Daily News Summary
Mayoral hopefuls offer solutions to New Yorkers on edge over spike in crime
The New York City program must get Emergency services back on cleared roads ASAP and restore public transportation in priority. To facilitate the work of DSNY, vehicular traffic would be restricted to emergency vehicles and High Occupancy Vehicles for the duration of the storm and for two days after.
To clear the streets/sidewalks equitably, a new protocol for snow removal is required.
Many additional interventions could make this process more efficient: marking the street in red where buses stop on the road prevents snow pile-ups there ; trucks follow snow plows to pick up accumulation; spray sidewalks and bike lanes in advance with brine to reduce accumulation.
In the end, it is a matter of equity and common sense: pedestrians and cyclists are at much greater risk when it snows. And why are millions of non-driving citizens who are the majority of New Yorkers paying taxes to clear streets for cars, while certainly not getting the same level of service.
NY Daily News
Feb. 21, 2021
New York City's next mayor will inherit a host of complex problems when he or she steps into office Jan. 1 — the pandemic, cratering revenue and reforming policing, to name just a few — but there's one pressing issue that's been given relatively short shrift on the campaign trail so far: crime.
In 2020, the number of murders and shootings jumped at an alarming rate. Murders rose nearly 47%, from 319 in 2019 to 468 in 2020. Shootings spiked a staggering 97%.
But so far, most of the top-tier candidates running for mayor have spent relatively little time addressing how they would handle the NYPD through the lens of how they would directly address crime. Instead, they've focused much more of their attention on reforming the Police Department.
That comes as little surprise.
The death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer and the protests that followed last summer justifiably made police reform one of the top issues for anyone running for office. That dynamic is even more pronounced in a New York City Democratic primary, which attracts more liberal voters and will most likely decide who ultimately becomes the next mayor.
How to address crime, though, is also on the minds of many New Yorkers. This became even more clear recently when a homeless man traveling on the A train went on a murderous rampage, stabbing four people and killing two of them.
"Outside of Eric Adams, I don't think any of these candidates necessarily feels all that comfortable talking about crimefighting measures or anti-gun-violence strategies," said veteran political consultant Neal Kwatra. "They don't have to be experts, but they are going to need to articulate a philosophy and world view on combating crime and gun violence effectively. For a not insignificant cohort of voters in this primary, that will matter a lot."
Though the candidates might not be spending that much time talking about it yet, New Yorkers' concerns that violence could spiral out of control is not exactly lost on them. Nor is the fact that violent crime is rooted in other problems that don't lend themselves to easy solutions — problems like homelessness, education, caring for the mentally ill and how to restore the city to a footing that resembles prepandemic times.
The Daily News reached out to several of the top mayoral candidates running in the June 22 Democratic primary. Here's what they have to say about how they'd address crime if elected:
Eric Adams
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams is a former NYPD captain who made waves during his years on the police force for speaking out against its treatment of Blacks. A recent poll ranks him second among voters — behind Andrew Yang.
To address crime, one of his first orders of business will be reconstituting the controversial anti-crime unit of plainclothes cops "the right way." That unit was previously tasked with tackling violent crime and was disbanded during the summer over concerns that its hyperaggressive approach had left the NYPD's relationship with communities frayed.
A newly formed unit would focus its attention in much the same way it did before — on getting guns off the street — but Adams said he would weed out cops with a history of being overzealous.
Adams also plans to put cops working desk jobs on the street and fill the posts they now occupy with civilian workers. Detectives and other cops assigned to low-crime neighborhoods would also be shifted to hotspots when spikes in crime occur in those areas.
"The prerequisite to prosperity is public safety, and we must be laser-focused in addressing the crime surge — especially shootings and violent crime," he said. "We can get crime back down by simply using our resources better."
Kathryn Garcia
Garcia, who served under Mayor de Blasio as sanitation commissioner and in Mayor Mike Bloomberg's Department of Environmental Protection, wants to expand the footprint of statistical analysis to determine how to improve violence interrupter programs and get a better understanding of how cops interact with the public in ways that are often ignored but can lead to building trust.
Areas that warrant further analysis could include looking at what the Police Athletic League is doing, or the number of tenant association and neighborhood meetings officers attend.
"The public needs to feel that you have a handle on what the problem is and that you have a plan to address it and that you're not totally reactive," she told The News. "As the mayor, you can't tell people they don't feel afraid because that's how they feel. You can't tell someone they're wrong about their feelings. You have to take that in. That is real, and you have to put in place measures that make them feel more secure."
Garcia stopped short of saying she'd like to see more cops on the street, but she's also not looking to reduce the NYPD's ranks. Police visibility, and where police are visible, she suggested, will also be important tools in cutting crime moving forward.
"We need to have cops visibly out there to deter crime, but you have to at the same time be looking at the drivers, the underlying drivers — lack of access to jobs, housing, food, education," she said. "We need to make sure that we're doing both at the same time."
Scott Stringer
Stringer, who as comptroller serves as the city's top fiscal watchdog, said he would put the "most effective" officers and detectives in high-crime precincts, but he has no intention of reconstituting the anti-crime unit.
He intends to increase the number of violence interrupters working with at-risk people and would apply data collected by the NYPD and other agencies to better identify those individuals.
"We have seen proven results from Cure Violence programs in Brownsville, Crown Heights and Jamaica, and I would devote an additional $28 million to expand them," he said. "We need more research and data going forward, but there is real evidence from both New York City and other jurisdictions that well-structured and resourced violence interruption programs with strong oversight are effective."
Improving the NYPD's clearance rate on unsolved cases would also be a priority that Stringer says he'd address through the "strategic deployment" of detectives to Black and Latino neighborhoods.
Dianne Morales
When asked how she would deal with the increase in murders the city has witnessed, Morales, a former nonprofit executive, said she wouldn't bring back the anti-crime unit, but would push to "identify safe spaces to address homelessness" and launch an effort to connect vulnerable New Yorkers to resources they need through a dignified and culturally responsive manner.
She also plans to place much more emphasis on violence interrupter programs, pointing out that they don't receive "anywhere near the NYPD budget."
"They are much more effective in responding to community violence, as well as social and human service outreach," she claimed. "This is why I'm calling for a fully funded Community First Responders Department unit outside of the NYPD and the hiring and training of professionals truly equipped to handle the majority of mental health and emergency calls that go to 911."
Ray McGuire
McGuire, a former Citigroup executive, plans to expand CompStat to focus on areas where it presently doesn't, including measuring the success of deescalation techniques and police responsiveness.
He intends to beef up the number of cops tasked with getting guns off the streets to combat spikes in murders and shootings, and described the battle against gun violence as requiring a "top-to-bottom approach."
"First, we need to expand community policing so that officers establish a rapport with the people they serve in order to more readily identify where the problem areas are, and who needs to be looked at most closely," he said. "Second, we need to make ShotSpotter a citywide effort, so that anytime a gunshot is recorded, law enforcement can save vital minutes in tracking down its source."
Maya Wiley
Wiley, a former MSNBC commentator who also served as de Blasio's legal counsel, said she would move the NYPD away from "containment and control" policing, which leads to unconstitutional stop-and-frisks, and make community- and problem-oriented policing the model.
"Eric Garner lost his life because he allegedly sold an untaxed cigarette. A community- and problem-oriented approach would have worked with storeowners, who were complaining, and also other agencies to address what was happening and how to find solutions that did not require an arrest," she said.
"Too often the NYPD responds to problems of poverty, not of crime. We need to ensure that if the NYPD receives a call about a poverty problem, the right city agencies are involved and the NYPD is not."
Andrew Yang
Yang, who leads in the polls and gained widespread name recognition during his 2020 presidential run, said he views crime as a key impediment to slowing the city's recovery from COVID and fiscal malaise.
Before the recent A-train stabbings, he called for more cops to be assigned inside the subway system, but said he'd also like to see police presence beefed up immediately outside transit hubs.
"If we're going to get New Yorkers back on mass transit — and eventually back to the office and out to establishments that need New Yorkers' business — we need to ensure their commute to mass transit is just as safe as when they're riding it," he said. "That's why I want at least as many cops aboveground, patrolling the areas within a few blocks of subway and bus stops."
Yang is open to the possibility of reconstituting the anti-crime unit as long as it doesn't lead to "the type of mistrust that ultimately damages public safety."
Shaun Donovan
Donovan, who served as President Barack Obama's budget director and housing and urban development secretary and oversaw housing under Bloomberg, said increased policing would not solve systemic problems like the absence of opportunity and cycles of trauma.
Like many of his opponents, he wants to see the NYPD stripped of current responsibilities such as policing schools and responding to mental health calls — and focused on violent crime.
He also plans to lean on his connections in President Biden's administration to stem the flow of guns into the Big Apple.
"To reduce the prevalence of illegal guns on our streets, the Donovan administration will make closing the out-of-state gun pipeline a top priority and target police resources accordingly," he said. "My administration will also emphasize effective collaboration between police, the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice, courts and district attorneys to ensure that gun cases are resolved rapidly and fairly."
NYC Evictions Dropped By More Than 80% In 2020
Feb. 21, 2021
New York City's next mayor will inherit a host of complex problems when he or she steps into office Jan. 1 — the pandemic, cratering revenue and reforming policing, to name just a few — but there's one pressing issue that's been given relatively short shrift on the campaign trail so far: crime.
In 2020, the number of murders and shootings jumped at an alarming rate. Murders rose nearly 47%, from 319 in 2019 to 468 in 2020. Shootings spiked a staggering 97%.
But so far, most of the top-tier candidates running for mayor have spent relatively little time addressing how they would handle the NYPD through the lens of how they would directly address crime. Instead, they've focused much more of their attention on reforming the Police Department.
That comes as little surprise.
The death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer and the protests that followed last summer justifiably made police reform one of the top issues for anyone running for office. That dynamic is even more pronounced in a New York City Democratic primary, which attracts more liberal voters and will most likely decide who ultimately becomes the next mayor.
How to address crime, though, is also on the minds of many New Yorkers. This became even more clear recently when a homeless man traveling on the A train went on a murderous rampage, stabbing four people and killing two of them.
"Outside of Eric Adams, I don't think any of these candidates necessarily feels all that comfortable talking about crimefighting measures or anti-gun-violence strategies," said veteran political consultant Neal Kwatra. "They don't have to be experts, but they are going to need to articulate a philosophy and world view on combating crime and gun violence effectively. For a not insignificant cohort of voters in this primary, that will matter a lot."
Though the candidates might not be spending that much time talking about it yet, New Yorkers' concerns that violence could spiral out of control is not exactly lost on them. Nor is the fact that violent crime is rooted in other problems that don't lend themselves to easy solutions — problems like homelessness, education, caring for the mentally ill and how to restore the city to a footing that resembles prepandemic times.
The Daily News reached out to several of the top mayoral candidates running in the June 22 Democratic primary. Here's what they have to say about how they'd address crime if elected:
Eric Adams
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams is a former NYPD captain who made waves during his years on the police force for speaking out against its treatment of Blacks. A recent poll ranks him second among voters — behind Andrew Yang.
To address crime, one of his first orders of business will be reconstituting the controversial anti-crime unit of plainclothes cops "the right way." That unit was previously tasked with tackling violent crime and was disbanded during the summer over concerns that its hyperaggressive approach had left the NYPD's relationship with communities frayed.
A newly formed unit would focus its attention in much the same way it did before — on getting guns off the street — but Adams said he would weed out cops with a history of being overzealous.
Adams also plans to put cops working desk jobs on the street and fill the posts they now occupy with civilian workers. Detectives and other cops assigned to low-crime neighborhoods would also be shifted to hotspots when spikes in crime occur in those areas.
"The prerequisite to prosperity is public safety, and we must be laser-focused in addressing the crime surge — especially shootings and violent crime," he said. "We can get crime back down by simply using our resources better."
Kathryn Garcia
Garcia, who served under Mayor de Blasio as sanitation commissioner and in Mayor Mike Bloomberg's Department of Environmental Protection, wants to expand the footprint of statistical analysis to determine how to improve violence interrupter programs and get a better understanding of how cops interact with the public in ways that are often ignored but can lead to building trust.
Areas that warrant further analysis could include looking at what the Police Athletic League is doing, or the number of tenant association and neighborhood meetings officers attend.
"The public needs to feel that you have a handle on what the problem is and that you have a plan to address it and that you're not totally reactive," she told The News. "As the mayor, you can't tell people they don't feel afraid because that's how they feel. You can't tell someone they're wrong about their feelings. You have to take that in. That is real, and you have to put in place measures that make them feel more secure."
Garcia stopped short of saying she'd like to see more cops on the street, but she's also not looking to reduce the NYPD's ranks. Police visibility, and where police are visible, she suggested, will also be important tools in cutting crime moving forward.
"We need to have cops visibly out there to deter crime, but you have to at the same time be looking at the drivers, the underlying drivers — lack of access to jobs, housing, food, education," she said. "We need to make sure that we're doing both at the same time."
Scott Stringer
Stringer, who as comptroller serves as the city's top fiscal watchdog, said he would put the "most effective" officers and detectives in high-crime precincts, but he has no intention of reconstituting the anti-crime unit.
He intends to increase the number of violence interrupters working with at-risk people and would apply data collected by the NYPD and other agencies to better identify those individuals.
"We have seen proven results from Cure Violence programs in Brownsville, Crown Heights and Jamaica, and I would devote an additional $28 million to expand them," he said. "We need more research and data going forward, but there is real evidence from both New York City and other jurisdictions that well-structured and resourced violence interruption programs with strong oversight are effective."
