Adult literacy programming (photo: John McCarten/City Council)
People from across the world come to New York City to build a new life, bringing with them their customs, cultures, and traditions. Our newest neighbors also bring with them their own languages, contributing to the wonderful diversity of our city, but also presenting a unique set of challenges as families build their new lives.
Take my district in Flushing, which has more than 70,000 “limited English proficiency” Asian New Yorkers, roughly 70% of the total Asian population in the district. A recent report by the Asian American Federation found that two-thirds of Asian seniors need help translating English into one of 12 languages. This doesn’t only present barriers to accessing services, it isolates them in their homes and presents challenges economically, socially, and physically.
Whether you are applying for senior housing or trying to access health care, language barriers can create incredible obstacles for New Yorkers who have limited English proficiency. Before joining the City Council, I worked as an attorney with a nonprofit assisting victims of domestic violence. I saw firsthand how people’s inability to access services in their native language prevented them from getting the often life-saving help they desperately needed.
Frankly, as a city as diverse as ours, we don’t do enough to make sure that immigrants not only have access to translation services, but also to culturally-competent, full-time bilingual staff who can meet the needs of those with limited English proficiency (LEP).
Rather than hiring multilingual staff, many nonprofits and city agencies rely on a service called Language Line or some other outside translation service to assist when a language issue arises. While these outside parties can translate questions and relay answers, they can’t provide context, nor do they always possess the cultural sensitivity to handle issues that may require a deeper understanding of the nuances that exist in a community.
This often leaves LEP New Yorkers searching for someone to help interpret — a child, friend, neighbor, relative. As an immigrant, a child of immigrants, and an attorney in an immigrant community, I’ve seen how stressful it can be for immigrant kids who find themselves acting as interpreters for everything from legal cases to health issues.
Whether it’s an organization providing legal services or social services, nonprofits should be investing more resources to hire native, bilingual speakers as staff. Not only will these staff have linguistic competence, but they will have the institutional knowledge and cultural literacy to handle complex issues with sensitivity.
As I have met with nonprofits to discuss budget designations, I have been struck by the number of them who tell me that they only offer services in one or two other languages, or who believe that Language Line is a replacement for multilingual service providers.
When larger, citywide nonprofits are faced with a language issue, they often rely on smaller, community-based organizations for assistance because those groups do have the language capabilities. In my district, that includes groups like Asian-Americans for Equality, Korean Community Services of Metropolitan New York, Chinese American Planning Council, Garden of Hope, KAFSC, Charles B. Wang Health Center, SACSS, Minkwon, and more.
While larger nonprofits receive a far greater share of funding because of their more established presence in the nonprofit and government worlds, they rely on these smaller organizations to fill gaps in their own services. To provide true equity for our immigrant community, we need to increase funding for the local community-based organizations (CBOs) that are providing linguistic and cultural support to immigrant communities.
Finding, hiring, and employing qualified bilingual staff can be an expensive proposition, and it’s incumbent on city government to help support our community-based nonprofits to meet the needs of constituents. As budget negotiations continue, it’s important to recognize that a lack of multilingual services in an organization essentially means that immigrant New Yorkers have no access to that service. Increasing the amount of money flowing to CBOs in immigrant communities isn’t optional if we want to ensure access to services for all New Yorkers, and the city budget should reflect the diversity of our communities.
In order to increase access to services in a targeted and immediately effective way, New York City should create a new initiative that allocates funds to districts based on the LEP population of that district. This would allow City Council members to allocate more funds to the smaller nonprofits that are providing on-the-ground services in our districts and handling the referrals from larger organizations that lack language capabilities.
In my community and in many others across New York City, the lack of multilingual and culturally-competent services is the equivalent to not providing a service at all. Only when every New Yorker has equitable access to the services and resources they need to succeed will we have a city that truly embraces its heritage as a city of immigrants.
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City Council Member Sandra Ung represents City Council District 20 in Queens, which includes Flushing, Murray Hill, Mitchell-Linden, Queensboro Hill and Fresh Meadows. On Twitter @CMSandraUng.
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An empty Belmont
The twice-bankrupt New York Racing Association (NYRA) is back at the State Capitol, cup in hand, asking the state to back $450 million in bonds to rebuild Belmont Park’s perfectly suitable and usually empty racetrack. The bonds would be in addition to the millions of dollars the state already provides to the industry through subsidies and tax exemptions. Considering the ongoing financial problems, coupled with diminishing interest and economic development as a result, it would be fiscally irresponsible for the state to back the bonds.
As NYRA seeks this three-decade bonding authority, it remains surprisingly light on the specific details necessary for legislators and taxpayers to evaluate the appropriateness of the spending. This is especially noteworthy following a damaging report authored by Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, a few short weeks ago, highlighting NYRA’s lavish and wasteful spending, inadequate oversight, and violations of the state’s competitive bidding and purchasing rules.
But that’s hardly unique for NYRA. Despite decades of scandals, bankruptcies, and financial mismanagement, the state has continued to prop up the failing association, directing more than $130 million annually in support payments – a portion of which NYRA plans to use to pay back the debt services on the state-backed bonds.
We are the sponsors of legislation (A8468A/S8485) that would take the revenue generated from video lottery terminals at racetracks and invest it in statewide education and economic development. NYRA cites its 2008 franchise agreement (set to expire in 10 years) as the basis for continuing the payments.
