Comptroller Lander on Sandy Recovery After 10 Years, Housing and More

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. You heard that story that Michael just had on the news about the New York City Comptroller, Brad Lander, saying Rikers Island should be put into federal receivership. Brad Lander joins us now to talk about that and a few other things he's been working on. One is as we approach the 10-year anniversary of Hurricane Sandy next week, can you believe it, 10 years, if you've been around New York that long, and some people still haven't succeeded in fully rebuilding and getting all the federal help and other kinds of help that they thought they were promised.

He's talking about that in a new report. Also, the housing crisis with rents going up so much. New York seems to have two problems right now. People are leaving the state and people are coming to the state. How can both things be true at the same time as problems? We're going to talk about all these things now with New York City Comptroller Brad Lander. Mr. Comptroller, welcome back to WNYC.

Brad Lander: Good morning, Brian. Great to be back with you.

Brian Lehrer: Let's do the Rikers piece first since that's the breaking news. You spoke yesterday at a Columbia University CUNY and Campaign Zero Forum titled How to End the Crises on Rikers Island? You're calling for the appointment of a federal receiver. What's a federal receiver and what do you think they can do better than the city itself is doing?

Brad Lander: Let me first just say, we've been watching this long-standing crisis at Rikers grow through the pandemic into a full-scale emergency. We're spending over $500,000 a year to detain a single person in custody and yet slashings and stabbings are up 354% compared to 2019 when there were 2000 more people in custody at Rikers. 16 People have died there this year while awaiting trial, 16 last year. It has just grown to a full-scale humanitarian emergency. A receiver cannot solve all the problems, but some of the key things that are happening a receiver could really make a difference on.

For example, one of the big problems right now is that 12% of officers are out sick on an average day. That's double what it was before the pandemic and because of the union contract and long-standing entrenched managerial issues, they just have not been able to make that change. A receiver has the power to move past, to cut through some of the managerial issues, some of the procurement issues. Again, it's not a magic fix, but I think at this moment of full-scale emergency, it's necessary to get the violence under control.

Brian Lehrer: A federal monitor could do what or federal control could do what better than Mayor Adams and his corrections commissioner?

Brad Lander: Right. It's not about the individuals. A federal receiver could change some of the rules, for example. In terms of how you assign people to posts, some of that based on the union contracts, some of that based on city rules, corrections officers can say, "I don't want to go to that post." In terms of some hiring issues, the receiver could change some of the things that will make it a little easier to hire people. Some positions don't necessarily need a college degree. You can use a certificate.

A receiver could cut through some of the procurement issues as well. We're trying to make procurement faster in the city, but it often takes far too long to bring someone in to fix the locks to provide adequate food or services.

Mostly what it is, is that a receiver is released from some of the existing barriers and rules, can cut through that red tape. I think, look, the sick days' thing shows especially that entrenched union leadership resistance to making some of the changes necessary is why there aren't enough people in place on an average day on some key posts throughout the jails.

Brian Lehrer: Despite that shortage of workers, in the report from your office, you state that the annual cost of incarceration at Rikers grew to $556,000 per person, per year or divided by 365, that's $1,525 every day. How is that possible?

Brad Lander: Every day. Well, of course, we're the only system in the country that has more corrections officers than people being detained. Part of what happened there is that over the last 15 years, there has been a big decline in the number of people being held in the city's jails. That's a really good thing. Crime came down through the vast majority of those years. Even as the number of people being detained came down, but the number of correction officers in the budget did not come down and so we have more correction officers than detainees. No other big system has that.

As a result, we spend an enormous amount per person, but we're paying a lot of those folks not to come to work and that means on a lot of those days, that key posts are not covered, that people can't get to their medical appointments, that people can't be produced for court. That percentage of sick leave is double what it was during the pandemic. Of course, it went up during the pandemic as it did for other uniformed agencies, but in the other uniformed agencies, sanitation, fire, police, it came back down and it has not at correction.

Brian Lehrer: Also the violence within Rikers, according to report is up more than 300% since 2019. Is that the understaffing, in your opinion, causing that?

Brad Lander: Look, yes. The short answer is yes. Obviously, there's a long-standing crisis there, an entrenched culture. The federal judge that's overseeing the case called it an entrenched culture of brutality. That is already the baseline, but yes, we believe the increase from 2019 to today, 354% more slashings and stabbings. Again, that's even though there were 2,000 more people in custody at Rikers in 2019, is largely because as a result of that excessive sick leave, you've got places where they're supposed to be two correction officers on a post, but there's only one, and that's taking place throughout the system.

