Affordable housing in the Bronx (photo: @NYCHousing)
A new consensus is taking shape in New York City: politicians, advocates, and policymakers are prioritizing ways for the city to produce more housing. Of course, there are still plenty of housing disagreements, but most now agree that New York’s severe affordability crisis is caused by the fact that there is not enough housing to go around.
While this is progress, New York City still has plenty of work to do if Thursday’s City Council Housing and Buildings Committee hearing is any indication.
City Council Members will hear feedback on a series of misguided bills highlighted by Intro 0637, which would require New York City to “prioritize not-for-profit developers and community land trusts” whenever it “disposes of land for affordable housing.” While that may sound innocuous, it would impose new bureaucracies and inefficiencies in housing production. It is the exact type of housing policy that got us into this crisis in the first place – and one that should be roundly rejected.
First, it is important to consider the overall context in which New York is making policy. The Mayor’s Management Report showed that New York City produced 45% fewer affordable homes in 2022 than it did the year prior. Despite the city’s new language about housing production, these figures are a stark reminder that rhetoric alone will not ensure our neighbors are safely housed.
The drop comes as the need continues to grow: a recent study found that New York City needs to add an additional nearly 600,000 units just to account for the lack of production over the last decade. And with the darkest days of the pandemic now years behind us, people are flocking (back) to New York City – causing intense competition for the housing stock we do have as the economy rebounds, many workers return to the office, and others want to live in the city as they work from home.
To make a dent in this crisis, New York City needs to utilize every tool at its disposal. It makes very little sense for a policymaker to reject material help from an entity solely due to its tax status – a framework the city does not use when purchasing city vehicles or any other type of good. In fact, doing so would functionally amount to trying to solve a problem that requires two hands with one hand tied behind our back.
Worse, Intro 0637 would kneecap the affordable housing industry’s growing MWBE presence. If passed in its current form, the bill would disenfranchise businesses owned by people of color and women. Right now, roughly 80% of all projects created by members of The New York Real Estate Chamber – a BIPOC-focused chamber of commerce – are affordable housing projects done in partnership with city agencies, including affordable and supportive properties like the Alabama Avenue Apartments in Queens, The Grand in the South Bronx, and Balton Commons in Harlem.
Affordable housing production is one of few bright spots for MWBEs in New York City, as nearly 84% of MWBEs “do not have access to city spending” right now and just 3.8% of city contracts flow to MWBEs. By prioritizing non-profits on City-owned land, we risk perpetuating these figures for no reason other than to satisfy pre-existing ideological preferences.
That last point is particularly instructive: there is no reason for this so-called “fix.” Because of the way affordable housing is created, all City-owned land goes through a request-for-proposals (RFP) process that guarantees permanent affordability regardless of a developer’s tax status, so the change would have zero bearing on the rents residents would pay, even decades from now.
Additionally, for-profit developers are already prohibited from bidding on such RFPs unless there is at least 25% ownership in a project by either a not-for-profit or MWBE. In other words, Intro 0637 would slow housing production by limiting choice and further closing off MWBE firms from city coffers to solve a problem that does not exist.
New Yorkers deserve housing policy conversations that will meaningfully address the housing shortage that is causing rents to balloon for everyone. What they will get on Thursday is a distraction from those core issues – and a return to a time when New York City’s leaders were far less serious about making the City as affordable as it can be.
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Jolie Milstein is president and CEO of the New York State Association for Affordable Housing. On Twitter @NYSAFAH.
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Yadira Ramos-Herbert (photo via campaign website)
On Thursday February 16, the New Rochelle City Democratic Committee made history by endorsing the mayoral candidacy of Yadira Ramos-Herbert in this year’s election. An Afro-Latina of Puerto Rican and Dominican descent and currently a City Council member, Ramos-Herbert is the first person of color to receive a major party’s endorsement for mayor in New York’s seventh largest city. Ramos-Herbert’s candidacy and the committee’s endorsement helpfully remind us that Latino politics in New York is about more than New York City; the Latino presence has been and continues to be felt throughout the Empire State.
Truth be told, my columns for Gotham Gazette have focused exclusively on the Latino political reality in New York City or at the statewide level. That’s for one key reason: because the overwhelming majority of the Latino population in New York resides in New York City — about 67%. Most Latino elected officials in New York represent parts of Gotham as well. Yet, that focus of mine (and sometimes others’) overlooks a good portion of our peoples’ political realities in other parts of the state — realities that point to growing Latino communities and their significant political achievements. It is high time I correct that oversight.
The achievements of Latinos in New Rochelle are one such example. In many ways, New Rochelle has been a city of firsts in New York. It is there where the first Mexican-born candidate was elected in New York — Roberto Lopez, elected to New Rochelle’s City Council in 2007. Along with Ramos-Herbert, the current New Rochelle City Council also includes Latina Martha Lopez.
