51 Council Members in 52 Weeks: District 37, Sandy Nurse

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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Later this hour, we're going to have A.J. Jacobs back on the show. You know him. He's the really interesting and often hilarious NPR commentator and author. He's got a little thing going where he's trying to find five people who helped him when he was lost in the middle of Alaska years ago. He wants to try to find them and thank them. [chuckles] We're going to see if any of you can help A.J. Jacobs later this hour.

We're also going to use that as an opportunity to give you a chance to call in and thank anybody, whoever helped you as an anonymous stranger at any time in your life. That's coming up later this hour. Right now, we continue our series, 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks. As many of you know, we are inviting all the New York City council members, roughly in their district number order across the whole year neighborhood by neighborhood touching every district of the city, every neighborhood of New York City, one of our commitments to you this year.

We're doing it this year because it's a new era in the New York City Council this year. There are mostly new members because of term limits and women make up the majority of council members for the first time ever. One new member joins me now, Council Member Sandy Nurse, who represents District 37. That's Cypress Hills, Bushwick, City Line, Ocean Hill, Brownsville, East New York. Council Member Nurse, thanks so much for joining 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks.

Council Member Sandy Nurse: Hi, Brian, and thanks for having me. Super excited to be here.

Brian Lehrer: I want to preview that I'm going to ask you about some breaking news stories over the last few days and get your reactions in a few minutes, including Mayor Adams saying maybe not expand 3-K to be universal. First, tell us a little bit about yourself as we usually start. Where'd you grow up and what first got you interested in politics?

Council Member Sandy Nurse: Well, thank you. I'm a third-generation Panamanian born in Panama and I grew up with both parents in the US Navy. I grew up around the world as what they call a military brat. I've lived in New York since I was about 24. I'm now 38 and I've had many lives. I've worked for the Department of Defense, the United Nations World Food Programme.

I was a carpenter and carpentry instructor for many years. I've built out large-scale farms and NYCHA developments. I've started community-based nonprofits over the last years, focused on youth development, environmental justice, and social justice, grassroots organizing. Now, I get to represent the 37th district and to be chair of the sanitation and solid waste committee.

Brian Lehrer: Amazing background. You're the first member of council in our 38 weeks in this series to mention carpentry. I'll tell you that. Where does all that lead you in terms of your priorities in public office?

Council Member Sandy Nurse: Yes, really, the priorities are driven by the needs on the ground. The biggest buckets of needs that we have are housing and also sanitation and dealing with our rat crisis. The biggest need in our district is for safe, stable, and affordable housing for our seniors and families. Then we also need our streets to be clean and we need to deal with our litter problem and our growing rat infestation. Those are two of our big focus areas.

Brian Lehrer: Talk a little bit more about that one, especially because you said you're a chair of the sanitation committee. There's a standard question that we've been asking in the series of every council member, which is what's the number one reason that people contact your office, constituents just getting in touch and saying, "Hey, I need help with something, Council Member"? I think the thing that's been mentioned most often is dirty streets, including the rat problem at the extreme end. How do you see your work as chair of the sanitation committee?

Council Member Sandy Nurse: Yes, so it's the second biggest complaint for our office, but what we've seen is that over the last two years, just from a citywide perspective, about a 52% increase in 311 complaints regarding dirty conditions, missed collections, and rat sightings. We went from about 97,000 complaints in 2020 to about 147,000 in 2021. In response and as sanitation chair, I've been really laser-focused on pushing forward two packages that I believe will be transformational for New York City. That is our zero-waste package and our rat action plan.

For our rat plan, we've teamed up with Council Members Ossé, Bottcher, and Abreu to deliver a set of four bills that will do everything from ensuring there are pre-construction rat mitigation plans, which would be a big deal for a neighborhood like mine, with lots of construction and gentrification to things like changing the times trash can be put out on the street. We have a situation where we put our trash bags outside at four or five o'clock at night. They have food in it and it sits there until about five, six o'clock in the morning when the sanitation trucks leave the garages. Rats are able to eat all night. They rip open our bags and they put litter out on the street.

Not only would this rat action plan really help with that, but our zero-waste package would complement that really well because within it is a bill for universal curbside organics collection, which would allow us to separate out our food waste from our trash bags. We're really excited about these two. These are my two things that I really want to get past this year and they have wide support. Our zero-waste package has about 40 to 41 co-sponsors, a super majority. I believe this is a historic package of bills that would really transform New York City and set us up to be a global leader on zero waste.

Brian Lehrer: That universal organics collection, is another word for that "composting"?

Council Member Sandy Nurse: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: The composting program seems to come and go and come and go. Mayors started and stop it and then say, "We can't afford it." Where are we now on that in terms of Mayor Adams' latest position as far as you could tell?

