Dear John,

I hope you and your family are doing as well as you possibly can, in these totally impossible times, as we close our second full week of this new reality. The disruption to our normal lives, jobs, homes, schools, and more has been enormous, but I am taking inspiration from the courage and dedication of the health care, grocery store, transit, delivery, child care, and other workers who are sustaining all of us. And in the many, many ways that neighbors are stepping up to help one another.

The news continues to be dire. As of last report, there were 25,398 positive confirmed cases of COVID-19 in NYC. Roughly 5,325 people are hospitalized with COVID-19, with 1,290 of them in the ICU. Across the five boroughs, 365 of our neighbors have already died from it, including beloved Brooklyn principal Dez-Anne Romaine, safe streets advocate Judy Richheimer, and the first homeless New Yorker lost to COVID. Those numbers will continue to grow every day, likely for weeks to come, and it’s going to be hard to remember that every one is a unique soul, mourned by loved ones.

Yesterday I joined a call with Dr. Mitch Katz, head of NYC Health + Hospitals, and was reminded that we’re fortunate to be in a city that has invested in preserving 11 public hospitals, where so many cities have not saved a single one. But those public hospitals (especially Elmhurst Hospital [[link removed]] ), like our private ones (e.g. the 175-year-old Brooklyn Hospital [[link removed]] , where Walt Whitman brought peaches and poems to Civil War wounded) are being overwhelmed by sick and dying patients. Health care staff don’t have enough personal protective equipment, and we are still thousands of beds short of what we will need when the apex of infections hits (If you want to support NYC H+H health care staff right now, you can donate here [[link removed]] ).

The City and State are working hard to create new hospital capacity (the new 1,000 bed facility at the Javits Center will open on Monday) and secure more ventilators. Businesses (including many at the nearby Brooklyn Navy Yard [[link removed]] ) are stepping up to produce masks. And everyone is asked to do their part by following the public health guidelines for social distancing in stores, in the parks, and in the streets to limit infection.

One piece of good news is that the State heeded our calls to halt non-essential construction. They’ve given a week to close up construction sites safely (and yes, it would have been better if they had started doing that when Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and Councilmember Carlos Menchaca and I called for it [[link removed]] more than a week ago and better if the shutdown was wider, more on this below). There will be real economic hardship for workers, big losses for developers, and a further blow to the economy. But lives matter more.

Now that most of what can be shut down is shut down, and many of us are at home 24/7, federal, state and city attention is turning to how to support people and institutions through the catastrophic economic disruption that this crisis brings.

In this email:
Update on the Federal Response
City and State Updates
Additional Resources
Upcoming Community Calls

Update on the Federal Response

Yesterday afternoon the House of Representatives passed the Senate’s $4.2 trillion dollar stimulus package. While this proposal includes far too many corporate giveaways with few strings attached, there are some real pieces of good news. And a lot of work left to do to make sure no one is left out.

The good news: As noted earlier this week, the bill expands unemployment insurance [[link removed]] (though not to cover 100% of current salary as I wrote earlier; now that we have them, the details are a bit more complicated). People will get $600 on top of what they are eligible for in state unemployment insurance for up to 4 months. Gig workers and freelancers will be eligible for the federal disaster unemployment insurance. Direct, one-time cash assistance will be sent to many Americans, $1200 for people making under $75,000 and a smaller amount for people making up to $99,000 with an additional $500 per child. There is funding for hospitals, community health centers, transit systems including the MTA, small businesses, and direct funding for state and local governments, although definitely not enough for the crisis we face.

What’s not there: Unlike the earlier House version, the final bill does nothing for people with federal student debt, it does not include funding for protecting voting access in the current context, and there are no emergency health care standards to insure better working conditions for the health care workers on the front lines of this crisis. But most egregiously, the bill excludes undocumented immigrants and many immigrants with legal status from both unemployment insurance, direct cash assistance, and Medicaid expansion.

The bad: The bill provides $475 in corporate bail out funds with very little oversight and no requirement that corporations keep their workers on the payroll. During a week when 3.3 million Americans filed for unemployment [[link removed]] (far more than any week in American history) and as we anticipate many, many more weeks of hardship, this is outrageous.

