MyCity (photo: @nycgov)

When Bill de Blasio took office as Mayor in 2014, everyone knew government information technology agencies needed significant reform but didn’t know how exactly to do it. His predecessor, Mayor Bloomberg, was a venerated technology executive who had a hugely embarrassing software development fiasco called City Time happen under his watch. Barack Obama, the nation’s allegedly tech-savvy and youthful president, had a similarly high-profile failure with his HealthCare.gov website, which forced his Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to resign and almost doomed the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) before it got started. 

From the ashes of HealthCare.gov came, in 2014, a small and experimental unit within the Obama administration’s General Service Administration called 18F. It was organized and operated like an engineering-driven software startup within the government. Instead of signing lots of big contracts with proprietary software companies, 18F built common-sense tools using available open-source components, and posted its work to the code-sharing website Github so people could see the progress it made and reuse its code.

18F was, and continues to be, a massive success. By reliably delivering modern applications for dozens of federal agencies, its “digital service organizations (DSO)” model has been copied by national, state, and municipal governments throughout the United States and the world.  

While top leadership in the de Blasio administration didn’t seem to be paying much attention to this new model for reforming technology bureaucracy, a few intrepid New York City civil servants did. They followed the 18F model to organize their own small teams within existing city agencies, but outside the city’s innovation-averse technology bureaucracy. 

NYC Planning Labs within the Department of City Planning was a great example. It released a dozen tools, including popular products such as ZoLa and the Population Fact Finder.

NYC Opportunity was another. Operating within the Mayor’s Office of Economic Development, it delivered ACCESS NYC. Beyond offering access to “over 40 programs” and the ability to “apply directly for SNAP, Cash Assistance and Medicaid renewal” or “all 3 at the same time through the Cash Assistance application,” ACCESS NYC is also a masterclass in how a DSO-style team communicates about their product. They explain how it’s built, who it’s built by, and post links to Github repositories with code for its various components that would be helpful to future administrations who want to “leverage technology to improve the delivery of government services,”  as Mayor Adams claims his administration is now doing.

Despite the successes of NYC Planning Labs and NYC Opportunity, de Blasio and his chief technology officer, John Paul Farmer, failed to organize a city-wide DSO to pursue IT reform. They did, however, announce an intention to do just that in December 2021, with less than a month left in de Blasio’s eight-year tenure.

When Mayor Adams took over, he recentralized the city technology bureaucracy under the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunication (DOITT), which he rebranded as the Office of Technology and Innovation (OTI), and put Matthew Fraser, a former NYPD Chief Information Officer and Gartner consultant, in charge. Looking at Adams' rhetoric and Fraser’s background, I saw no indication that they cared at all about the now-decade-old IT reform best practices established by 18F and similar DSOs around the country and world.

As a candidate, Adams campaigned on his plan for “MyCity,” an app that would consolidate residents’ enrollment in and interactions with New York City government into a single, streamlined portal. Somehow Adams seemed to convince people this was a new idea even though cities around the world have delivered apps like this to their residents, and NYC Opportunity’s ACCESS NYC app and open source components were already delivering much of the complex functionality Adams seemed to be envisioning. 

This should have been great news for Adams. All he needed to do was to keep doing what was already working with ACCESS NYC, expand the scope of the app, rebrand it, and then market it with his unique flair as something new and exciting. It was a big fat pitch right down the middle of the plate. And he missed it. 

On March 30, Adams announced the release of the first version of MyCity, and it is a dud with many of the classic hallmarks of a failed IT project: it is late and expensive, has fewer features than promised, and is built with proprietary technologies the city doesn’t own by over a dozen outside contractors. Let’s dig deeper, shall we?

First, MyCity is built on the proprietary and expensive Salesforce Experience Cloud. This means that the city has to pay Salesforce a licensing fee for as long as the city uses the site. It also means the investment in customizing the site is lost if and when the city wants, inevitably, to move to an open source system like ACCESS NYC that it actually owns and completely controls.

Second, the site is remarkably shallow considering it took over a year and millions of dollars to build. MyCity’s home page offers four sections: Child Care, Business, Jobs and Benefits, but only the Child Care section links further into the MyCity app. The Business section links to a site run by the Office of Small Business Administration. The Jobs section links to working.nyc.gov. The Benefits section links to ACCESS NYC at access.nyc.gov. 