However, the state subsidies are in direct conflict with the constitutional mandate requiring that betting on horse-racing “provide a reasonable revenue in support of the government.” The pari-mutuel tax on betting remitted to the state does not even cover the state’s cost to regulate the sport. And, since the inception of the franchise agreement, NYRA has never once paid its franchise fees to the state.
This is a losing bet for the State of New York.
Horse-racing is falling out of public favor due in large part to its history of worker exploitation and animal abuse. A 2021 Marist Poll found that more than 90% of New Yorkers have no intention to attend any racetracks in the future. According to New York records, Belmont’s attendance has fallen by 87% since the late ‘70s. And attendance has been declining even more at 10 of New York’s 11 tracks. Will horse-racing survive long enough to repay New York for the Belmont bonds?
NYRA proposes to dedicate money it receives from video lottery terminals - money that should be going to education - to pay back the debt service on the bonds. Not only does this reroute money the public should be accessing, but it will also create a de facto extension of NYRA’s expiring franchise agreement.
Using state subsidies to pay back state-backed debt does not pass the laugh test.
The public is growing tired of corporate subsidies that lack specific details beyond benefitting the ultra-wealthy, like the sales and use tax exemptions granted by the state for the purchase of race horses. (Assemblymember Rosenthal carried legislation with State Senator Salazar, (A7745/S7260) to eliminate these exemptions.) While corporate bailouts are at a high mark, the public is demanding, and is entitled to, greater transparency.
There should be greater disclosure regarding NYRA’s financials and the public benefit that this bonding authority would provide before the deal is permitted to move forward, if it does. A half-billion dollars could cover the rental arrears for nearly 70,000 NYCHA residents, with some left over. The state should not rush through a half-billion dollars of debt to support a dying industry in an end-of-year “big ugly” legislative deal. The public is entitled to a thorough airing of the facts at public hearings before committing this much money.
Preventing the Belmont bonds legislation is the first step in ending New York State’s long-standing corporate welfare to this failing industry. After 10 years of subsidies, NYRA is no closer to self-sufficiency. Enough is enough. It’s time to cut the cord.
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State Senator Robert Jackson and Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal represent parts of Manhattan. On Twitter @SenatorRJackson & @LindaBRosenthal.
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Housing in focus (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
State lawmakers clearly understand that New York faces an emergency-level housing crisis and have acted accordingly: adopting a five-year housing plan to invest $25 billion in affordable and supportive housing across the state. But the job is not over, there are several important housing bills under consideration that would help New York City fight the housing crisis.
In the final days of the state legislative session, Albany has a chance to help the city help itself by giving it new authority and without spending another dime this year.
Perhaps the most pressing housing issue in New York City is the living conditions at the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA). NYCHA public housing needs $40 billion in repairs and while there was optimism last summer that the president’s Build Back Better bill would provide needed funding, there is now little hope of the federal government coming to the rescue.
There are more than 535,000 New York residents living in 177,500 NYCHA apartments, and we cannot afford to lose a single unit without exacerbating our grave housing crisis. Fortunately, there is legislation in Albany that would give NYCHA new tools to raise capital, while leaving public housing in the hands of the public, where it belongs.
The proposed legislation would create a public trust to raise the additional funding and allow procurement capabilities that NYCHA doesn’t have for contracting repairs. Most importantly, the new plan puts tenants in the driver’s seat. The current bill allows tenants to vote on whether their properties are involved with the preservation trust. The unacceptable conditions residents live with every day should give extra resolve for lawmakers to approve the creation of a Public Housing Preservation Trust that unlocks new financing for NYCHA while preserving tenant protection and public control.
At the same time, the state can also give the city tools to improve, preserve, or convert affordable housing in the private market. There are several ways it can do so.
First, the state must allow New York City to modernize its housing programs for the 21st century by updating outdated lending authority. The proposed Affordability Plus legislation would allow the city to align their housing programs with market lending term periods and provide more flexibility on loan amounts and income requirements. This will help streamline many of the affordable housing finance programs. The legislation would also help to make affordable homeownership and community land trusts for housing possible. Currently, state law prevents the city from lending to the types of community ownership projects that many support in the city; outside of city-owned land.
The city can also add more affordable housing through legal and safe conversions. We now know that a good portion of the hotels that shuttered during the COVID-19 crisis are occupied by tourists again, but many are still in financial trouble. These properties can and should be converted into affordable units, which can be done far more quickly than building new construction and provide relief in a matter of months. But the conversion process is over-regulated and therefore cost-prohibitive. The state must amend the law to allow hotel conversions while retaining their existing Certificates of Occupancy.
Lastly, the state can help New York City take action on legalizing basements to improve safety and compliance in each borough. State legislative action will allow the city to fast-track solutions that have been stalled due to the complexities of the building and zoning codes. Following the devastating eleven drownings in basements during Hurricane Ida, there is renewed urgency to legalize basements that can be made safe and to enforce dangerous noncompliance.
These are common-sense solutions to complex problems, and they are uncontroversial: housing leaders in and out of City Hall agree that they would make a difference and are asking Albany to implement them. That means the only impediment is advancing these bills in Albany in the final days of legislative session. During a crisis of this magnitude, we need all hands on deck to solve a housing crisis and we have no time to waste.
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Rachel Fee is Executive Director of the New York Housing Conference. On Twitter @RachelFee4NY & @TheNYHC.