The Latino population in New Rochelle has increased rapidly over the last few decades and Latinos now comprise a third of the population in that city. Most of those Latinos are of Mexican descent. The rise of Latinos in the overall population has also resulted in an increase in the number of Latino registered voters, who have now surpassed African Americans as the largest non-white ethnic group among registered voters, forming 20% of the overall electorate. Surely Ramos-Herbert as the mayoral pick for the New Rochelle Democratic Party reflects that the future of the city is Latino.
Yet New Rochelle is not the only city in Westchester County with a growing Latino population. The city of Yonkers, the county’s most populous, has the largest number of Latinos, according to census data, with 89,605 Latinos, a whopping 42% of its entire population. However, when it comes to the voting population, Latinos make up only 31% of the electorate. The city of Yonkers has one Latina in the City Council out of six council members, Corazon Pineda-Isaac, who has just declared her candidacy for mayor in this year’s election. Yonkers also has a Latino representative in Westchester County’s Board of Legislators — José Alvarado, who became the first Honduran to win election to a position in New York in 1982.
The Latino presence there led to the creation of the organization Hispanic Democrats of Westchester. Founded and still led by Robin Bikkal, the group has endorsed a slew of candidates up and down the county, including again supporting the candidacy of Luis Marino, who in 2021 became the first ever Latino mayor of the Village of Port Chester.
But another county not far outside of New York City has more Latinos even than Westchester — Suffolk County on Long Island. With over 332,000 people, Suffolk’s Latinos make up 22% of the overall county population, but only 11% of the voting population. Its legislature has two Latinos out of 18 total seats— Sam Gonzalez and Manuel Esteban. This represents just 11% of that legislative body. Suffolk County also sent the first Long Island Latino to the State Legislature: since 2002, Assembly Member Phil Ramos has represented Central Islip in the Assembly, and is now that body’s deputy speaker. Suffolk has also sent to the State Senate Monica Martinez, a Latina who previously served in Suffolk’s legislature. Her brother, Antonio Martinez, is a Councilman in the town of Babylon.
Next door, Nassau is the county with the third largest Latino population outside of New York City. Latinos now make up 18% of the overall population and 11% of the voting population. And yet the Nassau County legislature currently has no Latino representation.
Further north, the cities of Buffalo and Rochester also have a Latino presence. Buffalo currently has a Latino representative in the State Assembly with Jonathan Rivera, and David Rivera is the majority leader of Buffalo’s Common Council. Rochester’s City Council president is Latino, Miguel Melendez. Joining him on the Council is another Latino, José Peo.
According to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials’ last published data on New York’s Latino political representation, there are 157 elected and appointed Latino officials in New York, outside of those elected to Congress and the State Legislature.
In short, Latino presence in political leadership is increasingly felt all over the Empire State. Yadira Ramos-Herbert’s candidacy for mayor of New Rochelle is only the latest example of Latinos rising toward higher office.
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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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Electric vehicle charging (photo: Ed Reed/Mayor's Office)
In late January, Mayor Adams announced a bold and exciting goal to require New York City’s for-hire vehicle fleet to reach zero emissions by 2030. This was a welcome step forward, considering the goal is shared by major for-hire platforms, including Uber, as well as the City Department of Transportation, who recognize the climate crisis is an existential threat to our city and our planet.
While these shared goals are a North Star, getting there is another matter. It will require coordination across the public and private sectors to make the changes necessary to reach zero-emissions.
Uber has already committed $800 million in resources globally to help support drivers’ transition to electric, covering an array of electric vehicle (EV) and charging discounts and incentives around the world to make the switch. Last year, Uber hired HR&A Advisors to help assess what strategies and policies need to be implemented in order to help spur such a transition in New York City, and whether the City’s current plans for charging infrastructure could support a full adoption of EVs in New York.
The resulting report, just published, found that critical gaps in New York City’s infrastructure will pose significant challenges to achieving this transition in the next seven years.
While there are currently critical gaps in the infrastructure needed to achieve these goals, by taking direct and clear action now, we believe the City, utilities, EV charging companies, and mission-driven landowners can work together to accelerate the path to a 100% zero-emissions future.
Supercharging NYC’s EV Infrastructure
Despite rapid growth in EV sales, New York City is currently lagging far behind other U.S. cities in adoption among for-hire drivers. EVs represent fewer than 1% of for-hire vehicles on city streets, compared to 9% in San Francisco and 11% in San Diego.
To transition to EVs, many ride-hailing drivers need access to overnight and off-shift charging at or near their homes. Given their high daily mileage, for-hire drivers also need convenient, low-cost, and fast public chargers in areas where they make most of their trips.
New York City has only 2,000 public chargers, of which only 200 are the direct-current fast chargers that drivers can depend on throughout their day. The trend in the ratio of new public chargers to new registered EVs also poses challenges.