Improving the NYPD's clearance rate on unsolved cases would also be a priority that Stringer says he'd address through the "strategic deployment" of detectives to Black and Latino neighborhoods.
Dianne Morales
When asked how she would deal with the increase in murders the city has witnessed, Morales, a former nonprofit executive, said she wouldn't bring back the anti-crime unit, but would push to "identify safe spaces to address homelessness" and launch an effort to connect vulnerable New Yorkers to resources they need through a dignified and culturally responsive manner.
She also plans to place much more emphasis on violence interrupter programs, pointing out that they don't receive "anywhere near the NYPD budget."
"They are much more effective in responding to community violence, as well as social and human service outreach," she claimed. "This is why I'm calling for a fully funded Community First Responders Department unit outside of the NYPD and the hiring and training of professionals truly equipped to handle the majority of mental health and emergency calls that go to 911."
Ray McGuire
McGuire, a former Citigroup executive, plans to expand CompStat to focus on areas where it presently doesn't, including measuring the success of deescalation techniques and police responsiveness.
He intends to beef up the number of cops tasked with getting guns off the streets to combat spikes in murders and shootings, and described the battle against gun violence as requiring a "top-to-bottom approach."
"First, we need to expand community policing so that officers establish a rapport with the people they serve in order to more readily identify where the problem areas are, and who needs to be looked at most closely," he said. "Second, we need to make ShotSpotter a citywide effort, so that anytime a gunshot is recorded, law enforcement can save vital minutes in tracking down its source."
Maya Wiley
Wiley, a former MSNBC commentator who also served as de Blasio's legal counsel, said she would move the NYPD away from "containment and control" policing, which leads to unconstitutional stop-and-frisks, and make community- and problem-oriented policing the model.
"Eric Garner lost his life because he allegedly sold an untaxed cigarette. A community- and problem-oriented approach would have worked with storeowners, who were complaining, and also other agencies to address what was happening and how to find solutions that did not require an arrest," she said.
"Too often the NYPD responds to problems of poverty, not of crime. We need to ensure that if the NYPD receives a call about a poverty problem, the right city agencies are involved and the NYPD is not."
Andrew Yang
Yang, who leads in the polls and gained widespread name recognition during his 2020 presidential run, said he views crime as a key impediment to slowing the city's recovery from COVID and fiscal malaise.
Before the recent A-train stabbings, he called for more cops to be assigned inside the subway system, but said he'd also like to see police presence beefed up immediately outside transit hubs.
"If we're going to get New Yorkers back on mass transit — and eventually back to the office and out to establishments that need New Yorkers' business — we need to ensure their commute to mass transit is just as safe as when they're riding it," he said. "That's why I want at least as many cops aboveground, patrolling the areas within a few blocks of subway and bus stops."
Yang is open to the possibility of reconstituting the anti-crime unit as long as it doesn't lead to "the type of mistrust that ultimately damages public safety."
Shaun Donovan
Donovan, who served as President Barack Obama's budget director and housing and urban development secretary and oversaw housing under Bloomberg, said increased policing would not solve systemic problems like the absence of opportunity and cycles of trauma.
Like many of his opponents, he wants to see the NYPD stripped of current responsibilities such as policing schools and responding to mental health calls — and focused on violent crime.
He also plans to lean on his connections in President Biden's administration to stem the flow of guns into the Big Apple.
"To reduce the prevalence of illegal guns on our streets, the Donovan administration will make closing the out-of-state gun pipeline a top priority and target police resources accordingly," he said. "My administration will also emphasize effective collaboration between police, the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice, courts and district attorneys to ensure that gun cases are resolved rapidly and fairly."
NYC Evictions Dropped By More Than 80% In 2020
Gothamist
Feb. 22, 2021
A total of 3,059 tenants were evicted from New York City apartments in all of 2020, according to new data provided by the city's Department of Investigation. That's a decrease of more than 80 percent, or about 18 percent of the nearly 17,000 evictions completed in 2019.
The data was compiled by DOI from reports submitted by city marshals, who are charged with enforcing court orders, including evictions. There was no breakdown by month. However, tenant advocates said it is pretty obvious the eviction moratorium Governor Andrew Cuomo signed after the pandemic struck last March contributed to this year's dramatically low number of evictions.
"From what we see we're thinking most of the numbers were pre-pandemic," said Haydee Villanueva, a tenant leader with Community Action for Safe Apartments (CASA) in the southwest Bronx. She also noted that every time the moratorium was about to expire, advocates succeeded in getting it extended. It is now due to expire on May 1st.
"The comparison between 2020 and 2019 clearly reflects the success the tenant movement had in 2020 in getting evictions halted," said Andrew Scherer, policy director for New York Law School's Impact Center for Public Interest Law.
In addition to the moratorium, Scherer credited the pandemic's halt to most housing court proceedings, as well as funds to avert evictions and provide counsel to all tenants facing eviction, regardless of income. He said the 2017 Right to Counsel Law, which expanded free access to tenants in housing court, was already reducing the number of annual evictions. Steps were taken during the pandemic to connect even more tenants with attorneys.
"Hopefully, there are lessons learned here that can lead to a reset of the whole eviction process as the pandemic becomes less virulent and the courts resume," Scherer added.
The emergency act Cuomo signed in December provides relief to tenants and property owners who can demonstrate they were adversely affected by the pandemic. But they must sign paperwork by February 26th to delay eviction and foreclosure proceedings. Elected officials have been urging people to fill out these "hardship forms" on time, because response rates have been slow.
The eviction moratorium protects a tenant from losing their home, but they are still required to pay the rent they owed during the pandemic. Landlords are increasingly desperate to collect that income, especially after the moratorium has been repeatedly extended. There have been protests against the moratorium in Albany and in New York City.
"For those tenants truly impacted by the pandemic they need and deserve financial assistance," said Frank Ricci, executive vice president of the Rent Stabilization Association, which represents landlords. But he said there are also "tenants that have gamed the system and not paid rent because there are no consequences. This ultimately hurts other tenants in the building and the housing stock."
Tenant leaders are now promoting a proposal to cancel rent altogether, which would have the state pay landlords what they are owed. They believe it will be too difficult for tenants who lost jobs during the pandemic to come up with the back rent, especially if they cannot complete the required paperwork. "Having to have people prove hardship, some people have jobs that are not really documented," said Villanueva. "Some people are undocumeted themselves."
The total number of 3,059 evictions in 2020 also includes possessions and ejectments. Possessions are far more common because landlords are not required to remove both the tenant and their property — they can merely change the locks. Ejections are evictions ordered by a Supreme Court instead of Housing Court.
Despite the moratorium, landlords are still allowed to begin the court process for evicting tenants and they are moving ahead on cases unrelated to the pandemic. However, Gothamist/WNYC reported the number of filings last year was much lower than in previous years — which could be a sign that landlords are cutting deals with tenants to pay whatever they can and avoid the whole court process for as long as possible.
New Rep. Ritchie Torres Bets on 'Game-Changer' to Bust Child Poverty in The Bronx and Beyond
Feb. 22, 2021
A total of 3,059 tenants were evicted from New York City apartments in all of 2020, according to new data provided by the city's Department of Investigation. That's a decrease of more than 80 percent, or about 18 percent of the nearly 17,000 evictions completed in 2019.
The data was compiled by DOI from reports submitted by city marshals, who are charged with enforcing court orders, including evictions. There was no breakdown by month. However, tenant advocates said it is pretty obvious the eviction moratorium Governor Andrew Cuomo signed after the pandemic struck last March contributed to this year's dramatically low number of evictions.
"From what we see we're thinking most of the numbers were pre-pandemic," said Haydee Villanueva, a tenant leader with Community Action for Safe Apartments (CASA) in the southwest Bronx. She also noted that every time the moratorium was about to expire, advocates succeeded in getting it extended. It is now due to expire on May 1st.
"The comparison between 2020 and 2019 clearly reflects the success the tenant movement had in 2020 in getting evictions halted," said Andrew Scherer, policy director for New York Law School's Impact Center for Public Interest Law.
In addition to the moratorium, Scherer credited the pandemic's halt to most housing court proceedings, as well as funds to avert evictions and provide counsel to all tenants facing eviction, regardless of income. He said the 2017 Right to Counsel Law, which expanded free access to tenants in housing court, was already reducing the number of annual evictions. Steps were taken during the pandemic to connect even more tenants with attorneys.
"Hopefully, there are lessons learned here that can lead to a reset of the whole eviction process as the pandemic becomes less virulent and the courts resume," Scherer added.
The emergency act Cuomo signed in December provides relief to tenants and property owners who can demonstrate they were adversely affected by the pandemic. But they must sign paperwork by February 26th to delay eviction and foreclosure proceedings. Elected officials have been urging people to fill out these "hardship forms" on time, because response rates have been slow.
The eviction moratorium protects a tenant from losing their home, but they are still required to pay the rent they owed during the pandemic. Landlords are increasingly desperate to collect that income, especially after the moratorium has been repeatedly extended. There have been protests against the moratorium in Albany and in New York City.
"For those tenants truly impacted by the pandemic they need and deserve financial assistance," said Frank Ricci, executive vice president of the Rent Stabilization Association, which represents landlords. But he said there are also "tenants that have gamed the system and not paid rent because there are no consequences. This ultimately hurts other tenants in the building and the housing stock."
Tenant leaders are now promoting a proposal to cancel rent altogether, which would have the state pay landlords what they are owed. They believe it will be too difficult for tenants who lost jobs during the pandemic to come up with the back rent, especially if they cannot complete the required paperwork. "Having to have people prove hardship, some people have jobs that are not really documented," said Villanueva. "Some people are undocumeted themselves."
The total number of 3,059 evictions in 2020 also includes possessions and ejectments. Possessions are far more common because landlords are not required to remove both the tenant and their property — they can merely change the locks. Ejections are evictions ordered by a Supreme Court instead of Housing Court.
Despite the moratorium, landlords are still allowed to begin the court process for evicting tenants and they are moving ahead on cases unrelated to the pandemic. However, Gothamist/WNYC reported the number of filings last year was much lower than in previous years — which could be a sign that landlords are cutting deals with tenants to pay whatever they can and avoid the whole court process for as long as possible.
New Rep. Ritchie Torres Bets on 'Game-Changer' to Bust Child Poverty in The Bronx and Beyond
The City
Feb. 21, 2021
After getting elected to Congress in November, Ritchie Torres made his top priority expanding the child tax credit — touting it as the biggest potential boost for his South Bronx constituents.
Now his wish is about to become reality, at least for a year, as the measure he championed as an incoming freshman representative is about to be included in the $1.9 trillion federal aid bill being pushed through Congress.
"There is bipartisan and bicameral support so I am as optimistic as I can be given how erratic Washington can be," he told THE CITY on Saturday.
The aid bill, labeled the American Rescue Act by Torres' fellow Democrats, would increase the tax credit from a maximum of $2,000 for children under 17 to $3,600 for a child under the age of 6. The amount would rise to $3,000 for children ages 7 to 17.
More significantly, it would make the entire amount refundable no matter what a person's taxable income is. Under the current law, the credit increases with earnings so a single parent with two children has to earn more than $30,000 a year to collect the full amount.
The numbers are striking: According to estimates from the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University, childhood poverty in the South Bronx, frequently described as the poorest urban congressional district in the country, would be slashed to just over 20% of all children from 45%.
Overall childhood poverty in New York City would decline to 12% from about 21%. The statewide figure would fall under 10% from 15%, according to the center, which has been studying the issue for five years.
The poverty rate in 2019, the last year for which statistics are available fell to 16% down from 21% five years earlier. In all about 450,000 New York City children were living in poverty pre-pandemic, defined as a family of four with an income of less than $32,000.
"It's going to be a game-changer for the Bronx, New York City and the country," said Emerita Torres, vice president for policy, research and advocacy at the Community Service Society of New York.
'I Would Benefit a Lot'
However, to be fully effective the expanded credit would have to not disqualify recipients for other benefits — and would need to be turned into a monthly stipend rather than a once-a-year lump sum as an income tax refund, supporters argue.
They also contend the one-year-only credit would need to be made permanent despite conservative opposition claiming the increase would reduce the incentive to seek work.
Torres' 15th Congressional District illustrates the role the child tax credit plays in the lives of low-income New Yorkers, many of them Black or Hispanic.
"There have been families that come to our tax preparation centers and we say this is how much you are going to get," said Karla Velasquez, who runs the financial empowerment center for the nonprofit BronxWorks. "They say, 'Thank God, because I didn't know how I was going to pay the rent or buy food.' Some people even say I can help my daughter and son pay for the costs of school."
In her experience, most of the families she works with save the money they receive and use it to make ends meet throughout the year. Her program helps more than 5,000 families prepare their taxes through in-person and drop-off options paid for by the city Department of Consumer Affairs, as well as a new online service sponsored by Montefiore Hospital.
One client, Ashley Garcia currently receives about $2,000 a year. She is a Head Start program teacher earning about $21 an hour, but that isn't sufficient to qualify for the maximum amount for her two children, ages 4 and 11.
Her hours were reduced due to the pandemic, leading her and her children to move in with her mother and sister on Prospect Avenue in the South Bronx.
Under the proposed child tax credit expansion, which would allow her to qualify for the full benefit despite her modest income, she would receive $6,600.
"I would benefit a lot because I am saving up to get enough money for an apartment," she said.