Brian Lehrer: At the same time, in your remarks yesterday, you voiced support for a bill that's before City Council now, calling for a ban on the use of solitary confinement for more than eight hours per day. I see the bill appears to have majority support in the council. Mayor Adams is threatening to veto it. The mayor's position is, "Look, just like you separate people from society in general, and put them in jail or put them in prison if they're a threat, then if they're committing more violence once they're in jail, then you need to separate them from the other inmates. That's solitary confinement." The mayor says that's just common sense. What's your position?

Brad Lander: Well, I'll tell you about my visit just a few weeks ago where I went to something that they told me was called, "Involuntary protective custody." These were not individuals that had engaged in violence to harm others. They told me these were people they were worried that others might harm even though the individuals themselves said they did not want to be in these cells. They were in these small dark cells by themselves for 22 or 23 hours a day without time outside, without time with other people.

The United Nations rightly calls solitary confinement torture and that's why I supported ending it in our city. There are jails all around the country that are able to keep people safe and reduce violence without what the United Nation calls torture. That's why I support that law here.

Brian Lehrer: One other thing about Rikers, before we move on to some other issues. The mayor has noted that the plan that got passed in the de Blasio era to close Rikers Island in a few years didn't have a plan B. That is it was based on a continuing decline in the jail population. It's been going down a lot in the last, what, decade or two decades, as crime has declined, but now it's been going up with the increase in crime. There are more people in jail now than there were two years ago.

He says there's no plan B that was part of that package where if there's more prisoners than were anticipated, there's nowhere else to put them. He thinks the plan to close Rikers is at risk. Do you think it is at risk or is there a plan B baked in there, and we can still close Rikers as an inhumane facility?

Brad Lander: I agree that the plan to close Rikers, which I voted for in the City Council, and which I think is the right one, is at risk, but to me, we developed the right plan A, and that requires both building the four new borough-based jails, but also dedication to decarceration. A 1,000 of the 5,900 people that are there right now have serious mental illness. We've let Rikers be our largest de facto mental health facility, and we know that that's not good for those individuals who are awaiting trial on a charge, but need mental health care. Most striking for me, I went to the facility where the women on Rikers Island are called Rosie's, and on that day 339 people were in that building. I talked to a couple dozen of them. I did not talk to one single person, and remember, these are all awaiting trial that haven't yet been sentenced. I didn't talk to one woman who I thought actually needed to be in jail awaiting trial. The right mix of drug treatment and supportive housing and community programs would be what would help them get on their feet, will help await trial in their communities.

The plan to decarcerate. Crime came down all those years, while the number of people at Rikers also came down. The plan to close Rikers is to stay on that path. We were on it, we can get back on it, and I think the alarm bell that we're not on the path to close Rikers is real, but what we need to do is go back to the plan that the Lippman Commission developed and that so many people who had been incarcerated there did the work to get us to move forward in the first place.

Brian Lehrer: My guest is New York City Comptroller Brad Lander. If you have a question for him, we can take it at 212-433-WNYC. Our main topics as he's got his hands on a lot of things as New York City Comptroller, all Rikers Island as we've been discussing the 10th anniversary of Superstorm Sandy, which we're about to get to. Also, the soaring New York City rents right now. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet a comment or a question for comptroller Brad Lander @BrianLehrer.

Hurricane Sandy. The report from your office shares that the city has received $15 billion in federal grants for Sandy recovery and resilience in these 10 years, but only $11 billion of the 15 has been utilized. Why?

Brad Lander: Because our process for doing capital projects for building infrastructure is too slow. That's not only about resilience, and this is an area where the mayor and first Deputy Mayor Lorraine Grillo and I really agree that we have to improve our system for delivering capital projects. I could hear in your voice the way you talk about that 10th anniversary that it's not only that you're thinking wow, that was 10 years ago, but it's not hard to remember where you were during that time thinking back to lower Manhattan going dark, or what we saw in the Rockaways, or in Red Hook Southern Brooklyn and we talked about it as a wake-up call.

We felt like this is a wake-up call, we have to get our city ready for the era of the climate crisis, and some good work has happened. I was out in the Rockaways this summer, I saw some of the projects that have been completed there, but 10 years later, being only three-quarters of the way through the projects, which means they have essentially a 15-year timeline and some of the raised shorelines and coastal resilience to work with anticipated completion dates as far as 2030, we've got to be able to do these projects faster.

Brian Lehrer: Given knowledge of increased flood risk, one would think developers might shy away from building on waterfronts. We're having a conversation about Florida now after EIN, and yet your office reports that real estate values in the 100-year floodplain, as it's called, have increased to over $176 billion of total real estate value. That's a 44% increase since Sandy. What is that risk if storm protection spending continues at the current rate enabling those people?

