Gotham Gazette

The Place for New York Policy and politics

CITY

City

De Blasio's Shelter Plan Moves Ahead


3 may first lady intake

Mayor de Blasio at a homeless shelter (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)


“We’ve opened shelters in communities that have never had shelters before,” New York City Social Services Commissioner Steve Banks said in October, at an online event hosted by New York Law School that took place amid controversy over Mayor Bill de Blasio’s decision to move homeless men from the Lucerne Hotel on the Upper West Side after uproar from some local residents.

Banks alluded to the de Blasio administration’s “Turning the Tide” initiative, a plan to reduce homelessness in New York City released by the mayor and Banks in February 2017. As part of the plan, the city pledged to eliminate the use of commercial hotels and “cluster site” shelter units in favor of shelters run by the Department of Homeless Services and efforts to reduce the homeless population through preventative and re-housing measures.

But the plan got off to a slow start and some advocates, like Coalition for the Homeless, say it is outdated in light of the pandemic and that the mayor is using it to deflect criticism from his handling of the Lucerne controversy, in part by repeatedly citing the goal of eliminating the use of commercial shelters. When the residents of the Lucerne were initially moved there from congregate settings to avoid the spread of COVID-19, they were not provided necessary support services and security was lacking.

When the administration announced Turning the Tide, de Blasio was on the receiving end of relentless criticism over his handling of homelessness in the city, and he acknowledged coming up short against the enormity and complexity of the problem. According to the Department of Homeless Services (DHS), the city shelter census currently stands at 53,778. That’s under the goal Mayor de Blasio set in 2017 of getting the DHS shelter census to about 57,500 by 2022, though it’s unclear how the covid eviction moratorium is impacting the numbers and what may happen when those protections are removed -- some are predicting a potential tsunami of homelessness. The city’s actual homeless population is far greater than the DHS census, which does not factor in all types of shelters in the city and does not account for the number of people living ‘doubled up’ or other crowded conditions after loss of housing.

The mayor and Banks are pledging to site 90 new community-based shelters by the end of this year that, in Banks’ words at the time, would be “as close as possible to the anchors in people’s lives.” The idea being that if people do wind up in shelter, they can keep continuity with regard to jobs, school, family, and other key pieces of their lives, helping them maintain some stability as they deal with housing insecurity and the challenge of returning to stable housing.

As of early this month (December 2020), 43 of the 90 shelters are operational and 37 are sited but not yet operational. Of those 43 operational shelters, about half (21) are located in the Bronx, with eight in Queens, nine in Brooklyn, and five in Manhattan, with none operational yet on Staten Island.

Of the 80 total sited shelters, whether operational or not, under Turning the Tide, 31 are in the Bronx, 14 in Manhattan, 19 in Brooklyn, 14 in Queens, and 2 on Staten Island. These numbers don’t exist in a vacuum, however, as the shelters are being opened to replace the use of hotels and other elements of the hodgepodge shelter system, and the overall plan said that the city’s shelter footprint would actually shrink significantly if the plan were to be implemented as planned, and in conjunction with other measures to prevent homelessness and re-house people who do enter the system. Yet there are also questions about whether the city should be dedicating so many resources to opening new shelters instead of investing time and effort into permanent housing, such as increasing the value of certain housing vouchers.

Overall, as of October 31, there are 132 Department of Homeless Services shelters in the Bronx, 127 in Brooklyn, 118 in Manhattan, 75 in Queens, and one on Staten Island, for a total of 453. These numbers include so-called “stop-gap” locations or commercial hotels being used due to the pandemic -- combined, there were 164 such locations throughout the five boroughs as of October. According to the Department of Social Services (DSS), which Banks runs and coordinates with DHS, these numbers represent a 28% decrease from the 647 various buildings in use before Turning the Tide was launched.

The 90 opened, sited, or planned but not sited new shelters are a mix of traditional shelters and specialized ones, such as those supporting families with children, adult families, employment-focused, or for LGBTQ New Yorkers.