The highest concentrations of public chargers are in high-cost business and residential districts in Manhattan, Downtown Brooklyn, and Long Island City, and are often behind a paywall in for-profit parking garages. Those chargers are convenient for commuters or high-income residents, but not for the for-hire drivers who drive more miles than residents do and disproportionately live in neighborhoods throughout Queens, Southern Brooklyn, and parts of the Bronx, places where there is currently minimal access to charging — let alone high-speed charging.
Strategies to Electrify New York
If the City and its public and private stakeholders, including platforms like Uber, work together, we can meet the moment. This is an ideal time to be engaging in this work, and leveraging unprecedented federal legislation, including the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act, to support EV infrastructure and help drivers purchase new and used EVs
The work has already begun with the City Department of Transportation’s “Electrifying New York” plan, which includes a goal of 40,000 low-cost chargers and 6,000 fast chargers by 2030, through a combination of public and private investment, and the recent electrification recommendations of the Taxi and Limousine Commission in its “Charged Up” report.
Our report recommends 10 strategies that will support enhanced access and affordability to EV charging infrastructure, build the processes and systems to support for-hire driver needs and help achieve the 2030 zero-emissions goal:
Working Towards 2030 Zero-Emissions
There is unprecedented momentum and alignment among the various players in the mobility and for-hire vehicle industry in New York City. For government, regulators, public utilities, Uber, Lyft, and the taxi industry, the zero-emissions target for 2030 is a North Star. Meeting this goal will require coordination among all parties and achieving success means creating an accessible, affordable, and ubiquitous ecosystem of charging solutions. The time to act is now.
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Hayley Prim is a Senior Policy Manager at Uber based in New York City. Eric Rothman is CEO of HR&A and a former official at Transport for London, and Ignacio Montojo is a Principal in HR&A’s Infrastructure Practice based in New York. On Twitter @HayleyPrim, @uber, @hraadvisors.
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Organizing efforts in Queens (photo: @johnchoe4nyc)
City Hall is a fascinating place where you can easily transform to be an “anti-racist,” if you know how to seize the opportunity. In December 2022, a member of a non-profit organization made racist remarks casting Asians as unwanted foreigners during a City Hall hearing. Sandra Ung, the Chinese-American City Council Member from Flushing, quickly jumped to condemn this person’s hurtful remark, portrayed herself as a staunch fighter against bigotry, and, one month after the incident, wrote an op-ed in Gotham Gazette reminding people of “the danger of downplaying AAPI bigotry.”
Throughout, Council Member Ung and many others who say they are champions of AAPI communities have been downplaying something else: Chinese home attendants in Ung’s district and beyond have been calling out her and other elected officials for upholding racist 24-hour workdays.
Home attendants in New York City — majority immigrant, Asian and other women of color — have been forced to work the inhumane 24-hour workdays, days on end, taking care of clients in serious health conditions who need round-the-clock care, and with only 13 hours of pay. If the workers refuse these shifts, the home-care agencies will punish them by not giving them work or assigning them few hours. The 24-hour workday has caused physical and mental damages to the workers such as insomnia, anxiety, back pain, deformed hands and injured legs, and ruined their family relations. It also puts patients in danger as it deprives the caregivers of needed rest.
Outside New York City, where home care work is performed mostly by white and other citizen workers, 12-hour or even 8-hour shifts are the norm. Home attendants in New York City have long-called for an end to the racist violence committed against them by the insurance companies and home care agencies in order to make profit.
Most recently, the New York State Department of Labor has been investigating the serious wage theft of numerous home-care agencies that stole from each worker hundreds of thousands of dollars on average, some as much as half a million. And now, with the “No More 24” Act (Intro. 175 at the City Council), New York City has a chance to end this racist and shameful practice of 24-hour workdays for good.
But Council Member Ung will not have it. While happily tweeting support for the leading wage-stealing home-care agency, Chinese-American Planning Council (ironically for “breaking stigmas of poverty”), she refuses to meet with her home attendant constituents to discuss the legislation. In early September of last year, home attendants testified for hours at City Council chambers detailing the torture they endured from 24-hour workdays. Yet Council Member Ung was nowhere to be found, nor did she write any op-eds reminding people of the racist violence faced by those Asian women workers. Instead, she held a press conference, disrespecting workers further by saying reasonable shifts can only happen with more state money for the agencies: we need more funding for these blood-sucking home care agencies, otherwise violence must continue!
It chills our bones to see Council Member Ung ask people to respect AAPIs for their “indispensable role in this great city.” What’s the “indispensable role”? That some so-called community representatives commit harrowing abuse upon Asian women in their community? That our elected representatives provide cover for such sweatshop conditions and look down on Asian women?
