West Farms 10460: Meet the Candidates Running for City Council in District 15

Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now, we continue our community well-being series West Farms 10460. For the past few weeks, as many of you know, we've been talking about issues relevant to this one specific community in the Bronx, in order to tell the broader story of the Coronavirus pandemic's toll on the city as a whole, and to reflect on the reasons why poor, predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods like West Farms have borne the brunt of it, as well as to highlight ongoing issues in the poorest congressional district in America. Why does it keep that designation decade after decade? Something's not being done. So far in this series, we've spoken about how rates of unemployment and eviction during the pandemic are higher in the area.

We've spoken about the worrisome community health profile of the district. Today, we'll speak briefly to three candidates for City Council District 15, which includes a section of West Farms. These will be three short interviews, just a few questions for each of these three candidates now, back to back to back. There is a special election underway. Election day itself is March 23rd. The early voting period begins March 13th, and this is happening because council member Ritchie Torres just got elected to Congress. We'll hear from Oswald Feliz and Kenny Agosto, but first, we'll go to Elisa Crespo, education liaison for the office of the Bronx Borough President, and one of 12 candidates for that vacant City Council seat in District 15.

By a little way of background, in an interview with a local news site City & State, Crespo spoke about how progressive policies might benefit the district and the borough. She says she was inspired by people like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a fellow Bronxite. If elected next month, Elisa Crespo would also be the first openly transgender elected official in New York City or New York state. She joins me now briefly. Welcome to WNYC. Thank you for coming on with us.

Elisa Crespo: Good morning, Brian. Thank you for having me and thank you for talking about this issue in West Farms.

Brian Lehrer: Because our audience is region-wide, tell everybody else, what do you love about your home neighborhood and what do you see as its greatest needs that City Council can help with?

Elisa Crespo: I ran for office because I believe in the power of public service and how it can really transform people's lives for the better. That's my number one goal and mission, is to improve people's quality of life. The City Council has enormous power in our budgetary process and negotiating the budget, deciding how we use land use, and creating legislation that can be meaningful and intentional about uplifting people out of poverty. My name, as you mentioned, is Elisa Crespo, and I'm a native New Yorker. I've been here all my life, and I'm really excited to be here and I'm ready to go to work and fight for Bronxites. Bronxites are some of the best organizers I've ever met. They're some of the most resilient people and the Bronx is no longer burning, but our passion is what's burning these days.

Brian Lehrer: We've been talking about parts of the Bronx as the poorest congressional district in America since I can remember. Why do you think it's such a persistent state of affairs?

Elisa Crespo: I think so much of it is related to racially concentrated poverty, just historical redlining, a lack of investment, a steady history of disinvestment in public services, particularly our schools. I think all of that attributes to it, but I think that the pandemic has exacerbated poverty, it's disrupted careers and opportunities, and it's forced many people out of work here in the Bronx,

Brian Lehrer: In the interview that you did with the publication City & State that I mentioned, you said that a core part of your platform calls for a public option for employment. What would that look like in District 15?

Elisa Crespo: Well, a public option for employment means simply that our city is going to have a job for everyone who's ready, willing, and able to work when the private sector is not fulfilling our city's economic needs. We absolutely have to focus on public-private partnerships and helping small businesses thrive and recover from this pandemic because we know that they employ half of our community members, but I think in this time in which we're living in, we have to be innovative. We have to be bold in order to combat low wages and reduce working hours. The public option for employment is a municipal jobs program that would be for targeted vulnerable populations and create pipelines for these people who've been historically marginalized into city service jobs.

So, it can be anything from a clerk to a parks ranger. We want to work with folks in labor to figure out what the program looks like, but we absolutely know that this is something that we're going to have to look into if we want to tackle unemployment. There are major cities across the country that have done this. Overall, I think people in the Bronx, they deserve a contract that's going to guarantee them not just a home, but also a living wage, and people deserve the right to also work in union employment. We know that municipal jobs come with the power of organized labor that come with healthcare benefits and retirement pensions.

For me, that is how we move people away from generational poverty towards generational wealth. I also think it's very important that we focus on youth in the Bronx. The Disconnected Youth Task Force put out a very troubling report that stated, "25% of Bronx youth are out of work and out of school." We've got to create universal year-round youth employment programs. We've got to be very intentional about using online job trainings and workforce development programs. We also have to figure out how do we create a green workforce for the next generation of environmentally-friendly infrastructure projects that our city will have to take on.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Last question for you before we go on to the next candidate, are you endorsing in the mayoral race? Are you aligned with anybody?

