Nonprofits have a lot less to fear now as a new law takes effect (photo: @596Acres)
Our interconnectedness has rarely been more pronounced than it is in this moment. The fact that we can take so many of our life-sustaining connections into the digital sphere is an unprecedented miracle. But if you’re missing New York’s places of physical gathering, where many of those connections were first forged, you’re not alone.
At its core, New York is a city of communities precisely because of its bounty of gathering places. As we reflect on the ones we miss, that we hope to return to as soon as possible, we can celebrate a new law that goes into effect today - Friday, March 27 - that will protect some of them.
In 2014, attorney Paula Segal, founder and then director of 596 Acres, the community land access advocacy nonprofit, got a call from community gardeners in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. They were distressed. They had continuously grown food and flowers and found solace on a patch of earth in their neighborhood since 1979. Now the land was in peril.
Unpaid tax debt on the nonprofit garden would soon be sold as a lien to a private investor-backed trust via the city’s tax lien sale. If left unpaid, the debt could lead to the trust initiating foreclosure. Gardeners were planning their first-ever bake sale to pay off the taxes, and they weren’t sure if it would be enough to keep the garden from disappearing.
Taking on the case as an attorney, Paula helped this Crown Heights garden get out of the tax lien sale and into the hands of Brooklyn Queens Land Trust (BQLT), a network of community gardens that, together, have bigger administrative capacity. BQLT raised money, paid the bills, and ensured that the garden would get the nonprofit tax exemptions entitled to it going forward. But the problem wasn’t over.
Soon after, Paula got a call from elders at a second garden having the same problem. Then a mosque, a community center, a synagogue, a theater, a choir hall, a church, and it went on. Each nonprofit-owned place was enduring a nightmarish situation of its own due to the same government practice: the New York City Department of Finance tax lien sale. Paula turned to the public data to understand the scope of the problem.
It is well known that nonprofits are exempt from paying property taxes in New York State. Less well known is the tax lien sale process. The tax lien sale in New York City started in 1996. Through it, each year the Department of Finance (DOF) bundles all the outstanding bills --unpaid taxes, water and sewer bills -- and sells the whole bunch to a private investment fund as liens, which is the right to enforce debt through collection and foreclosure. Wealthy individuals and corporations alone can buy into the fund to grow their wealth.
Through the sale, the city government gets paid 72 cents for every dollar of debt and private investors get triple-A investments plus the right to charge interest, collect debt, and initiate foreclosure leading to sale of these properties at auction to the highest bidder. Unfortunately, this sale routinely and mistakenly included nonprofits entitled to tax exemptions. At auction, these nonprofit-owned properties could be sold to anyone.
We know 300 nonprofits had debt sold by the city to the investment trust because advocates painstakingly went through the public data. Every year since Paula first got that call from the Crown Heights garden, it was like a bell would ring 90 days ahead of the sale, and staff from advocacy organizations, with help from volunteers, would begin to dig through the DOF’s spreadsheets, separating out the charities, hunting down their contact information, and reaching out by any and all means. Dreaded phone calls went something like: ‘Um, hi, you don’t know me, but your lovely theater might be at risk of foreclosure? Here’s who to call and what to do to get off the list.’
At first, advocates would whittle DOF’s lists (both sold and to-be-sold lists) down to all properties not classified as residential or utilities, then compare what remained to property ownership records to find which were charities and to locate contact information. In 2017, in response to advocates' requests, the City Council mandated that DOF publish a list specifically of the charities headed to each year’s lien sale. But these lists left out the owners’ names, so advocates still had to hunt those down in order to get in touch.
At the same time, 596 Acres set other strategies into motion: publicizing maps of all the nonprofits at risk in past and current years, meeting with City Council members, hosting events that brought together DOF staff with the leaders of at-risk nonprofits, creating guides for nonprofits to navigate the process, working with the DOF’s newly-minted taxpayer advocate so they would be prepared to assist nonprofits, and coordinating press pieces.
TakeRoot Justice and 596 Acres organized the impacted nonprofits and their supporters into the Protect Our Places Coalition, which had meetings and rallies on the steps of City Hall each year. At these rallies, leaders of impacted organizations would speak, often in conjunction with opportunities to testify before the City Council on the new bill, known as Intro. 245, that the coalition was working on to stop the problem. Paula had joined TakeRoot Justice as a staff attorney in early 2017.
After roughly six years of work and legislative wrangling, Intro. 245 was finally passed on February 27, 2020, and thankfully goes into effect today. The Protect Our Places Coalition had a final gathering on the steps of City Hall that February day, celebrating with speeches and music, and expressing gratitude for all who came together to correct this injustice, including the elected officials who truly can be the people’s lawmaking champions.
