Category: Food Programs

NY Daily News: No more NY Police Academy classes? NYC Councilmembers propose creative cuts to save vital programs

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New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio speaks to firefighters following the donation of meals on International Firefighters Day on May 4, 2020 in New York City.(Bryan Thomas/Getty Images)

By Shant Shahrigian

Originally published in the New York Daily News on May 6, 2020

Canceling this year’s NY Police Academy class and reducing funding for the mayor’s controversial ThriveNYC program are among the proposals City Council members are making as they try to find funding for their priorities and preserve New York’s social safety net in the face of massive tax revenue shortfalls.

With crime down amid stay-at-home orders, city funds would be better spent on social programs and food pantries than a new class of police cadets, said Councilman Donovan Richards (D-Queens), who chairs the Council’s Public Safety Committee.

“Imagine what we are facing with millions of New Yorkers out of work,” he told the Daily News on Tuesday ahead of the Council’s first budget hearing since the mayor proposed significant cuts last month. “There’s going to be a need for much more assistance for New Yorkers. I don’t think paying for another police class is the wisest choice right now.”

The NYPD previously pushed back graduation of this year’s class of roughly 587 cadets from April to July, saving about $6 million. With salaries for new officers in the $43,000 range, Richards said the city would save $25 million by completely canceling the class this year — funds that could go to other essential services, he added.

New members of the New York Police Department throw their gloves in the air during a Police Academy graduation ceremony at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday, April 18, 2018 in Manhattan. (James Keivom/New York Daily News)

Mayor de Blasio said at a Tuesday press conference he wasn’t mulling NYPD or Correction Department budget cuts.

“Both of them are doing extraordinarily important work and we need to keep them doing it, dealing with a lot of new challenges in this crisis,” Hizzoner said.

Many Council members are calling for the budget to restore funding for the city’s widely popular Summer Youth Employment Program, which the mayor put on the chopping block.

“It was just devastating that the entire youth budget for the summer was eliminated from the budget cycle,” said Councilwoman Deborah Rose (D-S.I.), who chairs the Council’s Youth Services Committee.

She said she was working with youth groups and advocates to find alternative employment during the age of social distancing, such as hiring youngsters to help with city food deliveries and different kinds of remote programming.

Rose said it was too soon to put a price tag on such an undertaking, but vowed there will be some form of summer youth employment, which hired 75,000 youths at a cost of $150 million last year.

“We’re going to need to figure out a way to get them engaged, to keep them engaged so that they are not in the streets doing nothing,” she said. “Our young people aren’t expendable.”

De Blasio has insisted there’s not enough money for the program, but said Tuesday he’s open to working the matter out with the Council.

ThriveNYC, the widely criticized mental health program led by First Lady Chirlane McCray, could provide Council members with leverage.

First Lady Chirlane McCray hosts a community conversation on mental health and substance misuse at the Queens Central Library on Tuesday, June 13, 2017. (Michael Appleton)

They’ve begun talking about cuts to the program, which critics fault for having little to show for its nearly $1 billion budget in recent years.

Councilman Mark Treyger (D-Brooklyn) said he’s identified $35 to $40 million in school-related Thrive funding that would not directly help students — money he suggested could be better spent on school staffing. The mayor’s $89.3 billion executive budget unveiled last month entailed over $800 million in Education Department cuts across this fiscal year and next.

The cuts “will absolutely devastate our school communities and disproportionately hurt those children who need the most help now,” said Treyger, who chairs the Council’s Education Committee. “You need more social workers, you need more counselors and actually even more teachers to deal with the class size issue,” he added, referencing the challenge of resuming classes with social-distancing rules likely to remain in place come the fall.

Earlier this year, the mayor proposed a $95.3 billion budget, but the coronavirus outbreak — and a projected $7.4 billion loss in tax revenue — prompted de Blasio to propose a range of painful cuts.