Supporters say the impact of the increase goes beyond helping people pay their bills.
Research by Columbia shows that raising the child tax credit results in long-term gains in earnings, improvement in health, longevity and infant mortality and reductions in criminal justice and welfare interactions.
'Close to an Equalizer'
For many, the unresolved question of whether the credit will continue to be a lump sum available only after a tax return is filed or transformed into a monthly stipend paid in advance is key.
"I would prefer the monthly amount to help with buying food and necessities for my children," said Garcia, who would get about $550 a month. "And my daughter is growing, so she is going to need more clothes."
If the payment is monthly, it will need to be exempted from income or it could cause recipients to lose other benefits like Section 8 housing vouchers or SNAP, experts agree.
Also crucial is whether the expansion can be made permanent by passing The American Family Act reintroduced in the House this month by Democrats Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut and Suzan DelBene of Washington. Torres joined them as the third leading cosponsor.
Some Republicans, including Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, have backed the concept behind the credit. Others are mobilizing opposition — among them Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who denounced Romney's plan as "not tax relief for working parents" but "welfare assistance."
Rubio had been a prime mover in increasing the credit to $2,000 from $1,000 in the 2017 Trump tax cut law. But that move was structured to mostly benefit middle- and higher-income families.
Torres plans to counter opposition by emphasizing the economic impact of a permanent expansion and the need to deal with the inequities that have been widened by the pandemic recession. He likens the move to Social Security and Medicare, which have allowed many seniors to escape poverty.
"The American Family Act would provide economic resilience in the South Bronx in the face of cataclysmic events like COVID," he said. "It is as close to an equalizer as we can get. A decent society should be dedicated to eradicating poverty among children and seniors."
City Releases First 10-Year Food Plan Under New Law
Feb. 21, 2021
After getting elected to Congress in November, Ritchie Torres made his top priority expanding the child tax credit — touting it as the biggest potential boost for his South Bronx constituents.
Now his wish is about to become reality, at least for a year, as the measure he championed as an incoming freshman representative is about to be included in the $1.9 trillion federal aid bill being pushed through Congress.
"There is bipartisan and bicameral support so I am as optimistic as I can be given how erratic Washington can be," he told THE CITY on Saturday.
The aid bill, labeled the American Rescue Act by Torres' fellow Democrats, would increase the tax credit from a maximum of $2,000 for children under 17 to $3,600 for a child under the age of 6. The amount would rise to $3,000 for children ages 7 to 17.
More significantly, it would make the entire amount refundable no matter what a person's taxable income is. Under the current law, the credit increases with earnings so a single parent with two children has to earn more than $30,000 a year to collect the full amount.
The numbers are striking: According to estimates from the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University, childhood poverty in the South Bronx, frequently described as the poorest urban congressional district in the country, would be slashed to just over 20% of all children from 45%.
Overall childhood poverty in New York City would decline to 12% from about 21%. The statewide figure would fall under 10% from 15%, according to the center, which has been studying the issue for five years.
The poverty rate in 2019, the last year for which statistics are available fell to 16% down from 21% five years earlier. In all about 450,000 New York City children were living in poverty pre-pandemic, defined as a family of four with an income of less than $32,000.
"It's going to be a game-changer for the Bronx, New York City and the country," said Emerita Torres, vice president for policy, research and advocacy at the Community Service Society of New York.
'I Would Benefit a Lot'
However, to be fully effective the expanded credit would have to not disqualify recipients for other benefits — and would need to be turned into a monthly stipend rather than a once-a-year lump sum as an income tax refund, supporters argue.
They also contend the one-year-only credit would need to be made permanent despite conservative opposition claiming the increase would reduce the incentive to seek work.
Torres' 15th Congressional District illustrates the role the child tax credit plays in the lives of low-income New Yorkers, many of them Black or Hispanic.
"There have been families that come to our tax preparation centers and we say this is how much you are going to get," said Karla Velasquez, who runs the financial empowerment center for the nonprofit BronxWorks. "They say, 'Thank God, because I didn't know how I was going to pay the rent or buy food.' Some people even say I can help my daughter and son pay for the costs of school."
In her experience, most of the families she works with save the money they receive and use it to make ends meet throughout the year. Her program helps more than 5,000 families prepare their taxes through in-person and drop-off options paid for by the city Department of Consumer Affairs, as well as a new online service sponsored by Montefiore Hospital.
One client, Ashley Garcia currently receives about $2,000 a year. She is a Head Start program teacher earning about $21 an hour, but that isn't sufficient to qualify for the maximum amount for her two children, ages 4 and 11.
Her hours were reduced due to the pandemic, leading her and her children to move in with her mother and sister on Prospect Avenue in the South Bronx.
Under the proposed child tax credit expansion, which would allow her to qualify for the full benefit despite her modest income, she would receive $6,600.
"I would benefit a lot because I am saving up to get enough money for an apartment," she said.
Supporters say the impact of the increase goes beyond helping people pay their bills.
Research by Columbia shows that raising the child tax credit results in long-term gains in earnings, improvement in health, longevity and infant mortality and reductions in criminal justice and welfare interactions.
'Close to an Equalizer'
For many, the unresolved question of whether the credit will continue to be a lump sum available only after a tax return is filed or transformed into a monthly stipend paid in advance is key.
"I would prefer the monthly amount to help with buying food and necessities for my children," said Garcia, who would get about $550 a month. "And my daughter is growing, so she is going to need more clothes."
If the payment is monthly, it will need to be exempted from income or it could cause recipients to lose other benefits like Section 8 housing vouchers or SNAP, experts agree.
Also crucial is whether the expansion can be made permanent by passing The American Family Act reintroduced in the House this month by Democrats Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut and Suzan DelBene of Washington. Torres joined them as the third leading cosponsor.
Some Republicans, including Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, have backed the concept behind the credit. Others are mobilizing opposition — among them Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who denounced Romney's plan as "not tax relief for working parents" but "welfare assistance."
Rubio had been a prime mover in increasing the credit to $2,000 from $1,000 in the 2017 Trump tax cut law. But that move was structured to mostly benefit middle- and higher-income families.
Torres plans to counter opposition by emphasizing the economic impact of a permanent expansion and the need to deal with the inequities that have been widened by the pandemic recession. He likens the move to Social Security and Medicare, which have allowed many seniors to escape poverty.
"The American Family Act would provide economic resilience in the South Bronx in the face of cataclysmic events like COVID," he said. "It is as close to an equalizer as we can get. A decent society should be dedicated to eradicating poverty among children and seniors."
City Releases First 10-Year Food Plan Under New Law
Gotham Gazette
Feb. 22, 2021
The New York City Mayor's Office of Food Policy is announcing the city's first-ever 10-year food plan, called Food Forward NYC, to better address food insecurity, improve a number of food- and nutrition-related processes, and meet the requirements of legislation passed by the City Council early last year.
The policy, previewed by Gotham Gazette before its public release on Monday, is intended to tackle hunger, food waste, malnutrition-related ailments, and food industry instability through five core goals, which all have underlying plans that require the cooperation of multiple city agencies and other entities. For example, the plan includes developing a "Food Community Hiring Initiative" to easily identify entry-level jobs in the food industry and creating a commercial kitchen for providers of the city's Department for the Aging by partnering the program with Citymeals on Wheels.
"It should go without saying that in a truly great city, no one should ever go hungry," writes Mayor Bill de Blasio, in part, in an opening letter of the Food Forward report. "But beyond tackling hunger, we are also committed to ensuring that all New Yorkers have the information, tools, and access to eat healthy food and learn about nutrition; to lift up food workers and reduce food waste; and to back local businesses and urban farming, among a host of other responsibilities."
The five overarching goals of the plan are: "All New Yorkers have multiple ways to access healthy, affordable, and culturally appropriate food; New York City's food economy drives economic opportunity and provides good jobs; The supply chains that feed New York City are modern, efficient, and resilient; New York City's food is produced, distributed, and disposed of sustainably; Support the systems and knowledge to implement the 10-year food policy plan."
According to the plan, 1.6 million New York City residents are food insecure — meaning that they do not have stable access to quality, nutritious food.
This number has only increased during the coronavirus pandemic, which has seen widespread loss of jobs and work, but there was a severe crisis even before the outbreak. Previously, 1.2 million New Yorkers were food insecure, according to data from Feeding America.
Malnutrition from a lack of nutritious food, which can be a result of food insecurity, leads to health issues such as diabetes, hypertension, and obesity, and therefore other challenges, shorter life expectancy, and more vulnerability to diseases like COVID-19.
"Communities of color in all five boroughs have less access to affordable, healthy food than white communities and they are disproportionately impacted by diet-related health diseases," the food plan reads, in part. "While many food businesses are owned by people of color and workers in the sector are substantially people of color, low business margins and low wages often result in limited economic mobility. Furthermore, many distribution hubs and waste facilities are located in communities of color, therefore placing additional disproportionate environmental and health burdens on them. At the same time, many of the biggest innovations in food policy in New York City, from local farms to cooperative ownership models, have emerged from communities of color. NYC's food policy can support these successes and turn the food system into a source of health, wealth, and sustainability."
According to the plan, two out of every three food businesses in the city have fewer than ten workers and almost half of New York City's food originates from locations outside the city before ending up in the boroughs' grocery stores, restaurants and schools.
The food industry is a key part of the city's economy and one whose workers have been hurt by the pandemic. Even before covid, restaurant and grocery store workers were already making yearly salaries far below the average New York yearly income, according to the new food plan, and while many food workers have been classified as "essential" during the pandemic, helping some to keep their jobs, they have been unable to work from home and therefore at significantly higher risk of covid. At the same time, many food businesses, like restaurants, have closed during the pandemic, costing many jobs.
"At this moment in 2021, the city is in the grips of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has resulted in extraordinary levels of food insecurity," Director of the Mayor's Office of Food Planning Kate Mackenzie writes, in part, in her opening letter of the new policy. "Yet, through these harrowing months, we have deepened our understanding of how essential our food workers are to our food system. From the farm workers who grow our food, to the drivers and store clerks who ensure our grocery stores and bodegas remain stocked, the delivery workers who bring food to our homes, the cafeteria workers who keep our students fed, the volunteers distributing food at pantries – we see you and we thank you."
For goal one of Food Forward NYC, the plan is to "expand food benefits to reach more New Yorkers in more places," "distribute food more equitably," and "reconfigure how the city sources food," each of which come with their own sub-initiatives.
The city plans to expand to more low-income neighborhoods the "Get the Good Stuff" program, which allows Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients to earn an extra dollar in reward points for every dollar they spend on fruits and vegetables at participating grocery stores.
Food Forward NYC also plans to allow adult members of children's families to permanently get free grab-and-go meals at public schools, even after the pandemic ends. Before COVID-19, only children were eligible for this program, and parents weren't allowed to take food even when they came with their children. The program was expanded to adults accompanying children and then all New Yorkers at the height of the pandemic in the spring of 2020.
Other strategies to achieve the first goal are to work with the state and federal governments to get "Medicare/Medicaid coverage for medically tailored meals." to make the city's outdoor dining program permanent, and to improve access to cold storage in underserved areas, among other things.
"For all New Yorkers to get the food they need and want, they need multiple ways to access healthy, affordable, and culturally appropriate food that meets them where they are," the plan explains. "The plan embraces that food intersects with New Yorkers' health and the broader economy in multiple ways, and not simply with regard to hunger; that food is important as an expression of cultural identity and as a way to connect with family and friends; and that food can bring tremendous joy."
The second Food Forward NYC goal focuses more on how the food industry relates to the economy.
Initiatives within it include enforcing already created fair-scheduling laws in the fast-food industry to make sure that workers have some control over their work schedules and get paid overtime when necessary, expanding and creating new childcare centers that have weekend and overnight hours to accommodate food service workers, pushing the state for a NYC Small Business Recovery Tax Credit for small businesses and restaurants, and developing customized workforce training programs in manufacturing and industry technologies. The city proposal for a tax credit would apply to "businesses with gross revenue below $1 million," which would "be eligible for a tax credit equal to 6% of their calendar year 2021 rent, up to maximum credit of $10,000."
The city will also "create financing and technical assistance plans to support worker-owned cooperatives," by adjusting current programs to better suit the needs of food businesses and by working with community organizations and business improvement districts.
"The restaurant industry is also vital to the city as a major draw for residents, workers, and visitors, underpinning many other industries such as office employment in the central business districts and serving as a draw for tourists," the plan says. "Indeed, the restaurant industry is key to making New York City the compelling place that it is. Its economic contribution is also large. In 2019, the industry made nearly $27 billion in taxable sales."
Food Forward's third main goal focuses on the way that food comes into New York City and where it originates — which more often than not is far from the five boroughs.
Initiatives in this category include modernizing the Hunts Point Food Distribution Center by implementing resiliency measures to protect the building from rising sea levels and flooding, increasing the amount of food the city buys from the New York region instead of outside sources, and removing barriers to urban farming that currently exist in the forms of laws and regulations, such as "reviewing regulations related to land use and exploring different nonprofit and for-profit operating models and mechanisms to distribute micro-grants more efficiently."
Under the fourth goal of the plan, the emphasis is on making sure that food is distributed fairly throughout the city and that food waste is handled sustainably and resourcefully.
The city is aiming to collect 90% of organic waste by 2030 and to "mandate the source separation and recycling of organic waste within all city institutions and schools by the year 2025 and in all residential buildings by 2029"; to figure out how to make cold storage more efficient and sustainable at a lower cost; and to include local seafood and seaweed in the New York State Grown & Certified program, which "is a program that makes it easy for consumers to identify local, safely-handled, and environmentally responsible agricultural products."