Elisa Crespo: I am going to announce an endorsement of my first choice ranking, yes, very soon.

Brian Lehrer: Elisa Crespo, thank you very much. She's education liaison for the office of the Bronx Borough President and a candidate for City Council in District 15. Thanks for speaking with us.

Elisa Crespo: Thank you, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: We're talking briefly to three candidates in this special election for the City Council that includes parts of the West Farms neighborhood that we're focusing on in our community well-being series West Farms 10460. Now, let's briefly bring on another candidate, Oswald Feliz, attendant lawyer and adjunct professor at Hostos Community College in the Bronx. He says, growing up in the borough taught him that opportunity can be severely limited based on the neighborhood that you live in. Mr. Feliz, welcome to WNYC. Thank you for coming on.

Oswald Feliz: Thank you so much, Brian, for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Same, first question that I asked the previous guest, what do you love about your home neighborhood and what do you see as its greatest needs that City Council can help with?

Oswald Feliz: I love the diversity of the Bronx and of Council District 15. I grew up and I live on Fordham road, and you could literally walk to any neighborhood and you will hear different languages, you'll see different cultures, different food. I love the diversity. I love how different every single neighborhood is. I think that contributes to-- that makes our borough and our city very vibrant. The Bronx faces a lot of challenges. One of them is unemployment. Another one is intergenerational poverty. The third one is the pandemic, which has worsened many of the problems that had already existed.

On the unemployment issue, the pandemic is unprecedented. The coronavirus pandemic is unprecedented. From one day to the next businesses were shut down and that worsened the economic insecurity that we already had in the Bronx. We should be doing more to help our small businesses get back on their feet. Many of them are owned by local residents. They also hire local residents as well. We should be doing more to help our small businesses, to help so that we could help resolve the unemployment problem in the borough. Another issue that we have is--

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead.

Oswald Feliz: The second issue is intergenerational poverty, which is created by the lack of opportunity in our neighborhoods. We have to ensure that our schools are preparing our students for the future. We have to make sure that the schools, especially those that serve disadvantaged students, have more resources, including more teachers and also smaller classes so that struggling students can get additional attention, the attention that they deserve, and also paid internship programs to prepare our students for the future.

Brian Lehrer: So, smaller class size is your number one education policy? If that's right, what else would you put on that list? We've seen education policy bat back and forth between the Bloomberg approach and the de Blasio approach. Maybe some progress has been made, but there's still so many problems.

Oswald Feliz: Many problems. There was a recent study conducted that basically said that New York State has one of the worst inequitably-funded public school systems in the country. Basically, the state spends the same on a student, regardless of whether that student is struggling or gifted. We have to make sure that struggling students get additional resources. I will fight if I'm elected to City Council, I'll fight so that schools that serve struggling students get 30% additional funding per student so that these students could get additional resources, again, smaller class sizes.

Just imagine being a teacher and having 30 students in a class and an overwhelming percentage of them are struggling, they all have questions, 30 hands up at the same time, it'll be very difficult for that teacher to answer all questions and at the same time move on with the curriculum. So, we need smaller classes so that each student could get the attention they need and the attention that they deserve.

Brian Lehrer: I see that before the pandemic, you worked at Bronx Legal Services as a tenant lawyer. How did that experience shape your understanding of the specific housing needs of the district that you're hoping to serve?

Oswald Feliz: Yes, as a tenant lawyer, I fought against so many Bronx landlords. The landlords who would take literally every advantage of every single loophole to deregulate apartments. Affordable housing is the major problem, and I think working as a lawyer prepared me to properly understand the root of the lack of affordable housing in the Bronx. One big issue is that landlords are building new affordable housing units. They negotiate contracts with the City where the City would give the landlords benefits, and in exchange the landlord would agree to provide affordable housing for let's say, 5 or 10 years. That is simply putting a Band-Aid on the problem.

We don't need a Band-Aid. We need affordable housing that is permanent, not just for 5 or 10 years. Otherwise, in 5 or 10 years, we're going to continue to have the same issue of lack of affordability. If I'm elected, I will fight so that new buildings that are being constructed, they allocate at least 20% to 30% of the units towards affordable housing, but also affordable housing that is permanently affordable, not just affordable for 5 or 10 years. Bronxites are here to stay, they're not here for simply 5 or 10 years. We have to make sure that our affordable housing is therefore permanently affordable so that they could have that opportunity.

Brian Lehrer: Finally, are you endorsing in the mayoral race? Are you aligned with anybody?