MyCity’s Child Care section has an eligibility screener that, after answering a few questions, directs the user to one of the two applications that MyCity apparently hosts. Before you access the applications, you are ejected to the NYC.ID login/registration flow. Presumably after that the magic happens where you access an online form wizard.

So, in summation, MyCity is, in its initial phase, a Salesforce-powered app with a short screener form, two benefits applications linked to a user’s NYC.ID, and a portal where a user can see the status of these two applications and any documents they’ve uploaded. How much did this cost the city?

Search Keyword: “MyCity” in the city’s recently released public view of Passport contracts. It shows over $6,750,000 awarded over 32 contracts to 15 different vendors, with $3,400,000 spent already.

Who are these vendors that the Adams administration thinks can do better than ACCESS NYC? I think that’s a great question worth investigating more. But the big winner here is clearly Innovative Business Concepts, Inc. It won seven contracts worth over $2.7 million, all of which were under the $500,000 threshold for small purchases, with two of those contracts starting, ending, and registered on the same day, each for $498,960. One is for “MyCity Portal - Development” and the other is for “MyCity Portal - Design.” (According to OTI, though the contracts are listed as Minority/Women-owned Business Enterprise non-competitive small purchase contracts, there was a competitive bidding process that involved multiple M/WBEs).

The Innovative Business Concepts website doesn’t have much information but does have a truly classic design and LinkedIn shows that it recently hired a former Assistant Deputy Commissioner of the NYC Department of Social Services and Human Resources Administration.

I’m not trying to suggest there is something out of the ordinary going on here. In fact, I’m suggesting the opposite: that MyCity is being executed the same, broken way that a myriad of other city IT projects have been executed. 

If Mayor Adams wants to deliver the technology improvements he promised as a candidate, he needs to reorganize his technology bureaucracy to follow open source DSO principles.

***
Devin Balkind is a nonprofit executive, civic technologist, and startup advisor who ran for Public Advocate three times as the Libertarian Party nominee. On Twitter @DevinBalkind.

Note - This article has been corrected to note that the contracts awarded to Innovative Business Concepts, Inc. went through a competitive bidding process involving multiple Minority/Women-owned Business Enterprises (M/WBEs). The contracts were not non-competitive as initially noted. 

In Harlem (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)

As a New York State Senator serving Harlem and an Executive Director of a Harlem community organizing group, we have witnessed the rapid transformation of our neighborhood over the past several years and the wave of gentrification that has accompanied it. 

For a century, Harlem has been a refuge for working-class Black families and other families of color. But today, those families are getting pushed out by rising costs — and not just out of the neighborhood, but out of New York altogether. Over the past two decades, more than 200,000 Black New Yorkers have left New York City – a 9% drop – pushed out by the skyrocketing cost of living. 

New York’s diversity is its strength. In particular, Harlem's rich Black culture and numerous contributions to our nation and the world’s civil rights movement must be preserved. Black people have a median average income of $53,000 per year compared to $98,000 on average for white people. There has to be targeted income-based housing coupled with enhanced tenant protections in the upcoming state budget agreement in order to protect current residents and make it possible for working class Black people and future generations of Black families to stay in New York City. If we want to preserve Harlem as a safe harbor for working families, and not just a playground for the rich, we need help to protect renters in Harlem and across New York from even more displacement.

There is a solution. The state must pass ‘Good Cause Eviction’ to preserve the stability of the community. Right now, landlords of unregulated apartments in New York are able to evict tenants for any reason and raise the rent as high as they want. If a tenant complains about basic health concerns, like a lack of heat or pest infestations, a landlord can legally retaliate by refusing to renew their lease. Given that more than a third of rental units in Harlem are unregulated, the lack of protections has a huge impact. Residents in these units have no protections against corporate landlords trying to squeeze profits from renters.

Good cause eviction protections, currently being considered by the State Legislature in negotiations with Governor Hochul, would provide important safeguards for tenants against arbitrary or retaliatory evictions. Put simply, the law would require landlords to have a valid reason to evict them, and give tenants the power to take landlords to court if they suspect they’re being kicked out for unjust or retaliatory reasons.

And the bill limits exorbitant rent hikes by capping rent increases at the end of a lease to 3% or 150% of the Consumer Price Index, whichever is higher. 