The final component of Food Forward NYC is about ensuring different stakeholders in the food and public policy worlds will work together effectively to make the ambitious new plan a reality.
"New York City's food system is highly distributed and fragmented, made up of many small parts that interact with each other in complicated ways," the plan reads. "In fact, the system is so complex that even people who have spent years working in one sector of the food system often have little to no knowledge of how the rest of it works. It is not surprising that it can be extremely hard for anyone who plays a role, from policymakers to food workers to advocates to food consumers, to understand what levers to push for systemic change. This complexity also makes meaningful community engagement and decision making around food very challenging."
Strategies to meet the goal of "strengthening community engagement and cross-sector coordination around the development and implementation of food policy" include partnering with the non-governmental sector to increase community participation in food policy decision-making, working with the private and civic sectors on food education campaigns about sustainability and nutrition, and establishing a Public Housing Food Leadership Innovation Lab to work on projects regarding food access, food production, food waste management, and community building in NYCHA. The plan indicates intention to finally begin recycling at public housing developments.
Candidates debate legalizing sex workers
Feb. 22, 2021
The New York City Mayor's Office of Food Policy is announcing the city's first-ever 10-year food plan, called Food Forward NYC, to better address food insecurity, improve a number of food- and nutrition-related processes, and meet the requirements of legislation passed by the City Council early last year.
The policy, previewed by Gotham Gazette before its public release on Monday, is intended to tackle hunger, food waste, malnutrition-related ailments, and food industry instability through five core goals, which all have underlying plans that require the cooperation of multiple city agencies and other entities. For example, the plan includes developing a "Food Community Hiring Initiative" to easily identify entry-level jobs in the food industry and creating a commercial kitchen for providers of the city's Department for the Aging by partnering the program with Citymeals on Wheels.
"It should go without saying that in a truly great city, no one should ever go hungry," writes Mayor Bill de Blasio, in part, in an opening letter of the Food Forward report. "But beyond tackling hunger, we are also committed to ensuring that all New Yorkers have the information, tools, and access to eat healthy food and learn about nutrition; to lift up food workers and reduce food waste; and to back local businesses and urban farming, among a host of other responsibilities."
The five overarching goals of the plan are: "All New Yorkers have multiple ways to access healthy, affordable, and culturally appropriate food; New York City's food economy drives economic opportunity and provides good jobs; The supply chains that feed New York City are modern, efficient, and resilient; New York City's food is produced, distributed, and disposed of sustainably; Support the systems and knowledge to implement the 10-year food policy plan."
According to the plan, 1.6 million New York City residents are food insecure — meaning that they do not have stable access to quality, nutritious food.
This number has only increased during the coronavirus pandemic, which has seen widespread loss of jobs and work, but there was a severe crisis even before the outbreak. Previously, 1.2 million New Yorkers were food insecure, according to data from Feeding America.
Malnutrition from a lack of nutritious food, which can be a result of food insecurity, leads to health issues such as diabetes, hypertension, and obesity, and therefore other challenges, shorter life expectancy, and more vulnerability to diseases like COVID-19.
"Communities of color in all five boroughs have less access to affordable, healthy food than white communities and they are disproportionately impacted by diet-related health diseases," the food plan reads, in part. "While many food businesses are owned by people of color and workers in the sector are substantially people of color, low business margins and low wages often result in limited economic mobility. Furthermore, many distribution hubs and waste facilities are located in communities of color, therefore placing additional disproportionate environmental and health burdens on them. At the same time, many of the biggest innovations in food policy in New York City, from local farms to cooperative ownership models, have emerged from communities of color. NYC's food policy can support these successes and turn the food system into a source of health, wealth, and sustainability."
According to the plan, two out of every three food businesses in the city have fewer than ten workers and almost half of New York City's food originates from locations outside the city before ending up in the boroughs' grocery stores, restaurants and schools.
The food industry is a key part of the city's economy and one whose workers have been hurt by the pandemic. Even before covid, restaurant and grocery store workers were already making yearly salaries far below the average New York yearly income, according to the new food plan, and while many food workers have been classified as "essential" during the pandemic, helping some to keep their jobs, they have been unable to work from home and therefore at significantly higher risk of covid. At the same time, many food businesses, like restaurants, have closed during the pandemic, costing many jobs.
"At this moment in 2021, the city is in the grips of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has resulted in extraordinary levels of food insecurity," Director of the Mayor's Office of Food Planning Kate Mackenzie writes, in part, in her opening letter of the new policy. "Yet, through these harrowing months, we have deepened our understanding of how essential our food workers are to our food system. From the farm workers who grow our food, to the drivers and store clerks who ensure our grocery stores and bodegas remain stocked, the delivery workers who bring food to our homes, the cafeteria workers who keep our students fed, the volunteers distributing food at pantries – we see you and we thank you."
For goal one of Food Forward NYC, the plan is to "expand food benefits to reach more New Yorkers in more places," "distribute food more equitably," and "reconfigure how the city sources food," each of which come with their own sub-initiatives.
The city plans to expand to more low-income neighborhoods the "Get the Good Stuff" program, which allows Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients to earn an extra dollar in reward points for every dollar they spend on fruits and vegetables at participating grocery stores.
Food Forward NYC also plans to allow adult members of children's families to permanently get free grab-and-go meals at public schools, even after the pandemic ends. Before COVID-19, only children were eligible for this program, and parents weren't allowed to take food even when they came with their children. The program was expanded to adults accompanying children and then all New Yorkers at the height of the pandemic in the spring of 2020.
Other strategies to achieve the first goal are to work with the state and federal governments to get "Medicare/Medicaid coverage for medically tailored meals." to make the city's outdoor dining program permanent, and to improve access to cold storage in underserved areas, among other things.
"For all New Yorkers to get the food they need and want, they need multiple ways to access healthy, affordable, and culturally appropriate food that meets them where they are," the plan explains. "The plan embraces that food intersects with New Yorkers' health and the broader economy in multiple ways, and not simply with regard to hunger; that food is important as an expression of cultural identity and as a way to connect with family and friends; and that food can bring tremendous joy."
The second Food Forward NYC goal focuses more on how the food industry relates to the economy.
Initiatives within it include enforcing already created fair-scheduling laws in the fast-food industry to make sure that workers have some control over their work schedules and get paid overtime when necessary, expanding and creating new childcare centers that have weekend and overnight hours to accommodate food service workers, pushing the state for a NYC Small Business Recovery Tax Credit for small businesses and restaurants, and developing customized workforce training programs in manufacturing and industry technologies. The city proposal for a tax credit would apply to "businesses with gross revenue below $1 million," which would "be eligible for a tax credit equal to 6% of their calendar year 2021 rent, up to maximum credit of $10,000."
The city will also "create financing and technical assistance plans to support worker-owned cooperatives," by adjusting current programs to better suit the needs of food businesses and by working with community organizations and business improvement districts.
"The restaurant industry is also vital to the city as a major draw for residents, workers, and visitors, underpinning many other industries such as office employment in the central business districts and serving as a draw for tourists," the plan says. "Indeed, the restaurant industry is key to making New York City the compelling place that it is. Its economic contribution is also large. In 2019, the industry made nearly $27 billion in taxable sales."
Food Forward's third main goal focuses on the way that food comes into New York City and where it originates — which more often than not is far from the five boroughs.
Initiatives in this category include modernizing the Hunts Point Food Distribution Center by implementing resiliency measures to protect the building from rising sea levels and flooding, increasing the amount of food the city buys from the New York region instead of outside sources, and removing barriers to urban farming that currently exist in the forms of laws and regulations, such as "reviewing regulations related to land use and exploring different nonprofit and for-profit operating models and mechanisms to distribute micro-grants more efficiently."
Under the fourth goal of the plan, the emphasis is on making sure that food is distributed fairly throughout the city and that food waste is handled sustainably and resourcefully.
The city is aiming to collect 90% of organic waste by 2030 and to "mandate the source separation and recycling of organic waste within all city institutions and schools by the year 2025 and in all residential buildings by 2029"; to figure out how to make cold storage more efficient and sustainable at a lower cost; and to include local seafood and seaweed in the New York State Grown & Certified program, which "is a program that makes it easy for consumers to identify local, safely-handled, and environmentally responsible agricultural products."
The final component of Food Forward NYC is about ensuring different stakeholders in the food and public policy worlds will work together effectively to make the ambitious new plan a reality.
"New York City's food system is highly distributed and fragmented, made up of many small parts that interact with each other in complicated ways," the plan reads. "In fact, the system is so complex that even people who have spent years working in one sector of the food system often have little to no knowledge of how the rest of it works. It is not surprising that it can be extremely hard for anyone who plays a role, from policymakers to food workers to advocates to food consumers, to understand what levers to push for systemic change. This complexity also makes meaningful community engagement and decision making around food very challenging."
Strategies to meet the goal of "strengthening community engagement and cross-sector coordination around the development and implementation of food policy" include partnering with the non-governmental sector to increase community participation in food policy decision-making, working with the private and civic sectors on food education campaigns about sustainability and nutrition, and establishing a Public Housing Food Leadership Innovation Lab to work on projects regarding food access, food production, food waste management, and community building in NYCHA. The plan indicates intention to finally begin recycling at public housing developments.
Candidates debate legalizing sex workers
Riverdale Press
Feb. 21, 2021
Society calls it the "oldest profession," but some both in and outside of government believes it also could be one of the most dangerous.
Sex workers face as much as a 75 percent chance of experiencing sexual violence on the job, according to statistics compiled by the Urban Justice Center. Yet, many of these assaults go unreported because sex workers fear potential arrest or even further assault if they go to the police.
And at least from a global perspective, law enforcement has not been too kind to sex workers. A United Nations report from 2004 claimed a pattern of police violence that included assault, sexual harassment, public "gender searches," and even rape.
But what can New York City do about it? And who's going to do it?
That was exactly what some of the candidates hoping to be this community's next city council member discussed during a debate last weekend hosted by NYCD-16 Indivisible.
"That's hard, because I'm trying to keep my religion out of it," said Carlton Berkley, a former New York Police Department detective, and one of six looking for votes during a March 23 special election.
"I don't think that it should be decriminalized. But then again, we're living in times that we never thought we would be living in."
Still, Berkley says it's hard not to look back at his own career dealing with sex trafficking, and his fears that young women could become "sex slaves."
"I've seen that, and I know what it can lead into," Berkley said. "It can lead into drugs, it can lead into sex slaves. So maybe we might have to still keep it criminalized so that we can keep people safe."
Yet, for many debating what to do with the sex worker trade, the choices seem to be a bit more liberal: decriminalize those who work in the industry, or decriminalize the entire industry itself.
Manhattan state Sen. Liz Krueger has taken a side there, introducing a bill last month that would maintain laws against anyone paying or trafficking people for sex, but would no longer punish those who are in prostitution themselves.
The idea, according to published reports, would be to allow sex workers to report crimes without fear of being arrested themselves.
But others believe it just doesn't go far enough. Eliza Orlins, a candidate for Manhattan District Attorney, is pushing a platform that would fully decriminalize consensual sex work, and would start by not prosecuting such cases if she were elected.
"Sex work is work," said the public defender on her campaign website. She is probably best known nationally as a contestant on the CBS reality competition show, "Survivor," but in recent years has focused her work with The Legal Aid Society.
"Criminalizing sex work stigmatizes and disproportionately targets people of color and trans women, who are already marginalized members of our community," Orlins said. "It traps sex workers in poverty and makes them afraid to come forward to report abuse or other violent acts perpetrated against them."
Mino Lora, a theatre non-profit executive also seeking to replace Andrew Cohen on the city council, mirrored Orlins words that "sex work is work," but believes it's the government's job to provide options where going into sex work isn't needed.
"This impacts Black trans women the most," Lora said. "So the conversation needs to be how do we make sure that Black trans women have work and have opportunities to get work so they don't have to do this. That is where this conversation needs to be."
Eric Dinowitz, a former school teacher, agrees current enforcement practices target both women of color and trans women. But he stopped short of full decriminalization.
"It does not address fundamental needs of commercial sex trade, like as Carlton was saying, sex slaves and sex trafficking," Dinowitz said. "I think any move to fully decriminalize sex work and commercial sex work needs to address the fact that women are still being kidnapped and trafficked. That is a sad reality, and that needs to be addressed."
Dan Padernacht, a real estate lawyer, has a different approach, however. For him, sex work should not only be made legal, but the government should regulate it as well.
"Some of these sex laws should be decriminalized," he said. "I think it's more of a public health issue. I believe if you regulate it, you promote it as a health issue. You make sure that the folks in these industries have plenty of health care, safety, etc."
It's a question that can't be resolved through a single debate, but it does show that many seeking office have taken very strong stands on the issue. Like environmentalist Jessica Haller.
"I agree with decriminalizing sex work," the city council candidate said. "Doing that will eliminate the black market for sex work, and make these people safer."
Berkley may not be for making sex work legal, but he does believe a bunch of other laws currently on the books shouldn't be there.
"Yeah, hopping a turnstile shouldn't be a misdemeanor," Berkley said. "It should be a violation. And there's a lot of other laws on the books that should be violations, because when you keep them as misdemeanors, that affects people's records to get jobs — and not only just to get jobs, but to get housing.