City and State Updates

Non-essential construction will be halted in NY state. After a lot of outcry and reporting on the dangerous conditions at construction sites for new office building and luxury condos, the Governor announced today the suspension of non-essential construction. Essential construction, for hospitals, health care facilities, transit, homeless shelters and affordable housing will continue. But -- we heard last night that buildings with just 20% affordable units will count as essential, a threshold which is both insufficient from the perspective of fixing our serious housing crisis and downright dangerous from a public health perspective. That's not good enough.

In response to another of our calls, Governor Cuomo announced the State will be releasing 1,100 people held in jails and prisons on parole violations, including over 600 people held on Rikers Island, where infections are skyrocketing. This is in addition to the 375 people that Mayor de Blasio released previously (bringing the number of inmates at Rikers below 5,000 for the first time in decades). Thanks to all of you who helped urge action. There’s more to do to protect the thousands still in our jails and prisons, but this is a good step. 

Parks remain open. I believe that playgrounds should be closed (there is just no way to keep them clean), but for now the Mayor is leaving them open. The Mayor is opening up one street per borough to create a paltry amount of more open space for recreation with appropriate social distancing. Along with other members of the City Council, I am pushing hard for the opening of more streets in our community to pedestrian-only use. We all have to continue practicing social distancing in these spaces for this to work. 

The Regional Enrichment Centers which are providing education and childcare to children of health workers, transit, and first responders will now also be open to the children of grocery, pharmacy and other city workers. The de Blasio administration is also considering opening up the City’s meals currently being available for pick up at schools for children to also be available to food-insecure adults. 

The rent is due on April 1st, and many New Yorkers who have lost jobs and income in the last two weeks are scrambling to figure out how to pay. While the State has delayed mortgage payments for landlords and homeowners, and delayed evictions for three months, renters are still expected to pay now. I am supporting Senator Gianaris’ legislation to suspend rent payments for individuals and small businesses that have lost jobs or been forced to close up shop during this crisis. You can support the call to suspend rent here. 

Additional Resources 

Resources for individuals, families, and businesses to get or give support are being updated regularly on our COVID-19 Resources Page here. Sending a few new ones that we added recently: 

Freelancers Union has started an emergency fund for freelancers. You can donate here, applications for relief will open April 2nd, more FAQ answers are here.

If you are ordering groceries from Fresh Direct, you can add a donation to NY Common Pantry to help another family with their groceries, click here for more information.

Know a college student looking to help others or a younger student looking for help with their schoolwork? Sign up to volunteer or get free tutoring help here. 

Have a prepaid MetroCard you aren’t using? Sign up here to give you MetroCard to an essential worker.

The State launched a COVID-19 mental health hotline: for free emotional support, consultation and referral to a provider, call 1-844-863-9314. 6,000 mental health professionals have volunteered their time to help with New York's Coronavirus response, learn more about volunteering here.

The deadline to register to vote before the Presidential Primary (which is still scheduled for April 28 for now, although it seems very likely to change) is April 3, and the last day to request an absentee ballot by mail is April 21.

When you can, please consider ordering online from local businesses, rather than Amazon (where workers have been complaining about health & safety conditions), to help them survive this economic tsunami. Try using IndieBound.org or locally.com to see what’s available.

Next Community Calls

We are in the process of scheduling more virtual calls to support our communities. Here are the calls we are currently planning for next week (put them on your calendar and we’ll have more details soon): 

Wednesday, April 1 at 7PM: A call for gig workers and freelancers to learn more about what economic relief is available to them and continued advocacy, with federal, state and local elected officials, artists, organizers, and labor experts. Register here.

Likely Wednesday, April 1: A call for parents to get support, answers, and troubleshoot remote learning issues with a DOE representative. We are still working to confirm a time with the DOE but sign up to let us know what issues you most want to discuss and we will confirm soon.

Hopefully, Friday, April 3: Parent support calls to help share information and troubleshoot remote learning issues in Bangla and Spanish. (If you are a bilingual parent and want to help facilitate one of these calls, let us know).

We’ve made it through two weeks. We know there are too many more weeks to go, and that they will be hard ones, with mounting anxiety, deep economic hardship, and lost lives.

But working together, we will make it through each one of them. Thanks for what you’ve done so far to support each other along the way.

Brad

456 Fifth Avenue, 3rd Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11215
718-499-1090
[email protected]

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