In her op-ed, Council Member Ung even cites historic examples of labor strife and competition, but casts workers of other races as the cause of Asian hate. The truth is, immigrant workers have been used by the government to suppress wages and lower working conditions for all workers. The 24-hour workday is the worst example as it creates a bottomless floor, forcing workers of other races to accept extra-long hours of work in order to compete. It’s in the interest of all workers to unite to end it. But Council Member Ung refuses to even co-sponsor the City Council legislation to end these abuses.
The status quo only strengthens the racist stereotype of Asians as cheap and happy slaves, willing to endure any unfair treatment and not daring to speak out. It furthers the resentment of other working people who bear the brunt of the worsening conditions created by those in power. It will only lead to more harassment and attacks against Asians, verbal and physical, in the street and in City Hall. This is the danger of upholding sweatshop conditions for our community.
Council Member Ung might think she successfully shields herself from responsibility by condemning “AAPI bigotry.” Yet, upholding the 24-hour workday for home care workers is upholding anti-Asian violence in the City Council. The home attendants have taken to the street with multiple protests and a petition against her, and are unifying the community to demand she step down — a defender of AAPI sweatshops cannot continue to represent the community.
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Zishun Ning is an organizer of Flushing Workers Center.
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City Council Members Louis, left, & De La Rosa, center - the authors (photo: Emil Cohen/NYC Council)
Our first women-majority New York City Council continues to make strides towards addressing critical inequities and disparities in the largest municipal workforce in the United States. The Council took an important step in addressing pay inequities in the municipal workforce with the recent passage of three bills. This legislative package aims to address pay disparities, occupational segregation, and the diversification and retention of city workers. Together, they will help to address many challenges impacting women and people of color in New York City.
These are real issues in New York City’s municipal workforce, just as they are across sectors and localities. In 2019, the City Council passed Local Law 18 (LL18) and began collecting and analyzing pay data across race and gender lines. Analysis from that data exposed troubling trends.
The City’s female employees make just 73 cents to the dollar made by their male colleagues. Black male employees of city government make 79 cents for every dollar made by their white counterparts. And, appallingly, Black women make just 69 cents on the dollar when compared with white male employees.
Furthermore, the analysis showed that occupational segregation is the driving force of these pay inequities. In other words, certain races, ethnicities, and genders are concentrated in specific positions within city government, and those roles are compensated differently than jobs filled by different demographics of employees.
In New York City, our government workers have carried us through the storm of COVID-19. We told them they were essential while we counted on them to drive our buses, clean our streets, distribute benefits, and keep our city running. We are currently facing severe government worker vacancies, with key agencies operating with skeleton staff, leading to challenges in New Yorkers receiving food stamps, cash assistance benefits, and other services. This is unacceptable — both for city workers, as well as for vulnerable New Yorkers who depend on these benefits to survive, and all of us who call this city home.
An oversight hearing last September addressed these vacancies in city agencies and accessibility to municipal jobs, and led to the passage of Local Law 02 of 2023. This law established the civil service ambassador program, aiming to bring awareness and additional educational support for the examination process required for 80% of municipal jobs and to reduce the approximately 8% citywide vacancy rate.
Based on the September 2022 Pay Equity Report, pay gaps decrease among employees who share the same civil service title, reaffirming that amplification of the civil service exam provides a clear pathway to close the pay equity gap within the municipal workforce. The ambassador program goes further to promote the civil service exam in non-traditional outreach locations such as high schools, juvenile justice facilities, foster care programs, shelters, and social work programs.
Government jobs can provide an important source of stability, growth, and opportunity for New Yorkers, especially for traditionally underserved communities. But these jobs must be distributed equitably. Workers of color must be afforded the same pay, benefits, and job opportunities as their white, male colleagues. And a fully staffed workforce is essential to providing the services and support New Yorkers depend on. These newly-passed bills represent a pay equity package that aims to address these issues from different, but related vantage points.
The Pay Equity Package seeks to provide the additional data collection, reporting, and analysis necessary to build on the foundation set by LL18 and LL02. Collectively, they look at the whole funnel of government employment, from the civil service exam process to recruiting and retention to terminations and resignations. They also remove some of the restrictions LL18 put in place that hindered analysis, and they dig deeper into the departments that are most segregated by race and gender. Together, they provide the City Council with the tools it needs to act on the disparities exposed by LL18.
Pay equity and a diverse workforce are the cornerstones of a just society. Without them, employees face unequal opportunity that harms them, their families, and our communities. The four years since LL18 was passed have shown us the importance of collecting the data to illuminate key trends. It was the first step towards addressing pay inequity and providing equal opportunities for city workers. But it didn’t go far enough.
These new policies take action on what we learned from that initial data. They send a strong message that we are prioritizing pay equity and a diverse workforce as our path to economic recovery and resilience. They bring New York City one step closer to its goal of being a place where people can live, work, and thrive equally. Our new majority will continue to lead the way in ensuring New York City is an equitable workplace for all.