"There's the whole criminal justice system that needs to get revamped."
Voters will choose among these candidates along with Kevin Pazmino during a special election March 23.
Letter: Making my voting choice
Feb. 21, 2021
Society calls it the "oldest profession," but some both in and outside of government believes it also could be one of the most dangerous.
Sex workers face as much as a 75 percent chance of experiencing sexual violence on the job, according to statistics compiled by the Urban Justice Center. Yet, many of these assaults go unreported because sex workers fear potential arrest or even further assault if they go to the police.
And at least from a global perspective, law enforcement has not been too kind to sex workers. A United Nations report from 2004 claimed a pattern of police violence that included assault, sexual harassment, public "gender searches," and even rape.
But what can New York City do about it? And who's going to do it?
That was exactly what some of the candidates hoping to be this community's next city council member discussed during a debate last weekend hosted by NYCD-16 Indivisible.
"That's hard, because I'm trying to keep my religion out of it," said Carlton Berkley, a former New York Police Department detective, and one of six looking for votes during a March 23 special election.
"I don't think that it should be decriminalized. But then again, we're living in times that we never thought we would be living in."
Still, Berkley says it's hard not to look back at his own career dealing with sex trafficking, and his fears that young women could become "sex slaves."
"I've seen that, and I know what it can lead into," Berkley said. "It can lead into drugs, it can lead into sex slaves. So maybe we might have to still keep it criminalized so that we can keep people safe."
Yet, for many debating what to do with the sex worker trade, the choices seem to be a bit more liberal: decriminalize those who work in the industry, or decriminalize the entire industry itself.
Manhattan state Sen. Liz Krueger has taken a side there, introducing a bill last month that would maintain laws against anyone paying or trafficking people for sex, but would no longer punish those who are in prostitution themselves.
The idea, according to published reports, would be to allow sex workers to report crimes without fear of being arrested themselves.
But others believe it just doesn't go far enough. Eliza Orlins, a candidate for Manhattan District Attorney, is pushing a platform that would fully decriminalize consensual sex work, and would start by not prosecuting such cases if she were elected.
"Sex work is work," said the public defender on her campaign website. She is probably best known nationally as a contestant on the CBS reality competition show, "Survivor," but in recent years has focused her work with The Legal Aid Society.
"Criminalizing sex work stigmatizes and disproportionately targets people of color and trans women, who are already marginalized members of our community," Orlins said. "It traps sex workers in poverty and makes them afraid to come forward to report abuse or other violent acts perpetrated against them."
Mino Lora, a theatre non-profit executive also seeking to replace Andrew Cohen on the city council, mirrored Orlins words that "sex work is work," but believes it's the government's job to provide options where going into sex work isn't needed.
"This impacts Black trans women the most," Lora said. "So the conversation needs to be how do we make sure that Black trans women have work and have opportunities to get work so they don't have to do this. That is where this conversation needs to be."
Eric Dinowitz, a former school teacher, agrees current enforcement practices target both women of color and trans women. But he stopped short of full decriminalization.
"It does not address fundamental needs of commercial sex trade, like as Carlton was saying, sex slaves and sex trafficking," Dinowitz said. "I think any move to fully decriminalize sex work and commercial sex work needs to address the fact that women are still being kidnapped and trafficked. That is a sad reality, and that needs to be addressed."
Dan Padernacht, a real estate lawyer, has a different approach, however. For him, sex work should not only be made legal, but the government should regulate it as well.
"Some of these sex laws should be decriminalized," he said. "I think it's more of a public health issue. I believe if you regulate it, you promote it as a health issue. You make sure that the folks in these industries have plenty of health care, safety, etc."
It's a question that can't be resolved through a single debate, but it does show that many seeking office have taken very strong stands on the issue. Like environmentalist Jessica Haller.
"I agree with decriminalizing sex work," the city council candidate said. "Doing that will eliminate the black market for sex work, and make these people safer."
Berkley may not be for making sex work legal, but he does believe a bunch of other laws currently on the books shouldn't be there.
"Yeah, hopping a turnstile shouldn't be a misdemeanor," Berkley said. "It should be a violation. And there's a lot of other laws on the books that should be violations, because when you keep them as misdemeanors, that affects people's records to get jobs — and not only just to get jobs, but to get housing.
"There's the whole criminal justice system that needs to get revamped."
Voters will choose among these candidates along with Kevin Pazmino during a special election March 23.
Letter: Making my voting choice
Riverdale Press
Feb. 21, 2021
Like many other residents of this city council district, I watched the first debate and forum on BronxNet recently.
I appreciated the fact that the moderators were professional and in control, and the candidates were calm and clear in their answers to the questions.
This is a very important job representing our council district, and Andy Cohen did an excellent job in representing every corner of our diverse district. Andy enabled our district to receive millions of dollars in city funding to support our schools, parks, not-for-profit agencies like Riverdale Neighborhood House, The Riverdale Y, Mosaic, Mosholu Montefiore Community Center, Knox Gates, Kingsbridge Heights Community Center, and many more.
Andy understood our entire district, and how to meet with groups to understand neighborhood needs.
As a city councilman, Andy became the head of various important committees that would approve major funding for our district's needs.
As I watched the debate unfold, it became clear to me that only Dan Padernacht — of all the candidates — had the experience, done the professional work, and understood the role of what an elected council member does. Dan would calmly and effectively, if elected, represent our entire district, work with all of our stakeholders, and smoothly transition into our vacant council position.
Dan Padernacht has my vote. I hope he has yours.
Don Bluestone
Fasten your seatbelts for bumpy ride on Palisade Ave
Feb. 21, 2021
Like many other residents of this city council district, I watched the first debate and forum on BronxNet recently.
I appreciated the fact that the moderators were professional and in control, and the candidates were calm and clear in their answers to the questions.
This is a very important job representing our council district, and Andy Cohen did an excellent job in representing every corner of our diverse district. Andy enabled our district to receive millions of dollars in city funding to support our schools, parks, not-for-profit agencies like Riverdale Neighborhood House, The Riverdale Y, Mosaic, Mosholu Montefiore Community Center, Knox Gates, Kingsbridge Heights Community Center, and many more.
Andy understood our entire district, and how to meet with groups to understand neighborhood needs.
As a city councilman, Andy became the head of various important committees that would approve major funding for our district's needs.
As I watched the debate unfold, it became clear to me that only Dan Padernacht — of all the candidates — had the experience, done the professional work, and understood the role of what an elected council member does. Dan would calmly and effectively, if elected, represent our entire district, work with all of our stakeholders, and smoothly transition into our vacant council position.
Dan Padernacht has my vote. I hope he has yours.
Don Bluestone
Fasten your seatbelts for bumpy ride on Palisade Ave
Riverdale Press
Feb. 21, 2021
Rollercoasters can be fun, so long as they're within the confines of state fairs and amusement parks. But when they're outside a nursing home, the adrenaline rush seems to suddenly disappear.
When Daniel Reingold drove to work at the Hebrew Home at Riverdale on a recent morning, he found several work trucks outside the facility's Palisade Avenue entrance. And when the senior care facility president left that evening, the trucks were gone. But in their wake were four new speed humps.
No one told Reingold anything about the speed humps, or even asked whether it was a good idea. If they had, city transportation officials may have thought twice about installing them, especially with how the humps might rob emergency vehicles of vital seconds that could literally mean life or death for the hundreds of souls who call Hebrew Home, well, home.
"I certainly understand the concerns of the community, to be sure that people are observing that 25 mph speed limit," Reingold said. "But one of (the speed humps) is literally at the front entrance to our campus. One would think that they would've reached out to us and have had some conversation."
Because of the older population the Hebrew Home serves, ambulance traffic along Palisade is fairly common. Those vehicles need to move quickly in times of crisis — something that's now especially difficult to do on a street like Palisade, with these four speed humps added to its name.
"The concern is that we have frail, elderly people who are coming in and out of our campus in ambulances and ambulettes. And even at a very low speed, this is very disorienting and disruptive to them," Reingold said. "The patients who are coming in and out to the hospital have expressed real discomfort with it."
Speed humps aren't intended to cause discomfort, but instead to slow traffic, according to Community Board 8 traffic and transportation committee chair Dan Padernacht. But there have been no known complaints about speed on Palisade — a narrow, winding street that runs parallel with the Hudson River. And no one stopped to tell Padernacht about the impending speed humps, either — something DOT normally wouldn't install without community input.
"I don't know if this is something that came from downtown that the Bronx DOT office was unaware of, or slipped through without somebody notifying the community board," Padernacht said.
It's not that the city agency hasn't been talking with the community board. In fact, Bronx DOT commissioner Nivardo Lopez had consulted with a working group exploring options to curb reckless driving on Independence Avenue.
Yet, the Palisade Avenue work never came up.
"I don't know what DOT's current policy is when it comes to advising the community board about changes to the roadway, traffic devices or parking restrictions," Padernacht said, noting these are protocols that seem to change often. "This is something that might've slipped through the cracks."
But it's not an isolated incident. Less than a year ago, DOT turned an oddly laid-out intersection involving West 238th Street, Orloff Avenue and Fort Independence Street into a three-way stop, where previously only one stop sign existed. That change, done just blocks from where Padernacht lives, created confusion for many drivers for weeks afterward since there was no warning the stop signs were being added, and they were difficult to spot.
The stop sign for Fort Independence was run six out of 10 times in a single hour observed by a Riverdale Press reporter at the time. Cars coming from the other direction didn't fare much better.
Reckless driving — especially drag racing — is a persisting problem on a few of the community's streets, among them Independence Avenue. Over the summer, speed bumps were reinstalled on Independence in an effort to address the racing, although some neighbors said it had little effect.
But CB8 never received reports of reckless driving or drag racing on Palisade, Padernacht said, so he's not really sure why speed humps — especially four of them — were installed there.
"Based on the location of the Hebrew Home, on its face, it does not seem to be a good idea to put a speed bump right there," said Padernacht, who first learned of the speed humps from a reporter.
A DOT spokeswoman said there wasn't much of a mystery here — the agency simply received a "community request" to install speed humps along Palisade. DOT commissioned a study, found it would be feasible, and sent out trucks.
DOT shared few other details on who made the request, or what other neighbors — like the Hebrew Home — were consulted.
Palisade is not without its problems, Reingold admits, especially the lack of light after the sun sets. There's definitely a need for caution, but speed humps were not necessarily the answer to that need.
"We remind our staff all the time about being a good neighbor and driving carefully," Reingold said. "There's definitely a need for cars to go slowly and carefully. I just wish we had an opportunity to discuss the various possibilities so our residents wouldn't be so negatively impacted by it."
Not only does it slow down ambulances, but it could make for a very bumpy ride for residents who might not respond well to such movement.
Reingold isn't sure what his next steps will be. But he hopes in the future, DOT might at least pick up the phone and call before moving forward with other major changes.
"It's not up to me to say whether they should be removed or not," Reingold said. If "we had an opportunity to at least discuss the issue and discuss different alternatives, it would have been more helpful."
New York City businesses are barely hanging on
Feb. 21, 2021
Rollercoasters can be fun, so long as they're within the confines of state fairs and amusement parks. But when they're outside a nursing home, the adrenaline rush seems to suddenly disappear.
When Daniel Reingold drove to work at the Hebrew Home at Riverdale on a recent morning, he found several work trucks outside the facility's Palisade Avenue entrance. And when the senior care facility president left that evening, the trucks were gone. But in their wake were four new speed humps.
No one told Reingold anything about the speed humps, or even asked whether it was a good idea. If they had, city transportation officials may have thought twice about installing them, especially with how the humps might rob emergency vehicles of vital seconds that could literally mean life or death for the hundreds of souls who call Hebrew Home, well, home.
"I certainly understand the concerns of the community, to be sure that people are observing that 25 mph speed limit," Reingold said. "But one of (the speed humps) is literally at the front entrance to our campus. One would think that they would've reached out to us and have had some conversation."
Because of the older population the Hebrew Home serves, ambulance traffic along Palisade is fairly common. Those vehicles need to move quickly in times of crisis — something that's now especially difficult to do on a street like Palisade, with these four speed humps added to its name.
"The concern is that we have frail, elderly people who are coming in and out of our campus in ambulances and ambulettes. And even at a very low speed, this is very disorienting and disruptive to them," Reingold said. "The patients who are coming in and out to the hospital have expressed real discomfort with it."
Speed humps aren't intended to cause discomfort, but instead to slow traffic, according to Community Board 8 traffic and transportation committee chair Dan Padernacht. But there have been no known complaints about speed on Palisade — a narrow, winding street that runs parallel with the Hudson River. And no one stopped to tell Padernacht about the impending speed humps, either — something DOT normally wouldn't install without community input.
"I don't know if this is something that came from downtown that the Bronx DOT office was unaware of, or slipped through without somebody notifying the community board," Padernacht said.
It's not that the city agency hasn't been talking with the community board. In fact, Bronx DOT commissioner Nivardo Lopez had consulted with a working group exploring options to curb reckless driving on Independence Avenue.
Yet, the Palisade Avenue work never came up.
"I don't know what DOT's current policy is when it comes to advising the community board about changes to the roadway, traffic devices or parking restrictions," Padernacht said, noting these are protocols that seem to change often. "This is something that might've slipped through the cracks."
But it's not an isolated incident. Less than a year ago, DOT turned an oddly laid-out intersection involving West 238th Street, Orloff Avenue and Fort Independence Street into a three-way stop, where previously only one stop sign existed. That change, done just blocks from where Padernacht lives, created confusion for many drivers for weeks afterward since there was no warning the stop signs were being added, and they were difficult to spot.