The revised budget includes $2.4 billion in funding for the city’s coronavirus response for this fiscal year — but nothing for next year, noted Councilman Daniel Dromm (D-Queens), who chairs the Council’s Finance Committee.

“That’s a concern for us,” he said. “In some ways, this budget is really about buying time to adjust to a new reality.

Read more here.

HuffPost: ‘Too Much Death’: This NYC Councilman Says He’s Lost 8 Friends To COVID

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Daniel Dromm’s district in Queens has become one of the epicenters of the pandemic in New York City, which itself is the epicenter of the virus in the world.

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By Christopher Mathias

Originally published in the Huffington Post on April 15, 2020

NEW YORK — As the coronavirus pandemic has ravaged New York City, so far killing over 10,000 people, it’s laid bare the harsh racial and social inequities in the five boroughs.

About 80% of the city’s frontline workers — grocery store cashiers, nurses, bus drivers, food delivery drivers — are Black or Latino. Look at a map of where they live in the city, and then compare it to a map of the most concentrated outbreaks of COVID-19, and you’ll see many of the same neighborhoods highlighted in red.

One of the hardest-hit working-class neighborhoods is Jackson Heights in Queens — one of the most diverse places on the planet. Daniel Dromm, who’s represented the neighborhood for 10 years in the city council, tweeted earlier this month that he’d already lost five friends in the pandemic, underscoring the desperate situation there.

WILLIAM ALATRISTE FOR NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL
Daniel Dromm, who represents Jackson Heights in Queens, says he’s lost eight friends in the pandemic.

Dromm talked to HuffPost about the growing food emergency in his community, how Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) needs to release people in state prisons now, the need for rent relief, and how, sadly, he’s lost even more friends over the last couple of weeks.

You call your district the “epicenter of the epicenter.” What makes your district specifically so vulnerable to all this? 

Well, we have a lot of service workers that live here, undocumented folks that live here, immigrants who are here, and oftentimes, we see that those folks are of lower income, and in order to survive, they have to live in overcrowded, illegally converted homes, which only makes the spread of COVID worse. So there’s really no place for many people who live in my community to self-isolate because sometimes they live 20 to 25 people in a house. We’ve seen this on numerous occasions here in the district.

So that closeness and that density in the neighborhood is, I think, one of the major contributing factors to COVID. Now, even those of us who are as fortunate as I am, I have a one-bedroom apartment for myself, there’s still the density of the neighborhood so that when you walk down on 37th Avenue, which is kind of like one of the main strips in Jackson Heights, it’s very hard to not bump into somebody or meet somebody that wants to talk.

That was always the case before COVID and in a sense, it was very quaint, very nice, because it’s kind of like a small town in the big city. But of course, that type of interaction between people as well is another contributing factor to the spread of COVID.

So something that for years we liked about the neighborhood, which was that social gathering and connections, now we’re being forced to socially distance, and that’s something we in Jackson Heights and Elmhurst are unfamiliar with. And so I think the density, the poverty, the lack of health care, all of those things have been contributing factors to the spread of the virus.

What is the most urgent thing your constituents need from the state or federal government that they’re not getting right now? 

So it’s kind of changed a little bit. Elmhurst Hospital seems to be a little bit better off than it was. Not much, because every single bed is taken — 545 beds taken at Elmhurst. But my on-the-ground type of feeling is that people now are seeking food.

A number of the supermarkets in the neighborhood had closed down, including Patel brothers, two Asian supermarkets on Broadway, most of the fruit stands and food stores along 37th Avenue closed down, so people were short of food simply by virtue of stores closing, but then again on top of that, you have those who can’t even afford it anymore because they’ve lost their job.

DAVID DEE DELGADO VIA GETTY IMAGES
Dozens of people stand in line outside of Seatide Fish & Lobster market to purchase fish on Good Friday on April 10, 2020, in Jackson Heights, Queens.