Four of the city’s 59 community board districts will be getting their first traditional shelters through this program, including Brooklyn 13 (Coney Island and Bensonhurst), Bronx 8 (Riverdale, Kingsbridge), Queens 9 (Woodhaven, Richmond Hill), Staten Island 3 (South Shore), and Manhattan 1 (Lower Manhattan), according to DSS.

As of now, this will leave six community board districts throughout the city without any DHS shelters, according to DSS, including Bronx 11 (Allerton), Brooklyn 10 (Bay Ridge) and 11 (Gravesend), Staten Island 2 (Mid-Island), and Queens 6 (Forest Hills) and 11 (Bayside), even after Turning the Tide is fully implemented. However, shelters could be coming to those community districts in the remaining batch of ten shelters that still need to be sited under the plan.

Additionally, there will be 21 specialized shelters in community board districts where such shelters have never been before, including three in the Bronx, seven in Manhattan, seven in Brooklyn, and four in Queens.

Neha Sharma, associate press secretary at the Department of Social Services, told Gotham Gazette that the city expects all 90 planned shelters to be sited "by the end of this year" and most to be operational by the end of next year, which is when Mayor de Blasio leaves office due to term limits. She noted that DSS has “a responsibility to make sure neighborhoods that never had shelters have the resources to support those who need them.”

According to Sharma, Turning the Tide “represents this administration’s holistic effort to really change the way we provide shelter” and “transform the physical footprint of shelters in this city.” Sharma stressed that the pre-de Blasio shelter system was “built up over several decades” and reflects “about forty years of inherited policy.”

DSS’ focus when opening new shelters is making sure communities have the resources to assist those experiencing homelessness within those communities, Sharma said, adding, “as we right-size the geographic footprint of the shelter system, the idea is making sure all communities share in this responsibility and have the resources they’d need to offer anyone from the community or neighboring communities to stabilize their lives there.”

Jacquelyn Simone, a policy analyst at the Coalition for the Homeless, told Gotham Gazette that “it is possible the administration may be on track with the goals they’ve set. However, it remains to be seen if that capacity will be able to meet the needs in light of the economic devastation brought about by this pandemic.” She criticized the mayor’s homelesness policies as lacking a focus on permanent housing and said “the commitment for permanent housing for homeless people has been inadequate to date.”

“We were disappointed at the time [Turning the Tide] came out that the administration was projecting they were only going to be able to decrease the number of people in shelters by about 2,500...and based their capacity planning on that very unambitious goal,” said Simone.

Simone sees a “bifurcation of responsibilities in City Hall where there’s one side of the government that works on homelessness issues and there’s one side that works on housing issues” and that “those issues are treated separately instead of recognizing that housing is the answer to homelessness.”

Coalition for the Homeless and other housing advocates have been critical of the mayor’s handling of the controversy surrounding the Lucerne Hotel on the Upper West Side being used as a temporary shelter. Simone said that “Mayor de Blasio has repeatedly alluded to this Turning the Tide goal to get out of commercial hotels as an excuse” for moving unhoused persons out of the Lucerne. He did so during September 10 and September 14 press conferences, during the height of the controversy, as well as at other times.

Simone believes that the Lucerne saga will have ripple effects throughout the city, where she is already seeing shelter sitings being contested in “almost every neighborhood, unfortunately,” where sitings are being attempted. She also believes that “the mayor’s capitulation will only make these shelter siting issues more challenging than they already were.”

She explained that by agreeing to move the unhoused persons from the hotel, de Blasio has “emboldened other NIMBY groups throughout the city and we’re already seeing other neighborhoods object to the presence of homeless New Yorkers nearby because they’ve received a very clear message from City Hall that the Mayor won’t defend homeless New Yorkers and his priority is to instead defend this vocal group of NIMBYs.”

***
by Andrew Millman, Gotham Gazette
   

Read more by this writer.

Note: this article has been updated to reflect that the de Blasio administration is planning to have all 90 new shelters sited by the end of 2020 and to correct the pronoun used for Neha Sharma - we regret the original error.