Organizations contributed to this winning campaign from far reaches of New York City: from Brooklyn, 1100 Bergen Street Community Garden in Crown Heights, Masjid Al Aman in East New York, and Devoe Baptist Church in Williamsburg; from Queens’ Merrick Marsden Community Garden in Jamaica, Haven Ministries in Far Rockaway and Al Muneer Foundation in Hollis; from the Bronx, Mary Mitchell Center in Crotona; from Manhattan, Hebrew Actors’ Foundation in the Lower East Side; and many others. These groups advocated tirelessly for the survival of their own spaces. Doing so together, they connected the dots between their individual nightmares to push for system-level change.
Aligned technical assistance and umbrella organizations contributed by supporting at-risk organizations in their networks, connecting organizations to city officials, and helping draft legislation. Elected advocates helped individual nonprofits in their districts while championing the new law, led by City Council Member Antonio Reynoso and members of the Council’s Progressive Caucus.
Today’s victory is a chance to reflect on how individual struggles against bureaucratic practices can be scaled up to make legislative change, with the help of many advocates. It’s a moment to gain inspiration from a winning campaign that moved from case-by-case problem solving to big-picture change by considering the elements that led to its success, including persisting on the path year after year.
It is also a moment to appreciate the belief at the heart of the work: small charity organizations across our city provide neighbors with invaluable services in decentralized, locally-relevant ways. The city should support their capacity to own, develop, and operate property that provides for their neighbors and that becomes the setting where we form strong connections to one another. Our connections are essential for our resilience. Even as we continue this work from home, our networks have never been more important than they are today.
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Mara Kravitz was an organizer with the Protect Our Places Coalition between 2016 and 2020, working for 596 Acres and TakeRoot Justice.
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32BJ SEIU workers rally for job protections (photo: Jeff Reed/City Council)
The coronavirus pandemic has made it clear that there are a host of vital service jobs that are essential to keeping people safe under extreme conditions. Among them are the workers at our nation’s airports, who have been on the frontlines of the COVID-19 outbreak from the start.
Reports of possible infections at John F. Kennedy International Airport and other hubs are increasing. Many of the 40,000 airport workers in the New York area are members of my union, 32BJ SEIU. More and more have told me they're proud to help keep our airports and planes clean and safe during this unprecedented crisis, but they are increasingly worried about their own health.
Even before the spread of COVID-19, airport workers were at extreme risk for injuries on the job and for infectious diseases because of the nature of their work with travelers and the often taxing physical demands of their jobs. Despite these difficult conditions, many of our airport members who work at JFK, Newark International, and LaGuardia Airport, do not have health insurance.
Often, these workers, who have been waging a successful campaign to raise their wages and get respect on the job, are offered employer-provided insurance that is too expensive for them, with high premiums, co-pays, and deductibles. Because of their rising wages, they make too much money to qualify for Medicaid.
For tens of thousands of airport workers, they fall into a gap in health insurance coverage, putting them in the unenviable position of not being able to see a doctor without worrying the bill will mean they can’t pay their rent for a month.
One of those workers is Luerica Fiffee, a passenger service representative at JFK and mother of seven. Luerica has close contact with passengers -- scanning their passports or directing them after they get off their flights -- and she is worried about getting sick and spreading it to her family. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, when she felt sick, she would make the tough choice about whether to go to the emergency room and hope that she’ll be able to pay the bill. Now, as she worries about her health and the future of her job in a struggling industry, “I can’t even afford to think about getting the virus,” she said.
The risk of airport workers without health care is not just borne by Luerica and her coworkers but shared by everyone in the airport. Travelers cannot make their journey unless airport workers check their tickets, clean the terminals and aircrafts, and handle their baggage. Airport security officers make sure travelers are safe, wheelchair attendants help our most vulnerable passengers, and line queue agents make sure everything is orderly. Airport workers are essential to air travel. And if they are infected with the coronavirus, passengers will be too.
To help close the insurance gap airport workers face, legislators in Albany and Trenton have introduced the Healthy Terminals Act, which would require employers in the airports to provide a benefits supplement that airport workers could use to acquire quality, affordable health insurance.
As COVID-19 has upended the legislative calendar, lawmakers in Albany and Trenton must take action right away. Airport workers are calling on legislators to use every mechanism at their disposal to urgently pass these bills.
Adding to this critical calculus are the waves of layoffs going on at airports as air traffic slows considerably. The Trump administration and Congress appear poised to offer billions of dollars in bailout money to airlines but it is unconscionable to ask workers making less than $20 an hour to take on the worst health and economic risks of this outbreak while only offering relief to the highly profitable corporations. Any bailout of the airlines must include generous sick leave, health insurance, and back pay for lost wages for airport workers.
