51 Council Members in 52 Weeks: District 35, Crystal Hudson

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now we continue our year-long series, 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks, in which we're welcoming every member of New York City council, touching every neighborhood in the city in this year in which a majority of the council is new because of term limits, and its majority female for the first time ever. Week 35, District 35, and another one of those freshman women members, Councilmember Crystal Hudson from district 35 which includes the neighborhoods of Prospect Heights, Crown Heights, Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, and part of Bedford Stuyvesant.

On her bio page, councilmember Hudson says her commitment to public service began when she had to navigate tricky bureaucratic systems to access services and resources as the primary caregiver for her mother who had Alzheimer's disease. Before she worked in politics, Hudson worked in marketing and advertising for both WNBA and Amtrak. At the start of the pandemic, she founded Greater Prospect Heights Mutual Aid, a group focused on food insecurity and economic instability mainly for seniors.

The councilmember is also one of the first out Black gay women elected in New York City. Councilmember Hudson, it's so great to have you on. Thank you for joining 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks.

Councilmember Crystal Hudson: Good morning. Thank you so much for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Want to tell people any more about your background a little, first, like where you grew up and what first got you interested in politics or public service?

Councilmember Crystal Hudson: Absolutely. I'm a third-generation Brooklynite from Prospect Heights. As you mentioned, I worked in sports marketing for over 10 years before I got into public service. What propelled me into public service was being a caregiver for my mother who had Alzheimer's disease. I moved back home, moved in with her, I cared for her for eight years.

My mother was a nurse here in New York City. She spent most of her career over 30 years at Harlem Hospital, and it felt like after she provided care for so many New Yorkers, there was no care for her. As the only child of a single parent, we relied on professional caregivers, and now we have a care crisis on our hands. I've spent the first several months that I've been in office fighting for the fair pay for Home Care Act both here in the city, but mostly up in Albany because I know personally how crucial it is that home care workers are paid fairly and well.

We know that home care workers are overwhelmingly Black and brown. They're overwhelmingly women and they're overwhelmingly immigrants. That's really essentially what propelled me into public service. I worked in the city council. I was also the first deputy public advocate of community engagement under public advocate Jumaane Williams before I decided to run for office myself.

Brian Lehrer: Talk about how the interests of the home care workers and the interest of the older adults, who they take care of, intersect, because somebody not familiar with these issues might think, "Oh yes, of course, fair pay for home care workers, but the more they get paid, the fewer older adults are going to be able to afford them."

Councilmember Crystal Hudson: Not entirely. I appreciate you providing an opportunity to give a little bit more clarity. As mentioned, the majority of home care workers are women, are immigrants, and are people of color. Until they're actually making fair and living wages will always have a shortage which we have now. New York state has the greatest shortage in the country of home care workers. We're expecting an increase in the older population by 25% by the year 2040, and that's compared to just a 3% increase in the general population.

We need to make sure that we're actually prepared to care for older New Yorkers, and in doing so, we need to make sure that folks are paid well and paid fairly. The working conditions that home care providers face are, in many cases, horrific. People have to commute on multiple trains and buses. There have been a few features in The New York Times about caregivers. Ai-jen Poo has been doing a great job advocating at the national level, but here locally, we need to make sure that the working conditions that these folks face are equivalent to the working conditions that so many more people have access to in the traditional workplace or work sector.

That includes even things as simple as vacation time, sick time. When you're working in somebody's home, it's very difficult to ensure equitable access to all of those rights and benefits.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, because unless they're getting paid by Medicaid, if it's a private relationship, probably they're being paid in cash under the table and then no vacation time, no health benefits, no social security payments, things like that. Right?

Councilmember Crystal Hudson: Right. We need to make sure that we're creating a workplace environment that's comparable to the workplace environment that the rest of us expect. A lot of care providers are older folks themselves. We need to make sure that they have access to healthcare and, like we said, time off so that they can provide the best care to our loved ones as possible.