City Council Speaker Unveils Comprehensive Planning Legislation


m b skyline

New York City development (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)


City Council Speaker Corey Johnson on Wednesday unveiled legislation that would overhaul New York City’s long-term planning processes, eliminating duplicative procedures, streamlining agency coordination, and establishing a more proactive, holistic approach to land use and budgeting that prioritizes racial and economic justice. 

For decades, the city’s zoning, land use, and development have been subject to disparate sets of mandates and guidelines, some overlapping and redundant, in the City Charter, the city’s foundational governing document. There are more than a dozen planning documents that determine how infrastructure is built and how communities and boroughs grow. 

Over the last two years, Johnson and his colleagues, particularly Council Members Brad Lander and Antonio Reynoso, have been attempting to reform those processes into one centralized comprehensive approach that would act as an overarching strategy for everything from housing creation to school construction, public spaces, transit access, and economic development. The approach would bring about more equitable and sustainable growth across the city, addressing long-standing disparities and needs, particularly in Black and brown communities, while also meeting citywide goals.

Council members along with the Thriving Communities coalition of advocates and experts unsuccessfully proposed such a comprehensive planning framework before a Charter Revision Commission last year. They sought to have the commission present the policy to voters in the form of a ballot question, but the commission decided against including it in its final list of ballot proposals. 

“We have a piecemeal and top-down approach to land use and planning and we can't afford to carry that ineffective approach into our future. The stakes are just too high,” Johnson said Wednesday, as he announced the new legislation and released an accompanying report, “Planning Together.” The report outlines the city’s broken planning procedures that have created inequities and critiques city government’s inability to realistically evaluate, budget, and build major infrastructure projects through the capital budget.

The report and the legislation, Johnson said, would “give us tangible and useful tools to plan for our future...We're going to have clearly-defined, measurable, citywide goals, and every neighborhood is going to develop their own land use plan. These are real concrete things that New Yorkers can actually wrap their heads around.” 

Johnson was joined at a virtual rally to announce the report and legislation by Reynoso and Lander, as well as Council Members Vanessa Gibson, who chairs the Council capital budget subcommittee, Carlina Rivera, and Ben Kallos, as well as planning experts and advocates from Association for Neighborhood & Housing Development, the Pratt Center for Community Development, the Municipal Art Society, and the Regional Plan Association. 

The new legislation, which includes City Charter amendments, would incorporate and re-jigger all the current elements of city planning into a comprehensive planning strategy over ten-year cycles, mandating a regular effort at thoughtful, coordinated growth and that decisions on land use and the city budget actively seek to rectify historic inequities across the city for low-income communities of color and to prevent the displacement that may be caused by forces of gentrification.

The plan will be a living document, changing every five years to keep up with the evolving needs of the city and based on regular engagement with communities. If the legislation is passed in 2021, the ten-year process would begin in 2022, with a Long Term Planning Steering Committee and an assessment of needs from community boards. The plan itself would first be published in 2025, and then amended in 2030 as citywide goals, needs and land use actions are reassessed.

It would require regular appraisals of infrastructure needs, short- and long-term risks and the impact of land use decisions. The proposed bill would require that the city prioritize community input and create new, local decision-making bodies to weigh in on land use and development processes. And it would set quantifiable targets for “housing, jobs, open space, resiliency infrastructure, schools, transportation, and other infrastructure.”  

The legislation was built off the Planning Together report, which includes, as Johnson called it, an indictment of “bureaucracy at its worst” under past mayoral administrations that created siloed processes, inefficient coordination across city agencies, and lacked proactive planning for community needs. Those problems, the report argues, have only worsened under Mayor Bill de Blasio and have served to effectively water down his attempt at holistic planning through OneNYC, his vision for equitable growth that retooled former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s PlaNYC framework. “The lack of proactive public engagement or buy-in from elected officials and communities has allowed the significance and utility of PlaNYC/OneNYC to fade over time,” the report says. 