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City Council Members Farah Louis (District 45) and Carmen De La Rosa (District 10) represent parts of Brooklyn and Manhattan, respectively. On Twitter @CMFarahLouis & @CnDelarosa.
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Gov. Hochul visits health care providers (photo: Kevin P. Coughlin/Governor's Office)
With her 2023 agenda, it’s clear Governor Kathy Hochul wants to be seen as a champion for New Yorkers who face significant health disparities. But for all she pledges to do, she’s failing to rise to the challenge to address a serious health care crisis coming this April.
On April 1, the state will divert funding away from safety net providers like mine — Alliance for Positive Change — and the New Yorkers we serve from under-resourced communities. This is funding we use to provide not only connection to health care, but the housing, food, behavioral health, and other wrap-around supports people need to stay healthy.
Hochul’s executive budget maintains what’s known as the Medicaid pharmacy benefit “carve-out,” an ill-conceived leftover policy proposal from the Andrew Cuomo era that will disrupt thousands of people’s lives through service reductions and job cuts. Worse yet, some safety net facilities could even be forced to close completely if the Legislature doesn’t now step in.
More than 1,000 people rely on Alliance for Positive Change for access to their prescriptions, treatment counseling, and other supportive services that help them take their medications. In all, safety net providers care for more than 2 million New Yorkers. They can’t afford for implementation of the “carve-out” to move forward.
Put simply, safety net providers rely on savings that come through the pharmacy benefit program to fund the myriad supports essential to overall health care for low-income New Yorkers. Under the proposed carve-out, the state will snatch away hundreds of millions of dollars. Rather than listening to providers who have presented a workable solution to her administration, Hochul uses her budget plan to create a convoluted payment mechanism that fails to adequately protect providers and the patients they serve.
This is a complex scheme with profound ramifications for the most vulnerable patients: Personalized, lifesaving care will be, at best, disrupted. At worst, it will disappear completely.
Alliance for Positive Change helps participants take their medications on time, get to their doctor appointments, and navigate systemic inequities to achieve health and well-being. We provide them a safe space where they can access pharmacy services and get structured support, including counseling, nutritional advice, and even MetroCards. They also have the opportunity to engage with a community of New Yorkers who face similar challenges.
These are low-income New Yorkers living with HIV/AIDS and other difficult-to-manage chronic conditions. Many contend with additional challenges like homelessness. Incredibly, more than 95% of those enrolled in Alliance’s Treatment Adherence Program maintain an undetectable viral load — the amount of HIV in the blood — meaning they cannot sexually transmit HIV to others.
One success story stands out for me. I helped a young man living with HIV get his prescriptions, stick with his treatment regimen, and access food and nutritional services so he could take his medication as directed. As a result of his commitment, and our support, he graduated from our peer training program, is now employed part-time, and has sustained his undetectable viral load. Most striking of all is what he said about our work together: “Before I met you, I was terrified of who I was. Now, I’m not scared. I am open about my status, and I can share my story with people.”
Without the pharmacy benefit savings, I fear that the services for this person — and so many others like him — will disappear. Roughly 20% of Alliance for Positive Change’s budget is built on these savings, but other safety net providers lean on the pharmacy benefit far more.
The carve-out scheme will devastate the continuum of care for patients, resulting in a reduction in treatment adherence, increased hospitalizations, and higher health care costs. It would worsen already startling health disparities and cost the state tax revenue, as reported in a recent publication by the Wakely Consulting Group — ultimately thwarting our statewide efforts to end the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
As early as this month, Medicaid recipients will begin receiving notifications of these impending changes, creating confusion and chaos. If the governor and legislative leaders don’t cancel the carve-out as part of the final state budget deal due by April 1, there will not only be significant financial costs associated with poorer health outcomes, but also moral costs of sabotaging the safety net for millions of New Yorkers.
Addressing health disparities is important work. But creating greater disparities in the process is a zero-sum game.
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Samuel Rodriguez is a Treatment Adherence Manager at Alliance for Positive Change. On Twitter @thealliance_nyc.
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On the construction site (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)
While it’s no secret that the pandemic and looming recession have taken a toll on all New Yorkers, they have been particularly detrimental to low- and middle-income communities, as they’ve only exacerbated the ongoing shrinking of the middle class and troubling disparities in wealth and income.
However, with the inevitability of hardship comes the longevity of certain sectors that will always serve as catalysts for recovery and reinvigoration of the economy and subsequently, the middle class. One of these crucial industries is unionized construction.
Historically, construction has been an enduring and dependable sector throughout and immediately following difficult times, including the Great Depression, times of war, and the Great Recession of 2008. Since 1940, the construction industry has consistently added jobs, with some of the biggest increases coming immediately after these major events.
Following the onslaught of COVID-19, and throughout talks of recession, this pattern has remained the same. Despite the pandemic paralyzing our economy, construction has been able to valiantly bounce back and return to its upward trajectory.