So people like taxicab drivers — I have a large constituency of cab drivers — they’re not really working anymore. Many of them are undocumented and don’t have access to SNAP benefits. So food has become last week’s and this week’s biggest issue to conquer. I was lucky that working with Grow NYC, I was able to get 300 boxes of food to be distributed at the United Sherpa Society started this week, and that’s going to last for another 12 weeks.

So finding food and getting access to food is an issue. And then even those who are fortunate enough to have an income or be able to pay for food are facing very, very long lines outside the supermarket, sometimes a block or two long, just waiting to get into the supermarkets that are open. So that is a big issue at this point.

Is there anything that D.C. or Cuomo in Albany can do to alleviate that problem?

So actually, I’m going to be having a conference call with Sen. [Chuck] Schumer and Sen. [Kirsten] Gillibrand and a few of the congressional delegates tomorrow, and that’s my major concern that I’m going to raise is, particularly for undocumented communities who are not eligible for SNAP benefits, what type of provisions are being made for them?

And also a number of food banks have closed in the area — because, one, of the volunteer shortage and two, because of the lack of food availability, but what type of provisions are going to be made for that?

So you were talking before about how this pandemic has kind of unmasked a lot of racial and economic inequalities that were already there, that maybe people in other neighborhoods or districts weren’t paying attention to. Being in the epicenter of the epicenter of this crisis, has it changed your worldview at all? Are there bigger changes that need to be made after all this is over? 

Yes, absolutely. I think what we have to do is really come to a realization: Who are our essential workers? OK. These folks that live in my district are the essential workers during this COVID crisis. They’re the aides in the hospitals, they’re the people who are doing the work in the restaurants. They’re the folks who are driving the buses and operating the trains. And so, you know, oftentimes when people think about essential workers, maybe they think of an elected official, maybe they think of some rich guy in Manhattan, whatever. But really what it comes down to are these people, our community, both documented and undocumented, who are risking their lives on a daily basis for everyone else, and to me, that’s something that’s really jumped out at me.

These delivery men, these delivery men who bring us our takeout orders. They’re essential, OK? They are essential to us and to the economy. And we have to look at that and in the future reward them with paid time off, sick days, etc., because we realize now how essential they are.

Gov. Cuomo has gotten a lot of accolades, and his poll numbers are up, and I was wondering if you thought that was deserved? 

You know, I have a real policy difference with Gov. Cuomo on the issue of how he has treated our New York state prisoners. They’re some of the most vulnerable people in the whole state because they are packed into prisons with very, very little to prevent the virus. They don’t have enough soap, they don’t have enough sanitizer, they don’t have masks, and the most insulting part of it is that the staff does! The corrections officers have that and have access to that but the poor people who are stuck in jail, don’t have access to any of that.

And like Rikers Island, I think today had 383 cases of COVID among the detainees, and I make a differentiation there between detainee and inmates because they haven’t been convicted yet, but upstate, upstate is where the governor has control, and he has done nothing, and he shot down reporters.

So I plead with the governor, to please release the — especially the elderly people who are in prison, and those who are near the end of their term, to release them from prison, because they should not be getting a death sentence simply because they are packed into these prisons. And ultimately, that’s what’s going to happen if we don’t deal with this issue immediately.

OK. And just to be clear, you’re saying he should release elderly people and people near the end of their term but would you even go further than that?

I would. I would look at all records of people who could potentially be eligible for relief. Because very few people in New York state prisons are on life terms, and there’s no death penalty, but by leaving them in prison at this point, you know, it’s really a matter of saving their lives. And so, the whole thing needs to be examined and we need a real change there. And overall, I think he has shown a lot of leadership, but this is one of the things that I think just sticks out in my mind. They have nowhere to go and it just to be looked at.

There’ve been some reports about there being an outbreak among homeless shelters at the moment, and also in NYCHA residences. What solutions do you see for those problems? 

Well, yeah, I mean, it’s very similar to the issue that we’re facing here in terms of overcrowding, within our immigrant community, and I’ve been pushing the mayor for about two and a half weeks now to open up these hotels and get people into hotels. There are enough hotels probably to house, I don’t know how many people really because I don’t have a grip on that, but to have a lot of people, let me put it that way.