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The ExpressVote XL 'hybrid' (photo: ExpressVote XL)
New York needs to ban hybrid voting machines before they start being used, and the opportunity is here.
Using these hybrid machines — where voters both mark and cast their ballot — is not good for voters, will not help election administration, and run the risk that voters will lose faith that their votes are counted accurately.
There is a bill before the State Legislature (SS309B/A1115C) that needs to pass now — there is no time to lose, our current machines are already overdue for replacement and the NYCBOE (as well as other county BOEs throughout the state) are wanting to replace them with these hybrid machines. And the 2022 legislative session in Albany is scheduled to end this week.
Yes, we need to replace the ballot scanners we currently use. They were purchased in 2010 and are long past their reasonable lifespan. But we do not need to replace them with machines that will make the voting experience and elections worse, especially in New York City. At a time when our democracy feels very fragile, we cannot and should not spend tens of millions of dollars on machines that are less secure, will create longer lines for voters, and where voters will not feel confident their ballot is counted properly.
We need to prioritize the voter. Taxpayer funds should be spent on election equipment that makes elections better, not worse.
Hybrid voting machines like the ones being considered in New York are direct-recording ballot-marking devices and tabulators. This means voters never touch their ballots themselves. The voter uses a touchscreen to make their choices and the machine records their votes. The manufacturer says voters will have an opportunity to “review” their selections, but in reality, voters will look at a receipt-like display on the machine’s screen. This display will show the names of candidates the voter selected, but the machine bases its tabulation on the barcode printed next to the name. New Yorkers read hundreds of languages, but “barcode” isn’t one of them. This is a smoke and mirrors approach to a voter-verified paper audit trail, the gold standard in elections.
One of the biggest security flaws in hybrid voting machines is not hacking, but that we might not have the ability to determine voter intent to do a manual audit, which is required by state election law. The “ballots” from the hybrid machines are printed on thermal paper, which is not easily preserved. This type of paper needs to be preserved in ways that our current paper ballots are not - and it is still unclear how or if this can be done.
We don’t know if a race is within the manual recount margin until at least two weeks after Election Day, as absentee ballots, as long as they are postmarked by Election Day and received within 7 days after (plus takes a few days to verify the postmark and signature and we now have a process to allow voters to add a missing signature. It’s unclear if the hybrid machine “ballots” will be legible to be recounted after this amount of time.
Additionally, multiple people have to touch the ballot many times during the manual audit - to pick it up, to show it to observers, and put it back. We can’t be sure the thermal paper -- the only kind used by the machines under consideration by the New York City Board of Elections and other election boards, the ES&S ExpressVote XL -- can handle this. We need ballots that can stand up to repeated recounting so voters are assured the machines work as intended. The alternative creates a potential nightmare for democracy and a crushing blow to trust in our elections.
New York has complicated elections and bottlenecks do occur. Yes, a non-working scanner slows down the process, but non-working hybrid machines would grind the voting process to a complete halt. With these hybrid machines, voters will have to wait for an available machine to both complete their ballot and cast it. Bottlenecks also occur when 1) machines go down and require a technician to fix; 2) voters need a lot of time to vote; 3) it’s a peak voting time; and 4) there are elections with highly-contested races. Bottlenecks make time-starved voters especially frustrated and more likely to leave and never cast their vote at all. The hybrid voting machines could exacerbate these bottlenecks at each point.
Then there is the capacity of the hybrid voting machines, which will cause further delays for voters in high turnout elections. Our current ballot bins that receive the scanned ballots need to be swapped out every 2,500 ballot pages, a process that takes about 10 minutes (and the scanners rarely - if ever - get to that amount of ballots). In contrast, hybrid voting machines require the printer hopper to be replaced after every 250 votes. While the cartridge is being replaced, the machine is out of service, causing yet more delays to voters. Why would we want machines that are designed to go out of service at the exact time that they are being used the most?
The manufacturer’s response is to point to Philadelphia, which uses similar hybrid voting machines. But there’s no comparison when you look at the numbers. Philadelphia has 1.1 million registered voters across 1,703 divisions (the equivalent of New York City election districts). In the 2020 general election, about 749,000 people voted, about 50% of whom voted via Pennsylvania’s absentee/mail-in/early voting process, so only about 375,000 voters actually used the hybrid voting machines. Each machine on average serviced about 125 voters. Virtually no machine serviced more than 250 voters, which is the point at which the paper hopper would need to be swapped by an on-call technician, per Philadelphia procedure.
By contrast, Brooklyn alone has about 1.5 million registered voters, of whom about 920,000 voted in the 2020 general election on the scanners. Each of the current type of scanners served, on average, under 250 voters, but this is an average, so many of Brooklyn’s poll sites had scanners with MORE than 250 voters per machine. Remember those long lines during early voting? Wait times would have been even longer had hybrid voting machines been in use. The Philadelphia experience is not at all comparable to the NYC experience.
Hybrid voting machines are bad for voters, bad for the voting process itself, and bad for increasing trust in our elections. New York must ban these machines and actually work on making voting easier for all eligible voters.
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Judith Hertzberg, Jan Combopiano, Julie Kerr, and Erica Cohen are co-founders of Brooklyn Voters Alliance, an all-volunteer, non-partisan organization that works to protect and expand voting rights in New York State. On Twitter @BKVoters.