Good Cause would give tenants greater security and peace of mind in their homes, knowing that so long as they are lease-abiding, rent-paying tenants, their leases will be renewed. And it would be particularly valuable for Black women, who are evicted at twice the rate of white tenants. 

The lack of tenant protections has caused tremendous hardship for low-income renters in Harlem. Too many residents cannot afford rent increases and find themselves in shelters or on the streets. And not only do evictions take a toll on renters themselves, but they reverberate across the entire neighborhood. Research shows that evictions increase crime rates, hurt public health, and make it harder for children to succeed in school. 

And, Good Cause could be good for small landlords, especially homeowners of color, who are increasingly getting squeezed out of the market by corporate landlords and big investors. Today,  89% of all rental units in New York City are owned by corporations, and the average apartment in New York City is owned by a landlord with 900 units – not a mom-and-pop building owner. The law would dissuade corporate real estate profiteers from slapping tenants with outrageous rent increases like many people have seen in the past two years. In January, rents in Manhattan hit an all-time high, with median rent spiking 15% in a single year.

As people who know and love our community and our city, we want to protect Harlem renters – and all New York tenants – more than anything. While new growth and development is an essential part of any city, we must ensure that it doesn’t take an undue toll on existing residents or decimate the character of entire neighborhoods. To maintain the vibrancy of our city and make sure New York remains a place where people from all walks of life can live, we must pass Good Cause this year. 

***
Senator Cordell Cleare was raised in Harlem and currently represents the 30th District of the New York State Senate. Juanita O. Lewis is the Executive Director of Community Voices Heard, a statewide, grassroots organizing nonprofit based in Harlem. On Twitter @SenatorCCleare & @CVHAction.

Construction workers need protection (photo: Ed Reed/Mayor's Office)

There’s a crime wave affecting hard-working New Yorkers that you won’t hear about on cable news. Construction contractors are using underhanded schemes, shell companies, shady bank accounts, and check-cashing stores to avoid paying employees the full pay they have earned. In New York, that adds up to $1 billion in wages lost every year, impacting tens of thousands of workers. 

As Americans finish filing their income taxes this week, consider that tax fraud in the construction industry adds up to more than $8.4 billion every year in lost federal and state tax revenue. Funds that should be going to fund police and emergency services, build schools, or help veterans are instead lining the pockets of wealthy developers who refuse to play by the rules.  

Getting cheated out of wages is an all-too-common experience for construction workers, and with 528,000 New Yorkers employed by the construction industry – about 1 in 18 workers statewide –  this is an issue that hits close to home for thousands of families in the Empire State. 

Law enforcement officials across New York are stepping up to fight this crime wave, but more needs to be done in Albany to strengthen existing laws. 

At the state level, the Construction Wage Theft Task Force is a coordinated effort among the NYS Department of Labor (NYSDOL), the New York State Attorney General, and local District Attorneys to combat corruption and crime within the construction industry. Due in part to the efforts of this task force, the NYSDOL has recovered more than $360 million in stolen wages over the past decade. 

At the county level, aggressive district attorneys are also cracking down on wage theft. During his tenure as president of the District Attorneys Association of New York, Orange County District Attorney David Hoovler made fighting tax fraud a top priority. Just a few weeks ago, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced his office’s first-ever Worker Protection Unit to investigate and prosecute wage theft. That new unit builds on the success of his predecessor’s Construction Fraud Task Force.

In Albany, there is a renewed push to toughen penalties for stolen wages. A bill introduced by Senator Neil Breslin and Assemblymember Catalina Cruz would amend the penal law in relation to wage theft. This legislation would enable prosecutors to charge larceny for stolen wages, which is a much more serious felony charge than a typical “scheme to defraud” that might be charged today. 

It makes sense – why should a rich contractor get off easier than a petty thief if they both end up stealing a day’s wages from a construction worker?

We hear a lot lately about rising crime, but wage theft is one that stays under the radar. The offenders rely on their victims to stay silent, threatening future employment opportunities and using their power and influence to evade accountability. That’s coming to end, because more and more people understand that workers aren’t the only ones being cheated. Stopping wage theft is good for business, it’s good for blue collar workers, and it’s good for New York’s economy.

*** 
Bill Banfield is Assistant to the Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the North Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters (NASRCC), the union representing more than 30,000 men and women employed by the leading residential and commercial general contractors and carpentry subcontractors in the region.

