NYC's Public Advocate on the Latest City News

Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. We begin today with some things that did not destroy New York City. The 1929 stock market crash did not destroy New York City, neither did the 1970s fiscal crisis, Ford to City, Drop Dead, the '70s and '80s crime wave, the 1987 stock market crash, oh 9/11, the financial crisis of 2008, Hurricane Sandy did not destroy New York City neither did the pandemic or Donald Trump. Here are some things that definitely did not destroy New York City. The Irish immigration wave of 1845 to 1855 and the Ellis Island era that followed.

The great migration from South to North during Jim Crow, the arrival of so many US citizens from Puerto Rico over the decades. Let's look back at a couple of these. At the peak of Irish emigration from 1845 to '55 about 100,000 Irish immigrants per year came to the city, more than 900,000 in one decade according to the website Irish Central. That's about the same number of migrants per year as are arriving now. Ellis Island, according to the History Channel website, from 1900 to 1914 around 700,000 people per year were admitted through Ellis Island.

The record year was 1907 with nearly 1.3 million people, a quarter of whom, or more than 300,000 settled in New York or New Jersey. Nobody looks back at the Ellis Island era and says it destroyed our city. I'm flooding you with numbers here, right? Sorry, but they provide the context for today's headline about Mayor Adams, which we'll get to. Here are just a few more bringing us up to the present, from Crain's New York Business in February of this year headline, A 56% Drop in Immigration is Hampering New York's Recovery. The resulting labor shortage, the article says, has played out across the economy as a silent headwind to the city's plotting recovery.

That was this year when the migrant freakout was already underway. An article about population on Bloomberg News in March says, "The city still has a long way to go to get back to pre-pandemic levels. The total population of 8.3 million is down from 8.8 million in April 2020," from Bloomberg News, context by the numbers. It was despite that context that Mayor Adams made his statement that's making headlines around the world and bringing him high praise from Republicans like Vivek Ramaswamy. It was on Wednesday at a town hall on the Upper West Side that he said the current wave of asylum seekers will destroy this city.

We'll get reaction in two minutes from New York City Public Advocate and we'll open the phones. I thought, in fairness to the mayor and really to serve all of you, we would go way beyond the soundbite that you've no doubt been hearing and play two full minutes of the mayor that included his line about destroying this city but also gives you more context for how he said it. He says he's been quoted out of context. Here we go. Two minutes of Mayor Eric Adams from an Upper West Side town hall on Wednesday.

Mayor Eric Adams: Let me tell you something, New Yorkers. Never in my life have I had a problem that I did not see an ending to. I don't see an ending to this. I don't see an ending to this. This issue will destroy New York City. Destroy New York City. We're getting 10,000 migrants a month. One time we were just getting Venezuela, now we're getting Ecuador, now we're getting Russian-speaking coming through Mexico. Now we're getting Western Africa, now we're getting people from all over the globe have made their minds up that they're going to come through the southern part of the border and come into New York City.

Everyone is saying it's New York City's problem. Every community in this city is going to be impacted. We have a $12 billion deficit that we're going to have to cut. Every service in this city is going to be impacted, all of us. I say to you, as I turn it over to you, this is some of the most educated, some of the most knowledgeable, probably more of my commissioners and deputy commissioners and chiefs live in this community, so as you ask me a question about migrants, tell me what role you played. How many of you organize to stop what they're doing to us?

How many of you were part of the movement to say, "We're seeing what this mayor is trying to do, and they're destroying New York City." It's going to come to your neighborhoods. All of us are going to be impacted by this. I said it last year when we had 15,000, I'm telling you now with 110,000, the city we knew, we're about to lose. We're all in this together, all of us. Staten Island said, "Send them out to Manhattan." Manhattan is saying, "Send them out to Queens." Queens is saying, "Send them out to Brooklyn." [chuckles] No, it's not the game we can play.

Brian Lehrer: Two minutes from Mayor Eric Adams from an Upper West Side town hall on Wednesday saying the issue of the current influx of asylum seekers will destroy this city and warning everybody, this is coming to your neighborhood, and that he sees no ending to the problem, unlike other problems he apparently saw as more temporary. I don't know, little things like the pandemic, 9/11, the various financial and stock market crashes. With me now on that and also some other things New York City Public Advocate, Jumaane Williams. Public Advocate, always good of you to join and take calls. Welcome back to WNYC.