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Cleaning up at Rikers (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
The United States is the world’s largest jailor. As a result of our criminal justice system, we regularly put innocent people behind bars. Conservative estimates say 20,000 people are currently in jail or prison throughout the nation for crimes they did not commit.
Wrongful convictions can occur for many reasons: police and prosecutors fail to turn over exonerating evidence; police threaten and intimidate vulnerable people who falsely confess; eyewitnesses mistake innocent people for actual culprits; defense lawyers ineffectively represent innocent defendants; and, prosecutors prejudice juries with improper arguments.
We often hear the adage “it is better to allow 10 guilty people to go free than to convict one innocent person,” but DNA evidence and revelations of police and prosecutorial misconduct far too often reveal that is not a reflection of how our system of criminal justice actually works.
When our system convicts the innocent, it fails us all. The least lawmakers can do is ensure victims of flawed prosecutions, once exonerated, are justly compensated — even though no amount of money can get their lives back.
Take the case of David Bryant. He was 17 years old in 1975 when an eight-year-old girl in his neighborhood was raped and killed with a knife. The crime scene was a blood-soaked stairwell where an officer had seen David months earlier. On this basis alone, hours after the murder, David was roused from bed by police and taken in for questioning. Officers brutally interrogated David for 10 hours. All in the name of getting a confession, they knocked David to the floor several times, repeatedly screamed at him, and left him, a minor, alone and without food for the duration. Exhausted and starving, David finally told his interrogator what he wanted to hear. He confessed.
David was convicted at trial where the primary evidence was his “confession,” which he denied making voluntarily and was evidently made to simply end his inappropriate interrogation. The other evidence was manufactured by officers who intimidated other kids to provide false information about what David did the day of the murder. And, at trial, his lawyer never had his blood type compared with the blood type of the murderer.
After 43 years in prison for a crime he did not commit, David is finally free. New blood evidence exonerated him. After reading about David’s case in a newspaper in 2013, the only witness who at trial linked him to the young girl came forward to describe how cops had intimidated him to lie at David’s trial.
Shockingly, under New York’s unjust conviction statute, David cannot be monetarily compensated. It is overwhelmingly clear that David was innocent, railroaded into a confession, and falsely convicted at just 17 years of age. However, our current flawed law disqualifies David for compensation on the technical ground his lawyer provided deficient representation by not presenting the blood evidence which would have cleared him. Under the current law, this disqualifies him from compensation and is considered a “technical” basis for reversing his conviction.
The law also does not recognize situations where an innocent person has their conviction vacated because of the government’s failure to turn over evidence which favors the defendant.
This is wrong. Therefore, along with Assemblymember Dan Quart, I am proposing amendments to our unjust conviction statute that will fix this injustice by allowing for fair compensation whenever any exonerated person can prove by “clear and convincing evidence” that they are innocent.
This is the least we can do to redress wrongful conviction travesties is to ensure adequate financial compensation.
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State Senator Brad Hoylman represents parts of Manhattan. On Twitter @bradhoylman.
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Tenants in New York City (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
Tenants in New York are struggling. Rent prices are through the roof, rising more than 30% from last year. People are getting kicked out of their homes at rates we haven’t seen since before the pandemic.
Add to this the growing costs of inflation and a looming decision by the New York City Rent Guidelines Board to raise rents on stabilized apartments even higher, and you have the makings of a historic crisis for tenants across the board.
With just days left in the 2022 state legislative session, lawmakers in Albany must listen to the voices of tenants crying out for help by passing the Good Cause bill, which will give tenants the power to challenge outrageous rent hikes and unjust evictions.
With few protections in place for working families facing eviction, predatory landlords and private equity firms are using this moment to pad their bottom line. In New York, if you’re not in a rent-controlled or rent-stabilized apartment, your landlord can raise your rent as high as they want, whenever they want, and they can kick you out of your home for any reason, even as payback for raising safety concerns.
As a result, all across New York City, landlords that are essentially private equity firms in disguise have been jacking up rents as high as 100% when tenants go to renew their leases and evicting long-time tenants with virtually no notice, all to flip properties and make a profit.
Take the case of Irene Cepeda, a Make the Road New York member who has lived in the same apartment in Bushwick for 22 years and paid her rent on time every month. Irene is now facing a sudden rent hike of $1,200 per month, which amounts to the same thing as an eviction. Her kids are worried sick about the prospect of moving away from the neighborhood they grew up in.
Good Cause would protect tenants like Irene getting hit with sticker shock when they renew a lease. The legislation ties rent increases to the rate of inflation, requiring landlords to justify rent hikes greater than 3% or 150% of the Consumer Price Index. And if a landlord wanted to deny a lease renewal, they would need to be prepared to justify it in court.
Not only does Good Cause give tenants more power to fight outrageous rent hikes, but it also empowers tenants to demand repairs and speak out against harassment without fearing retaliation from their landlord. Such retaliation is all too common right now. Weeks ago, for example, New York Attorney General Letitia James sent a scathing memo calling out landlords for trying to crack down on tenants who have been organizing for safer conditions.
We’ve seen it in our own neighborhoods. Another Make the Road New York member, Grisel Pacheco, was forced to leave her apartment in Ridgewood after her landlord refused to repair a broken kitchen sink pipe. She and her three children needed to move to a new neighborhood, far from their schools and support network.
Evictions aren’t just harmful for those who lose their homes. They make it harder for children to succeed in school. They destroy support networks and communities. And they make our neighborhoods less safe. Good Cause isn’t just about protecting tenants - it’s about keeping our communities healthy and safe.