A health care push (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)

Recent estimates suggest that there are approximately 245,000 New Yorkers — our friends, caregivers, laborers, and neighbors who do not have health insurance simply because they do not have a qualifying immigration status. With the three-year mark of the first known COVID-19 case in New York in our rear view, we now know all too well the importance of a strong healthcare delivery system, investments in public and population health, and access to healthcare. 

Because of federal restrictions, individuals without qualifying immigration status are ineligible for insurance coverage options that are federally funded, locking them out of primary and preventive care. New York State currently provides state-funded coverage for income-eligible children and pregnant individuals regardless of immigration status. Further, New York State provides Medicaid and CHIP coverage for qualifying immigrant children and pregnant people. Now New York State could expand      coverage to all low-income people regardless of immigration status.

Currently, the Governor and leaders of the State Senate and Assembly are negotiating the next state budget. The Legislature, in their one-house budget resolutions, modified the Executive's proposal to expand the Essential Plan through a 1332 State Innovation Program waiver, which could secure federal funding to expand eligibility to all New York residents including immigrants currently not eligible for the Essential Plan. Coverage expansion is critical because we know that insurance impacts how individuals access needed care. Disease that might be preventable becomes chronic because of delays in accessing care. And these delays result in more costly and often complex treatments and lead to worse health outcomes. 

Immigrants are part of the bedrock of New York State from Buffalo to Brooklyn, Rochester to Rockland, Staten Island to Syracuse, Potsdam to Poughkeepsie. 

The expansion of the Essential Plan will also lead to savings for New York State. Currently, individuals who are undocumented can access costly emergency Medicaid, but with this Essential Plan expansion, we are investing in the care for these individuals and investing in the entire healthcare delivery system. Today, the costs related to uncompensated care places a burden on our safety net hospitals and community clinics that are a critical component of the healthcare delivery system in New York. 

We all have a responsibility to reduce access and enrollment barriers including language access, education on the American medical system, and addressing legitimate fears to ensure that this population has access to the affordable, high-quality healthcare they deserve.

Our health depends on it. 

***
Dr. Ashwin Vasan is New York City health commissioner. Murad Awawdeh is Executive Director of New York Immigration Coalition. Dr. Talya Schwartz is President and CEO MetroPlusHealth.

Gov. Hochul talks climate (photo: Governor's Office)

New York is poised to ban fossil fuels in new buildings statewide. A politically popular priority of New York’s grassroots climate movement, the law would be the first of its kind in the country. With the Governor, Senate, and Assembly on board, they can make it happen in the state budget that will be finalized any day now.  

The key question that remains: how fast will they move to ban fossil fuels in new construction?

It is imperative that New York ban fossil fuels in new buildings starting in 2025, with no delays and no loopholes. New York City, Ithaca, and Beacon already have bold gas bans on the books that go into effect in 2024. The more lawmakers delay, the more fossil fuel profiteers lock their dirty fuels into New York’s energy mix, harming public health, deepening environmental injustice, and worsening the climate crisis. 

Cleaning up building pollution also means stopping the projects meant to deliver more gas. One major fracked gas pipeline expansion will be decided this month — it must be stopped. The Iroquois Pipeline Company has a proposal before the state to substantially increase the amount of fracked gas moved through the 37-year-old pipeline that runs from the Canadian border to New York City and Long Island. To make it happen, the company has proposed doubling the size of four toxic compressor stations in the Hudson Valley and Connecticut

In addition to increasing climate pollution, the Iroquois gas expansion threatens public health. Compressor stations are toxic, noisy equipment linked to serious health risks. A Food & Water Watch analysis found that compressor stations emit ozone and smog-forming particulate matter linked to asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, low birth weights, and certain cancers. What’s more, homes near compressor stations report noise levels far exceeding guidelines from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), with negative implications for quality of life and health, including sleep deprivation.

Iroquois’ gas expansion proposal is environmentally unjust. The compressor stations proposed for expansion are located in Athens and Dover, communities that already shoulder more than their fair share of fossil fuel infrastructure. Dover residents already live in the shadow of the massive Cricket Valley fracked gas power plant; next door, the Athens Generating Plant, which also runs on fracked gas, looms over homes and schools. It’s a sadly common story, where the same communities are required over and over again to bear an ever increasing burden of pollution. At a time when we need to be moving off fossil fuels as quickly as possible, we can’t keep dumping more pollution on these communities.