It highlighted what has become a central issue for de Blasio’s affordable housing program: vociferous community opposition to individual neighborhood rezoning and land use proposals. The mayor’s administration has sought to upzone swathes of neighborhoods to allow for more density and to encourage developers to build a combination of market-rate and rent-restricted housing. But time and again, those rezonings have been met with widespread resistance and even legal challenges, some of which have successfully derailed the administration’s plans. The ones that have been passed, in coordination with the City Council, have all been in communities of color. In his final year in office, de Blasio is looking to advance rezoning plans in Soho and Gowanus.

“That contention is, in part, due to a growing distrust of the process and a sense among some community stakeholders that the City and private developers are often unfairly targeting neighborhoods—particularly low-income communities of color—to bear the burdens of growth in exchange for long-overdue investments like affordable housing, schools, child care centers, street safety improvements, parks, and playgrounds,” the Council’s report notes.

Johnson said he is hoping to soon hold a hearing on the legislation.

“It has long past time, long overdue that we implement these best practices that nearly every other city in the world uses to prioritize its spending,” said Council Member Gibson. 

“[A]dvocates are marching today as they have often in the past for an approach to land use that starts from listening to communities about their needs, rather than starts by responding to a proposal from a developer,” said Council Member Lander. “A comprehensive plan, developed in conversation with communities grounded in principles of fair housing, equity, livable neighborhoods, and sustainability will help give us the tools to do that.” 

An equity-focused comprehensive plan “will help move us away from this ad hoc approach to planning that only perpetuates the existing inequalities,” said Barika Williams, executive director of ANHD, which is a leader of the Thriving Communities Coalition.

Council Member Reynoso said comprehensive planning would ensure that “the burden of building ourselves out of any crisis doesn't fall on strictly poor Black and brown neighborhoods. We get to have a conversation about how all neighborhoods can contribute.” Reynoso recently killed a de Blasio administration attempt to rezone a portion of his district in Bushwick after the sides could not come to agreement on key pieces of the puzzle.

The comprehensive planning legislation is of a piece with Johnson’s policy agenda as speaker. He successfully created a “streets master plan” for traffic and pedestrian infrastructure, which was signed into law by the mayor at the end of last year (though it’s implementation has been delayed due to the pandemic). Johnson has pushed through legislation to codify the mayor’s Office of Food Policy into law and to mandate a ten-year plan to tackle hunger and food inequity. He called for municipal control of the city’s subways and buses in his first State of the City speech last year. In January this year, he proposed a homelessness reduction plan, though he has yet to produce a strategy for building affordable housing which he promised at the time as a companion plan. In March, Johnson also released an in-depth report and a series of proposals to mitigate climate change and build resiliency infrastructure. The plan was originally meant to be released in his State of the City speech, which was cancelled because of the pandemic.

***
by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

Read more by this writer.

Four Women Running for Mayor Pitch Candidacies to ‘Amplify Her’


5 woman running

Four women running for Mayor (photo: @AmplifyHerNYC)


There’s never been a woman elected Mayor of New York City and four of the candidates attempting to change that fact through next year’s election met for a forum Tuesday night hosted by Amplify Her, an organization dedicated to electing more women to office in New York City.

Former New York City Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia, nonprofit executive Dianne Morales, former city Veterans Affairs Commissioner Loree Sutton, and Maya Wiley, a civil rights attorney and former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, participated in the forum. All four are Democrats and all are first-time candidates for any elected office.

They are competing in a much larger and still-growing field of candidates in what is set to be the first mayoral race with a party primary in June and featuring ranked-choice voting, which allows voters to rank up to five candidates in order of preference, rankings that come into play if no candidate is the first choice of a majority of voters. It encourages politicians to speak to a wider array of voters and replaces costly runoff elections while electing a winner based on depth of support beyond a simple plurality of first-place votes.

According to the event’s organizers, a ranked-choice straw poll was being sent to Amplify Her members and the group’s endorsement will come “in the new year.”