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams: Good morning. Always a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, it's ask the Public Advocate, as part of this segment, your questions for Jumaane Williams at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Call or text on the influx of asylum seekers or anything else. Public Advocate, do you think the issue of the current inflow of asylum seekers will destroy this city?

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams: What's clear to me now, unfortunately, the mayor seems to have a pattern and practice of using the most extravagant, sometimes hyperbolic language to try to get a point across and not taking the time to understand how damaging it might be. This time last year, a lot of us were asking him not to use the language of hyperbole and extravagance when it came to bail, and that continued. I think that's what helped us lose the House, and there's a concern that it may happen again. We also discussed certain language that was being used when the asylum seekers started coming that might create an atmosphere where they may be harmed.

I think this falls into that category. It isn't necessary, and I don't even think it's going to be helpful to get the assistance that we need. As you mentioned, all the things that we've seen before, many of them we didn't know when it was going to end. We didn't know when recessions and pandemics were going to end, and we had to push forward with an air of hope, not desperation. Even with that said, what I don't want to get lost, and that's why it's unfortunate when he used that language, is that the nuggets of truth that are there, which is, it is unsustainable for New York City, the mayor can only do but so much without the assistance of the governor, and especially without the assistance of the Biden White House and Congress.

Brian Lehrer: Right. The mayor ties it to a projected $12 billion deficit. That's presumably over the next three years. Here's some more math folks, $4 billion a year, which is about 4% of the city budget. That's a lot to have to cut from all the other city services. That's part of what he was saying at that town hall. Every agency is going to get cut because of the cost of sheltering migrants that the federal government and the state aren't helping enough with. What impact do you think it will have short of destroying the city if the asylum seekers keep coming at the current rate and nothing changes in Washington or Albany?

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams: Yes, what was interesting is when we were in Albany asking for revenue-raising options, the mayor didn't support that. He was expressly opposed to it. My hope is when we come back around for the next budget that he will support now [unintelligible 00:09:39]

Brian Lehrer: When you say revenue-raising options, you mean raising taxes?

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams: Raising revenue from the people who have expendable income and can do that. This is people who are primarily making more than $1 million a year. What often happens is when we use the word taxes it affects and pretends it affects everybody, when it doesn't. We simply can't do our job properly without honoring and looking at revenue-raising options. We can never get this mayor to support that. My hope is that will change. What I do have to say is something that you pointed out, people are forgetting, and this is a whole nother conversation, but our economy is based on labor.

Unfortunately, oftentimes cheaper the labor so people can get wealthy, but that's another conversation. Our immigrants have been a large part of that. As you mentioned we have a labor shortage right now. It's not taking jobs from Americans because Americans aren't filling them, but we have a labor shortage. The chancellor said that we're down 125,000 students before the asylum seekers came. There's a lot of things here that we're missing and we're lumping everything into what I would call xenophobia. With that said, we absolutely need the help, not just money.

Money is a part of it. The Biden White House should be helping us with a decompression strategy so that everything is not coming to New York City that has a small landmass area. The governor just woke up and started providing some assistance, but she too is not helping with decompression strategy to help get some other municipalities across the state, and is refusing to receive, and accept that right to shelter is a statewide right, and only focus on the city. The mayor is right. This is not something the city itself can solve, and they have to stop just pretending that this is just a citywide issue. It's, he's right there, and we have to make sure that we keep pointing that out. At the same time, the doomsday message is not helpful at all, and it can ultimately get people hurt.

Brian Lehrer: By the way, here's a fan of yours apparently sending us a text message, who writes, "If Adams can't see a way to handle this, he should quit and let the New York City succession plan take effect. Public Advocate Jumaane Williams is better equipped than he is to do the job." That is the succession plan. That's obviously not actually in the conversation here- [coughs] excuse me- in a serious way. If for any reason, and this one of the reasons your job is so important, the mayor of New York City could not continue in the job, the Public Advocate is next in line, correct?