This is why New York must remain committed to greenlighting large-scale public works and private development projects that are built union. If we’re to fully recover from the pandemic and weather the storm of a possible recession, we’ll need the economic stimulus and job creation that unionized construction uniquely drives forward.
Development is the leading generator of family-sustaining careers in New York's unionized construction industry. By creating reliable and honest work for our tradesmen and tradeswomen, projects that are built union, including clean energy and green infrastructure initiatives, give New Yorkers from a diverse range of backgrounds an opportunity to pursue the middle class and contribute to the betterment of the community around them.
Not to mention, as the barriers to education remain and starting salaries for many occupations struggle to keep up with the cost of living, let alone loan repayment, union construction remains an industry accessible for New Yorkers of all backgrounds, including those from diverse and disenfranchised communities.
Pre-apprentice, apprentice, and direct-entry programs have become the crux of the unionized construction industry. They provide entry-level workers with accessible, on-site, and in the classroom craft skills training, as well as safety training, and prepare individuals for careers in the construction industry by providing them with the skills necessary to succeed. These programs ensure that we will have a ready, safe, and productive workforce to build critical infrastructure for years to come and uniquely pave a clear pathway for hardworking New Yorkers to build a sustainable, middle-class career.
While Governor Hochul, Mayor Adams, Majority Leader Schumer, and the Biden administration are seemingly aware of the importance of union construction, and should be applauded for their collective focus on infrastructure, we must continue the progress made on pushing forward or commencing major initiatives like the Penn Station Redevelopment, the Hudson River Tunnel Access project, the new Buffalo Bills stadium, and the NYCFC soccer stadium in Flushing. It will be projects like these that create tens of thousands of middle-class union jobs, bolster and sustain our economy, and foster stimulus for other local businesses and industries, including hospitality, retail, transportation, culinary, real estate, and more.
When it comes to periods of uncertainty, history has undoubtedly repeated itself, and each time, unionized construction has played a role in leading us out of the dark. With our current situation, we must lean into what we know how to do best: innovate, build, and develop by training and mobilizing our dedicated and skilled workforce of union tradesmen and tradeswomen. Not only will this sustain and uplift our middle class, but it will also maintain New York’s place as a leader in modernized infrastructure, fiscal opportunity, and forward-thinking ideas.
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Gary LaBarbera is the president of the New York City and New York State Building and Construction Trades Council. On Twitter @NYCBldgTrades.
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Mayor de Blasio in Williamsburg (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)
State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa’s demand for June completion of New York City yeshiva investigations is a step in the right direction. But her order will be hollow unless deficiencies are quickly addressed. Every day that ultra-Orthodox yeshivas fail to provide substantially equivalent secular instruction to their students is a day that those children are deprived of their legally guaranteed educational rights.
What The Daily News criticizes as “slow motion” progress is insufficient, demonstrated by the recent case of Yeshiva Mesivta Arugath Habosem (YMAH) in Brooklyn, where after years of delayed investigations and months after Commissioner Rosa finally determined YMAH is violating state education law, no meaningful improvements have occurred.
Last October, after a lengthy legal case, Commissioner Rosa ruled that, contrary to New York City Department of Education findings, YMAH doesn’t provide required secular instruction, such as English Language Arts, science, math, social studies, and other mandated subjects. A corrective plan was ordered by December. Yet the Commissioner’s detailed twelve-page decision was cynically met by YMAH with a mere three-page, widely-spaced response more intent on delay than meeting the educational standards itemized in the decision.
That plan, I said, “could have been written on a napkin during a quick lunch.” It is devoid of even the most basic structure of the school day, daily or weekly hours of instruction in the required subject areas, the scope and sequence of topics in each instructional area, and the specific qualifications needed to teach them. Merely parroting words plucked from the commissioner’s decision and relevant regulations, the napkin plan attaches speculative dates for delivery without explaining the process or sources through which deadlines will be attained, making a mockery of a timeline that extends well into next year prior to implementation and eventual evaluation.
Perhaps most astounding, the plan includes the mystifying passage that “connections to particular lessons in Judaic Studies will be identified to demonstrate how the Judaic Studies curriculum satisfies learning standards” and that “Judaic studies curricular materials will be included,” raising the question of whether YMAH intends a separate secular studies program at all.
Yet, despite its empty substance and extended timelines, Commissioner Rosa still has not ruled on the so-called napkin plan, allowing YMAH to shrug off the legal and ethical duties that the commissioner demanded.
That same scenario is playing out again with the commissioner’s new order for New York City to complete other investigations by June. These have been delayed since a complaint was filed by Yaffed, an advocacy organization, in 2015. The city’s Department of Investigation determined that the de Blasio administration obstructed the task for political purposes, words also used in the state education commissioner’s latest order concerning Mayor Adams’ conduct. Yet, incredibly, the commissioner is still depending on the city to conduct a timely review.
