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New Veterans Services Commissioner Lays Out Agenda at Council Oversight Hearing


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DVS Commissioner Hendon (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)


At a City Council oversight hearing on Tuesday, the new commissioner of the city’s Department of Veterans’ Services (DVS), James Hendon, outlined two main priorities for the next chapter of his department’s work and its efforts to help the city’s hundreds of thousands of military veterans.

Testifying before the Council’s Committee on Veterans, Hendon, who was appointed by Mayor Bill de Blasio in October 2019, said he is focused on internal restructuring of DVS and outreach to the city’s veterans.

DVS was established in December 2015, becoming a stand-alone city department after having been a mayoral office, after a push by City Council members and veterans. That background and other key information was outlined in a report released by the Council’s Committee on Veterans before the hearing. According to the report, DVS provides four main services for veterans living in New York City, including engagement (such as educational resources), housing and career assistance, and the VetsThriveNYC health plan, which connects veterans with mental health resources in the city specifically for them. 

The goal of the oversight hearing was to “examine how DVS has changed since replacing the Mayor’s Office of Veterans Affairs in 2015, the lessons it has learned, the new Commissioner’s plans for the future, and what goals the agency has to improve upon to ensure that all veterans in New York City are properly served,” according to the report. All five Council committee members were present, and Vincent Garcia, director of intergovernmental affairs and ombudsman, testified along with Hendon on behalf of DVS.

To begin, Hendon focused his prepared testimony on an internal restructuring that he’s leading at DVS.

“To be able to best assist the constituency we serve we must first be able to examine our  internal agency operations,” Hendon said. “As we began this phase shortly after my arrival, DVS is presently undergoing a reconfiguration into three teams: current operations, future operations, and administration.”

He drew a distinction is between the current and future operations teams. The current operations team will serve to maintain the commitments that have already begun, such as housing and engaging outside organizations, veteran service providers, and nonprofits, while the future operations team will develop strategic proposals, based on data, to introduce to expand DVS’ work.

Council Member Chaim Deutsch, a Brooklyn Democrat who chairs the Council’s veterans committee, pressed Hendon on how DVS will further reduce homelessness among the city’s veterans. Hendon said the key is to pre-empt homelessness before it happens, breaking down the problem by the teams created by the restructuring. The current operations team will tackle ongoing housing challenges that will be eased by the restructuring. Meanwhile, the future operations team will work to streamline relevant processes.

During Hendon’s initial testimony he discussed DVS’ outreach work, saying, “there is no substitute for boots on the ground or in-person connections. Veterans, and the subgroups we serve, including the elderly, students, family members, LGBTQ persons, women, those transitioning from service, and even those just entering the service requires a unique, diverse, and personal approach.”

Hendon said the major change in their approach to outreach is going from geographic to demographic. DVS is seeking to connect with veterans who are young professionals, students or elderly, versus those who live in a specific area. Hendon said this would allow DVS to meet veterans where they are, and a better way to begin to have a relationship with veterans. 

Deutsch pressed the new commissioner on this point, asking what DVS staff was doing, and if there could be a coordinated effort by the City Council, DVS, and advocates to spread the word and make sure everyone is aware of DVS and the services it provides.

Hendon hesitantly responded saying that it is a “delicate area” to ask employees to do this other work on top of their other responsibilities. Hendon agreed to ask DVS’ general counsel about an effort like Deutsch suggested.

Deutsch emphasized the need for a DVS presence at community board meetings, civic meetings, and community council meetings in all five boroughs, and Council Member Alicka Ampry-Samuel, also a Brooklyn Democrat, cited the opportunity for outreach in the waiting rooms of federally-run VA hospitals. The need for greater outreach was reiterated by many of the advocates who also testified at the hearing -- they cited the need for awareness in order for veterans to receive the full benefits of government services they may access.

Hendon also mentioned that DVS has previously focused on the city’s most vulnerable veteran populations, but that DVS could also expand services to other groups, saying “young working professionals, middle class families and those looking to purchase a home, is an area of opportunity.” 

“Entering this next chapter we will focus our efforts on engaging the larger market share of veterans while maintaining our commitments to more vulnerable members of our community,” Hendon said.

When asked about suicide rates among the city’s veterans, Hendon said he could not provide numbers, but Garcia said DVS is actively working to “determine what those numbers look like, where that population is and how best to actually access that data” in an effort to know what we can do better as a society to address the prevalent issue of veteran suicide. Deutsch said he would like the numbers for the next hearing.