And there’s been some hesitancy on the part of the De Blasio administration in that direction, although now they are finally moving in that direction…

The other thing I’m seeing here in the community is people who are in Elmhurst Hospital, they’ve been taken in because they have severe symptoms of the virus, or they have for four or five days, maybe a little longer, but then they’re released but they have no place to go to convalesce. So you know, they go back to their overcrowded conditions where somebody else is infected and who knows, they could infect somebody else or whatever. And in some instances where people don’t even want them back into the overcrowded homes to begin with.

So we’ve been working with Mitch Katz, the head of Health and Hospitals, to at least get those folks who are being released with nowhere to go, to be aware that there is now going to be implemented this program of the availability of a hotel room for a period of convalescence. So that is supposed to be happening as of today.

What needs to be done that’s not being done when it comes to rent?

I think we have to have a rent freeze and the mayor has called for that by the Rent Guidelines Board, and I think there need to be some federal dollars because even if we have a rent freeze, it’s still not going to protect those tenants if they can’t catch up for three, six, eight, nine months, whatever it may be. To expect them then to pay back all that rent when they don’t have an income or haven’t had an income is going to be a very hard burden, particularly on my constituents, but on anybody who finds themselves in that type of situation. So a rent freeze and some type of federal balance to help with the payment of rents.

And so on April 1, you tweeted that you’ve lost five friends to the virus, and I’m very sorry for your loss.

Thank you.

And I hate to ask, but has that number grown since? 

Yeah, yep. I’d say it’s about — of personal friends — eight or nine now. [Editor’s note: It’s eight people. Their names are Lorena Borjas, Priscilla Carrow, Father Antonio Checo, Tarlach MacNiallais, Anne Quashen, Joe Hennessy, Gloria Lippman, and Joe Forman.]

Which is just incredible. And then, of course, I’m the councilman for the area and I’ve heard about, you know, at least two dozen, maybe almost 30 people in the community who have died.

JIM BURKE
LGBT activist Anne Quashen, right, seen here celebrating shortly before the 2019 Queens Pride Parade kick-off in Jackson Heights, Queens, recently died of the coronavirus.

I just found out this morning that a woman who lives in my building complex, not in my exact building, but within the complex, her name is Gloria Lippman, she died last night. She was only 75 years old. But, you know, I used to see her in the neighborhood all the time. She’d go [puts on thick New York accent] “Dannyyy! How are youuu?”

So you know, I hear of maybe one [death] a day. And it’s just too much death. It’s just too much death for anyone to bear.

Well, that was my next question. How are you bearing it? Like, what kind of toll is it taking on you?

I try to keep moving forward. One of the people who was in the original batch of five when I tweeted that out, his name was Tarlach MacNiallais, and he was a member of the St. Pat’s For All Parade, you know, the inclusive St. Patrick’s Parade that we have here in Sunnyside, Queens. So I think that one kind of hit me the hardest because he was the one who was I was closest to.

But I also just lost one of the founding members of PFLAG Queens. Her name is Anne Quashen. She was older, she was 88. And she died on Friday afternoon.

So it’s hard to say, you know, I just keep going forward because that’s all you can do, you know. And what makes it worse is that there’s no grieving period that, you know, you can get together with people and hug and console each other.

For Tarlach, we did an online or a virtual funeral, and a virtual Irish funeral, which went on for six hours. … There were people from Ireland on it, so … at least you can see people that might not otherwise be able to fly here, but you realize how important those things are, you know, to the grieving process. And so without it, all you can do is just keep going and, you know, try to get up each day and do what you can to get to the end of this.

Do you see a light at the end of the tunnel now? Are we at that point? 