While any of the four would be the first woman elected mayor, Morales or Wiley would mark only the second person of color in the role after David Dinkins, and Sutton would be the first openly gay mayor in the city’s history. At one point, all but Morales served concurrently in the de Blasio administration, but Wiley, Garcia, and Sutton have all had harsh words for their former boss as they seek to replace him.

“I’m thrilled to be on an all-women panel, not that I find any of the men boring,” Garcia half-joked during her opening statement, while also noting that “women lead differently” and that “when you have a problem, give it to a busy woman. She’ll get it done.”

Garcia is running on her record as an experienced city government leader who has been called into several crisis situations, including as interim chair of NYCHA and “covid food czar.” She’s centering her campaign around strong government management and good city services, as well as the need to fight and prepare for climate change.

“We can’t build a new city if we follow the old rules,” said Morales, who is Afro-Latina. “I believe it’s important to not just elect a woman, but to elect a woman of color as the next mayor. We need to be committed to centering and elevating the voices and experiences of women of color.” Morales’ campaign is centered upon a community-first model of returning power to those who’ve often not been heard at City Hall.

“We can and must be a city where we can all live with dignity,” said Wiley, a former chair of the Civilian Complaint Review Board for NYPD oversight, and said “we can put the public back in public safety.” During the forum Wiley reiterated her position that NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea should have been fired for how the police department treated Black Lives Matter protesters during the spring and summer.

Sutton said she would make a good mayor because “I know relationships are at the heart of the matter” and “it’s about forming safe and productive partnerships, reaching out and engaging with communities.” Throughout the forum, she proposed public-private partnerships to address the city’s needs. She added, “we can’t build back, we need to build forward.”

Garcia, who has repeatedly called the city’s current situation a “shitshow,” warned “we don’t want to return to” a New York City like the 1980s, when she grew up, noting that she was scared to take the subway after 8 p.m. at the time.

The first questions posed to the candidates were about how they have supported women, particularly in running for office and especially women of color. Each candidate said their campaigns’ senior leadership are comprised either entirely or mostly of women.

Sutton, who was the founding commissioner of the city’s Veterans Affairs Department, said she put an emphasis on hiring underrepresented groups, recalling an official at the city’s Equal Employment Office once telling her, “Commissioner Sutton, you have a distinct underrepresentation of white men.” She also highlighted her experience as a veterans surrogate for Hillary Clinton during her 2016 presidential run and her donations to women candidates, stating “politics as usual won’t cut it. We have to put women in charge at every opportunity.”

Morales noted she was a supporter of now-Congressional Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s first run in 2018, “before it was cool.” She also said that, as a nonprofit executive, “the majority of people I’ve served have been women of color.” She said she believes in “lift as you climb” as a motto for helping other women succeed.

Wiley referenced her work in the de Blasio administration transforming the Commission on Women’s Issues, which she described as “antiquated,” into the Commission on Gender Equity. She also touted her role as co-chair of the campaign for ranked-choice voting, saying that under the system “non-traditional candidates have more opportunity.”

“We worked very hard to recruit women as sanitation workers, said Garcia, who described the department as “highly male-dominated” and a “uniformed, paramilitary force.” She said she’s worked “to make sure that everyone is at the table because we [women] often are not.” Like Wiley, she voiced support for ranked-choice voting, saying it “gives everyone an opportunity to throw their hat in the ring.”

The candidates were also asked about their support for defunding the police and, more broadly, about their vision for public safety.

“Public safety is way too important to be left on the shoulders of the police,” said Sutton, who added “public safety is a shared responsibility.” She proposed establishing a public safety council to coordinate between public safety-related agencies and expanding the use of comp-stat to other agencies.

“All agencies are likely to lose funding,” said Garcia of the city’s budget woes. But like Sutton, she is not a proponent of “defunding the NYPD.”

Morales, who emphasized she was the first mayoral candidate to call for defunding the police, said it was necessary to “redefine and reclaim public safety,” with housing at the forefront because “no one can be safe and healthy without first having a roof over their head.”