Jeremy Butler, the CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), said during his testimony that 43% of IAVA’s members expressed suicide ideation and that nationwide, there were 6,139 veteran suicides in 2017, according to a September 2019 report released from the VA.

Advocates testified to push for services from DVS. Butler also highlighted a gap his organization has identified in DVS’ work.

“A clear deficit we see within DVS is the lack of a comprehensive case management component and an over-reliance on third-party programs to make referrals and connections to resources,” Butler said.

To increase DVS’ ability to act quickly for veterans, such as those with suicidal ideation, IAVA is advocating for an in-house case manager and veteran officer who could streamline the process.

Kent Eiler, project director of the City Bar Association’s Justice Center’s Veterans Assistance Project, emphasized the need for outreach to service partners to avoid overlap in programming.

“It’s vital that DVS is engaged with the city’s veteran community. Its size and budget mean that to be effective, it must, prior to prescribing policy, consult with service providers and subject matter experts to learn what services are being provided to veterans, to avoid unnecessary duplication of existing services,” Eiler said.

Ampry-Samuel asked about DVS’ asks as the Council moves ahead in the city’s budget season. Hendon said he would get back to her with specific asks and budget implications. Hendon will likely testify at a Council budget hearing in the next couple of months.

Hendon said DVS is holding a partnership convening event on February 6, to meet with the communities and advocates the department works with to better determine the path forward under new leadership.

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by Katie Kirker, Gotham Gazette

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Williams Delivers First ‘State of the People’ Speech as Public Advocate


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(John McCarten/City Council)


In his inaugural State of the People speech on Wednesday, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams cast himself as Sisyphus, relentlessly pushing a boulder up a hill. But rather than the punishment doled out to the mythological Greek king, Williams bears the burden in service of the people of New York City, he said, and rather then being doomed to eternally fail, he said he is making progress.

Over a roughly 40-minute speech, he touted his accomplishments as an ”activist elected official,” many of which came through legislation he passed as a City Council member, victories at the state and local level, and pledged to pursue an agenda of criminal justice reform, housing equity, environmental improvement, immigrant protections, worker rights, and more.

“The people are the core of New York City, theirs are the voices I've heard, and the ones I'm in this office to amplify,” Williams said, speaking at Brooklyn College, his alma mater, to an audience that included his predecessor, State Attorney General Letitia James, City Comptroller Scott Stringer, City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, and several state and city legislators as well as advocates and others.   

After taking office last year, Williams has sought to restructure the office in his image as a community activist, appointing deputy public advocates to cover different responsibilities across the five boroughs. A recent City Charter revision approved by voters will also give the office an independent budget starting next fiscal year.  

As a former tenant organizer, housing has long been one of Williams’ priorities. He hailed the landmark tenant protections and rent reforms passed by the state Legislature last year, but said more needs to be done, including a push to institute good cause eviction, one of the few measures that failed.

Williams’ power as public advocate lies in the city, however, where he can introduce legislation before the City Council even as he rallies like-minded New Yorkers to call on Council members and the mayor to support it. He laid out several legislative priorities in his speech.

Williams, whose office has continued the tradition of releasing an annual Worst Landlords List, said he would introduce a Worst Landlord Accountability Act, to target those in the industry that continue to flout Albany’s newly strengthened rules. Among its provisions, he said, would be limits on landlords self-certifying repairs to buildings, enhanced penalties for failure to carry out critical repairs or lying about them, and greater transparency in building ownership. “[W]e will continue to shine a light on shady management companies and mismanagement practices,” he said.

But at the top of his Worst Landlords list is public housing, the mismanaged New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), “an agency that has earned a new chair, a federal monitor, but not its tenants’ trust,” he noted.

Williams indicated that he would, in coming weeks, highlight those public housing developments with the most complaints from tenants and lowest response times, calling for more funding to fix them. He also said he would introduce a bill “to create a [NYCHA] tenant-centered task force to solve problems by focusing on the people facing them in their daily lives,” though he did not provide any further detail.

Williams has been a longtime critic of the de Blasio administration’s housing program, which aims to preserve affordable housing with city intervention and to build income-targeted housing in low-density areas to make the city more affordable but has struggled to make a major dent in a rampant housing affordability crisis. At the same time, homelessness has reached record levels with few signs that the city will be able to significantly reduce the number of homeless people in the near future.

At the nexus of the housing debate are the various neighborhood rezonings across the city that Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration has proposed and pursued, to mixed success. Critics complain that the rezonings are too often targeting low-income communities of color, exacerbating gentrification and furthering the displacement of current residents. Williams is one of those critics and has called for a moratorium on all rezonings – he has advanced legislation to mandate a racial impact study for every city-sponsored rezoning, which he reiterated on Wednesday.