Well, I’m always optimistic. You know, I like to say I survived one crisis, the AIDS crisis or the AIDS epidemic, right, and we survived other things as well. 9/11 and other catastrophes. … I’m of the age of Vietnam. I didn’t go to Vietnam, you know, but that was a disaster. I remember the oil crisis where you couldn’t get oil [for] your cars.

Eventually, we came out of all of that, and it’s part of our lived experience. So, yeah, I’m hopeful. You know, I think we’ll get through this and maybe even be more united as a community, and maybe people will stop sometimes being so ugly, but that’s what I’m hoping.

Yeah, and then the last question, when this is all over and we’re back to life as normal, when you kind of imagine that situation, what’s the first thing you do to enjoy yourself as a New Yorker?

I’m going to go to a Broadway show. [Laughs.] When I heard that the Broadway theaters weren’t gonna open ’til June 7, I thought, ‘Oh my God, that’s a gay man’s nightmare.’

I always love my art and my theater and stuff like that. It kind of makes life worth living. So I’m really looking forward to that.

Read more here.

amNY: ‘When you ignore problems, the problems get worse’: Queens activist calls on DOE to help feed homeless with excess food from schools

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Crystal Wolfe, founder and president of Catering for the Homeless, and Councilman Daniel Dromm signing her DOE petition. (Angélica Acevedo/QNS)

By Angélica Acevedo

Originally published in amNewYork on April 9, 2020

Crystal Wolfe, the founder and president of Catering for the Homeless, has been on a mission to feed the homeless and others who are food insecure in Queens well before the COVID-19 pandemic hit New York City.

“Our main mission is to end hunger by utilizing food excess from catering companies, schools, restaurants, and grocery stores for the homeless and food insecure,” Wolfe said. “There has never been so much hunger and homelessness in the history of America, and New York City has the greatest homeless population in the nation.”

Wolfe is a well-known advocate for homeless people in the community, and even wrote a book, “Our Invisible Neighbors,” debunking myths about the state of being homeless where she noted homelessness often stems from domestic violence and poverty, to name a few reasons.

But the Maspeth resident does much more than write and give the community a voice — Wolfe actually goes out and collects food as well as supplies to distribute among Queens’ neediest families.

To date, Wolfe has provided approximately 41,000 meals to the homeless and food insecure through church lunches and dinners, food pantries, as well as directly to homeless people and migrant workers, and provided approximately 16,000 items of clothing for the homeless throughout NYC.

She developed a network of partners in Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan, many of which are churches, pantries and other organizations, that she counts on to help distribute the items among people and families after gathering the food from various catering companies and restaurants.

“There is food going to waste in every town in America that no one needs to go hungry,” Wolfe said. “Getting this food excess to those who need it can solve, or greatly reduce, this hunger crisis.”

In NYC, there were 62,679 homeless people, including 14,682 homeless families with 22,013 homeless children, sleeping each night in the New York City municipal shelter system, according to the organization Coalition for the Homeless.

Photo courtesy of Crystal Wolfe

Getting the DOE on board

However, Wolfe believes there’s a particular element that’s missing in order to reduce the hunger crisis in NYC: The food excess from schools.

Wolfe has tried to work with schools across Queens in order to redistribute their food excess for years, but is met with a hesitant yet resounding “no” every time. She said the main reason schools don’t feel comfortable donating their food is because they don’t have set guidelines from the Department of Education.

In response, she created a petition to get the DOE to comply with the food law that passed in 2017 and was co-sponsored by state Senator Joseph Addabbo, which encourages schools to donate their unused food items.

She has the support of many people in the community, including former educators like Councilman Daniel Dromm and Jerry Drake, a Community Board 5 member who retired a year ago from a school in Corona.

“Running out of food for a school has never happened in my experience of being in 25 plus schools, they always have food left over that was not used. What happens to that food?” Drake said. “I used to watch the students throw away perfectly good apples not even taking a bite and would think to myself, ‘What a waste.’”

Wolfe understands that liability is a big concern, but she emphasizes that she’s done extensive research and hasn’t come across an actual lawsuit against a food donor.