Council Member Sandy Nurse: Right, so the mayor stopped the program. Earlier this year, he announced he was not going to push for expansion. Right now, the program is stalled. It's not expanding. There's about seven community districts that have curbside organics. Some were cut. We have a pilot that was announced where they will be collecting curbside food scraps for a few months in Queens, covering the entire borough of Queens, and then it will stop again.

We are continuing with the stop-start. That's why this bill is so important because it's just going to require the program to exist to cover all New York City. We're going to stop this. Let's get going. Let's try it out. We really need to create a system that is super easy for people. They can understand the benefits of separating out their food waste as part of an anti-rat strategy and really make the connection between our city achieving zero waste and what our city can do. I'm really hopeful that we can pass this bill this year.

Brian Lehrer: Sometimes when we talk about composting and the people who feel really strongly about composting, I think it either tends to be or tends to have a reputation of being located in the more prosperous and whiter communities among a certain fairly affluent progressive part of the population as part of their environmental awareness. Your district is generally much poorer than that. Cypress Hills, Bushwick, Brownsville, East New York. Do you see composting in an environmental justice context that maybe doesn't get enough play?

Council Member Sandy Nurse: Oh, 100%. My district has never had this and we are primarily, as you said, the low-income working-class community of color and we've never had it. There was a small section of Ocean Hill that has it but is not currently being served right now. This program, the pilot rolled out in, what, 2013 in Windsor Terrace and down in Park Slope. Park Slope even got to two times a week and we've still been over here just asking for the brown bin.

There is some racism within policymaking, of course, in any policymaking and bias. Certainly, environmental racism exists and we are a community that experiences it. This perception that working-class people of color are not environmentally aware, we're not thinking about the climate crisis, we're not thinking about our environment is simply not true. We have a lot of other things that are priorities such as our need for stable housing and affordable rent and taking care of our families, but people care about this.

Our community is a diaspora community from many other places where they have this. It's a common feature. We don't have the infrastructure and the system in place for everybody to access it in the language that makes sense to them, with the messages that make sense to them. This perception that we're not interested in participating, I think, is simply not true. I think this bill that we have would ensure that we just break through this barrier and roll it out for every single person here in the city.

Brian Lehrer: You mentioned a diaspora district. Do you want to talk about the diaspora and diasporas in your district? We do ask every council member in this series to paint a demographic picture of the district that they represent. Who are the people? We don't just talk about the politicians. Of course, New York is always changing so much. In District 37, Cypress Hills, Bushwick, City Line, Ocean Hill, Brownsville, East New York, who lives there and who lives there, maybe compared to 20 years ago?

Council Member Sandy Nurse: Yes, it's definitely a district that is changing. Primarily, we have a lot of Puerto Ricans, Dominicans. We have folks from Guyana. We have a lot of folks from Ecuador. We have a South Asian population, folks from Bangladesh. Actually, quite diverse. Even within a non-white spectrum, we have a lot of folks from all over the world.

According to our census, we did lose about, I believe, 10% of our Black population and gained about equally that for white folks. It is definitely changing from West to East. This is why it's so important for us to stay focused on our housing, which is our top need in our district, and why we need to make sure that we can keep our folks here because they are being forced out.

Brian Lehrer: Every council member brings up housing as well. I guess you've said your top two that you hear from constituents are sanitation number two and housing number one. How do we get enough affordable housing for everybody? It seems so financially daunting for the city. We've talked a lot on this show about how the deals with the private sector are limited like market-rate development at 80%, as long as you include 20% affordable, all those kinds of things. The city doesn't have enough money to just build hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of below-market-rate housing units to start to meet the need and bring supply and demand into more balance after so many decades of tremendous imbalance. What have you got?

Council Member Sandy Nurse: Well, I think there's a lot we can do without necessarily new construction. Some of the things that we've been pushing, for example, was to get some money to complete a basement pilot conversion program. A Basement Conversion Program is a pilot in Cypress Hills and East New York. There are hundreds of thousands of basement units that potentially could be brought into being safe housing options that, right now, are being occupied illegally and in unsafe conditions.

That's one way we could do it. We could focus on accessory dwelling units. Things like the grandma attic above the garage or the apartment that is in the backyard. Those are things that we could bring into the fold. That doesn't require new construction, but what it does is bring those up to code and make them safe. One of the things that we are really focused on is ending the tax lien sale and really focus on implementing a more just and equitable alternative.

That would really allow our small homeowners, which often provide low-rent, affordable housing, an option to keep them in their homes and stop this ridiculous process that we've used in the past of selling the debt, the tax arrears of our small homeowners to private equity-backed firms and really put that back into the public realm and allow people to maintain the equity, stay in their homes, and continue to offer tenants low rent and affordable rent because these are folks who are invested in this community.