Oswald Feliz: Yes, I'm still debating. There are many good candidates, including Eric Adams, including Scott Stringer, and a few others. Still debating who I'll endorse, I still haven't made that decision yet. [chuckles]

Brian Lehrer: All right. Oswald Feliz, former tenant lawyer at Bronx Legal Services, now running for that open City Council seat in District 15 in the Bronx, thank you very much for joining us.

Oswald Feliz: Yes, thank you so much, Brian, for having me.

Brian Lehrer: If you're just joining us, we're talking briefly to three candidates in the special election for City Council that includes parts of the West Farms neighborhood that we're focusing on in our community well-being series West Farms 10460. One more brief interview in this set. The last candidate we'll speak to today is Kenny Agosto. He's District Director to New York State Senator Jamaal Bailey, and he's worked as a staffer in the New York State Legislature for the greater part of two decades. Kenny Agosto, welcome to WNYC.

Kenny Agosto: Brian, I'm honored and a big-time fan and often caller. I love you.

Brian Lehrer: Glad you're on. What do you love about your home neighborhood, and what do you see it as its greatest needs that City Council can help with? Same question I asked the other two guests.

Kenny Agosto: Well, Brian, I was born in the district in the Belmont section. It is from the decade of the fire when the building to the left and to the building to the right of me were burning, to the times where we people in government were divesting, the federal government told us to drop dead. They said benign neglect. It has led to a decade of crumbling infrastructure and houses and the South Bronx has rebuilt, but the North Bronx really wasn't really rebuilt.

The problem I have, there's good actors, developers, there are good actors in builders, but there are bad actors and bad landlords. We have buildings that are five years old, they're brand new, and they're having heat and hot water issues. They have other problems, and these are the things that we have to do. I'm not here to castigate landlords, but I know that the Bronx is a place that we need to grow into. We don't want it to be gentrified, and then we're priced out of our own apartments. We pay already a lot of rent to apartments. Affordability is a myth.

I want to focus on keeping people in their house so they can age in place, that if you get older and you become a person with disabilities, that you can easily access your bathroom, that you can access your home, that you don't have to leave because you can't get up the stairs. These are things that I'm interested in doing in terms of our housing, but we really need to expand our rights of counsel that we've been doing in the state legislature, we've done it to most of the district, but we want to expand it to the whole city.

This is a crisis right now, and the moratoriums, we're good on a federal and local and state level, but the problem, Brian, is, once those moratoriums end, what is going to happen? We need rental assistance--

Brian Lehrer: Did we just lose your line, or do we have you? We're going to get him back up. I'm going to ask him when we do about what's the city's responsibility, and what's the state's responsibility. He's got an interesting background in this respect, because he's running for the open City Council seat in the Bronx, this special election, March 23rd, with early voting beginning March 13, but he's worked for a long time in the New York State Legislature at the state level as a staffer. I think we have your back, do we?

Kenny Agosto: Yes, I'm here. I'm here. I'm sorry. I don't know what happened.

Brian Lehrer: No. It could've been on our end.

Kenny Agosto: I was just saying that the moratorium is okay, but at the end of the process, people are going to have to pay those rents back. We want rent assistance on all levels of government. We want also mortgage forgiveness for those mom and pop, small landlords, responsible landlords. We want to make sure that they can do, and I like the Speaker's plan for commercial rent regulation.

I heard you on your show many times, you had Speaker Johnson on and he spoke about that. I'm very interested in doing that because mom-and-pop businesses, mostly immigrant-run, I have Dominican, Puerto Rican, Black, Bengali, Yemeni, we have probably the largest Yemeni population in our district in West Farms and neighboring Van Nest, and they were the frontlines providing fresh food in their bodegas. We need to help them. A lot of the big stores get the PPP, we don't have that.

I want to create incubator programs. I want to get small business startups microloans, all these things that we can do. We have an incubator in neighboring Lehman College, a CUNY school, we want that expanded to all parts of the district. I have [unintelligible 00:18:42], I have other places that we can put it to good use. Immigrants make money to survive, they're not eligible for SNAP, they're not eligible for welfare or one-shot deals. They're not eligible for anything. We've been working with immigrants, asylum seekers. We've been working with people going through things. All the things that we do at our state level in my 20 years and my 30 years of community activism is solving problems, getting people together on solving the problem. So, this is where we are. Can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: Yes, I can hear you just fine. Since you've done 30 years of activism, let me ask you the same long-term question that we addressed with the other two guests, because we've been talking about these parts of the Bronx as the poorest congressional district in America since I can remember, I'm sure since you can remember. Why do you think it's such a persistent state?