“My organization would be happy to accept all liability and I would gladly sign a waiver to that effect,” Wolfe said.

The online petition has garnered almost 700 signatures and her physical petition has more than 350 signatures as of Wednesday, April 8.

Wolfe said she was able to talk to Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza directly during Community Education Council 24’s town hall in March.

“I was gratified to hear the chancellor say that he is open to getting more food excess from the schools out into the community,” Wolfe said.

Since then, the COVID-19 crisis has caused all schools to close. But there are still more than 400 locations in NYC serving three, free meals a day for kids and adults, which initially began as breakfast and dinner for students who are school aged. The DOE also opened almost 100 Regional Enrichment Centers throughout the city, where they’re also providing meals for the children of first responders.

One of the reasons officials were hesitant to close schools was because many students and families depend on them for their daily source of food.

According to a 2019 report by Advocates for Children, one in 10 of NYC’s public school students are homeless. An estimated 348,500 NYC children live in food insecure households, according to the nonprofit Feeding America.

Yet, the first week the DOE began the “Grab and Go” initiative, Pix 11 reported that some schools’ free lunches became garbage.

“It’s still likely they have food excess,” Wolfe said. “My hope is to work with them now with Enrichment Centers that have that food excess, and then, of course, when schools reopen.”

The DOE told QNS they’d review the petition.

“The health and well-being of our students is our top priority and every day school is in session we serve free, nutritious breakfast and lunch to all New York City public schools students citywide,” a DOE spokesperson said. “Our rigorous health and safety standards prohibit repurposing food that has already been served.”

Photo courtesy of Crystal Wolfe

Catering for the Homeless’ COVID-19 crisis relief drive

In the meantime, Wolfe continues to go out into the community and help those in need, with added precautions due to the rapid spread of COVID-19 in the borough.

In the past three weeks, Wolfe has delivered more than 300 food and toiletry items to food pantries in Ridgewood and Woodside, assembled 100 bags of toiletries and food with six to eight items per bags, began distributing the 3,000 socks she won from Hanes’ 2020 Sock Drive, and helped organize about 700 bags of food to provide a week’s worth of meals for about 100 families at St. Teresa’s Food Pantry in Woodside.

Wolfe believes that, to an extent, the repercussions of the coronavirus outbreak we’re witnessing are due to the existing failures within NYC’s — and the nation’s — system.

“When you ignore problems, the problems get worse,” she said. “These problems didn’t happen overnight and solutions also won’t happen overnight. It’s going to take time, but what drives me to make it happen is knowing people are suffering.”

The need, Wolfe said, will only increase from here. But she’s ready to work within the community to help feed people.

Wolfe added, “I hope people will start to realize that what’s happening in the entire country right now due to the pandemic — Americans losing their jobs with no fault of their own, not being able to pay the bills or food — that’s what’s been happening to millions of homeless people every year.”

Read more here.

Bond Buyer: Coronavirus colors New York City Council’s budget response

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By Chip Barnett

Originally published in the Bond Buyer on April 8, 2020

The New York City Council issued its response to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s $95.3 billion fiscal 2021 preliminary budget, focusing on supporting the social safety net as the coronavirus has ravaged the city and its finances.

“The impact of COVID-19 on our economy has been much like the effect of the virus itself — sudden and with a quick decline,” Council Speaker Corey Johnson, Council Finance Committee Chair Daniel Dromm and Capital Budget Subcommittee Chair Vanessa Gibson said in a joint letter released late Tuesday.

The preliminary fiscal 2021 budget was released by the mayor three months ago, when the city was a drastically different place, the council members said.

The council said its response contains what it deems are essential programs and services that must be retained.

“We recognize that revenues are decreasing because of severely reduced business activity, deferred tax collections, and a sharp drop in tourism. And we understand that a substantial amount of resources will be needed to combat the spread of coronavirus and to protect the health and safety of our people and the heroic essential workers,” the Council members said. “However, as we make the tough decisions about where to find savings and efficiencies, it is imperative that the basic social safety net programs remain untouched, and in some cases expanded with additional investments.”