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams: That is correct. I very much appreciate the sentiment. I also am very clear that the mayor of New York is a very difficult job. I never want to lose sight of that. It's a hard job to do. God forbid something happens, I'm prepared to do it. I think I'm trying to do the best I can with this job that we have here. The mayor applied to be mayor of New York City. There are some things that I think the city should have done better, I'm clear about that, and can now still do better. One of them is making sure that we're getting as much legal services to the asylum seekers as possible so that we can get them to work.

Even though the Biden White House is refusing to allow work authorizations, once they apply for asylum seekers and three or six months happens, they can start working. That time is going to run its clock out. We want to make sure that we're getting as much work authorizations as possible because when I've spoken to cities and municipalities and the leaders, they say they're happy to take some folks and happily to help their economy as well. If we can either get some help with assisting for housing, and/or, and this is always important, they can work.

Brian Lehrer: Right. I had Senator Gillibrand on the show on Wednesday, and she said President Biden won't come up with expedited work authorization 30 days as Gillibrand is asking for, rather than have to be here 6 months because Biden says that would take an act of Congress and he doesn't want to overstep his executive authority. I want to follow up on something that you just said a minute ago. You used the phrase decompression strategy. By that, do you mean a federally guided rational distribution of where asylum seekers who need government shelter are housed in their early days here, so the burden doesn't fall so heavily on the few places like New York where they're choosing so disproportionately to go?

You never want to tell anybody, "You have to live in this city. You can't live in that city," but is that what you're talking about under these relatively extreme circumstances?

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams: Absolutely. You said it so much more eloquently than decompression strategy, but yes, absolutely. All of this is a national problem, and it needs a national response. It's a humanitarian crisis, so we need a humanitarian crisis. Humanitarian is the keyword here. As angry as we may get sometimes when we think about this in a lump sum, we think about people who are coming and this and that, think about what you would do with your family if you were in a place that you thought you would get killed, or you in a place that you can't feed your family and someone says there's a place that can help you.

You will try to get there, and so, folks are doing what human beings do and have done for centuries. While we can't solve this problem ourselves, yes, if you want to say that, I don't know that the entire world, it can come, but we're not [unintelligible 00:15:08] the entire world now. We're at a humanitarian crisis that we can address if we get leadership. If the federal government stepped in, as you mentioned, and guided where folks can go so that it is not left to a few spaces like New York City that has limited landmass, how much better off would we be right now? Right now, the federal government is doing all but nothing.

Brian Lehrer: Why do you think Biden is doing all but nothing as you just put it? Is it about 2024 re-election strategy, or do you have some other theory?

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams: That's the only thing I can think of because I have to believe that there's a humane part in there to think about what's going on. I think he's making the wrong political calculus. I guess it's the assumption that it's New York, so he doesn't really need it for reelection. The political assumption is wrong because we can lose congressional seats because of this issue like we did last year, and we're suffering for it. I think it is the wrong political calculus to assume that New York City can just do and can just absorb all of this without any assistance.

If you put some kind of rational plan in place, people will rock with you. The problem is you're doing nothing right now. You're criticizing New York City, and there is some space to criticize, but to basically say that there is criticize without a plan when you're the person doing nothing, it's hard to swallow. I heard some recent criticism with the governor as well. I want to say the same thing there. I'm glad she just started providing some assistance, but if she would stop fighting the right to shelter and help get some additional shelter in other municipalities and cities, that too will be tremendously helpful.

Brian Lehrer: I want to come back in a couple of minutes to that Hochul and right to shelter issue. I'm going to play a clip of the governor for you to react to, and get your reaction to her argument that it's really different than the Ellis Island era. Let's say because of this right to shelter law, but hold that thought. Listeners anticipate that question. I want to get a caller or two on here first. Akisa in Manhattan, you're on WNYC with New York City Public Advocate, Jumaane Williams. Hello, Akisa.

Akisa: Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my call. I think the mayor's careless and cavalier, and ill-informed comments lack historical perspective, and it's exhausting. This nation and New York City especially is built on the labor of immigrants. His rhetoric is doing more harm to the cohesiveness of the city. He said we're going to lose the city we knew. What does that mean? Othering people is the root cause of sowing hatred and violence. The vibrancy of the city centers around the constant wellspring of new energy, and new cultures constantly taking root in the city. Honestly, the mayor's rhetoric is no different to the former president's. It's dangerous, and it needs to stop.