Brian Lehrer: City council member Crystal Hudson with us from District 35 in Brooklyn, Crown Heights, Prospect Heights, Fort Greene, Bed Stuy, Clinton Hill. I don't think I left any neighborhoods out.

Councilmember Crystal Hudson: You got them all.

Brian Lehrer: Week 35, District 35 in our series 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks. We can take some phone calls for her from the neighborhood or on some of the issues that we raise from anywhere. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer. We're asking all the council members to describe their districts and the people in their districts. Who lives there these days demographically and how much has that been changing over the course of your lifetime since you grew up in the district?

Councilmember Crystal Hudson: It's certainly changed a lot as I'm sure folks can imagine. My district used to be majority Black district in all of the neighborhoods that you've listed, and just in the last 10 years, we've lost 20% of our Black population, and that's not even intergeneration. That's just in the last 10 years. It's been a big loss. We now have just about 36% white residents just under 36% at about 35% Black residents, and then under 15% Hispanic residents, and then about 8% Asian and other.

The majority of residents in the district are between the ages of 19 and 64. That makes up 70% of the district. We have almost 20% under 18-year-olds and just over 10% of folks 65 and older. An extremely diverse district across race and ethnicity, across age, and also across socioeconomic background.

Brian Lehrer: You mentioned 20% smaller Black population in the district than earlier. I presume that's largely the result of gentrification. You tell me if you think it's other reasons, but regarding gentrification, how do you protect or how do you advocate protecting people from being displaced, or to what degree is it acceptable because neighborhoods do change and demand to live in different places changes?

Councilmember Crystal Hudson: Yes, it's absolutely due to gentrification and really a lack of deeply affordable housing for low and extremely low-income folks and also for moderate-income folks. One thing that I'm really proud to be launching in the coming weeks will be a community-led rezoning along Atlantic Avenue. The Atlantic Avenue corridor in my district runs basically from Flatbush Avenue to Bedford Avenue. That's an opportunity for the community to create its own plan for what we think and want the future of our district to look like.

We're also going to be working with an organization called Hester Street to create a community-led land use plan and development plan for the entirety of the district. It's two separate projects but I think both really great and unique opportunities for people to be engaged with what development should look like and what we should be prioritizing and who we should be prioritizing.

I think, for so long, the private sector has been prioritized and private developers have built luxury towers that don't deliver for the folks with the greatest needs.

Brian Lehrer: How's Mayor Adams doing so far in your opinion on affordable housing? He seems to want to put less emphasis on what Blasio and Bloomberg seem to talk about a lot, which is adding or preserving hundreds of thousands of units of below-market-rate housing. He seems to want to focus more on quality of housing  than quantity. Do you get that, and how do you judge his performance or his plan so far?

Councilmember Crystal Hudson: I think the plan came out pretty late considering we're still in the midst of a housing crisis. Housing is the number one issue that we hear from constituents in my district, and it's everything from negligent landlords to a lack of affordable housing. Unless and until we're actually building deeply affordable housing for the people with the greatest needs, then I think we're failing.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. I'll tell you, you touched the nerve with the bit of our conversation about home healthcare from both sides of that equation, the caregiver and the person who's being cared for. Let's take a phone call from Mary in Crown Heights. You're on WNYC with councilmember Crystal Hudson. Hi, Mary.

Mary: Hello. Thank you for having me. I have a question. I am a caregiver for my mother. She's 90 years old living in Crown Heights. You mentioned navigating through and getting care for her. That's what I need right now. Do you have a program where I can contact for paying for the care and finding a care agency?

Councilmember Crystal Hudson: Hi, Mary. Good morning. Thank you so much for calling in. I'd be happy to connect with you offline, but it depends on whether or not your mother is eligible for Medicaid or Medicare. So often, the choices are limited if you're not eligible for Medicaid in terms of the hours that you might qualify for. I don't know also if she has a particular health condition or if it's just age, but sometimes that would also help us point you in a more specific direction.