If you’re a landlord playing by the rules, you have nothing to fear from this bill. Good Cause wouldn’t stop landlords from taking action against tenants who are disruptive or who refuse to pay the rent, nor would it deny landlords the right to deny a lease renewal to occupy a unit themselves or have a family member move in.
What this bill would do is provide real relief to tenants who are facing unsustainable rent hikes and provide protections from abusive and predatory landlords. New York’s Congressional delegation and more than a dozen of the state’s largest labor unions support this bill. Multiple cities in New York, including Albany and Poughkeepsie, have passed their own version of Good Cause.
The pandemic has left working families in New York in survival mode for the past two years, on top of what was already an affordable housing crisis where so many were severely rent-burdened and one large rent increase away from losing their homes.
We have just days left in the state legislative session to make a difference for tenants and accelerate our recovery. We can rebuild our state and ensure that all New Yorkers can keep a safe roof over their heads without fear of harassment or eviction. It’s time to pass Good Cause.
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Julia Salazar is a State Senator representing the 18th district in Brooklyn. Jose Lopez is the Co-Executive Director of Make the Road New York. On Twitter: @JuliaCarmel_ & @JLopez_MRNY.
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A rally for the Clean Slate Act (photo: Emil Cohen/NYC Council Media Unit)
With the end of this year’s legislative session in Albany quickly approaching, we must seize the opportunity to pass critical reforms that will have a real impact on advancing racial and economic equity in our state. The Clean Slate Act holds the potential for meaningful progress in our fight for justice, directly impacting 2.3 million New Yorkers. The passage of this bill by the State Legislature will affirm New York’s principles and prioritization of equity, and it is past time for serious legislative action to afford fairness and dignity to all our residents.
Since 1922, FPWA has fought to achieve social and economic well-being for greater New York’s most vulnerable by advocating for just public policies and strengthening human service organizations. Each year, we reach approximately 1 million New Yorkers through our more than 170 member organizations.
Our centennial year marks an unprecedented moment in New York’s history; as we emerge from a public health and economic crisis, race-based inequities and the deepened needs of New Yorkers have been laid bare. FPWA is committed to advancing policies that will bring impactful and sustainable change, which is precisely why we strongly support and call for the immediate passage of the Clean Slate Act (S.1553C/A.6399B), sponsored by Assemblymember Catalina Cruz and Senator Zellnor Myrie.
Where individuals have have completed their sentences and have no new criminal convictions during the waiting period, the Clean Slate Act would automatically seal misdemeanor conviction records after three years and felony conviction records after seven years for all convictions except sex offenses. With this reform, criminal records will be sealed for civil purposes with some exceptions such as for gun licensing. To be eligible under Clean Slate, a person must have served their full sentence and cannot be on community supervision, including probation and parole.
It is simple: the Clean Slate Act would allow an eligible person who has served their time and paid their dues the opportunity to fully invest in their rehabilitation by giving them a fresh start; a clean slate. A clean slate that would remove known debilitating barriers to employment, housing, and education, and allow access to critical supports necessary for real mobility and opportunity.
This is not just a matter of economic justice. This is a matter of morality, of redemption, and of dignity. Even after serving their sentences and returning to their communities, too many with convictions live in a state of perpetual punishment that tears families apart and maintains a painful cycle of intergenerational trauma and economic insecurity.
The impact of this continued and additional punishment beyond sentences already served reverberates across children, families, and entire communities. Children that grow up in poverty are far more likely to remain living in poverty throughout their lives. By lifting the barriers to full participation, individuals can obtain the jobs and housing necessary to lift their households out of poverty. By design, our systems - including the legal system - criminalize poverty. Today, our brothers and sisters return to their communities to find themselves locked out of opportunity, locked out of the very essentials that we all need to live with dignity – a job, a secure roof over our heads, an education. How is this justice?
If we are committed to advancing equity and inclusion in New York, we must take steps to end the perpetual punishment of those who are justice-involved. Clean Slate offers the only path forward for New York. Clean Slate is an inclusive, common-sense bill that will have an immediate impact on the quality of life for New Yorkers in every corner of the state. It is an anti-poverty bill with broad-based support that will strengthen our state's economy.
At the heart of the Clean Slate movement are human beings — 2.3 million New Yorkers and their loved ones — suffering from the ongoing and often permanent bar against full participation in economic and civic life.
By helping to ensure that all New Yorkers can access stable employment and housing at a time when they are most needed, Clean Slate will revitalize our communities, which are safest when basic needs are met and individuals have the resources necessary to thrive.
As a state, we herald the principles of redemption and rehabilitation, but we are not allowing people to move beyond their past mistakes. Supporting Clean Slate simply does just that. Justice must not be delayed any longer for the 2.3 million New Yorkers held as prisoners by their convictions and subjugated to a lifetime of inequity.
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Raysa S. Rodriguez is Chief Program and Policy Officer, FPWA. On Twitter @FPWA.
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Housing (photo: Edwin J. Torres/ Mayor's Office)
No matter who you are, these past two years have been difficult for New Yorkers across the state. The COVID-19 pandemic was not only a health crisis where we lost tens of thousands of our loved ones, but also an affordability crisis. Too many of our neighbors lost jobs, routines, social connections, and more. Hundreds of thousands were thrown into economic instability, made even more difficult by circumstances that predated the pandemic: the housing crisis.