Brian Lehrer: Akisa, thank you very much. We're going to get, I think, a very different take that's also going to set up the Governor Hochul clip, from Ellen in South Salem in Westchester. Ellen, you're on WNYC with New York City Public Advocate, Jumaane Williams. Hi.

Ellen: Hi. I grew up in Manhattan on the Lower East Side. My mother and my grandparents were immigrants that came through Ellis Island in the 1920s. I just want to say that to compare this wave of immigrants with previous waves is a little disingenuous, because previous waves of immigrants came into horrible conditions. They lived in slums. We talked about the Irish. They came through and they ended up in Hell's Kitchen, which is now a great upscale neighborhood. There were places that people could live that the conditions were horrible, but there was "affordable housing."

There was also, my grandfather helped dig the New York City subway. I think that the focus on housing and right to work is correct, but I do think that the mayor is between a rock and a hard place. I'm not condoning his language. That was awful, but I can see where he would get desperate.

Brian Lehrer: Ellen, I hear you. Here is Governor Hochul [clears throat] making a similar historical point.

Governor Hochul: I don't think in a million years it was anticipated to be an unlimited universal right to have shelter provided to the entire world at cost of taxpayers with no end in sight. There needs to be a conversation now.

Brian Lehrer: Governor Hochul, this week. Public Advocate I imagine you've been to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum where you see, on display, the kinds of things that our caller, Ellen, was talking about, how immigrants slept on chairs, shared beds in shifts, all of that, which you don't wish on anyone. Total taxpayer funding for tens of thousands of people, shelters now, plus the difficulty of finding the beds and all the community resistance makes this different than past migration waves certainly on the city's budget. Yes?

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams: I would say there's always differences in migration waves, but while they're happening, we generally try to use those differences to excuse a xenophobic atmosphere because when you were in that moment when they were coming, you still had the xenophobic atmosphere even if they were coming "legally" and applying for asylum is legal, but "legally" through Ellis Island, or whether they're coming through Port Authority and through Texas now, there's always a reason to explain why this particular xenophobic response is different and better than the previous one.

Brian Lehrer: On the charge of xenophobia, Adams is pushing back on the Republicans who are heaping praise on him for saying what he said about this issue destroying the city. Adams said they, the Republicans, caused the crisis by refusing to participate in comprehensive immigration reform. I think in fairness to the mayor, he and the Republicans who also think migration is destroying the city and are not afraid to say so, have very different reasons and very different solutions. Tell me if you disagree. The mayor, I think he would say, is only worried about the cost over the next few years.

The Republicans don't want so many people from that part of the world. The mayor would say, he just wants federal aid. The Republicans want to close the border. To be fair to the mayor, or put it in the broadest possible context, do you agree that that distinction as I described it, and that it matters to how we perceive Adams versus the Republicans in terms of xenophobia?

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams: One, yes, it does. I want to be clear though, you don't have to be xenophobic to continue to create a xenophobic atmosphere. I don't think that the mayor is xenophobic at all, but his rhetoric helps further an atmosphere where people can be harmed because xenophobia exists. That's what we have to understand when we're using this language. Now, I want to be clear to what some of the callers are saying, the mayor is between a rock and a hard place, and New York City is between a rock and a hard place.

I want to be clear about that. How we respond to that is on us, though. We can either respond in a way that keeps making that message very clear and pushing that narrative, or we can respond to it in a way that's going to allow the xenophobia to take hold and people to be harmed. Republicans are the ones that created this mess. Abbott and other Republicans who never wanted to solve the crisis are causing this problem, but I have to be honest, Democrats are making it worse. To hear the governor talking about, we can't shelter the world, which is 100% true, but we're not even close to that yet, and you're not allowing the rest of the state to try to help.

If you're trying to make it so that New York City is the only person to do this, it becomes much worse. I think it's just as disingenuous as Biden to say, we have to look at right to shelter when the governor hasn't even honored the right to shelter that exists now.