Kenny Agosto: I believe, and having lived in the poorest congressional district for the better part of my youth, and in the neighboring-- I live in AOC's district now. We have gone through everything back. We've been through everything that you can imagine. Everyone's saying, only now they're saying that there's a problem because of the COVID situation, but it's compounded poverty and hunger and desperation. Statistically, we are the poorest congressional district in the nation. We are the poorest county in the state and out of 51 members, I'm tied with Vanessa Gibson's district for the poorest. No one legislator can do anything, but we, getting together, working with our partners, our community partners, this has to be a people-centered approach.

We have community-based organizations like Tomas Ramos and Bronx Rising, we've been talking about what are we going to do about the COVID. People can't go to Yankee Stadium, we have people with disabilities, that can't get to any neighboring place, even to the senior center down the block, because the elevators are broken like in the NYCHA Monterey Houses, persistently broken, things are happening. There's a disinvestment in our federal housing. We don't want to happen what happened in Chicago in the Cabrini-Green, where they just tore it down.

I know we're having developers invest in the RAD program, and community reinvestment, and we want to see that happening but the way we solve the problem is by diversification, getting these community-based organizations online, getting those shots in the arms for people in COVID, getting really affordable housing, going after the bad-acting developers and the bad-acting landlords, putting teeth to HPD, because many times the inspectors for heat, or inspectors for businesses or inspectors for anything for the DOB, they'll give a heads up call to those landlords to put the heat back on and nothing's come and we're back in the rabbit hole.

These are the things that I'm passionate about. I grew up here, I was raised here, I want to die here. I want to make sure that we're healthy. The intersectionality is so huge, Brian, of health care and homelessness. We have a lot of homeless shelters, but not a lot of truly affordable apartments. We can't get them into-- I don't want warehouses in here. We had a big debate yesterday, where we were speaking about the Northwest Clergy Coalition, and they were talking about their Bronx plan. I prescribe to a lot of it. I'm not going to say one-word answers of this and that, but I'm going to tell you that what people want is people-centered. They don't want someone to represent them and forget about them. That's why I'm not accepting developer dollars of any kind. I'm not accepting [unintelligible 00:22:38] corporate landlord dollars. I'm asking people for $1 and $10 to www.kennyagosto.com [crosstalks]-

Brian Lehrer: We're just about out of time, let me ask you this.

Kenny Agosto: -the rabbis to donate.

Brian Lehrer: Just to give you the same equal time that the other candidates had, we have to wrap it up, but what's your thinking on the mayoral race? I asked the other two candidates if they are endorsing anybody yet, as a point of reference to how to think about yourself, are you endorsing yet in the mayoral race?

Kenny Agosto: Well, I can tell you right now, I've already made my decision for borough President, that's Vanessa Gibson, that she's done the work and she has experience and she's an activist, and she's [unintelligible 00:23:19] , but for mayor, I've really got to think about it. I have a great relationship with Scott Stringer way back to when he was Assemblyman before he was Bronx Manhattan Borough President. I know Eric Adams pretty well. I'm interested in what Morales is saying, I'm interested in what Yang saying. I'm interested in what Wiley is saying, but I really want someone that's going to work.

I know Scott's been doing a great job, and I know in terms of health, Eric Adams has been doing a good job in terms of health, because I had those comorbidities, I went through COVID, I survived.

I was supposed to be that 95% High Blood Pressure diabetes person that once almost weighed 400, now weighs in the low 300, top 200. I still got 100 pounds to go, but I'm going to listen very carefully to who's going to run and who am I going to partner with, because in this special election, all of these great candidates that we have, and they're great caliber candidates, we need someone to hit the job on day one-

Brian Lehrer: All right, [unintelligible 00:24:17].

Kenny Agosto: -and we're going to take over for congressman Torres' election. These are the things that [unintelligible 00:24:22] , I'm sorry, I'm trying to squeeze everything in a couple of seconds, but Brian, I think that's important. I listen to your show, and I listen to a lot of shows every day because I want to be informed about it and this is what makes my thinking.

Brian Lehrer: I appreciate it a lot. Kenny Agosto District Director to New York State Senator Jamaal Bailey and a candidate for City Council in District 15, thanks so much for being here.

Kenny Agosto: We love you.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much, and thanks again to Elisa Crespo and Oswald Feliz for joining us earlier in this segment. Three candidates in this special City Council election in the Bronx. Again, the voting begins early on March 13th, leading up to election day itself on March, I think I said 23rd, it's March 21st. Next week, more candidates for the City Council seat as we continue our series, community well-being series for 2021, West Farms 10460.

 

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