The stop sign for Fort Independence was run six out of 10 times in a single hour observed by a Riverdale Press reporter at the time. Cars coming from the other direction didn't fare much better.
Reckless driving — especially drag racing — is a persisting problem on a few of the community's streets, among them Independence Avenue. Over the summer, speed bumps were reinstalled on Independence in an effort to address the racing, although some neighbors said it had little effect.
But CB8 never received reports of reckless driving or drag racing on Palisade, Padernacht said, so he's not really sure why speed humps — especially four of them — were installed there.
"Based on the location of the Hebrew Home, on its face, it does not seem to be a good idea to put a speed bump right there," said Padernacht, who first learned of the speed humps from a reporter.
A DOT spokeswoman said there wasn't much of a mystery here — the agency simply received a "community request" to install speed humps along Palisade. DOT commissioned a study, found it would be feasible, and sent out trucks.
DOT shared few other details on who made the request, or what other neighbors — like the Hebrew Home — were consulted.
Palisade is not without its problems, Reingold admits, especially the lack of light after the sun sets. There's definitely a need for caution, but speed humps were not necessarily the answer to that need.
"We remind our staff all the time about being a good neighbor and driving carefully," Reingold said. "There's definitely a need for cars to go slowly and carefully. I just wish we had an opportunity to discuss the various possibilities so our residents wouldn't be so negatively impacted by it."
Not only does it slow down ambulances, but it could make for a very bumpy ride for residents who might not respond well to such movement.
Reingold isn't sure what his next steps will be. But he hopes in the future, DOT might at least pick up the phone and call before moving forward with other major changes.
"It's not up to me to say whether they should be removed or not," Reingold said. If "we had an opportunity to at least discuss the issue and discuss different alternatives, it would have been more helpful."
New York City businesses are barely hanging on
NY Post
Feb. 21, 2021
Nearly one year after the COVID-19 pandemic hit New York, parts of the Big Apple look more like ghost towns, lined with shuttered storefronts, empty office buildings and businesses teetering on the edge of closure.
Now industry leaders and struggling store owners are calling on the city and state to turn things around — before it's too late.
"I'm not saying there will be an exodus in the city or the city is going to die" without help, said Gino Gigante, owner of the Lower East Side's Waypoint Cafe — where sales tanked from $500,000 in 2019 to just $80,000 last year.
"But you're going to see a lot of unhappy people and a lot of empty storefronts."
As of this month, more than 47 percent of small businesses citywide remain closed, while revenue for those that are open has dropped nearly 60 percent, according to TrackTheRecovery.org, a Harvard University-run database tracing the virus' economic impact.
In Lower Manhattan, commercial office leasing dropped nearly 70 percent in 2020, while a staggering 12 percent of businesses — ranging from hotels to department stores to restaurants — closed for good, data from the Downtown Alliance shows.
"There are hours and hours where no one comes in the store at this point," Alyssa Morrow, chief operating officer of SoHo clothing store The Vintage Twin, told The Post. "We're down to bare bones."
Restaurants, bars and cafes have been among the businesses hardest hit by the pandemic.
"We started out with 22 or 23 employees. Now we have about 10," said Andrew Chase, owner of Cafe Katja on Orchard Street in Lower Manhattan.
In a stark reminder of the dual dangers of the pandemic, those losses include a worker who succumbed to the virus at just 36 years old, Chase said.
"It was just so tragic," he said. "So all I care about is that everybody else is healthy."
Nevertheless, plummeting profits have sowed an uncertain future for Chase and his cafe, despite a GoFundMe cash drive, a loan through the federal Paycheck Protection Program and an understanding landlord taking their lease quarterly.
Vacancy rates in residential, office and retail spaces have continued to skyrocket — with as much as 21 percent of buildings in parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn empty, according to data from Coldwell Banker Richard Ellis, the world's largest real estate and investment firm.
"New York City had a vacancy storefront crisis before the pandemic and it's been exacerbated to levels unimaginable," Andrew Rigie, the Director of the Hospitality Association, told The Post.
A series of governmental failures only accelerated the process.
It took 11 months to roll out an outdoor permit program for the city's flailing live arts sectors, three of five promised emergency busways remain unbuilt, hampering transportation, and there's still no aid package for tenants who collectively owe more than $1 billion in back rent.
The Open Dining and Open Streets programs, which breathed a trace of life back into the city over the summer, only came after threats of legislation and pressure from lawmakers, while aid and loan programs for small businesses have totaled less than $100 million.
New York must also address quality of life issues to convince tourists — and residents who fled — to come back, said Jerome Barth, president of the Fifth Avenue Association.
"New York managed to become the number one tourism destination in the world by being the safest big city in the world and we need to own that label," said Barth, referencing the homeless crisis, high murder rates and rising crime on the subways.
"Perception is what matters in terms of people deciding whether or not to come to New York.
While cracking down on quality of life issues, the city must be more forgiving when it comes to slapping businesses with penalties and fines for minor infractions, said Rigie, urging an emphasis on the things that make New York the greatest city in the world.
"The city needs to embrace the energy that makes New York City so unique," he said. "We need to continue with the outdoor dining, we need outdoor performances.
"New York City needs to create reasons to bring people back."
Rigie and other industry leaders across the five boroughs said government red tape, coupled with complicated and inadequate relief efforts, is making it nearly impossible for businesses to bounce back.
"It's just so much simpler to operate in a lot of other places," said Elizabeth Lusskin, the executive director of the Long Island City Business Improvement.
"The rules are easier, the applications are easier, there's a simpler bureaucracy around everything."
Those businesses not already forced to close may pack up voluntarily if the grass looks greener in other states, warned Lusskin.
"If we want to keep a strong business climate here we have to up our game and really not take it for granted that everyone just wants to be here," said Lusskin. "We are in a competition. And we're New Yorkers, so we should win, but we're not going to win just by default."
Schumer stumps for $25B in restaurant relief as thousands close in NYC
Feb. 21, 2021
Nearly one year after the COVID-19 pandemic hit New York, parts of the Big Apple look more like ghost towns, lined with shuttered storefronts, empty office buildings and businesses teetering on the edge of closure.
Now industry leaders and struggling store owners are calling on the city and state to turn things around — before it's too late.
"I'm not saying there will be an exodus in the city or the city is going to die" without help, said Gino Gigante, owner of the Lower East Side's Waypoint Cafe — where sales tanked from $500,000 in 2019 to just $80,000 last year.
"But you're going to see a lot of unhappy people and a lot of empty storefronts."
As of this month, more than 47 percent of small businesses citywide remain closed, while revenue for those that are open has dropped nearly 60 percent, according to TrackTheRecovery.org, a Harvard University-run database tracing the virus' economic impact.
In Lower Manhattan, commercial office leasing dropped nearly 70 percent in 2020, while a staggering 12 percent of businesses — ranging from hotels to department stores to restaurants — closed for good, data from the Downtown Alliance shows.
"There are hours and hours where no one comes in the store at this point," Alyssa Morrow, chief operating officer of SoHo clothing store The Vintage Twin, told The Post. "We're down to bare bones."
Restaurants, bars and cafes have been among the businesses hardest hit by the pandemic.
"We started out with 22 or 23 employees. Now we have about 10," said Andrew Chase, owner of Cafe Katja on Orchard Street in Lower Manhattan.
In a stark reminder of the dual dangers of the pandemic, those losses include a worker who succumbed to the virus at just 36 years old, Chase said.
"It was just so tragic," he said. "So all I care about is that everybody else is healthy."
Nevertheless, plummeting profits have sowed an uncertain future for Chase and his cafe, despite a GoFundMe cash drive, a loan through the federal Paycheck Protection Program and an understanding landlord taking their lease quarterly.
Vacancy rates in residential, office and retail spaces have continued to skyrocket — with as much as 21 percent of buildings in parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn empty, according to data from Coldwell Banker Richard Ellis, the world's largest real estate and investment firm.
"New York City had a vacancy storefront crisis before the pandemic and it's been exacerbated to levels unimaginable," Andrew Rigie, the Director of the Hospitality Association, told The Post.
A series of governmental failures only accelerated the process.
It took 11 months to roll out an outdoor permit program for the city's flailing live arts sectors, three of five promised emergency busways remain unbuilt, hampering transportation, and there's still no aid package for tenants who collectively owe more than $1 billion in back rent.
The Open Dining and Open Streets programs, which breathed a trace of life back into the city over the summer, only came after threats of legislation and pressure from lawmakers, while aid and loan programs for small businesses have totaled less than $100 million.
New York must also address quality of life issues to convince tourists — and residents who fled — to come back, said Jerome Barth, president of the Fifth Avenue Association.
"New York managed to become the number one tourism destination in the world by being the safest big city in the world and we need to own that label," said Barth, referencing the homeless crisis, high murder rates and rising crime on the subways.
"Perception is what matters in terms of people deciding whether or not to come to New York.
While cracking down on quality of life issues, the city must be more forgiving when it comes to slapping businesses with penalties and fines for minor infractions, said Rigie, urging an emphasis on the things that make New York the greatest city in the world.
"The city needs to embrace the energy that makes New York City so unique," he said. "We need to continue with the outdoor dining, we need outdoor performances.
"New York City needs to create reasons to bring people back."
Rigie and other industry leaders across the five boroughs said government red tape, coupled with complicated and inadequate relief efforts, is making it nearly impossible for businesses to bounce back.
"It's just so much simpler to operate in a lot of other places," said Elizabeth Lusskin, the executive director of the Long Island City Business Improvement.
"The rules are easier, the applications are easier, there's a simpler bureaucracy around everything."
Those businesses not already forced to close may pack up voluntarily if the grass looks greener in other states, warned Lusskin.
"If we want to keep a strong business climate here we have to up our game and really not take it for granted that everyone just wants to be here," said Lusskin. "We are in a competition. And we're New Yorkers, so we should win, but we're not going to win just by default."
Schumer stumps for $25B in restaurant relief as thousands close in NYC
NY Daily News
Feb. 21, 2021
Indoor dining is returning around the city, but struggling restaurants desperately need another stimulus bill to make it through the next stretch of the pandemic, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D.N.Y.) said Sunday.
The Senate majority leader said he's working to keep thousands of local restaurants afloat by pushing for a $25 billion relief fund baked into the proposed $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus package working its way through Congress. Struggling restaurateurs could apply for relief grants through the Small Business Administration.
Restaurant owners were able to apply for forgivable Paycheck Protection Program loans through previous stimulus packages that Congress passed in March and December. But Schumer is aiming for a dedicated program exclusively for bars and eateries.
"Too many of the places we know and love could close without the help, leaving a giant hole in our local economy," Schumer said at a news conference outside Dirty Candy, a vegetarian restaurant on the Lower East Side. "My dad was a small-business owner. He struggled ... he was an exterminator. I know how hard restaurants are hit."
Under the proposal, restaurant groups would be eligible for $10 million grants; individual restaurants could apply for up to $5 million in relief.
The help can't come soon enough for restaurant owners and workers, said Andrew Rigie, executive director of the New York City Hospitality Alliance, which found in a survey last month of 400 restaurant owners around the city that 92% couldn't pay their full December rent.
"The restaurant industry is vital to the economic foundation and social fabric of New York City, and it has been decimated by COVID-19," said Rigie. "Our eating and drinking spots have shed over 140,000 jobs and many New Yorkers still working in the industry are underemployed."
Another survey by the National Restaurant Association last month estimated one in six restaurants across the country have closed for good during the pandemic — including 4,500 in New York City.
Schumer said a dedicated relief fund is the best way to stop the bleeding.
"It's very flexible, and very tailored to what the restaurants need," said Schumer. "New York can't live without its restaurants."
Opinion: Here's what NYC needs to do to start its economic comeback
Feb. 21, 2021
Indoor dining is returning around the city, but struggling restaurants desperately need another stimulus bill to make it through the next stretch of the pandemic, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D.N.Y.) said Sunday.
The Senate majority leader said he's working to keep thousands of local restaurants afloat by pushing for a $25 billion relief fund baked into the proposed $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus package working its way through Congress. Struggling restaurateurs could apply for relief grants through the Small Business Administration.
Restaurant owners were able to apply for forgivable Paycheck Protection Program loans through previous stimulus packages that Congress passed in March and December. But Schumer is aiming for a dedicated program exclusively for bars and eateries.
"Too many of the places we know and love could close without the help, leaving a giant hole in our local economy," Schumer said at a news conference outside Dirty Candy, a vegetarian restaurant on the Lower East Side. "My dad was a small-business owner. He struggled ... he was an exterminator. I know how hard restaurants are hit."
Under the proposal, restaurant groups would be eligible for $10 million grants; individual restaurants could apply for up to $5 million in relief.
The help can't come soon enough for restaurant owners and workers, said Andrew Rigie, executive director of the New York City Hospitality Alliance, which found in a survey last month of 400 restaurant owners around the city that 92% couldn't pay their full December rent.
"The restaurant industry is vital to the economic foundation and social fabric of New York City, and it has been decimated by COVID-19," said Rigie. "Our eating and drinking spots have shed over 140,000 jobs and many New Yorkers still working in the industry are underemployed."
Another survey by the National Restaurant Association last month estimated one in six restaurants across the country have closed for good during the pandemic — including 4,500 in New York City.
Schumer said a dedicated relief fund is the best way to stop the bleeding.