Brian Lehrer: You want the governor to do the same kind of decompression strategy you were talking about before? Like say, if all these migrants are coming to New York while they wait for their asylum hearings, which usually takes a couple of years to get there, this many are going to go to New York City, this many are going to go to Schenectady, et cetera.

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams: We absolutely have to have that discussion. We have to have it with the municipalities that are there, and we have to honor the right to shelter that's available. Even on their own, not every migrant asylum seeker wants to stay in New York City, and that's happening naturally on its own. If we can get folks the ability to work, they may be happy to go to another city in New York State or another state altogether. The problem is we have executives that are not using and doing everything that they can and just pointing and blaming fingers at other folks.

Brian Lehrer: One more clip of tape on this. We had a caller to yesterday's show, Omar, in the Bronx, on the first day of school that was our context yesterday with 20,000 asylum families' kids entering the public school system in the last year. Omar said he mentors school kids, and he said this.

Omar: When I start to see kids that just got here for their asylum, leapfrogging over the kids that are already here, I got a real bone to pick with the mayor on stuff like that. You can read that speech of the Statue of Liberty and all that. All right, no problem, that's fine. At the end of the day, what settles down on the ground is there are kids here now that need stuff and that are in these public schools. I mentor elementary and junior high school kids. I'm on the ground. I'm seeing what's lacking.

Brian Lehrer: Public Advocate, Omar didn't mention race, but I'll frame a question based on his comment in racial terms. Wave after wave of immigrants come to the city, and some say that makes it harder for the city to do its part to foster racial equality for Black Americans as city services that should prioritize digging out from 400 years of racism, get diverted in large measure for the constant stream of newcomers. Your reaction to Omar, or to that question phrased that way?

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams: One, I want to be clear that Black New Yorkers are always at the bottom when they need the most assistance. Any category you could think of from housing, education, getting healthcare, they're always at the bottom of that. That's a problem, and we have to call that out, and I continue to do that. It is an issue of race. I want the caller, I want Black New Yorkers, I want New Yorkers, in general, to be angry that they haven't received what they should have received and stay angry. I just want to make sure they direct that anger at the right place.

It is us in government who has not prioritized that. It is not the asylum seekers who have come in trying to find their best lives. We want to make sure we focus the anger in a proper way. He's correct. There are students who have been pleading for assistance and not getting it in the shelter system. The day before the first asylum bus came, there were 50,000 people in this homeless shelter, primarily Black, who were waiting for years, on average, to get a home. Last year we lost more homeless people in the streets dying than ever before.

Most of them were Black. I am telling you, if the asylum seekers were not here, they still would not be getting that assistance because they weren't provided it before. When we were pleading with the mayor and others to support good cause eviction, to support getting some revenue raises, not to put people on the rent guidelines board who are going to raise the rents more than they have in the last one or two decades, we didn't get that support from the mayor. What I don't want is people who have less to then get angry at people who have none, when the people who are not providing assistance is the government officials.

They wouldn't be providing it if the asylum seekers weren't here now. The problem that we have to solve is how do we get that assistance to everybody, people who have been trying to get it for so many years and haven't, not because of asylum seekers, but because of government officials?

Brian Lehrer: A listener writes to us in a text message, "All of the people I see on social media deriding Adams' migrant policies refer to them as illegals. Obviously, they're here under asylum rules established in 1948. Is there any more cogent or succinct way to explain to these deriders the legal framework that gives these people a right to be here under US law? I've talked about this before on the show, Public Advocate, but I never call them illegals. I don't even call them undocumented because when you come here and present yourself at the border as somebody seeking asylum, your claim may or may not be validated in the long run once you get your day in court, but you are here legally.

You are not like some other groups that people might want to call undocumented immigrants or even illegal immigrants. These people are here legally under US asylum law. Everybody should at least agree on that context and that terminology, correct?

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams: Yes, but it doesn't really matter because that's not really what people want. They just don't want folks to be here, especially a particular type of person to be here. First, it's hard to harm a human being unless you dehumanize them. Illegals and those people, all those words that you use are the beginning process of dehumanization so that you can treat people however you want to treat them. You are correct, and I've repeated that people who are seeking asylum are actually here legally, but that doesn't matter. That is just this current excuse to use dehumanizing language or to pretend like these are less than human beings who are trying to feed their families like anybody would. There'll be just another excuse that will fill that void once you point that out.