Mary: Yes. Do you have a contact I can reach out to?

Councilmember Crystal Hudson: Yes, absolutely. My email address is district35@council.nyc.gov, or you could also call my office at 718-260-9191, and we'll be sure to look out for your email or your call.

Brian Lehrer: Mary, reference in that email that you spoke to the council member on this show. Hopefully, that'll be helpful.

Councilmember Crystal Hudson: Absolutely.

Brian Lehrer: Pamela on the Upper West Side. You're on WNYC. Hi, Pamela.

Pamela: Hi, thank you for taking my call. The councilwoman was talking about the legislation to protect healthcare workers that she's sponsoring, which I am so in favor of. I have a niece who works as a home healthcare worker, and my concern, the last time they passed legislation, which was to guarantee overtime and other kinds of things, what this has led the agencies for which she works do, is to be so careful that she never gets overtime.

What that has done is create a patchwork so she'll work two days at one place and half a day at another place. She works for two agencies so that she keeps her healthcare, which she desperately needs. I just think it could be useful to look at the previous legislation and then see how the companies that employ the healthcare workers are using it to in fact avoid giving the workers the kind of care, I would say, that they really deserve because I know how hard my niece works and that she really cares for the people that she's working for.

Councilmember Crystal Hudson: Thank you so much, Pamela.

Brian Lehrer: That's really interesting, Pamela. There's a tip on the side effects of the law, council member.

Councilmember Crystal Hudson: Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much, Pamela for sharing that story. So much of this is regulated at the state level. The fair pay for Home Care Act that I referenced is actually at the state level, and you're absolutely right, we need better regulations in the care industry to protect both the patients and the care providers. We can definitely look into details for all the previous legislation that's been passed as we look to support future legislation making sure that we're holding the providers and the organizations responsible for how they're treating their workers.

That's of paramount importance to me, especially as chair of the aging committee. My goal is to make sure that New York City is the best place for everybody to grow older and that includes everybody providing care and receiving care.

Brian Lehrer: Let's keep going on this. Jane on Roosevelt Island, you're on WNYC with councilmember Crystal Hudson. Hi, Jane.

Jane: Hi. I'm actually in the same position. I take care of my mother. She was also a nurse at Bronx Community College for 30 years, and she's on Medicare. We are finding that Medicare compared to Medicaid offers no home healthcare, zero.

It's like they want to bankrupt her. There's ways to put her on Medicaid but you have to start this trust and you're just giving her money away because it's impossible to spend. I don't know. It just seems like here she worked her whole life and, from insurance, she gets offered none, and she can't take care of herself. Fortunately, I can take care of her, but if that weren't the case, I don't know. It just seems like a very odd system to me that--

Brian Lehrer: This is such a big thing and that a lot of Americans don't realize, it's exactly what Jane says, right council member? If you're poor at that level, to be qualified for Medicaid as your health insurance, that actually does cover home healthcare. Anybody just on Medicare, the general US health insurance system for anybody over 65, if you're above the Medicaid poverty line, there's no home healthcare benefit in Medicare.

I think this is one of the things that president Biden was trying to address in the original Build Back Better, but Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema wouldn't have it. Here we are. So many middle-class people who would be bankrupted if they were to spend their money on full-time home health aids, if that's their need, bankrupted quickly.

Councilmember Crystal Hudson: Absolutely. Jane, thanks also for calling in, and your mother is lucky to have you. This was exactly my experience. It's incredibly difficult and challenging navigating these systems. Quite frankly, the systems are broken. To have to spend down your money in order to qualify for care shouldn't be the way that our healthcare system and care system, care economy are run in this country. We have a lot of work to do.