"It's very flexible, and very tailored to what the restaurants need," said Schumer. "New York can't live without its restaurants."
Opinion: Here's what NYC needs to do to start its economic comeback
NY Post
The ghost-storefront blight represents an existential threat to New York City's future. Left unaddressed, it will crush the Big Apple's normally indomitable spirit. Who wants to live or work where blocks of empty storefronts shout "failure" and provide sidewalk loitering grounds for drug dealers and vagrants?
Abandoned storefronts are ruinous to landlords, who must still make payments on mortgages, taxes and utilities. The loss of retail rent is disproportionately damaging because stores typically pay much more per square foot than do office and apartment tenants. The city's entire lender-landlord-tenant balancing act is on the brink, and a new wave of retail failures could collapse it.
The crisis won't fix itself. Our most urgent needs are to halt the government-driven creation of more brick-and-mortar shops at a time when consumers increasingly shop online, and to reduce the nation's most unfair and destructive taxes on retail venues of every size and shape.
Oh, yes — let's clean up the streets so people want to go out again.
The picture is worst in Manhattan. Residential areas aren't in as bad shape as Midtown, but they're inching toward free fall, as well. Count the ghosts on Broadway below West 86th Street. That was Brooks Brothers. That was Chinese-Cuban cafe La Caridad 78. That was — no one remembers because it's been dark for so long. On the Upper East Side, Ann Taylor Loft and The Container Store, jumbos both, vanished overnight in the past week.
Our retail vitality depends on pedestrian traffic. But there are few office workers in Midtown, even fewer tourists in Times Square, and no NYU students in Greenwich Village. The flight to the Hamptons from upper Madison Avenue and Tribeca left merchants in those high-income areas without customers.
Our storefront lights were going out long before March 2020. Pundits unmoored from facts blamed property owners for keeping stores empty to get a "tax deduction." Alas, no such tax deduction exists. Others claimed "the rent is too high." But stores fell and remained empty for a tangle of reasons. Physical shops were disappearing from coast to coast as chains battered by e-commerce went belly up or were sold to cost-cutting private equity firms. Entire malls closed. Department stores including beloved Lord & Taylor fell like ten-pins.
But local retailers also faced challenges unique to the five boroughs.
Killer No. 1: Gotham has far too many store locations but not enough stores to fill them. The Real Estate Board of New York reported that the volume of retail space in the five boroughs grew by 20 percent between 2004 and 2017 — encouraged by zoning rules and mostly due to new construction that added millions of high-priced square feet to the market while people were turning in droves to e-commerce.
Zoning rules and city affordable-housing initiatives in many areas require new residential projects to include retail or provide size bonuses in exchange for it. Developers of all types of projects that require public review include store space whether or not there's any demand for it.
For example, a proposed new complex on the Flushing waterfront, which requires a zoning change, would have a monumental 850,000 square feet of new retail space. And some developers who have yet to come to terms with new realities pile on more retail even when it isn't required.
To those who say, "Well, who wants to live on the ground floor," it isn't a binary choice. What happened to the grand lobbies and entryways of the past? It doesn't always have to be a store.
Online shopping's share of retail spending climbed nationally from 4 percent to 10 percent from 2000 to 2019. It surely skyrocketed above that in the Big Apple when "nonessential" (i.e., most) stores were closed by government order last March.
The wipeout is about to get worse. The restaurant shutdown killed off thousands of eateries from taco joints to the '21' Club. Of those still afloat, 90 percent failed to pay rent in December, the New York Hospitality Alliance reported.
Killer No. 2: City property taxes that landlords pass on to tenants. "Skyrocketing property taxes have risen 50 percent over the past seven years and can contribute to up to one-third of a retail tenant's rent," said Paimaan Lodhi, REBNY senior vice president of policy and planning. Yet Mayor de Blasio, who wants even higher taxes, has the temerity to criticize landlords for charging unaffordable rents.
There are also a separate, only-in-New-York "commercial real-estate tax" that milks tenants directly; regulatory overkill that soaks store owners with fines; and proliferating "sidewalk bridges" that scare off customers.
It might take years for things to return to normal. But shorter-term remedies can arrest the calamity for a time. Zoning rules should change to discourage large-scale creation of even more retail venues on top of the empty ones that exist. Besides reducing taxes, City Hall must torpedo an insane City Council pipe dream for commercial rent control, which would leave landlords even more desperate than they already are.
To draw shoppers back, the city needs to clean up the deteriorating urban environment. Get homeless off the street and into shelters, restore garbage collection to earlier levels and make subways safe again.
They are indispensable first steps toward preserving what remains of our retail landscape — and offering hope for its future.
NYC transit chief Feinberg blames media for low subway ridership amid COVID-19
The ghost-storefront blight represents an existential threat to New York City's future. Left unaddressed, it will crush the Big Apple's normally indomitable spirit. Who wants to live or work where blocks of empty storefronts shout "failure" and provide sidewalk loitering grounds for drug dealers and vagrants?
Abandoned storefronts are ruinous to landlords, who must still make payments on mortgages, taxes and utilities. The loss of retail rent is disproportionately damaging because stores typically pay much more per square foot than do office and apartment tenants. The city's entire lender-landlord-tenant balancing act is on the brink, and a new wave of retail failures could collapse it.
The crisis won't fix itself. Our most urgent needs are to halt the government-driven creation of more brick-and-mortar shops at a time when consumers increasingly shop online, and to reduce the nation's most unfair and destructive taxes on retail venues of every size and shape.
Oh, yes — let's clean up the streets so people want to go out again.
The picture is worst in Manhattan. Residential areas aren't in as bad shape as Midtown, but they're inching toward free fall, as well. Count the ghosts on Broadway below West 86th Street. That was Brooks Brothers. That was Chinese-Cuban cafe La Caridad 78. That was — no one remembers because it's been dark for so long. On the Upper East Side, Ann Taylor Loft and The Container Store, jumbos both, vanished overnight in the past week.
Our retail vitality depends on pedestrian traffic. But there are few office workers in Midtown, even fewer tourists in Times Square, and no NYU students in Greenwich Village. The flight to the Hamptons from upper Madison Avenue and Tribeca left merchants in those high-income areas without customers.
Our storefront lights were going out long before March 2020. Pundits unmoored from facts blamed property owners for keeping stores empty to get a "tax deduction." Alas, no such tax deduction exists. Others claimed "the rent is too high." But stores fell and remained empty for a tangle of reasons. Physical shops were disappearing from coast to coast as chains battered by e-commerce went belly up or were sold to cost-cutting private equity firms. Entire malls closed. Department stores including beloved Lord & Taylor fell like ten-pins.
But local retailers also faced challenges unique to the five boroughs.
Killer No. 1: Gotham has far too many store locations but not enough stores to fill them. The Real Estate Board of New York reported that the volume of retail space in the five boroughs grew by 20 percent between 2004 and 2017 — encouraged by zoning rules and mostly due to new construction that added millions of high-priced square feet to the market while people were turning in droves to e-commerce.
Zoning rules and city affordable-housing initiatives in many areas require new residential projects to include retail or provide size bonuses in exchange for it. Developers of all types of projects that require public review include store space whether or not there's any demand for it.
For example, a proposed new complex on the Flushing waterfront, which requires a zoning change, would have a monumental 850,000 square feet of new retail space. And some developers who have yet to come to terms with new realities pile on more retail even when it isn't required.
To those who say, "Well, who wants to live on the ground floor," it isn't a binary choice. What happened to the grand lobbies and entryways of the past? It doesn't always have to be a store.
Online shopping's share of retail spending climbed nationally from 4 percent to 10 percent from 2000 to 2019. It surely skyrocketed above that in the Big Apple when "nonessential" (i.e., most) stores were closed by government order last March.
The wipeout is about to get worse. The restaurant shutdown killed off thousands of eateries from taco joints to the '21' Club. Of those still afloat, 90 percent failed to pay rent in December, the New York Hospitality Alliance reported.
Killer No. 2: City property taxes that landlords pass on to tenants. "Skyrocketing property taxes have risen 50 percent over the past seven years and can contribute to up to one-third of a retail tenant's rent," said Paimaan Lodhi, REBNY senior vice president of policy and planning. Yet Mayor de Blasio, who wants even higher taxes, has the temerity to criticize landlords for charging unaffordable rents.
There are also a separate, only-in-New-York "commercial real-estate tax" that milks tenants directly; regulatory overkill that soaks store owners with fines; and proliferating "sidewalk bridges" that scare off customers.
It might take years for things to return to normal. But shorter-term remedies can arrest the calamity for a time. Zoning rules should change to discourage large-scale creation of even more retail venues on top of the empty ones that exist. Besides reducing taxes, City Hall must torpedo an insane City Council pipe dream for commercial rent control, which would leave landlords even more desperate than they already are.
To draw shoppers back, the city needs to clean up the deteriorating urban environment. Get homeless off the street and into shelters, restore garbage collection to earlier levels and make subways safe again.
They are indispensable first steps toward preserving what remains of our retail landscape — and offering hope for its future.
NYC transit chief Feinberg blames media for low subway ridership amid COVID-19
NY Post
Feb. 21, 2021
New York City transit chief Sarah Feinberg blamed the media Sunday for low subway ridership — claiming news outlets stoked fears about contracting COVID-19 on trains.
"[The subway system] was really ill-served by some of the early coverage of the pandemic," said Feinberg, the MTA's interim transit president, in an interview with ABC 7, referencing news footage at the time of packed subway trains.
"So I think people started thinking, the last place I want to be is in a crowded subway car," she said.
Feinberg said data shows that — despite more than 28,000 COVID-19 deaths in the Big Apple over the past year — public transportation isn't a hot spot for transmitting the virus.
"Well, fast forward a year, there's now been study after study that shows that the subway system, the transit system, not just in New York but really everywhere, is really not a place that's vectoring the virus," she told the station — without referencing specific studies.
Her comments come as subway ridership in New York City plunged this month to roughly 70 percent of that in February 2020 and as city bus ridership dropped 50 percent.
The plummet in straphangers also comes amid a string of subway assaults that left two homeless riders dead last week and countless others injured.
Job loss may also be linked to the decline in riders — with more than 550,000 New Yorkers losing their jobs over the past year and others switching to working remotely.
Transit officials including Feinberg have also made cuts to subway service lines such as the C and the F trains and scaled back hours over the past year.
A study commissioned by the agency has predicted that subway ridership won't return to pre-COVID-19 levels until at least 2024.
MTA Budget Woes Threaten Training Program That Put City Kids on Express Track to Transit Jobs
Feb. 21, 2021
New York City transit chief Sarah Feinberg blamed the media Sunday for low subway ridership — claiming news outlets stoked fears about contracting COVID-19 on trains.
"[The subway system] was really ill-served by some of the early coverage of the pandemic," said Feinberg, the MTA's interim transit president, in an interview with ABC 7, referencing news footage at the time of packed subway trains.
"So I think people started thinking, the last place I want to be is in a crowded subway car," she said.
Feinberg said data shows that — despite more than 28,000 COVID-19 deaths in the Big Apple over the past year — public transportation isn't a hot spot for transmitting the virus.
"Well, fast forward a year, there's now been study after study that shows that the subway system, the transit system, not just in New York but really everywhere, is really not a place that's vectoring the virus," she told the station — without referencing specific studies.
Her comments come as subway ridership in New York City plunged this month to roughly 70 percent of that in February 2020 and as city bus ridership dropped 50 percent.
The plummet in straphangers also comes amid a string of subway assaults that left two homeless riders dead last week and countless others injured.
Job loss may also be linked to the decline in riders — with more than 550,000 New Yorkers losing their jobs over the past year and others switching to working remotely.
Transit officials including Feinberg have also made cuts to subway service lines such as the C and the F trains and scaled back hours over the past year.
A study commissioned by the agency has predicted that subway ridership won't return to pre-COVID-19 levels until at least 2024.
MTA Budget Woes Threaten Training Program That Put City Kids on Express Track to Transit Jobs
The City
Feb. 21, 2021
An apprenticeship program that trains high school graduates for jobs at the MTA is on the chopping block — even though the transit agency just got $4 billion dollars in federal aid.
The potential mid-stream elimination of the Transit Mechanical Apprentice Training Program — which gives youths on-the-job experience to help them become everything from MTA mechanics to electricians — would represent "a betrayal of their trust," Transport Workers Union Local 100 declared.
In an email sent Friday to the head of buses at the MTA, a top union official wrote that the apprentices were recruited out of city public schools "with a guarantee to further develop their skills in a professional trade" and to have a shot at a "lifelong career."
"We made a commitment to them and we need to keep it," JP Patafio, a TWU Local 100 vice president, wrote in the email that was provided to THE CITY.
Patafio said the union has pushed management for months to save the program, but MTA officials relayed news of the possible cut at a recent meeting where "no one was happy" but "the sentiment was that we would try to save it."
The email notes that New York City Transit "is in a deficit of technical trades" and that "this program was designed to help mitigate this problem."
The MTA, which has a workforce of about 70,000 employees, announced last year that it expects to surpass, through attrition and retirement, its goal of eliminating 2,700 jobs as part of an agency-wide reorganization.
A Way Up
Since the apprenticeship program was launched in August 2018, 10 workers have moved on to full-time careers at New York City Transit after completing their training, union officials said.
But 18 who have yet to complete the three-year program could lose their jobs, said Jonathan Jackson, a TWU Local 100 vice chair for surface transit. He added some of those being trained for skilled labor may be offered positions as cleaners.
