS and the city can further strengthen their commitment to race equity.

Collecting and analyzing data to identify opportunities to better support employees. 

Taken together, this vital work is already sparking discussion and fostering greater understanding among DCAS employees. The department seeks to encourage other city agencies to replicate or learn from this initiative, which was just introduced citywide at the NYC HR & EEO Our Common Ground– A Transformative Workplace conference from March 1 through March 5.

As the most diverse city in America, New York City is unique in how it can serve as a leader for this important work. City government not only prides itself on the diversity of its workforce, but New York is a place where people of every background are inextricably linked and create what former Mayor David Dinkins called a “gorgeous mosaic.”

So much of what we must do goes back to a simple truth: it is easy to fear or distrust what you don’t know or don’t understand. Frank, honest conversations between people and candid sharing of truths should not be feared as a wedge to divide people, but as a strength in helping people understand one another and feel connected to one another. It is through openness and sharing that we can build understanding that invites empathy and builds stronger bonds. 

We also recognize that leadership requires accountability and delivering measurable results. That is why it was important for our team to take a deep dive in using data to understand current circumstances and to build a roadmap for the progress ahead. We will be analyzing data we collect throughout the initiative to inform next steps and policy decisions.   

Ensuring race equity in the city’s workforce is not only a moral and ethical imperative, but it is also a simple matter of good government. In a city with the richness and diversity of New York, our municipal government can best serve its constituents only when its workforce reflects the talents and diversity of all New Yorkers. 

We profoundly believe in the power of public sector leadership and innovation and the Race Equity Initiative is a manifestation of that belief. All too often people think of the private sector as being the hub of innovation in the workplace, but government has a platform to affect major change on both the macro and micro levels. The City of New York and our team at the Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) is committed to being bold in promoting race equity and we hope the work we are doing will inspire you to be champions of change to create a more equitable future. 

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Dawn Pinnock is the Executive Deputy Commissioner for People Operations and Risk Management and Belinda French is the Diversity & EEO Officer at the New York City Department of Citywide Administrative Services. On Twitter @NYCDCAS.