As Brian mentioned, there were some carve-outs for the care economy and the original Build Back Better plan, and that's what Ai-jen Poo who is an advocate and the head of the National Domestic Workers Alliance has been working on at the national level. We need to make sure that, at the local level, we're doing everything we can to create systems and provide tools for people to get the care that they need, but we aren't there yet, and it does make it incredibly difficult for those of us who want to provide the best possible care for our loved ones.

Brian Lehrer: This is WNYC-FM HD and AM New York, WNJT-FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcong, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are on New York and New Jersey Public Radio, and live streaming at wnyc.org. A few more minutes for today in our 51 Council Members in 52-week series as we interview every member of the New York City Council in this year in which a majority of them are new because of term limits, and its a majority female council for the first time today. We are up to district 35 in Crown Heights, Prospect Heights, Clinton Hill, Fort Greene. I'm leaving one of them out, Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Councilmember Crystal Hudson: A little bit of Bed Stuy.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, with councilmember Crystal Hudson. We'll take a few more of your calls. We've been talking largely about one of her priorities in office, which is older adults, and another one, which is housing. You are part of the first-ever female majority on the council. I wonder if you see that having an impact on policy or maybe there's no better example than the fact that we've spent such a large part of the first part of our conversation talking about home healthcare. Maybe if it was majority male, they may support you on these issues but maybe wouldn't come up as much.

Councilmember Crystal Hudson: I think that's absolutely right. I think the care economy is driven  by women, and I think so many of us who were elected into the city council last year are bringing our own lived experiences as caregivers, whether for young children, or our older parents, or loved ones, into the council, and into how we govern and legislate.

I am introducing a package of legislation next month, all on aging. Some that address the housing needs of older adults, essentially creating systems that would provide resources, including funding for rental arrears as well as the right to counsel for everybody over age 60 including-- I know your rights pamphlet for all older adults that they're sent by DFTA, Department for the Aging.

Also requiring any newly built buildings or units to have at least 10% of those units with universally accessible features like stepless entryways and grab bars all over the buildings. Really, thinking about our own experiences and what we're bringing to the table, absolutely, I think forms the legislation that we're putting forward.

Brian Lehrer: Lived experience matters.

Councilmember Crystal Hudson: It does.

Brian Lehrer: I want to take Juan in Yonkers because I think he's going to make an important point that Medicare does cover some home healthcare in limited situations. Not to let people think that they're not eligible for any at all if they're on Medicare, but not Medicaid. Juan, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Juan: Thank you. I'm a great fan of yours. I just wanted to say that, with Medicare, you could get home care, but you have to have a skilled need. You could get referred by a doctor to a certified home health agency and get some home care services, at least for a limited time. Then the team in that agency could try to help the person apply for Medicaid or other community services.

Brian Lehrer: Juan, thank you. That's just wonderful.

Councilmember Crystal Hudson: Thank you for that point.

Brian Lehrer: Council member that's accurate, right?

Councilmember Crystal Hudson: It's accurate, but some of the challenges that we see are, for example, in my case, my mother had Alzheimer's disease, in the early stages of the disease, and she was in perfectly good health otherwise. In the early stages of her disease, she didn't have any actual medical needs, and so she didn't qualify. She needed more supervision to make sure that she wasn't leaving the gas on after cooking or injuring herself doing something, or leaving the house and being lost, for example.

Those types of needs aren't covered under Medicare. I know that Jane who called in, who's caring for her mother, her mother who also has Alzheimer's disease. Juan's point is well taken and I appreciate him providing that context, but there's still so many folks who Medicare doesn't meet the needs for so many people.

Brian Lehrer: I think the coverage that it provides as often as Juan says for skilled services. If you need a visit from a nurse, a visiting nurse services nurse because they have to do a particular medical thing that you can't go outside for.

Councilmember Crystal Hudson: Perhaps dressing a wound or something like that.

Brian Lehrer: It's better covered by Medicare than just the help you would need because you're incapable of taking care of yourself in general. Hey, we're asking every member in this series, what's the number one reason that people contact your office since you took office in January? What do people say they need when they call your office or email you?