Everywhere you look, it’s painfully obvious that our city’s housing ecosystem is on the brink. At the same time as property values in some neighborhoods approach unheard of highs, tenants in other neighborhoods contend with stagnant wages and rent increases beyond their means. All around us, new luxury developments are springing up while efforts to increase the supply of truly affordable housing — housing that working families can afford to rent or own — fail to live up to their promise and costs.
In a city as large and resource-rich as ours, no individual or family should have to confront the painful reality of being unable to afford a home. No one should be unhoused. No one should be forced to lose their home because it becomes exorbitantly overpriced or without good cause or justification. Everyone should be entitled to a safe and healthy home that is within their means to afford.
Conversations and advocacy around the housing affordability crisis in our city and state typically focus on limiting rent increases, preventing evictions, and the imperative to build more truly affordable housing. And these conversations, while incredibly important, don’t address all of the factors that contribute to a wildly astronomical housing market and drive out working- and middle-class families from neighborhoods all across our city. Any long-term solution to our housing crisis that truly gets to the heart of affordability should also take into account rising property taxes, one of the chief reasons for rent increases and a lack of new affordable housing.
Property taxes are usually only thought of as a part of a homeowner’s affordability calculus but they play a significant role in contributing to the lack of affordable rental housing in New York City. We live in a delicate housing ecosystem where one person’s rent payment is another person’s income, which becomes a mortgage payment, an insurance payment, a water bill payment, a property tax payment, and so on. This means when costs go up, it affects both tenant and owner alike. Simply put, exorbitant costs and property taxes levied upon us by the city push up the price of our rents.
Neighborhoods in and around my district are not immune to the effects of the city’s broken property tax system. I surveyed the public property tax records of 40 three- and four-unit buildings for the last four years across three southern Brooklyn neighborhoods: Bay Ridge, Bath Beach, and Sunset Park. Three-fourths of the buildings I surveyed had two or more consecutive years of at least 5% property tax increases. One building in Bay Ridge saw its property tax bill go up 19% over two years; another in Sunset Park saw a whopping 24% increase over three years; two in Bath Beach had nearly 20% increases over three years.
The inequities of our property tax system are real. They affect the affordability of our communities, for both homeowners and tenants, alike. Do these increases justify exorbitant 100% rent hikes, as we’ve seen in some parts of the city this past year? Of course not. But we can’t ignore the impact that property taxes have on the housing ecosystem, including how they affect rent prices, and especially in outer-borough communities. These costs, just like many of the other factors that go into housing expenses, need to be taken into account when we determine whether rents are fair and affordable, or not. Not taking all of these factors into account will just result in an ecosystem that is out of balance and without a sustainable financial underpinning.
In the remaining days of the state legislative session this year, there is a lot of advocacy in support of S3082, the Good Cause Eviction bill. In a nutshell, the bill would prohibit a landlord from evicting a tenant without good cause, and would allow a tenant the right to renew a lease. Failing to pay rent is good cause for an eviction, unless the tenant is not paying rent because the rent has been unreasonably increased. The bill establishes that a rent increase is presumed to be unreasonable if it exceeds 3% or 1.5x the annual rate of inflation as measured every August, whichever is greater. Broadly speaking, this bill would apply to apartments that are not rent-stabilized and not owner-occupied.
While I fully support the principle behind this bill - the idea that a tenant shouldn’t be evicted without good cause - and that rent increases should be reasonable and justifiable - I don’t think the calculation of what is or is not reasonable accurately reflects the true costs of housing. Linking increases to a factor of the inflation rate - or a flat amount of 3% - is a good step towards recognizing that housing costs inevitably go up. But those calculations don’t account for property tax increases, which in many cases bear no relation to inflation.
Looking at New Jersey, which is a model that many advocates point to in support of enacting the Good Cause Eviction bill, the law requires full consideration of all the expenses - and inversely, profitability - of a landlord in determining what is or is not reasonable.
Take 2019 as an example, when the annual inflation rate was 1.8%. Under the current Good Cause Eviction bill, rent increases up to 3% would be presumed reasonable (1.5x the inflation rate=2.7%, which is less than 3%). But in that same year, 30 out of the 40 buildings I surveyed had property tax increases greater than 6% alone. So while the presumed 3% increase would be used to pay for added costs associated with the housing market such as fuel, water, insurance, etc.,the total cost of the tax increases would be more than double what would be presumed to be reasonable.
Tenants absolutely need to be protected from unreasonable and unjustified rent increases. But any effort to protect tenants has to be done in a way that is financially sustainable to the underpinning of the totality of the housing ecosystem that we live in. In the absence of comprehensive property tax reform (which remains an incredibly important issue to resolve once and for all), it is important that our legislative efforts to rightfully protect tenants also balances these considerations. In the final days of the legislative session, I’m hopeful that we can strike the right balance. My position remains the same and I’m eager to find the solution that will make this work for everyone.
New York’s recovery means a thriving economy and an affordable place to live for working- and middle-class families. We must make our housing systems fairer and more affordable for all New Yorkers in the long-term, so homeowners and renters can stay in their homes and landlords can afford to cover their legitimate costs.
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State Senator Andrew Gounardes represents parts of Brooklyn. On Twitter @agounardes.