The Council members said it was crucial that both the city and the state continue to press the federal government for additional stimulus and recovery funding.

“The city’s ability to stabilize its economy, help the tens of thousands of newly unemployed or underemployed workers, provide loans to small businesses, and pay for the public health response to the virus hinges on federal assistance,” the Council members said.

De Blasio released the $95.3 billion fiscal 2021 preliminary budget in January and the council held the first round of hearings on the budget.

The mayor will release his revised executive budget later this month. The 51-member council will hold a second round of hearings, after which they will negotiate adjustments with the mayor.

The mayor said the council’s response would be looked at closely.

“We are in an unprecedented crisis and facing billions of dollars in lost revenue. There is no doubt this budget cycle will be painful,” said Laura Feyer, the mayor’s deputy press secretary. “We are laser focused on fighting COVID-19 and protecting the health and safety of all New Yorkers. We are reviewing the Council’s proposals.”

By law, the council must vote on a budget by July 1. The last four budgets were all approved ahead of schedule.

New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, left and finance chair Daniel Dromm, right, joined capital budget subcommittee Chair Vanessa Gibson in signing the letter to the mayor.William Alatriste

Last month, the mayor said the budget will be on time despite the spread of COVID-19 forcing $1.3 billion of cost-cutting measures.

The council called on the administration to:

  • Continue to prioritize and maintain services that focus on the prevention and identification of infectious diseases; provide needed mental health supports; address health disparities in the city’s communities of color that cause an excess burden of ill health and premature mortality; support the full range of health services; and conduct surveillance of environmental-related diseases.
  • Invest at least $25 million in food pantries, expand all feeding programs, and increase food allowances for all emergency housing programs. With the drop in employment, thousands more New Yorkers are food insecure.
  • Ensure that every older adult who requests a meal receives one and to adequately fund the enhanced need for senior services.
  • Fund a robust rental voucher program, move families out of shelters into vacant units, invest in homeless street solutions, and expand anti-eviction services, and preserve NYCHA’s affordable housing stock.
  • Continue to support human services providers by ensuring that workers feel protected, safe, and properly compensated; that contracts reflect the increased costs associated with COVID-19; and that agencies allow flexibility in contract scope and services.
  • Support a rent relief and deferral program for adversely impacted families and implement tax deferral programs for struggling homeowners and small property owners.
  • Implement measures to stabilize the small business community. Businesses have certain bills that need to be paid whether or not they are operating, such as rent, utilities, loan payments, insurance costs, and taxes.

“The upcoming budget negotiations will involve many tough choices, but it is clear that there are certain basic items that should remain protected, including investments in public health and the social safety net,” Johnson said. “This is a crisis unlike any we have ever seen, but I believe in New York City.”

The council’s finance chair said average New Yorkers need the city as a backup in these trying times.

“The city must deliver for the thousands of New Yorkers who rely on our social safety net in this time of great need. The COVID-19 pandemic has presented an unprecedented challenge to our city and to the budgeting process,” Dromm said. “There is a lot of uncertainty but one thing is clear: services that keep New Yorkers housed, fed, healthy and open for business should remain strong. Because the need for many of these services will only grow in the coming months, New York City needs to prioritize them to the fullest extent possible so that no one falls through the cracks.”

The city is one of the largest issuers of municipal debt in the United States. As of the end of the second quarter of fiscal 2020, the city had about $37.7 billion of general obligation debt outstanding. That’s not counting the various city authorities that issue debt.

Moody’s Investors Service rates the city’s GOs Aa1, but has placed the rating on negative review. S&P Global Ratings and Fitch Ratings rate the city’s GOs AA.

The NYC Transitional Finance Authority has $38.9 billion of debt outstanding while the NYC Municipal Water Finance Authority has $30.8 billion of debt outstanding.

Read more here.