Those are some options that I think the city could focus on. I understand that constructing new buildings is really, really challenging, and getting the financing right is really challenging, but I do think that it is possible if we make it a priority and we really focus on the state, federal, and city financing options that exist.

Brian Lehrer: My guest, as we continue our series 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks, is New York City Council Member Sandy Nurse, who represents District 37. That's Cypress Hills, Bushwick, City Line, Ocean Hill, Brownsville, East New York. Who has a question for her? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Tanya in East New York, you're on WNYC. Hi, Tanya.

Tanya: Hi. Thanks, Brian, for taking my call. Thank you for coming to present your case, Ms.-- I think you said Sandy, what?

Brian Lehrer: Sandy Nurse.

Tanya: Listen, I'm from East New York. Sandy Nurse. Ms. Nurse, I'm from East New York, Brooklyn, and this sanitation situation that you're talking about with these rats and things like that is sanitation. Why are we changing our cars four days a week? I own a two-family home in East New York. Sanitation is not cleaning the streets like they're supposed to. They only pick up the garbage two times a week.

I got to change my car four times a week. You guys let sanitation continue this on. What was the problem with us just doing the last two days of the week? You know we don't have no parking. We don't have parking spaces or parking garages in a lot of the Brooklyn homes. I don't understand. If you are helping with sanitation, how did you let this go on? We're moving our cars four days a week.

Brian Lehrer: Council Member?

Council Member Sandy Nurse: Thank you so much for that. The move to restore alternate side parking and street sweeping four times a week was announced by the mayor earlier this year. Look, we got a lot of calls about it. It's an inconvenience for sure. We have more calls about trash and litter. One of the best tools that the city has are these street sweepers and they're very efficient.

They can pull in-- I forget what the commissioner said, something like maybe 1,500 pounds of trash in just one. That's a phenomenal tool we have to keep our city clean. Unfortunately, we have not invested in on-the-ground people who walk around and sweep the street every day. This is what we have. This is the tool we have to combat litter and trash all over our city.

I understand. It's really inconvenient to move the car, but I think it's a worse condition to live in a city that is filled with trash all over our streets and that is feeding the rat problem and it creates a larger public health situation. I understand. I have to move my car as well. I'm not asking anybody do anything that I'm not doing, but it's the tool we have and we should use it.

Brian Lehrer: Tanya, I know that's not the answer you wanted, but thank you for raising your voice and speaking up, and please call us again. Aaron in East New York as well, you're on WNYC. Hi, Aaron.

Aaron: Hi, Brian, longtime listener, second-time caller. I wanted to know about encouraging the residents to use covered trash cans to at least temporarily deal with the rat problem until composting could be put into the neighborhood.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. Could you hear the question, Council Member?

Council Member Sandy Nurse: Yes, I heard it. Yes, I would love as many New Yorkers as possible to put their trash out in a container with a lid that closes. Try not to stuff the bags. Really try to close that container. That is a way that we can prevent rodents from ripping open the bags looking for food. I know that there's been a lot of calls to containerize our trash, containerize our waste, and that is something that is being piloted by the city mostly in commercial corridors.

I believe there was five sites or maybe $5 million going into this program. I think we're going to get there, but we really definitely need all New Yorkers to work towards containerizing their waste in some way. Whatever container it is, put it in there and put a lid on it. That will really help us by stopping to feed the rats at night.

Brian Lehrer: You said at the beginning of the segment that behind housing, sanitation was the thing that causes constituents to contact your office. Here, we're hearing examples of that with you on the show and on the phones. I also said at the beginning, I was going to ask you about Mayor Adams and preschool. You took us in so many interesting directions. It's been a long time since I actually said that, so let's do that.

This morning, The Times version of this is that the Adams administration is "now distancing itself from Mayor de Blasio's target of expanding free preschool to 60,000 families with three-year-old children by next school year. The mayor's reassessing how the city's so-called 3-K for All program fits into his broader early childhood education strategy." It says Mayor Adams and Schools Chancellor David Banks reportedly want to focus on making childcare affordable for families with kids under the age of three. That's, of course, vital too to the equality goals that pre-K is for. Do you have an initial reaction to this?

Council Member Sandy Nurse: Yes, I think what we're seeing is education fights. They're starting and they're going to be really hard. I think a rollback of pre-K or 3-K would be a huge blow to New York City's commitment to supporting families. Early childhood education is so key to development. Children socializing is so important for future understanding of each other, for language development, for cognitive development. It's just helpful to families to have the ability to take their young children to school.

My reaction is we've been in larger fights right now around public education. This is certainly concerning, but I have to say not surprising. We've seen that this mayor is willing to penalize the public education system and this already cut almost $500 million from our public education system. My thoughts are this is what happens when billionaire charter school advocates get involved and win our elections.