Brad Lander: I was really struck by this as well. We projected by mid-century, it's going to grow to a quarter of a trillion dollars. We continue to build in the floodplain plus we just have a lot that's in the floodplain, and of course, the floodplain itself is growing as sea levels rise. Today it's 17% of NYCHA buildings, but it's going to grow to over a quarter of NYCHA buildings, nearly 80% of transportation and utility uses. Let's remember that the terminals that receive the gasoline were knocked out after Sandy and what a crisis that caused secondarily because we weren't able to get gas in the vehicles that we're trying to deliver emergency relief. Yes, we can--

One other thing that really struck me here, we do have new rules for building in the floodplain to better floodproof standards, but only three and a half percent of structures in the current 100-year floodplain were built or last altered after those new codes went into place. Over 95% of the buildings are still what they were before.

Brian Lehrer: What do you think about the resiliency plans that have been so controversial? We see how a lot of people on the Lower East Side are so unhappy with the East River resiliency project at least the way it's being done. We have a dispute now over whether one at the lower tip of Manhattan your Battery Park City should be done in the way that they're proposing because it would affect Wagner Park. It seems like there's resiliency versus the community that's being protected. Maybe not as a matter of if, but as a matter of how but these things are breaking out all over.

Brad Lander: Yes, this is hard. This is just hard, and like who we are as human beings, we have that moment when the storm hits, and we think we need better protection, but then we go back to our ways of being and we're not sure about change. We love the things we have, but we've got to do better. We have to face up to the changes that are needed or the next storm is going to wallop us all that much harder. What we propose in the report is stepping back now that it's 10 years in and doing a real risk-based analysis.

What are the current climate catastrophes that are most likely? It's not only coastal storms of forests, flash flooding as we saw in Hurricane Ida, or we'll get a devastating heatwave, like the one that hit Northern Europe or the Northwest of the United States. Then what projects can provide the most protection? There will also be some areas we probably can't protect. How do we have a city-wide conversation about that risk and prioritize those projects, make room for people's voices in that conversation, but also have an honest and comprehensive look at where we should be spending these billions of dollars?

What kinds of protections we can provide? Make those decisions together as a city. Let people have their voices heard, but then also once we've made those decisions, move forward in a way that provides the best protection we can.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a closing Rikers call from Marsha in Queens. Marsha, you are on with New York City Comptroller, Brad Lander. Hi, Marsha.

Marsha: Hi. Well, my question is, why are we doing this if we don't have the facilities in place yet for the inmates that need to be relocated? Are the contractors in place that will be facilitating these buildings to protect the inmates and their services, as well as the community?

Brian Lehrer: Marsha, thank you. Well, that, of course, is another series of land use disputes controller as you well know. The place is where the four borough jails are supposed to be that would replace Rikers, one in each borough except Staten Island. People in those immediate neighborhoods don't want them.

Brad Lander: Marsha, that's a good and hard question. The plan to close Rikers has two essential elements. The one we talked about a little before is continuing a decarceration approach that would get down to 3300 people, at the beginning of the pandemic we got down below 4000, so we weren't that far away although now we're backed up to nearly 6000. Part one is, let's pay attention to the women at Rosie's who don't need to be there to the folks who need mental health care and have a plan to get to 3300, but yes, part two of the plan is to build a four new borough-based jails.

We've seen there's been resistance, less so in Brooklyn, I have to say, as a Brooklynite than in some of the other boroughs. You understand why people in neighborhoods again, same sort of thing, maybe I like what was already there. People don't like new tall development, whether it's luxury housing, affordable housing, or a new jail facility. I guess I will say, look, the new jail facilities will be very safe for the neighbors around. In Brooklyn, there's even going to be new retail on the ground floor.

Yes, this is part of why I'm nervous that we're not on path because we're not doing either of those paths. We're not on the path to decarcerate to have only 3300 people in custody on a daily basis, and we are not on path to build a four new borough-based jails in time by 2027. Partly that is because of community resistance. Understandable, but that is slowing progress. If we don't get those done, then we're going to get to 2027, Rikers is still going to be open, we're still going to have 1000s of people more than we have planned, and we won't have done anything to make it safer.

I think we'll get worse and worse. For me, the answer is, it was hard for us to reach that plan, but we did. The council voted the mayor supported it, both the prior mayor and this mayor. Let's get back on that path. Let's get the four facilities built. Let's get on the path to bring the daily rate down to 3300 by providing the mental health care by providing the supportive housing that we need. Not easy to do, but that really is the right solution to a humanitarian emergency for which we all bear responsibility.