“Whether you're trying to pay the skyrocketing rent on a studio or facing foreclosure on a split-level, we will be working for you,” he said. “We are going to help New Yorkers go home.”

The mayor has argued, on the other hand, that the rezonings help to stem the tide of gentrification by adding housing, including rent-regulated housing, to areas already seeing rampant displacement and real estate speculation that would become far worse for existing residents if not for city intervention, which also often includes investments in schools seats, parks, and other aspects of the larger community.

As he regularly does, Williams also inveighed against the slow progress the city has made in transparency and accountability in policing, criticizing the reactive approach that he said leads to more policing for every problem from drug addiction to the city’s mental health crisis. “Public safety does not equate with policing, nor does it exclude it,” he said. “Better policing is a part of keeping New Yorkers safe, and the NYPD can be our partners in public safety as we take on immense challenges together. But police cannot, and should not, be made to do everything.”

In particular, he touted his office’s recent report that seeks to change how the city responds to those experiencing mental health crisis, removing the NYPD from that role. He said he would continue to press for implementing that plan, which includes a separate mental health emergency hotline. “We'll also be pushing to realign budget priorities to this holistic response. In the last year, we have been part of shifting the conversation. Now we need to shift the money,” he said.

On criminal justice, Williams had much to pledge. He said he would continue to advocate to end solitary confinement across the state, and said he would work to expand the Fair Chance Act, which prohibits employment discrimination based on criminal history.

Williams also took aim at the city’s school system, the largest and most segregated in the country, obliquely critiquing the solutions that have been offered by Mayor de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza without naming them.

“We have a curriculum of separation that divides students by zip code, by race, and false perception of abilities,” he said. “Well intentioned reforms are being put forward without consideration of unintended consequences, from removing the SHSAT to entirely abolishing the gifted and talented program.” He said the problem could not be solved “by pitting communities against each other.”

A major piece of legislation that Williams had sponsored while in the City Council, and which the mayor used as a campaign talking point during his short run for president, would provide guaranteed paid time off to about half-a-million New Yorkers. Williams pledged to continue the push for the bill. “After five years with this legislation, and the many decades of work that led us to this point, we can seize the moment and create transformational change for workers while uplifting and supporting our small businesses,” he said.

Williams also expressed support for legislation that would allow prison inmates to vote, as well as legislation to let green card holders and immigrants with work permits cast ballots in local elections. “We cannot create second-class citizenry in New York City, and that means everyone, no matter national citizenship status, has their right to vote restored for municipal elections,” he said. (Non-citizens could previously vote in New York City school board elections, but the boards were eliminated in 2002. Several municipalities across the country also currently allow non-citizen voting. On Thursday, Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez is introducing legislation, which Williams has co-sponsored, to allow non-citizen voting in municipal elections.)

One of the obscure aspects of the public advocate’s office is its purview over the Commission on Public Information and Communication (COPIC). Williams promised to revive and reinvigorate the commission, a vow that his predecessor, now-AG James, also made but failed to deliver, in order to increase government transparency.

“I know sometimes this work feels like Sisyphus, pushing the boulder up the hill,” Williams said. “It feels like the challenge is too great, the goals too lofty. At times, we get tired. But it is in these times that we look to our past victories, to the gains fought and won, as inspiration and invigoration for what's next, what we the people need, and what we can do.”

“I know we can achieve great things because we've done it before,” he said, later in the speech, returning to the metaphor. “The hill still stretches steep before us, the boulder is still a great weight, but we cannot wait, because we have the people behind us.”

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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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Max & Murphy Podcast: The Rise in Anti-Semitic Hate Crimes


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(photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)


January 22, 2020 - Max & Murphy Podcast: The Rise in Anti-Semitic Hate Crimes

headshot1 dgFormer City Council Member David Greenfield, now CEO of Met Council, joined the show to discuss the recent rise in anti-Semitic hate crimes, how it has impacted Orthodox Jewish communities, what is being done about the troubling trend and what else needs to be done.

Listen to the conversation and let us know what you think -- we're on Twitter @TweetBenMax and @JarrettMurphy. You can listen to the show through the embedded audio below or download the episode wherever you get your podcasts, under "Max & Murphy," and listen to Max & Murphy live on Wednesdays at 5 p.m. on WBAI radio, 99.5FM or wbai.org.

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by Ben Max, Gotham Gazette
     

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