The Iroquois gas expansion would also undermine our state’s climate goals. By 2030, New York must reduce economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions 40% – 85% by 2050. These targets are ambitious, but they are also achievable – unless we continue to allow new fossil fuel infrastructure in New York. To date, Governor Hochul has rejected several fracked gas power plants, but greatly expanding an existing pipeline’s capacity, with all the attendant increases in greenhouse gas emissions, is just as destructive to a livable future as building one from scratch.

Last but not least, Iroquois’ gas expansion proposal is profoundly unnecessary. New York City is making bold strides off fossil fuels, from Local Law 97 to the new construction gas ban. As of next year, buildings — our largest polluters — will be getting off gas. Iroquois’ proposal flies in the face of our local laws. Even the EPA has weighed in, writing that the Iroquois pipeline expansion proposal is unnecessary and out of alignment with state and federal climate policies.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released last month was clear: fossil fuels have got to go. It’s up to states like New York to lead the way in ending our reliance on destructive fuels like fracked gas. Governor Hochul and the Legislature must enact a prompt ban on fossil fuels in new buildings starting in 2025 in the state budget and reject the Iroquois Pipeline expansion.

*** 
Laura Shindell is a Senior New York Organizer with the national advocacy organization Food & Water Watch. She is based in Queens. On Twitter @LShindell & @foodandwater.

Seeking big numbers when it comes to investment in children (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)

The drumbeat of headlines suggesting youth-on-youth gun violence is skyrocketing in New York City and State may be attention-grabbing, but these headlines are profoundly misleading. New Yorkers are right to be concerned about safety in their communities. However, reverting to failed, punitive policies of the past is not the answer. 

Gun violence is real, and children are far more likely to be a victim of gun violence than the perpetrator. For example, in 2021 in New York City (the last year with full-year data available), of 2,011 shooting incidents on record, 95 incidents were perpetrated by a minor. Only 28 of those shooting incidents met the description of a minor perpetrator harming a minor victim; while in 156 of all incidents a minor was the victim.

While similar gun violence data is not available for all of New York State, state level data does illustrate declining youth crime in New York City and State. Youth arrests have fallen by 80% over the last decade and arrests for major (index) crimes are similarly down 79%.

When youth under 18 years of age engage in shootings and other serious crimes, under New York’s Raise the Age law, they are held accountable. All 16- and 17-year-olds charged with felonies are arraigned in the Youth part of adult Criminal Court. If they are charged with a shooting or even displaying a deadly weapon, or of causing significant physical injury, the case stays in adult court, where adult sentencing applies.

Cases that begin in or are removed to Family Court can result in detention, individual and family-based counseling, intensive case management, and access to educational and mentoring supports, as well as short- and longer-term court-ordered residential placement. Characterizing Raise the Age as diminishing accountability is wrong. 

Advancing policies and budgetary commitments that improve community safety and child and family well-being should always be paramount. Shamefully, misguided calls to criminalize children and youth not only ignore the facts on Raise the Age, but they also distract from other sobering statistics that should have every New Yorker and elected representative pressing for urgent and immediate action. 

There are more than 4 million children in New York State and over 700,000 of them live in poverty; more than 114,000 are homeless. More than 800,000 households with children in New York report not having enough food to eat. The state’s subsidized child care system reaches less than 10% of eligible children. And while there is little public data on the behavioral health status of all children, 20% of female and 17% of male students in New York report having considered suicide in the most recent Youth Risk Behavior Survey. Suicide is now the second leading cause of death for children and youth 10 to 24 years of age. These issues demand attention.

Child poverty, homelessness, hunger, and the behavioral health crisis should be the statistics making headlines, and state leaders must ask themselves: what am I prepared to do to address these pressing needs? 

New York’s children and families deserve a state budget that makes meaningful investments in them - lifting incomes by raising the minimum wage and implementing tax reforms for and expanding child care to low-income households; addressing hunger by funding universal school meals; stabilizing housing and combating homelessness by supporting a statewide Housing Access Voucher Program; improving young child development and family stability by investing in early intervention and child welfare prevention; and addressing the child and adolescent behavioral health crisis by investing heavily in community-based clinical services.

The state budget must also do more than simply appropriate Raise the Age resources but must ensure all counties, including New York City, and community-based youth programs within them, access the funds. 