Moreover, the DOE’s previous examination of YMAH gave it a clean bill of health, requiring the state commissioner herself to visit and overturn that decision! Why should the city continue to be trusted with this investigatory function when it has demonstrably failed to hold yeshivas accountable for providing the sound, basic education required by the state constitution?
So, come June, the scenario of questionable city investigations will be repeated with no promise that the State Education Department will adequately review its results. And even if it does, more time will be lost with further letters of demand from the commissioner and more napkin plans submitted for further review and, best case, slow-motion implementation.
This chicanery, robbing children of required instruction in math, reading, history, and science, must end. The public has lost faith in government because of farcical cycles of buck-passing where nothing is accomplished. The commissioner’s “enough is enough” is not good enough. It extends good faith to bad actors at the cost of educational justice and public confidence. That price is too high. State Ed has to send its own independent experts into the yeshivas, make rapid detailed evaluations of any deficiencies, and institute immediate reforms consistent with state law.
Enough is enough.
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David C. Bloomfield is Professor of Education Leadership, Law, and Policy at Brooklyn College and The CUNY Graduate Center. On Twitter @BloomfieldDavid.
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Guards on Rikers Island (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
Mayor Adams says we cannot look away from New Yorkers who are suffering. Yet, his new preliminary budget suggests that he’ll slash social services now and over the coming years. Yet, he continues to say ‘yes’ to luxury developers and dedicate limited resources to supportive housing. Yet, he questions the mandated closure of the Rikers Island jail complex.
New York City is required by law to close Rikers by 2027. The conditions at Rikers should prompt the administration to accelerate that timeline. Instead, our mayor is asking the City Council to extend it, or reconsider closing Rikers altogether. We don’t need Rikers. We need plans for more community-based supports, more crisis respite centers, more hospital beds for those who need emergency care, and more investments in a culturally competent and linguistically appropriate workforce.
People at Rikers – more than half of whom are affected by mental illness and almost 17% of whom have a serious mental health diagnosis – are far too often not receiving the treatment they need and are subjected to inhumane, unsafe conditions, including solitary confinement. They are not in the right place for the treatment they need. Rikers has been aptly described as a “torture chamber.”
New Yorkers at Rikers don’t have access to appropriate mental or medical health-care. They are already isolated in a place that takes their families hours to reach by public transportation, and soon may no longer have access to physical letters and other mail. Those who are incarcerated are still subjected to solitary confinement even though we passed the HALT Act and know that solitary confinement significantly increases the risk of suicide and self-harm. In 2022 alone, 19 of our fellow New Yorkers died at Rikers—many of them lost to suicide and preventable medical issues. Another 15 died in 2021.
Rikers is a death sentence.
What other reasons do we need to close Rikers? Why are we still debating this?
NAMI-NYC is a part of the Treatment Not Jails coalition, a group based on a bill with the same name. The Treatment, Not Jails Act would ensure that people living with serious mental illness are diverted from the criminal legal system and instead have access to therapeutic and trauma-informed care. Research shows that government saves money by investing in mental health and drug treatment courts, which both reduce recidivism.
We have also spoken with reporters, families, and many others about the mayor’s problematic forced hospitalization directive. If we closed Rikers and provided actual mental health care – more crisis response teams, more psychiatric hospital beds, more crisis centers, more peer-based community centers – we wouldn't be in this position. To live healthy lives, people need treatment, not jail stays.
We are tired of false promises. Rikers is under a costly federal monitor, but not improving and as an institution, it is beyond repair. It costs far more to jail New Yorkers than to provide the health-care services and supportive housing they need. The mayor must move more aggressively to close Rikers as quickly as possible. It's clear to NAMI-NYC and over 130 organizations signed on to the Campaign to Close Rikers that it’s the humane thing to do.
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Matt Kudish is CEO of the National Alliance on Mental Illness of New York City (NAMI-NYC), helping families and individuals affected by mental illness for over 40 years. On Twitter @NAMINYCMetro.
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Norm Fruchter (photo: Courtesy of NYU Metro Center)
Norm Fruchter, an education activist whose unique intellectual and organizational abilities led to major change for the New York City school system, died in early January from injuries sustained after being hit by a car in December. His special significance was recognized in a New York Times obituary.
Norm’s contributions weren’t just about school funding, but the development of the small school movement that focused on equity and integration as well.
My early years of service in the New York State Assembly in the ‘80s and ‘90s overlapped with Norm’s service as an elected school board member in District 15 in Brooklyn, from 1983 to 1994. District 15 included the neighborhoods I represented, Park Slope, Windsor Terrace, Sunset Park, Kensington, and Boro Park, and I knew Norm well.
His leadership in organizing the Campaign for Fiscal Equity school funding lawsuit, brought in 1993, was affirmed by New York State Senator Robert Jackson, one of the original plaintiffs in the case, when I spoke with the Senator.