"They should be expanding this, not cutting it," he added. "This program is like a jetpack straight into the middle class — bang, you are right there."
The MTA said the program, which costs about $2 million a year, has enlisted 37 apprentices.
Those who've been in the program see it as a path out of poverty.
"It really puts us at a different level from where we come from," said 19-year-old Sandra Diaz, an apprentice who maintains heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems at the MTA's Fresh Pond bus depot in Queens. "Working this job, I feel like I have a chance to get out of where I came from."
Diaz joined the apprentice program in September 2019 after graduating from the Bronx Design and Construction Academy. She said she had other job offers coming out of the South Bronx vocational high school, but "dropped everything and went with the MTA" because of its training and career prospects.
Diaz said she heard earlier this month about the possibility of her apprenticeship being terminated before she has a chance to complete her training and certification.
"This is what we were promised," she said. "Now it's like, 'Well, you might not have a job.' So what do you do now?"
Cash Crunch
An MTA spokesperson said the agency does not negotiate or discuss labor matters publicly.
"But what we have made clear is that in this fiscal crisis, we continue to be faced with an $8 billion deficit and are grappling with very difficult decisions," said the spokesperson, Shams Tarek. "While no decisions have been made about this important program, our priorities remain avoiding layoffs and draconian service cuts."
MTA officials this week announced that billions in federal aid and improved tax revenue will allow the agency to avoid service cuts through 2022. The MTA board last week approved 7% toll increases on nine bridges and tunnels, but has postponed a planned fare hike until the summer.
For months, officials had warned of thousands of layoffs and cuts to subway, bus and commuter rail service without significant federal aid.
But that may not be enough to save the apprenticeship program.
Alberto Caamano, a product of the program who now works as a mechanical maintainer at the Grand Avenue bus depot in Queens, described it as "a big opportunity" for him and his family.
"I wasn't a college person, and I didn't want to disappoint my mom," Caamano, 20, told THE CITY. "I wanted to do the best I could and the best I could do was MTA — if you take this pipeline away, that's not a good thing."
Caamano said the job has been "honestly better than anything i could have thought of."
"I came from the lower class, I live in The Bronx, but we've all been trying to take advantage of the program," he said. "For us, that's a great opportunity."
Patafio described the program as "a success by a lot of different measures."
"This is what we need — training people, getting young people good jobs," he said. "And they want to cut it?"
Elderly lady pushing cart killed while walking against traffic direction in Kingsbridge area
Feb. 21, 2021
An apprenticeship program that trains high school graduates for jobs at the MTA is on the chopping block — even though the transit agency just got $4 billion dollars in federal aid.
The potential mid-stream elimination of the Transit Mechanical Apprentice Training Program — which gives youths on-the-job experience to help them become everything from MTA mechanics to electricians — would represent "a betrayal of their trust," Transport Workers Union Local 100 declared.
In an email sent Friday to the head of buses at the MTA, a top union official wrote that the apprentices were recruited out of city public schools "with a guarantee to further develop their skills in a professional trade" and to have a shot at a "lifelong career."
"We made a commitment to them and we need to keep it," JP Patafio, a TWU Local 100 vice president, wrote in the email that was provided to THE CITY.
Patafio said the union has pushed management for months to save the program, but MTA officials relayed news of the possible cut at a recent meeting where "no one was happy" but "the sentiment was that we would try to save it."
The email notes that New York City Transit "is in a deficit of technical trades" and that "this program was designed to help mitigate this problem."
The MTA, which has a workforce of about 70,000 employees, announced last year that it expects to surpass, through attrition and retirement, its goal of eliminating 2,700 jobs as part of an agency-wide reorganization.
A Way Up
Since the apprenticeship program was launched in August 2018, 10 workers have moved on to full-time careers at New York City Transit after completing their training, union officials said.
But 18 who have yet to complete the three-year program could lose their jobs, said Jonathan Jackson, a TWU Local 100 vice chair for surface transit. He added some of those being trained for skilled labor may be offered positions as cleaners.
"They should be expanding this, not cutting it," he added. "This program is like a jetpack straight into the middle class — bang, you are right there."
The MTA said the program, which costs about $2 million a year, has enlisted 37 apprentices.
Those who've been in the program see it as a path out of poverty.
"It really puts us at a different level from where we come from," said 19-year-old Sandra Diaz, an apprentice who maintains heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems at the MTA's Fresh Pond bus depot in Queens. "Working this job, I feel like I have a chance to get out of where I came from."
Diaz joined the apprentice program in September 2019 after graduating from the Bronx Design and Construction Academy. She said she had other job offers coming out of the South Bronx vocational high school, but "dropped everything and went with the MTA" because of its training and career prospects.
Diaz said she heard earlier this month about the possibility of her apprenticeship being terminated before she has a chance to complete her training and certification.
"This is what we were promised," she said. "Now it's like, 'Well, you might not have a job.' So what do you do now?"
Cash Crunch
An MTA spokesperson said the agency does not negotiate or discuss labor matters publicly.
"But what we have made clear is that in this fiscal crisis, we continue to be faced with an $8 billion deficit and are grappling with very difficult decisions," said the spokesperson, Shams Tarek. "While no decisions have been made about this important program, our priorities remain avoiding layoffs and draconian service cuts."
MTA officials this week announced that billions in federal aid and improved tax revenue will allow the agency to avoid service cuts through 2022. The MTA board last week approved 7% toll increases on nine bridges and tunnels, but has postponed a planned fare hike until the summer.
For months, officials had warned of thousands of layoffs and cuts to subway, bus and commuter rail service without significant federal aid.
But that may not be enough to save the apprenticeship program.
Alberto Caamano, a product of the program who now works as a mechanical maintainer at the Grand Avenue bus depot in Queens, described it as "a big opportunity" for him and his family.
"I wasn't a college person, and I didn't want to disappoint my mom," Caamano, 20, told THE CITY. "I wanted to do the best I could and the best I could do was MTA — if you take this pipeline away, that's not a good thing."
Caamano said the job has been "honestly better than anything i could have thought of."
"I came from the lower class, I live in The Bronx, but we've all been trying to take advantage of the program," he said. "For us, that's a great opportunity."
Patafio described the program as "a success by a lot of different measures."
"This is what we need — training people, getting young people good jobs," he said. "And they want to cut it?"
Elderly lady pushing cart killed while walking against traffic direction in Kingsbridge area
Bronx Times
Feb. 21, 2021
A car struck a pedestrian in the intersection of Broadway and West 231 Street at around 9 p.m. Thursday. The 73-year-old female was pushing a shopping cart while walking northbound in the southbound lane against vehicular traffic. The driver and vehicle remained at the scene and the victim was transported to Bellevue Hospital Center where she was pronounced deceased on Friday 19. The NYPD Highway District's Collision Investigation Squad is investigating the incident.
OPINION: Pedestrians Are Second-Class Citizens — And Snow Proves It
Feb. 21, 2021
A car struck a pedestrian in the intersection of Broadway and West 231 Street at around 9 p.m. Thursday. The 73-year-old female was pushing a shopping cart while walking northbound in the southbound lane against vehicular traffic. The driver and vehicle remained at the scene and the victim was transported to Bellevue Hospital Center where she was pronounced deceased on Friday 19. The NYPD Highway District's Collision Investigation Squad is investigating the incident.
OPINION: Pedestrians Are Second-Class Citizens — And Snow Proves It
Streetsblog
Feb. 22, 2021
If you ever needed confirmation, recent snowstorms showed once again that there is no equity between drivers and pedestrians/bus riders/cyclists in New York City. All lanes of vehicular traffic for cars were cleared of snow in 12 hours, while bus stops, bike lanes, corners and sidewalks were impassable. We should not be surprised: the New York City Sanitation Department calls its mission "restoring the blacktop."
So — one week later — entire sidewalks and bike lanes are still submerged under snow and no one is bothering to even inspect the situation: 311 refuses to accept complaints about snow (which is a sure way to eliminate problems!). With so many stores closed, the situation is dire for public transit riders, first responders, seniors and people with disabilities and the vast majority of the population that does not drive.
Today, the taxpayers pay for DSNY to clear the roadways. Although bike lanes are part of the roadway, they require smaller trucks which are few and far between in the DSNY fleet. Clearing the sidewalks is entirely the responsibility of businesses and residents, who are unlikely to clear a consistent pedestrian path, corners, pedestrian crossings and bus stops or to receive a fine if they do not comply. Areas adjacent to parks or MTA are the responsibility of those agencies, subject to negotiation.
There are so many good reasons to change the way the streets are cleared of snow in New York City.
Feb. 22, 2021
If you ever needed confirmation, recent snowstorms showed once again that there is no equity between drivers and pedestrians/bus riders/cyclists in New York City. All lanes of vehicular traffic for cars were cleared of snow in 12 hours, while bus stops, bike lanes, corners and sidewalks were impassable. We should not be surprised: the New York City Sanitation Department calls its mission "restoring the blacktop."
So — one week later — entire sidewalks and bike lanes are still submerged under snow and no one is bothering to even inspect the situation: 311 refuses to accept complaints about snow (which is a sure way to eliminate problems!). With so many stores closed, the situation is dire for public transit riders, first responders, seniors and people with disabilities and the vast majority of the population that does not drive.
Today, the taxpayers pay for DSNY to clear the roadways. Although bike lanes are part of the roadway, they require smaller trucks which are few and far between in the DSNY fleet. Clearing the sidewalks is entirely the responsibility of businesses and residents, who are unlikely to clear a consistent pedestrian path, corners, pedestrian crossings and bus stops or to receive a fine if they do not comply. Areas adjacent to parks or MTA are the responsibility of those agencies, subject to negotiation.
There are so many good reasons to change the way the streets are cleared of snow in New York City.
- First, it violates the American with Disabilities Act. Maintaining the sidewalks during snowy weather is never optional according to the ADA: "Reasonable snow removal efforts are part of the public agency obligation to maintain its Walkways in an accessible condition, with only isolated or temporary interruptions in accessibility." Throughout the city, snow pileups are not "isolated or temporary" for people with disabilities — they are a persistent hazard!
- Second, it is dangerous: in our era of Vision Zero forcing people to walk in the street, while at other times we penalize pedestrians for walking in the street, is absolutely wrong. And there is ample evidence that citizens are not happy about the current state of affairs: during the last snowfall, a tweet asking, "Why do we treat cars better than people" garnered 18,400 likes in no time at all for its poster, @JBlascoNYC.
- Third, you cannot fine your way out of the problem: "There are people who simply can't adhere to shoveling ordinances, like those who are elderly or disabled, and single parents working multiple jobs," Bloomberg news mentioned in a 2019 story. And now with the COVID and retail crises, many storefronts may remain empty for years to come, perpetuating a patchwork of impassable sidewalks.
- Municipal snow clearing from sidewalks is not an outlandish concept: many cities and states do it. Stockholm clears all its major arterials prioritizing bike/ped facilities to address equity concerns, Fast Company reported. In the United States, a 2013 survey of 33 state DOTs showed that 49 percent of those states did clear sidewalks (to some extent, based on various criteria). Such states include Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Also:
"Although most cities don't treat sidewalks as necessities, some do, and prioritize them to varying degrees. Most sidewalks in Toronto are cleared by the city. In Rochester, New York, the city steps in when snow totals reach more than four inches. Rochester pays for removal through an 'embellishment fee' on property-tax bills, which averages $35 [annually] per homestead. Duluth clears 100 miles of priority sidewalk routes, including routes to schools, high-pedestrian traffic locations, and public-transit locations. Bloomington, Minn., clears all of its 250 miles of sidewalks. These cities' programs could act as templates for New York to formulate a plan for safe pedestrian paths in the winter," the Bloomberg story said.
The New York City program must get Emergency services back on cleared roads ASAP and restore public transportation in priority. To facilitate the work of DSNY, vehicular traffic would be restricted to emergency vehicles and High Occupancy Vehicles for the duration of the storm and for two days after.
To clear the streets/sidewalks equitably, a new protocol for snow removal is required.
- Create a network of safe access for emergency vehicles and bus route by clearing one lane on each arterial (bus lanes and others)
- What is the point of clearing a bus lane if passengers cannot get on the bus? As a second priority, the city would clear bus stops, corners and sidewalks. A simple operational change will make this much easier: on arterials, plows should push the snow to the left rather than to the right. As a result, there would be minimal accumulation at bus stops and street corners. Snow would instead be piled in a car lane (given that drivers are being discouraged from driving anyway, they won't miss the space).
- Snow must be removed from bike lanes after sidewalks are cleared. This prevents bike lanes being re-buried by the sidewalk snow removal. Snow from bike lanes gets pushed onto parking lanes and not the cleared sidewalks.
- Lastly, the remaining car lanes on arterials would be cleared.
Many additional interventions could make this process more efficient: marking the street in red where buses stop on the road prevents snow pile-ups there ; trucks follow snow plows to pick up accumulation; spray sidewalks and bike lanes in advance with brine to reduce accumulation.
In the end, it is a matter of equity and common sense: pedestrians and cyclists are at much greater risk when it snows. And why are millions of non-driving citizens who are the majority of New Yorkers paying taxes to clear streets for cars, while certainly not getting the same level of service.
Christine Berthet is one of the founders of CHEKPEDS, the Clinton Hill/Hells Kitchen pedestrian advocacy group. She is also a member of Manhattan Community Board 4. Follow CHEKPEDS on Twitter @chekpeds.
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