Prioritizing these investments as Fiscal Year 2024 state budget negotiations are finalized is the surest path to safety, recovery, and well-being for all New Yorkers. 

***
Jennifer March is Executive Director of Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York. On Twitter @JenMarchCCC & @CCCNewYork.

Senator Monica Martinez, the author, speaks with students

As an educator and former school administrator responsible for the health, safety, and well-being of children, I can attest there is no greater fear than your students and faculty being in danger. 

As school shootings and violent threats continue to spike across the nation, school districts are confronted with the unavoidable question of how to best reduce, prevent, and respond to emergency situations, particularly those involving active shooters. Having worked in the Brentwood School District for 14 years, I am fortunate to have never experienced such a tragedy, but many cannot say the same. 

Preventative measures have largely spanned the implementation of door locks, metal detectors, surveillance, security guards, active shooter drills, and anonymous reporting tools. The inclusion of school security guards specialized in an academic environment and updated technological response systems within our communities may aid in strengthening schools’ response to emergency situations.

Student mental health programs are vital for supporting the long-term health and well-being of our youth. It is important to emphasize each school district and region has varying demographics with unique student needs; there is no one-size-fits-all model for safeguarding our students against acts of violence in school.  

Recent school shootings and threats have exposed vulnerabilities and deficiencies in response systems. In New York State, our emergency response services are operating on outdated technology. There is modernized technology known as Next Generation 911 (NG911) that enables faster response times, improved communication, increased accessibility for disabled individuals, enhanced location accuracy, and effective coordination among multiple emergency response agencies. This could make all the difference in life threatening situations where communication is critical and seconds matter. We should remain open to exploring all viable options. 

The role of security guards in schools has undeniably changed. It is imperative school security guards receive school-specific training in youth mediation and conflict resolution, de-escalation, and the dynamics of student behavior. This will ensure they are equipped with the tools, skills, and knowledge necessary to serve our students in the most effective way.

Student mental health and well-being should not be an afterthought. Students are often in a school environment for over 40 hours per week. We would be doing them a disservice if we did not recognize and act on the need for supportive resources to empower and guide our youth through any mental, social, and behavioral challenges. Social and emotional learning must be incorporated into school curricula to help students develop important skills like stress management, resiliency, and empathy. As educators and community leaders, we must build a safe environment and a culture of acceptance within our schools.  

At the end of the day, schools are a place for learning, growth, and development. Our students should be expanding their minds in class and excited about upcoming school events, not fearful of school shootings or any other type of violence. Together, we must raise awareness and implement holistic school safety measures to fully support our school districts, students, parents, staff, and communities statewide.  

***
State Senator Monica R. Martinez represents the 4th district, on Long Island. On Twitter @NYSSenatorMRM.

(photo: Kevin P. Coughlin/Office of Governor Kathy Hochul)

This month, the New York State Legislature has the chance to pass a state budget that will have a profoundly positive impact for thousands of students in New York City.  

In February, Governor Kathy Hochul proposed lifting the regional cap on charter schools in New York City, and reviving “zombie” charters – a proposal that would finally allow more public charter schools to open their doors. The proposal would mean two things: more good schools in the communities that need them most and giving more parents a choice of where to send their kids to school.  

The Governor isn’t alone in this fight – charters are supported by a vast majority of New York City families, and Mayor Eric Adams has been clear in his support for public charter schools. In fact, a new StudentsFirstNY poll was just released that shows just how popular charter schools are in New York City — 78% of Black voters and 81% of Latino voters believe charters can play a positive role in our school system; nearly two-thirds of New York City voters – including two-thirds of Black voters and more than three-quarters of Latino voters – want the charter cap lifted; and two-thirds of Latino voters are more likely to support candidates if they support charter schools. 

I stood shoulder to shoulder with the thousands of families who have rallied with legislators for months to ask that organizations like Latinas on the Verge of Excellence (L.O.V.E.) and East Side House Settlement expand their work to lift up students. For that to happen, we need the legislative leaders in Albany to honor their constituents’ wishes and ensure that the Governor’s proposal is included in this year’s final budget. We simply can’t afford to leave this solution off the table when it has the potential to make a real difference for students – especially the thousands of students from Latino and Black communities who have been left behind by the education system. 

When I immigrated to New York City from Colombia, I saw the disparities faced by Latina students firsthand. I worked hard. I put myself through college by working as a personal trainer, and was able to succeed, launching my own nonprofit – L.O.V.E. – to support, mentor, and empower young Latinas to succeed in school.  