Senator Jackson, who was an elected School Board member from Washington Heights at the time, said that among Norm’s critical insights (along with Heather Lewis, another District 15 School Board member whom Norm married after his first wife when she was also hit by a care in 1997), was to ensure parents and their kids as plaintiffs. When the State moved to dismiss the case, the courts ruled that the City of New York and the community school board did not have standing to sue the State, but parents and their kids did, and the case was allowed to proceed.
One of my clearest memories of Norm involves a confrontation between him and then-Speaker of the Assembly Mel Miller about school funding at a District 15 School Board meeting in the late ‘80s. The powerful Brooklyn Speaker, whose own district also overlapped District 15 along with mine, had simply arrived at a local community meeting. I was in the audience when Norm began ‘speaking truth to power,’ criticizing unfair State funding of the City school system in comments directed at Miller.
Miller defended the State aid formula, which required the City to contribute to school funding in proportion to its own wealth. They argued and it was an unsettling public conversation. I see it now as a prelude to the CFE lawsuit, which argued that the issue was broader than just the distribution of aid, that in fact the amount of money for the schools was simply not adequate to provide a basic education.
It took ten years of resistance from former Governor George Pataki before the lawsuit was victorious in the State’s highest Court, the Court of Appeals. Even then, large sums of money to make good had to await the early budgets of Governor Eliot Spitzer. The premise of the lawsuit was not just that the State had obligations to increase funding, but municipalities too because they were subdivisions of the State.
The additional dollars in the New York City school budget are immense compared to decades ago, even adjusted for inflation (enrollment is similar), overcoming the 2008-2009 recession and the covid pandemic. Below is a snapshot of the New York City School Budget from 1999-2000, taken from the Department of Education’s School-Based Expenditure Report:
The City’s system-wide budget was $11.39 billion in that year and enrollment was 1.1 million students. Per pupil expenses were roughly $10,000 per year.
Fast forward to the 2022-2023 City schools budget (via New York City Office of Management and Budget, Publications 2022, Mayor’s Message, FY 2023 Executive Budget - Message of the Mayor (nyc.gov) :
The New York City education budget is now $37.2 billion; there are still about 1.1 million students.Inflation has doubled since 1999, meaning funding in today’s dollars has risen from $22.6 billion then to $37.2 billion now, a 67% increase per student after the inflation adjustment. (The City of New York remains the largest contributor, funding 54% of the budget, with the State and Federal governments the remainder.)
While there has been much significant change since the CFE lawsuit was brought in 1993, Robert Jackson, Norm Fruchter, Heather Lewis, and the many other activists who brought that lawsuit, with their lawyer Michael Rebell, surely laid a foundation for the system to have the resources it would require for progress in areas like graduation rates.
No tribute to Norm would not be complete without a mention of his contribution to the small schools and public school choice movement. I was also there when a small group of parents and teachers in District 15 founded the Brooklyn New School in 1989 (discussed in this Chalkbeat column on Norm’s passing). Norm described his involvement: “Fruchter recalled getting a pitch from a group of parents dissatisfied with the largely segregated local public school in their neighborhood and pushing to open a new one.”
“I shared the parents’ vision of a small school driven by progressive instruction, project-based learning and a parent choice lottery admission process designed to ensure a diverse and representative student population,” he later wrote, even though he had some misgivings about the idea of starting a new school. That push eventually led to the creation of Brooklyn New School, a progressive public elementary school that remains a popular choice in District 15.
The small schools movement gained momentum as the system’s failures deepened. A 1994 report from then-New York City Schools Chancellor Ramon Cortines acknowledged that the high school on-time graduation rate was 44%, and dropout rates were astonishingly high. Norm spurred grants from the Diamond Foundation to fund public school choice initiatives like innovative new schools, along with other groups like the Annenberg Institute and New Visions.
Elected New York City school boards were (unfortunately, in my view) abolished in 2002, along with the State Legislature granting new Mayor Michael Bloomberg administrative control of the school system. Bloomberg brought in one of Norm Fruchter’s friends, Michele Cahill from New Visions, to help develop new schools. The result was hundreds of new schools throughout the system, many connected to the breakup of the big high schools.
I’m not sure Norm would celebrate the charter schools now educating a large portion of city students, but his visionary contributions to the small schools movement is another one of his unique achievements. The 2022 on-time high school graduation rate for New York City school students was 77%, a far cry from 44% in 1994.
Norm Fruchter was a brilliant person who shined a light on the path forward for the New York City schools. His final blog, written shortly before he was killed, showed he was keeping up with the latest issues on the schools, criticizing Mayor Adams for limiting expansion of 3-K and advocating for his long-held principles and what he believed was best for New York City’s children.
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Jim Brennan was a member of the New York State Assembly for 32 years, where he chaired four committees. On Twitter @JimBrennanNY.
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