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At a celebration of Latino heritage (photo: John McCarten/City Council)
Bienvenidos to “Latino Vote ’22,” the latest series in Gotham Gazette on the Latino vote in New York. Last year’s columns on the ever-growing Latino vote looked at specific races and boroughs in New York City’s 2021 elections, as well as the impact of the Latino vote on the mayoral election.
This year’s series will explore specific races in predominantly Latino districts across the city as well as larger trends and dynamics related to Latino representation in New York politics and government.
The latest redistricting saga, the lines drawn by a court-appointed “special master” finally approved, has created some intriguing dynamics in many majority-Latino or Latino-plurality districts throughout the city. This series will take a look at some of the key, competitive races.
It will also take additional dives into the 2022 races for Governor and Lieutenant Governor. For the first time, the Lieutenant Governor race will have two Latinas (Ana Maria Archila and Diana Reyna) and one Latino, Antonio Delgado, who is Governor Hochul’s appointee to fill the position left vacant by Brian Benjamin’s resignation. The Latino vote is becoming increasingly pivotal in the governor’s race. As a mark of that, Governor Hochul and the State Democratic party have announced a new effort aimed at Latinos, Nueva York Initiative.
This new series begins with a podcast episode, also building off our 2021 audio series. I am delighted to be joined by former New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and Lucia Gomez, the political director of the New York City Central Labor Council, as we share insights on the recently-completed redistricting process. We ask: Have Latino neighborhoods been split electorally? Is there potential for Latino vote dilution? What does New York’s legislative redistricting mean for Latino representation at the state and federal levels?
That discussion will be published May 30, and found starting then at the Gotham Gazette website or on podcast platforms (iTunes, etc) within the “Max Politics” feed, home to Gotham Gazette’s ongoing podcast hosted by editor Ben Max, and titled in part “Latino Vote.”
Grab your cuchifritos, a tasty mofongo, or a delicious taco and, since the summer is upon us, try the famous Puerto Rican limber, and join us for this latest journey, Latino Vote ’22.
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Eli Valentin is a political analyst and author of the forthcoming book, Reinhold Niebuhr: A Political Life. On Twitter @EliValentinNY.
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Gov. Hochul signs the Adult Survivors Act (photo: Mike Groll/Office of Governor Kathy Hochul)
This is a troubling time in America. With the Supreme Court poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, the fight over women's reproductive rights is becoming more focused on state capitals, where at least half of the states in this country are likely to ban or seriously restrict abortions (and, in some cases, certain forms of birth control) even in cases of rape and incest or the serious injury or death to the pregnant woman. This will cause immeasurable harm to women and girls, including the victims of sexual assault.
In the midst of this darkness, a small bit of good news emerged this week from New York State’s capital, where the Legislature passed and the Governor signed the Adult Survivors Act (ASA) -- a law that will allow survivors of sexual assault whose claims are long time-barred to once again bring those claims.
And make no mistake, such sexual assault is endemic in America. According to the Rape Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN), the largest non-profit anti-sexual assault organization in the United States, every 68 seconds an American is sexually assaulted. The legal system is simply failing these victims.
To begin with, the criminal justice system often provides little help to the survivors of sexual assault. For example, for several years we ran New York City’s Department of Investigation which, among other things, oversaw the NYPD’s Inspector General. During our time at DOI, we did a lengthy investigation of the NYPD that demonstrated, in stark terms, how poorly one of the nation’s premier police forces investigated sexual assault and how little then-senior leaders of the Police Department cared about getting it right.
The civil justice system has its own limitations, with short times to bring lawsuits that often do not allow survivors to process what has happened to them in time to seek justice.
The fight to protect the survivors of sexual assault, like the fight to protect reproductive rights, will now also play out in the various state capitals. New York’s path to the ASA is instructive in this regard.
In February 2019, New York State passed a “lookback window,” the Child Victims Act (CVA), extending the statute of limitations for survivors of child sexual abuse in criminal and civil cases in New York. In civil cases, prior to the CVA, the victims of child sexual abuse had only a short window of time, after turning 18, to bring a civil lawsuit against their abuser. The CVA permitted child victims of sexual abuse whose claim was previously time-barred to bring an action. Other states have passed similar statutes and earlier this year, Louisiana became the 22nd state to pass such a lookback statute.
We have experience representing survivors under the CVA and have seen firsthand how the CVA allowed survivors of sexual abuse to hold powerful institutions — including private and public schools — liable for abuse that those institutions had tolerated for years. The CVA allowed victims of sexual abuse to finally hold institutions like the Catholic Church and Boy Scouts of America accountable for enabling the abuse of thousands of children. It helped more than 10,000 victims bring sexual abuse cases and seek justice for the wrongs committed against them.
New York State has now taken the next step in this fight for justice by passing the Adult Survivors Act. The bill goes into effect in six months. Based on the CVA, the ASA will create a one-year lookback window for survivors of sexual abuse who are over 18 years of age and whose claims are presently time-barred.
Given the historical stigma attached to sexual assault, as well as the career threat that reporting assault by a superior at work can entail, it is no surprise that many sexual assault survivors did not report their assaults at the time they occurred or in the years immediately following. With time, however, some survivors are able to come forward. Unfortunately, by the time they do so, the statute of limitations has often passed, and so legal redress is unavailable. The ASA, by creating a lookback window, will solve this problem. Like the CVA, it will allow survivors to finally hold powerful institutions and individuals accountable for their conduct.