Over the past decade, L.O.V.E. has served over 2,500 students across 30 different public schools in New York City, providing young Latinas and young women in general the mentorship, college and career counseling, and targeted support they need to promote their educational, physical, and mental well-being. When schools quickly pivoted to go online during the height of the pandemic, so did we. Our program became a safe-haven for young women who felt like they had nowhere to turn to share their struggles, feel valued, and receive the social-emotional and academic supports they need to grow and thrive.    

Today, we’re working to scale the success of the L.O.V.E program and open a brand-new school that provides individualized learning, wellness support, a college preparatory curriculum, and a plethora of extracurricular activities to prepare young women to succeed in their academic and personal lives.  

We need to scale excellence where we see it – and today, we’re seeing it in public charter schools, where Latino and Black students continue to close the proficiency gap in both math and English, and where enrollment has grown despite the downturn in district school enrollment. We should be expanding these schools, not stunting their growth. Albany revived 22 New York charters in 2015, and they can do it again. 

These are ideals that all New Yorkers can get behind. The only thing standing in the way is the charter cap, and because of it, innovative schools like L.O.V.E. may never be able to open their doors.  

The state budget and legislative session in Albany isn’t just a selection of bills and dollar figures – it’s a reflection on our values as New Yorkers. So, the question is, what do lawmakers value more, the status quo or our students and families?  

Now more than ever, we need to ensure that as we continue to recover from the pandemic together, we do so equitably and in a way that addresses the inequities that marginalized populations in New York City face every day. That starts with improving education, and improving education starts with lifting the charter cap.  

***
Claudia Espinosa is Founder of Latinas on the Verge of Excellence (L.O.V.E.). On Twitter @LOVEmentoring.

Affordable housing on the docket (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)

The great strength of New York is our diversity. Strangers from all walks of life share the subway, the sidewalk, and the park. Of course, it’s not perfect: spiking inequality coupled with an acute housing affordability crisis has fostered disparities that have been exacerbated by the pandemic.  But very few large cities anywhere on the planet has our “gorgeous mosaic” of the well-off and the working class; the immigrant and the well-established; the young and the old; the cis- and fluid-gendered; Black, brown and white, all living, loving and striving in close proximity.   

To support this mix, New York is a national leader in inclusionary housing. The inclusionary model is where subsidized apartments are distributed within privately developed residential buildings.  Inclusionary projects typically set aside approximately 25%-30% of their apartments for various tiers of lower- and moderate- income residents in exchange for financial and other regulatory incentives. According to New York University’s Furman Center, nearly 70% of rental housing built over the past decade used a tax abatement, producing about 20% of all new affordable housing units. 

Last June, Albany let the current subsidy program (the alluringly named 421-a) lapse. The predictable frenzy to get projects in the ground prior to the incentive’s sunset has been followed by an equally predictable dearth of new project starts. The obstruction of the housing pipeline comes at a particularly unfortunate moment of spiking housing costs: just when we really need more housing production, almost none are being planned. Inaction, no doubt politically convenient, has truly let us all down.  

As the budget season in Albany hits fever pitch, one hopes for a healthy examination of the program’s costs, effectiveness, and areas for improvement. However, it’s important to remember inclusionary housing’s ample benefits to avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater. 

The program works for the population it is designed to serve. Lower- and moderate-income New Yorkers have access to the same community, transportation, and civic infrastructure as their wealthier neighbors. Critically, residents are not warehoused in under-maintained, under-served, and under-supported housing campuses. 

The program takes the pressure off brown and Black communities to shoulder development. The mayor and governor have rightly called for desperately needed new housing to be equitably distributed. Wealthier, whiter neighborhoods have the bulwark of Landmarks, land use controls and lawyers that stifle development and increase socio-economic disparities. Inclusionary housing is a tool that can be effectively executed, using the higher values found in wealthier neighborhoods to cross-subsidize affordable production. According to the Furman Center’s comprehensive analysis of housing production from 2010-2020, while “most of the affordable units were built in poor neighborhoods populated by people of color. The 421-a property tax break for rental housing …was the one program that brought diversity to whiter and wealthier areas.”

The program maintains affordable housing. Owners and managers have the built-in incentive to maintain their properties to continue to compete in the rental marketplace. 