I think that we should be doing everything we can to support families, our young people, who are our most important investment that we can make as a city to ensure that our city is strong. We have future leaders who can run this city, who are critical thinkers, who are compassionate people who want this city to work. That starts early on at the home and in early education. I hope this doesn't go in that direction.

Brian Lehrer: I know the mayor talks a lot about pre-K childcare. It's something that President Biden wanted to expand nationwide and fell apart under the pressure of Senators Manchin and Sinema at the national level. Governor Hochul and the state legislature have passed a childcare bill. I guess you're saying they don't need to be in opposition. That's if there's enough money to go around for all the early, early childcare funding that's needed and the 3-K making it universal.

Council Member Sandy Nurse: Absolutely. I think we should be doing everything we can to invest in our families and our young people. Look, these are costly programs. It is expensive to have free childcare. It's expensive to have a high-quality education system, but there's also associated costs when we don't do that. All of the things that happen when we don't invest in people early on, give them the tools they need to succeed, we pay for at the other end when they're not able to get jobs when they're missing out on important social and emotional things that they need later on in life.

We pay for it either way, whether we do it upfront or we do it at the end. It is a costly thing, but this is what a good society is when we invest in people from the jump and set them up for success. I think we should be doing everything we can to ensure that they're on the right track. I believe that that starts with high-quality childcare, access to childcare for working families, for women so that they can participate in the workforce, and really make sure we have high-quality early education programs.

Brian Lehrer: I've seen a stat that more than 1,500 families applied for 3-K slots for their children this year and were denied because there was no space available in those programs in those districts. That's got to be a shock to them when they keep hearing this phrase "universal pre-K in New York City." Well, it's not universal 3-K yet, the first year of that. Let me get your take real quick on another thing in the news this week.

We haven't gotten a chance to do a separate segment on this yet. Governor Hochul's announcement that the MTA would install two security cameras on every subway car in an attempt to make people feel less threatened by crime. Maybe it'll even cut down on actual crime. I don't know, but two surveillance cameras in every subway car to be installed over the next three years. Do you like it?

Council Member Sandy Nurse: I've been catching up to this and I have many concerns. I'm very against being a CCTV nation and hyper-surveillance truly, truly worries me. I don't believe we should live in a world where our every move is tracked. There have just been too many examples where our state misuses and abuses surveillance technology. It's also incredibly hard for lawmakers to conduct oversight over the agencies. Transparency is very hard to achieve. Understanding effectiveness and efficiency is also hard to achieve because oftentimes we cannot get data. I have questions around the effectiveness of cameras.

From what we have seen this last year, a lot of these incidents are related to folks dealing with mental health issues. While a camera in a subway may help find someone who has caused harm, it most likely will not be a deterrent since a lot of folks with mental health issues might not be thinking of cameras at all. I'm not sure. So much of our city is already under surveillance. So much of our city already has cameras. Has it been a deterrent? I don't know. I don't know if it prevents, but it can help to track down folks. That certainly is an outcome, but--

Brian Lehrer: Does it victimize anybody in your opinion?

Council Member Sandy Nurse: I would say I'm uncomfortable with the idea that you and I, Brian, all over this city are available on camera. That data, that information, what it's used for, and whether or not something is effective or not is really hard to determine. I just don't believe we should have this level of surveillance.

Brian Lehrer: All right. That debate, just beginning. In our last minute, we're inviting every council member to bring a show-and-tell item from your district, something in the district that other people listening might not know about that you'd like them to know about. What'd you bring for show-and-tell?

Council Member Sandy Nurse: I brought my lunch, which is a Tamarind Doubles from Roti on the Run, which is a fantastic West Indian halal restaurant on Fulton Street right off the Norwood J train. It's one of the first opened in East New York. It's just got trays and trays of delicious food. I love it because it really just shows the diversity of our community. It's owned by someone from Guyana who has made its way here.

A lot of the food is fused from all of the traditions of folks in the Caribbean, all across the Caribbean. I just really love it because it shows just like, even though we have these tragic histories of migration to the Caribbean and they're complex, we have so much that we celebrate. Our food shows our resilience and how folks who all got to the Caribbean learn from each other and really cross-pollinated to make these amazing foods that we love so much. I just really enjoy it. Tamarind Doubles from Roti on the Run.

Brian Lehrer: Now, you got me all hungry and we have another 20 minutes to go in the show. I'll just have to hold out. Council Member Sandy Nurse, bringing her lunch as her show-and-tell item, representing District 37, Cypress Hills, Bushwick, City Line, Ocean Hill, Brownsville, East New York. Thank you so much for joining 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks.

Council Member Sandy Nurse: Thank you so much, Brian, for having me.

 

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