New York did well in passing this law. Survivors of sexual assault in every state need similar laws. Now that organizing is increasingly focused on state capitals, that organizing should include some version of the ASA to provide justice for survivors of sexual assault. Victims of child sexual abuse had to wait years both in New York and many other states to get lookback statutes. Adult survivors throughout the country should not need to wait a similar amount of time.
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Lesley Brovner and Mark Peters are the founding partners of Peters Brovner LLP, a boutique law firm that focuses on, among other things, helping survivors of sexual assault. They previously ran the New York City Department of Investigations.
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Penn Station redevelopment rendering (photo: MTA)
A landmark open government bill passed the New York State Senate last week with a unanimous vote and the Assembly this week. The bill (S8419A-A9622-C)) would amend the urban development corporation act in relation to community advisory committees and usher new sunshine into how New York does some of its economic development business. After the Senate passes the slightly updated version that went through the Assembly, Governor Hochul should sign this bill into law immediately.
Sponsored by State Senator Jessica Ramos and Assemblymember Michaelle Solages, the bill is intended to fill the gap in transparency requirements for Empire State Development (ESD), a state authority. If the bill is passed into law, ESD would be mandated to make all its community advisory committee (CAC) materials, reports, and meeting minutes available to the public in a timely fashion. It would also make all CAC meetings open to the public.
When then-Governor Andrew Cuomo introduced the massive Penn Station area redevelopment project in 2020 at the height of covid, he refused to let my community board, the very community board where the project lies, provide local input. As the land use chair of Community Board 5 in Manhattan, the project fell under my purview. But ESD, the state agency leading Cuomo’s grand plan, decided that I would not participate because I was “opposed to the project,” as stated by ESD leadership to Community Board 5. While ESD was correct that I was opposed to the project, it should never be a reason to deny community participation. ESD’s tactics amounted to community suppression. As we continued to demand the right to fully participate, it became a bitter fight. We stood firm.
Only after I blew the whistle and told my story to the New York Post did ESD agree to let me attend and fully participate in the community advisory committee, without any threat of removal if I dared express my opposition to a plan that from the get-go was fatally flawed. ESD reconvened an expanded CAC, to which I was finally formally appointed and embarked in a series of weekly committee meetings.
But there was one huge caveat: the community advisory committee meetings would not be open to the public, and all attendees were on gag order. No information, data, reports or studies discussed during these meetings would be permitted to be shared with the broader public. The minutes of the first meeting note under point 9. CONFIDENTIALITY: “All CACWG members are reminded that CACWG meetings are confidential in nature.” We were especially put on notice not to talk to the media.
This gag order put us, community leaders, in a Kafkaesque situation: members of my own community board would ask me for updates on the Penn plan, and I would be prohibited from providing even a basic report about the facts. Information with major implications was revealed to members of the CAC, including potentially spending billions of taxpayer monies. But the small CAC group was not at liberty to share it with any outside party.
Alarmed by the total lack of transparency and accountability, the good government group Reinvent Albany submitted a FOIL request to obtain the materials from ESD. After a long and arduous process, Reinvent Albany was finally provided with the materials.
Only after Reinvent Albany published the documents to its website was the public at large, the media, and independent auditors such as the city’s Independent Budget Office able to grasp the full breadth of the plan, including its potentially devastating financial and fiscal implications.
Getting access to information from any government agency should not have to be so onerous. The public has a right to know how decisions that involve billions of dollars and could put taxpayers on the hook are made.
The bill passed by the State Senate and the Assembly aims to address the lack of transparency and underscores the lack of accountability from ESD on how it disburses money, or plans to issue and repay debt, and, as importantly, how it justifies such actions.
The bill’s memo notes, “Further, through these advisory bodies, ESD has provided information regarding the potential spending of billions in taxpayer dollars to a small group of individuals who in theory represent the community, but are not required to proactively share this information with the public at large.”
In the case of the Penn project, not only were we not required, we were barred by ESD from sharing any information with the public at large.
The bill’s memo refers to the Penn project by name and specifically notes its lack of transparency: “For example, for the Community Advisory Committee for the Penn Station Area project, it was not until after a FOIL request was filed for CAC materials that ESD posted a portion of the materials provided to the CAC on its website, months after this information was first made available to CAC members.”
The bill would also make community advisory meetings open to the public, allowing neighbors, the media, civic groups, and others to attend and be informed in a timely fashion.
After the bill’s passage in the Senate last week, Senator Ramos said in a statement, “New Yorkers should not have to go through an arduous FOIL process to see how the Empire State Development Corporation is spending the billions of taxpayer dollars it receives in our annual budget.”
The companion Assembly bill (A09622) passed yesterday. It is now back in the senate for ratification of an amendment. The bill’s passage and the governor’s signature will be a major accomplishment in delivering transparent, equitable decisions serving the greater good rather than special interests.
Governor Hochul modestly revised the Penn plan last year but she continues to push for its approval. With ESD’s continued activity around the project plan, the legislation is especially timely.
Good government requires trust and trust can’t exist without openness, accountability, and transparency. New Yorkers deserve nothing less.
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Layla Law-Gisiko is Chair of the Land Use, Housing and Zoning Committee of Manhattan Community Board 5 and a member of the Penn Area GPP Community Advisory Committee Working Group. She is also a Democratic candidate for State Assembly in New York’s 75th District. On Twitter @laylaLawGisiko.
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