The program is good for the local economy. Much ink has been spilled about how 421-a “lines the pockets of fat cat developers” and other hyperbole. It is worth noting that the design, construction, financing, and maintenance of new housing creates good-paying jobs for many New Yorkers from architects and engineers to electricians and concrete workers, to brokers and appraisers, to doormen and porters. 

A full half of the 800,000 new homes in Governor Hochul’s housing plan rely on some form of revised 421-a program. As lawmakers seek strategies to address the housing crisis, they should look to the successes of 421-a in building a more equitable city.

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Dan Kaplan, FAIA, LEED AP, is a Senior Partner at FXCollaborative, a leading architecture firm in New York committed to building a better world through equitable and sustainable design.

State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal (photo: @bradhoylman)

For decades, Big Tobacco companies like R.J. Reynolds have insidiously pushed menthol cigarettes onto our most vulnerable communities, perhaps most infamously with Black Americans. Menthol cigarettes are mint-flavored and highly addictive because they soothe the throat and mask the harshness of regular cigarettes. As a result of tenacious advertising and marketing campaigns, today 85% of all Black smokers smoke menthols compared to just 29% of whites. 

What is less known, however, is that in the 1990s Big Tobacco companies began targeting queer communities with menthol-flavored products as well. On the heels of the AIDS epidemic that took the lives of a hundred thousand LGBTQ+ men, Big Tobacco sought to take advantage of the emerging LGBTQ+ market and started directly marketing towards the communities. Masquerading as allies, Big Tobacco companies  advertised at pride festivals and other LGBTQ+ community events and even contributed financially to local and national LGBTQ+ and HIV/AIDS organizations. Internally, R.J. Reynolds’ marketing campaign was called “Project SCUM” (Sub-Culture Urban Marketing), showing us how they really feel about the queer people they’re profiting from.

As with communities of color, Big Tobacco’s advertising machine paid off. Smoking rates are generally higher in the LGBTQ+ communities: 1 in 6 LGBTQ+ adults smoke cigarettes, compared to about 1 in 8 non-LGBTQ+ adults. Even more worrisome are the smoking rates among LGBTQ+ youth. In 2021, 17.4% of LGBTQ high school students used tobacco products, compared with just 11.4% of their cis-heterosexual peers. 

Menthol-flavored products are more prevalent in our communities as well: 36 percent of LGBTQ+ smokers report smoking menthol cigarettes, compared to 29 percent of non-LGBTQ+ smokers. Much of this data comes from the 2009-2010 National Adult Tobacco Survey, the last major effort to research LGTBQ+ tobacco use. Many health experts theorize that the numbers may be even higher since many people may not have been out at the time. 

Big Tobacco is using the same playbook to kill LGBTQ+ folks as they have done for decades with the Black and Latino communities. By banning menthol-flavored products in New York State, as proposed in Governor Hocul’s executive budget and our bill S2441/A3907, we’d go a long way to stopping thousands of people from smoking and thousands more from even picking up the habit in the first place. 

Big Tobacco, of course, isn’t going down easy – while profiting off the harm of communities of color and LGBTQ+ communities, both groups with a difficult history with policing, they’ve spread misinformation about local law enforcement’s role in enforcing the proposed menthol ban. 

Let’s be clear: our bill explicitly prohibits the NYPD or any local law enforcement agency to make arrests for unregulated individual purchase, use, or possession of any kind of cigarette – just as they do now with flavored e-cigarettes. To avoid adding police presence to already overpoliced communities, we will only pass a bill that makes the lack of law enforcement crystal clear. Big Tobacco’s most recent misinformation campaign that says otherwise is just one more example of how low they will stoop to keep their profits up. 

In the last century, the government callously ignored a major health crisis in queer communities by turning a blind eye to the AIDS epidemic. But today, while 13,000 Americans die from AIDS each year, more than 700,000 die from smoking-related deaths. We must end this needless suffering. It’s time to ban menthol and protect thousands of LGBTQ+ New Yorkers from the greed of predatory tobacco companies. 

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Dr. Scout is the Executive Director of the National LGBT Cancer Network and the principal investigator of both the CDC-funded LGBTQ tobacco-related cancer disparity network and Out: The National Cancer Survey. Brad Hoylman-Sigal is a Democratic State Senator from Manhattan. On Twitter @scoutout & @cancerLGBT & @bradhoylman.