Brian Lehrer: We can debate whether US asylum law is too welcoming in that respect, but these are not undocumented immigrants. We'll continue in a minute with New York City Public Advocate, Jumaane Williams, including more of your calls and some other issues. Stay with us.

[MUSIC - Marden Hill: Hijack]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We continue with New York City Public Advocate, Jumaane Williams. Listeners, we're going to get to some of your housing calls on our Ask the Public Advocate segment. T, in Brooklyn, we see you. Laurie, in Brooklyn, we see you. You're going to be our next two callers. New topic Public Advocate that I know is of particular interest to you, the NYPD, which you're always interested in assessing for best practices, in the last few days, we've seen the NYPD adopt new policies for policing protests.

No more kettling or penning groups of people. If a judge approves this lawsuit settlement after the abuses of the George Floyd protests in 2020, and the NYPD getting community praise for both safety and for a positive approach at J'Ouvert and the West Indian Day Parade this past Monday. I'll also get to an NYPD issue that has to do with the migrants. Do you agree about J'Ouvert and the parade?

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams: Yes, I think we had one of the safest, if not the safest in a number of years, J'Ouvert and Labor Day Parade. Sadly there were a couple of incidents, and data means nothing if you have been at the end of that incident. We did have a loss of life that had nothing to do with the parade. From Thursday to Monday afternoon, I believe there were no incidents that occurred. You compare that to any weekend parade or not, and it's just pretty amazing. Now I want to make sure we give a hat tip to law enforcement who definitely have a role to play, but I think it was a collaborative effort.

Not necessarily the drones, but the collaborative effort that occurred between the NYPD, between the community groups' crisis manage system, between clergy groups who were on the ground the entire weekend doing their best to defuse situations and make sure that resources were where they needed to be in a swift manner. I do give a hat tip, and just thank everybody who was involved. This is a collaborative effort that I think we need to be doing much more often.

Brian Lehrer: The issue in which the NYPD overlaps with the asylum seekers regards the arrests and alleged rough treatment of some people and seizure of illegal scooters and mopeds. The news organization, The City, reports it this way, "The NYPD swarmed a migrant shelter in Brooklyn early Thursday morning to confiscate mopeds parked in front of it. The situation quickly escalated with officers wielding stun guns and shoving migrants to the ground before leaving with six men in handcuffs and trucks full of confiscated mopeds, according to videos and eyewitness accounts.

The chaos unraveled outside the men’s shelter at 455 Jefferson Street in Bushwick, eyewitnesses said, as police moved in on the vehicles many migrants use for delivery work in a targeted raid of a kind that activists say has become much more frequent." From the news organization, The City. Your reaction?

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams: First I want to talk about the settlement, which you brought up, which I think is good, as a great step forward on how we police this kind of events. It honored when people said, "We didn't see what we saw," in fact, we felt it honored that. I wanted to bring up to say those kind of reforms, it's just pretty much whack-a-mole at a bigger problem every single time because the problem is accountability, transparency, and how we lose law enforcement. Every reform we do is just a game of whack-a-mole until we actually address those real issues.

Here's a great point, what if it was a different agency or someone else that came to actually show people how to register those vehicles, to show people how to get the actual batteries that are safer, and maybe help them make the exchanges that are available? That's not what happened. Instead, we sent law enforcement. I don't know that all the ins and outs, so I don't want to speak in too much ignorance, but I do know if we use law enforcement for every situation and issue, this is the inevitability. That's what's going to happen regardless of how many reforms we get done.

Brian Lehrer: Let me get two callers in here back to back, and then I'll get your unified response to them before we run out of time. T in Brooklyn. You're on WNYC with Public Advocate Jumaane Williams. Hello, T.

T: Hi. Yes. I'm calling my landlord, is on the worst landlord list. He has been for a few years.

Brian Lehrer: That's the Public Advocate's own list, right?

T: This is the Public Advocate's own list. I'd call my city council member. I'd call the Public Advocate's Office just as recently as last week to complain about my landlord and not fixing things. I called last year, and I spoke to someone in the Public Advocate's Office. I would agree with him that politicians are not prioritizing this part of affordable housing. There's talk about building affordable housing. There's currently rent-stabilized apartments. I live in one. HPD, I've been told, "Make an appointment." I made an appointment in June, nobody showed up.