Finding a sustainable solution for the industry’s problems that centers workers and not CEOs and shareholders will be an arduous fight. But we can start with a comparatively easy solution for health care coverage that lawmakers in New York and New Jersey can enact quickly to close the insurance gap.
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Kyle Bragg is president of 32BJ SEIU. On Twitter @kyle32bj & @32BJSEIU.
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emergency supplies at a local firehouse (photo: Edwin J. Torres/Mayor's Office)
As the city and state are on pause and most people are shut in, many (including me) are stunned and anguished about the sudden shutdown of the city’s economy. Restaurants, bars, and personal services are the grout that holds our neighborhoods together. We are heartbroken about all the waiters, cooks, bartenders, manicurists, personal trainers, and others who are now unemployed; many of these people who give character to our lives are now in dire financial straits. The same is true for cleaning and other front line staff at hotels, taxi and for-hire vehicle drivers, theater and movie staff, and many thousands of others, both regular employees and part-time, off the books, and gig workers.
The aid and recovery legislation that has been agreed to by Congress and the Trump administration will do much to help, by sending checks directly to workers, extending unemployment benefits, and providing loans to small businesses so they can keep employees on the job and try to stay in business. Bravo.
But we are in for a long siege in New York as coronavirus cases continue to grow, hospitals are overwhelmed, and much of the city’s daily life is kept on hold. While many are suffering, others are continuing to work from home and receive their paychecks; indeed, some of us are fortunate enough not to have to depend on paychecks to provide for food, shelter, and other daily needs. There is an untapped wellspring of support from those who want to help their fellow New Yorkers who are struggling. What can they do?
This is a situation in which, for many who should not be leaving their homes to volunteer at a food bank or child care center, the best thing to do is contribute money. Of course individual donations cannot begin to match the magnitude of aid and support that is needed from government. But there are many ways that private donations can be used to make a difference.
Restaurants, trade groups, and social service agencies have been trying to raise money through approaches such as selling gift certificates, starting GoFundMe campaigns, and other kinds of outreach. But these well-intentioned but ad hoc efforts cannot be as effective or reliable as a more centralized, coordinated effort.
The September 11th Fund, for which I served as CEO, is sadly relevant today, and the creation and operation of that Fund is a useful model as we plan ahead now. A large, well-regarded New York City organization or group of organizations (e.g. Association for a Better New York (ABNY), The Partnership For New York City, The New York Community Trust, etc.) should create a 501(c)(3) that will accept donations from individuals, corporations, and charitable foundations. The fund’s board of trustees would use the money raised to assist victims of the coronavirus and its fallout — with the term ‘victim’ broadly defined — who live and/or work in New York City.
I don’t know how much money could be raised, but by way of comparison, when The New York Community Trust and United Way created and announced the September 11th Fund, $500 million was raised in less than four months. If New Yorkers who are able donate the amount they usually spend in one or two months on dining and drinking out; hair, nail care, and gym memberships; and theater, movie, and concert tickets, I suspect tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars can be raised very quickly.
In addition to the $200 million in one-time cash payments The September 11th Fund made to the families of those who were killed in the World Trade Center attack, it also made monthly payments to individuals who worked downtown whose jobs were lost when the area south of Canal Street was closed. Of course the number of impacted workers was small in comparison to the roughly 300,000 to 500,000 city-wide who are already affected. But the experience does show that New Yorkers will contribute to such an effort, that it can be up and running quickly, and make a difference.
Technology has improved so much since 2001 that many of the administrative tasks to start and run such a fund would be far easier. Software to maintain a large database and print checks and/or transfer funds is now readily available. Ideally there should be one non-profit service provider (in The September 11th Fund case it was Safe Horizons) that can process applications for direct assistance, but this will be challenging in a time when people are not easily able to show up in person.
There are of course complex policy questions to be addressed, including what kind of assistance is most needed and who is eligible. The board of trustees to be created to govern the fund would need to make difficult decisions as The September 11th Fund board did. But the most urgent question right now is who will take the initiative to form the fund and get the fundraising going.
The September 11th Fund was announced in a full page ad in The New York Times on September 13, 2001. I think the Times would agree to publish such an ad free of charge now, as would other city publications. And now we have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media to help raise funds. A concert on behalf of the new fund, like the one at Madison Square Garden after 9/11, broadcast on TV and online, during which viewers could contribute by phone or on line, would raise even more money.
I urge business and civic groups to convene and take up the challenge to get this going as soon as possible. Many of our fellow New Yorkers need our help.
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Carol Kellermann was president of Citizens Budget Commission from 2008 through 2018.
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