Brian Lehrer: Charles in Manhattan, you're on WNYC with Brad Lander. Hi, Charles.

Charles: Thank you Brian, I thought I was going to be missing out on this. I wanted to say, first of all, I think Rikers Island should be rehabilitated. You're saying that you need more space than what Rikers has?

Brian Lehrer: No.

Brad Lander: No. We don't need more space than what Rikers has.

Charles: Well, I think if you brought those things that they need like psychiatry, all the things that are missing, I think that's great because it's isolated. Normally, we send people upstate to get them out of New York City. Why put them in a barrel? It just doesn't make sense to me because it-- I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Brad Lander: No, no. Thank you, Charles, for your question. I think it's important to remember these are folks who are awaiting their trial. Their trials are going to be in the court buildings, in the boroughs. That's what's supposed to be happening here, is folks get arrested and charged with a crime. In a lot of cases if they're wealthy enough to make bail, so this isn't an issue of whether they're a risk to the community, but if they're not wealthy enough to make bail, then they often wind up being held while awaiting trial so that they don't flee New York.

Awaiting trial near the courts is what's appropriate. That means your lawyer could come visit you. That means your family could come visit you. Then just what has happened at Rikers because it's isolated, is what a federal judge calls a culture of brutality has developed, where some of it is that the facilities are old and dangerous and there were doors that don't lock. Some of it is that it's too easy to get weapons onto the island. Some of it is that this entrenched culture has led to just too much ongoing violence.

The plan of both figuring out who doesn't need to be in jail while awaiting trial, but also let's build facilities, new modern facilities near the courts where lawyers and families can visit, and that are also safer. Let's remember for guards and corrections officers and staff as well as for those folks being detained.

Brian Lehrer: As a footnote to that, though this is not about Rikers per se, when the caller says we should consider putting those people somewhere upstate like we do with people who've been convicted. Well, that's controversial too. I just want to note a lot of families are so unhappy with the idea that if you get convicted of a crime in Brooklyn, and wind up at Attica or somewhere like that, well that doesn't help the person get rehabilitated and reenter society in the place that they came from to recall our previous segment, which was about rehabilitation.

Brad Lander: I totally agree with that. I just think it's also important to know that only 400 of the people on Rikers, and even that's way up, it was 100 a year ago, but now it's 400 people who have been sentenced for a city-level offense. The others 5,500 are folks awaiting trial.

Brian Lehrer: For Charles, thank you for your questions. Do call us again. Let's just touch housing very briefly. We covered so much on the show, but you have a report on that rent prices have grown faster in New York City than any other large US city. This year we've all seen these crazy stories. I know people, friends of mine who are going through this right now, having to move and actually finding themselves in bidding wars if they were trying to buy a place.

Yet we see in the gubernatorial race and in other kinds of political discussion that people leaving New York is supposed to be our big problem. Things are so bad in New York. People are leaving the city and they're going to Florida and they're going. At the same time, we're hearing stories about so many people are coming to New York, that the rents are going through the roof. How can we have a people leaving and a people coming crisis at the same time?

Brad Lander: What this pandemic has given us, we already had a very low vacancy rate. It's been low since World War II. It's been below 5%. That's part of why we have rent regulation. We've been very slow in producing new housing. Before the great recession, job growth for every new job we produced 2.2 housing units, but after the Great Recession, only 0.5 housing units. We already had a tight market. What I think happened, and we offer a bunch of reasons in our newsletter that are possible, but the one that I thought was most interesting is something called pandemic churn people did in the early months and year of the pandemic, if they could move away.

Quite a few of those people came back once employers said, "Okay, three days a week." We did get a lot of new people. Google, for example, said Google employees could live in any city that they had a presence and a lot of folks actually moved to New York. That churn, even if supply and demand raise is about the same, if your market is already tight and then people move out and come back, it's exactly that competition that leads to spiking prices.

That's consistent with some data we saw that show the spikes are actually in the places most where there were drops in Manhattan and in parts of Brooklyn. It is that bidding war that's part of what is causing these super-spiking rent increases.

Brian Lehrer: Did the average rent go up higher than it was before the pandemic, or did it just drop so low in 2020 that the recovery looks like a huge increase?

Brad Lander: Went up much higher. Folks can look on our website at comptroller.nyc.gov to see this for each borough, but yes, especially in Manhattan and in Brooklyn, but in the other boroughs as well. Modestly there were drops, but the increases are now far above even where they were before the pandemic.

Brian Lehrer: New York City Controller, Brad Lander, thank you so much.

Brad Lander: Thanks, Brian. Great to talk to you as always.

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