They come unannounced. One other thing, I'm sorry, I'm a little nervous, especially with heat season coming up, my landlord turns off the heat at night. When I complained last year, no HPD inspectors came out and I'm concerned with heat season coming up. Just to wrap it up, the onus is put on us as individual tenants when the HPD system is broken. When we make complaints, why do we have to sit around wondering when a HPD inspector is going to come? When we make an appointment, why doesn't the HPD inspector show up? Why then am I told, when I call the HPD line for an appointment, "You have to start all over again."?

What that does is it doesn't hold my landlord accountable. For example, one thing that I've been trying to get fixed for six years, every time I call 311, they get to restart. Here's the thing, as I said, the city and HPD already knows that he is one of the worst landlords in the city, in Brooklyn, but the onus is on us.

Brian Lehrer: T, let me get you a response. T, hang on there. I said I was going to take two calls back to back, but there was so much in T's call that sounds urgent and applies to so many New Yorkers. Public Advocate, I want you to respond to that one individually.

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams: I'm so sorry that T is going through that. Brian, if we can get her information, maybe we can follow back up and see if there's something else that we can try that we haven't. Yes, we're trying to get more and have gotten some teeth to that worst landlord's list. We're trying to get even more so that the city has some more sticks to use for that worst landlord list. We hope people will eventually lose their buildings. We're going to be putting our new landlord list out soon. She's correct. I think the bottom line is there is no real housing plan unless you have, 60% of that plan is about preservation.

We're always losing more homes than we can build. We have to build, that's one thing, and we have to build for affordable. We have to preserve. Some of that preservation is getting repairs done, like what's happening in T's apartment. What we found is that landlords, many of the worst ones, are just not doing it. They're allowed to get away with, with impunity, and actually still do business with the city. We're trying to stop that so we can add some more teeth to it. I'm sorry she's going through that. There is something called repair in the dark, that I'd love to speak to you about, which is withholding your rent.

Brian Lehrer: Can we connect her with your office off the air?

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams: Absolutely. Yes, [unintelligible 00:37:44]

Brian Lehrer: Take her contact information and give it to your folks. T, if you want to do that, hang on. Screener's heads up, we're inviting T to give you her contact information so the Public Advocate's Office addresses this individually. One more. Laurie, in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Laurie. Right to the point as we're running out of time.

Laurie: Hi. Okay. Public Advocate, you said specifically a couple years ago, that short-term rental ban, the Airbnb ban would not apply, does not apply to those of us with one or two-family homes because our situation is different. We're not a hotel. We're not going to be installing $75,000 sprinkler systems. We actually help the city as far as tourism and local businesses are exploding positively. The Chamber of Commerce has supported short-term rentals. We want all the bad actors gone, but one of two family homes are different.

Brian Lehrer: Laurie, I'm going to leave it there because we're about to lose the Public Advocate but give Lori a response on small owner Airbnb use.

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams: What we said and was very clear when this came through my committee, it wasn't my bill, I was the housing chair then, that we didn't want the Office of Special Enforcement to focus on one or two-family homeowners. That is not why we passed the bill. It seems that they have not been listening. We've been trying the best that we could with the laws on the books to try to prevent that from happening. We're hoping that they extend some more grace period so people can register if they don't know how to register.

What it looks like is there's some issues in the state law that prevent them from differentiating. I also want to point out that 44% of the housing stock is one and two-family homes. We don't want to lose some of those second units to housing because we do have a housing crisis. If all of those are used for short-term rentals, then we don't have the long-term rentals. I do think particularly for owner-occupied units, there should be some more flexibility than there is now. People can use one room in each unit. I think if you're on a occupied unit, you should be able to expand that a little bit. The OSE is not following what it is that we intended and had made very clear. We're trying our best to try to fix that to provide some relief from people that we didn't intend to be focused on.

Brian Lehrer: New York City Public Advocate, Jumaane Williams, we always appreciate it thank you very much.

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams: Thank you so much.

Copyright © 2023 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.