Councilmember Crystal Hudson: Without a doubt it's housing, and it's everywhere. Everything from negligent landlords that are leaving folks in really hazardous and unsafe living conditions like ongoing leaks, mold and mildew, rodents and roaches, patchwork done for major fixes that aren't being addressed, to actually trying to find affordable housing, and facing eviction. The second thing we hear about is sanitation issues, which I'm sure you've heard from a lot of my colleagues.

Brian Lehrer: Indeed.

Councilmember Crystal Hudson: Everything from obviously the rats across the city, but also to alternate side parking, the lack of enforcement, the need for people to actually move their cars so that the street sweeper can come through. One of the things I'm really proud of is the fact that we put out 50 new trash cans in our first 6 months across the district. We've got really fun slogans that we did a crowdsourcing campaign for, that say things like spread love, not trash, it's the Brooklyn way.

I encourage anyone in the 35th District, if they see one of those trash cans, to take a photo, post it and tag me @cmcrystalhudson.

Brian Lehrer: Real quick, on the controversial education cuts in the budget that city council passed, we've talked about it so much with other council members because this has been going on all summer, and I don't want to go over the same ground a million times, but 40 of the 51 members, I think you were among the 40, wrote a letter to the mayor asking to reverse the cuts to the schools with declining and enrollment.

The mayor argues the cuts make sense. There's a set number of dollars per pupil that it gives to each school. That's not going down. It's just the total funding to schools with fewer students than before they get fewer dollars. The latest reports say this may not be resolved before the school year starts. Are you hearing from principals in your district on how they're coping and compensating for this uncertainty?

Councilmember Crystal Hudson: Yes. I think it's been incredibly difficult. We've actually held several calls with all of our school principals, and union leader reps, and parent coordinators. We do them every couple of months. I think one thing that people are most appreciative of is just getting information. They're not receiving accurate information all the time from the department of education.

The numbers keep changing. I think it's really hard to plan with such uncertainty. I think folks are obviously trying to do the best they can as they have been for the last several years with COVID, and everything else that we've seen, that we're experiencing in this city. I know that our principals and our teachers and all of our school employees will continue to do the best that they can, the very best that they can to support our students this year, but we really need full funding from the mayor.

We need him to use the stimulus funds that were allocated specifically for this purpose to keep schools whole so that everybody has the resources they need for the best school year ahead.

Brian Lehrer: Of course, we'll keep following this until it's resolved. Last thing, we're asking every city council member to bring something virtually to our conversation for show and tell, something people outside the district might not know about that you would like to enlighten us about or sometimes it's a physical thing that they might even come and see. What have you got for Show and Tell?

Councilmember Crystal Hudson: Today for Show and Tell, I'm bringing the Connect to Culture program at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, which is a program for people with Alzheimer's and other types of dementia. It's a great program that's actually offered at cultural institutions across the city. It's at both the Botanic Garden and the Brooklyn Museum. In my district, I'm also home to a number of other cultural institutions like the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Mark Morris Dance Center, and so many other smaller theaters.

The really special thing about this program is that it provides a space for folks with Alzheimer's and dementia, as well as their caregivers for a little respite. At the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, one thing that my mother always used to love and enjoy was going there, planting something, bringing a plant back home. We had a small little collection of all the plants she would bring home every month from Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

There are teaching artists who are trained specifically in how to work with folks with Alzheimer's and dementia. I think it's an amazing program that should be highlighted. If you have somebody that you know or love with Alzheimer's or dementia, I hope folks will get an opportunity to look up all of the wonderful cultural institutions across the city that provide this program.

Brian Lehrer: That's wonderful. Connect to Culture, including at Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Crystal Hudson, Council Member from District 35, our 35th guest in our series 51 Council Members in 52 weeks. Good talk. Thank you so much for joining us.

Councilmember Crystal Hudson: Thank you so much, Brian. It's been a treat speaking with you.

 

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