Wiley has also repeatedly voiced support for moving significant funds from the NYPD to other services and programs. She voiced support for a “housing first strategy” and said the city “cannot and should not be policing in schools.” As an alternative, she proposed “student support teams” for school safety and “participatory justice funds” that would empower communities with high crime rates to address problems in their communities.

When asked about childcare and workplace protections, Sutton said that the city “has to develop public-private partnerships.”

Wiley said that the city needs to strengthen enforcement agencies for workplace justice and better coordinate with the state on the issue. She also said the city’s workforce development programs need to “more effectively target low-income workers,” including through CUNY, the public university system.

Morales criticized the “traditional recovery model” that “prioritizes corporations,” when the majority of New Yorkers are employed by small- or medium-sized businesses. She has said she would focus city investment and incentives on those smaller and medium-sized businesses.

When asked how each candidate would close the city’s looming budget gap, Wiley said called for going to Albany for higher taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers, as well as a vacancy tax, and said the city needs to “cut fat not bone” when making budget cuts, and that “while we will go through a budget cut process, it will be a moral process.”

Morales said she would try to prevent cuts by “working with the new super-majority” in the State Senate, because “as the city goes so goes the state.”

Garcia said efficiencies can and must be found throughout city government and said the city must work with labor unions to find additional savings.

The rest of the questions asked at the forum were directed at candidates individually, though rounds of questions often applied to a theme.

Garcia said that supporting local businesses, particularly those owned by people of color, needs to be part of creating an equitable post-covid city. She proposed forgiving sales tax liens and “having the city get out of the way with permits.”

With looming MTA budget cuts, Morales said “it’s really important to make sure we take care of the outer boroughs” and called potential fare increases “absolutely unacceptable.” She proposed increasing express bus services and adding bike lanes in the city’s transit deserts.

Sutton said that police oversight “involves more than the CCRB,” pointing to the NYPD’s internal affairs bureau and inspector general, adding “as mayor it’s important to ensure that all three of those elements are in balance.”

When asked if the Council should have a greater role in appointing the NYPD commissioner, Garcia said no, believing that it would reduce accountability, but also saying “you have to have the guts to fire appointees if they’re not following orders.”

While reiterating her call for the firing of Commissioner Shea, Wiley also criticized the NYPD’s handling of protests this summer and said “kettling is never appropriate,” describing the tacit as escalatory.

At different points during the forum, both Wiley and Morales expressed support for reusing vacant commercial properties as affordable housing. Both also support congestion pricing. When asked about reducing car traffic, Morales said the city has to “move away from every individual thinking they have the right to drive around the city.”

Morales also said she is supportive of ending mayoral control of city schools, though she wants to figure out a better model than simply returning to a flawed Board of Education system that preceded mayoral control, which was granted by the state to Mayor Bloomberg early in his tenure and has been renewed several times since.

When asked if they would take donations from real estate, police unions, or finance industry lobbyists, Wiley and Morales said no to all three; Garcia said no to real estate and the finance industry; and, Sutton said yes to all, saying she believed in her own ability to “separate out bad actors.”

***
by Andrew Millman, Gotham Gazette
   

Read more by this writer.



Print Friendly and PDF

Editor's Choice


Gotham Gazette: New York Voters Approve $4.2 Billion Environmental Bond Act
New York Voters Approve $4.2 Billion Environmental Bond Act
Gotham Gazette: 
New York City Voters Approve Racial Justice Ballot Measures
New York City Voters Approve Racial Justice Ballot Measures
Gotham Gazette: 
Housing Development in New York City Slows to a Crawl as Officials Debate Tax Incentives
Housing Development in New York City Slows to a Crawl as Officials Debate Tax Incentives
Gotham Gazette: 
City Council Examines Low Voter Turnout, Moving Local Elections to Even Years City Council Examines Low Voter Turnout, Moving Local Elections to Even Years