NYC NOW - April 11, 2024 : Evening Roundup

Episode Date: April 11, 2024

As city officials work out the details of a new plan to recover unpaid property taxes, homeowner groups warn them to not replicate past problems. Meanwhile, new numbers show Mayor Adams ratcheted up the number of times police cleared homeless encampments last year. Plus, the Bronx District Attorney’s office is assembling a team of prosecutors to look into allegations of sexual assault from former Rikers Islan detainees. Finally, NYC Now celebrates its 1 year anniversary.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. I'm NYC now producer Jared Marcel. City officials are working out the details of a new plan to recover unpaid property taxes. But WNYC's David Brand reports, homeowner groups are urging them not to replicate past problems. The city used to sell property tax liens to a trust with the power to collect. debts and even foreclose on homes. A new report from the Center for NYC neighborhoods found the old system mostly targeted owners in low-income areas.

Executive Director Christy Peel says it led to foreclosure and bad deals for people selling homes to cover their debt. There's a lot of value in these homes and a lot at risk for these families. She wants small homes excluded from the lien sale. City Finance Commissioner Preston Niblich disagrees. He says New York needs an enforcement tool. We have a pretty large delinquency problem this year. I don't want to see it continue to grow next year.

He says he hopes the city has a plan in place by June. New data shows New York City Mayor Eric Adams ratcheted up the number of times police cleared homeless encampments last year. WNYC's Karen Ye reports, it's the latest sign the mayor is not backing away from using police to fight what he says. It's a perception that the city is unsafe. We're right here. Right here.

37-year-old Eduardo Ventura takes me to the corner of 9th Street and 1st Avenue in downtown Manhattan. That's where he used to sleep on the street, and where police, sanitation, and homeless services workers would repeatedly tell him to clear out. Imagine you don't have nothing and they throw in the little stuff that you get. It's giving us step forward, going backwards.

This corner was part of 22 so-called homeless encampment sweeps in the past two years. That's according to data obtained by WNYC that ranges from May 2022 to February 2024, the first 22 months after. Adams buckled down on the tactic. Ventura shows me a video of one of those sweeps. He counts the number of police.

He says would arrest him. Adams put a new focus on these sweeps when he came into office and left it to the NYPD to determine which sites to target. During the sweeps, city officials clear tents or cardboard boxes from the encampment and offer homeless people shelter. Critics like Brooklyn Council member Sandy Nurse say the sweeps are just a cosmetic fix. When we sweep them up and displace them, they are not going to go away. They are just going to find different areas to sleep or they'll return when those people leave.

Records show there have been about 8,000 sweeps across the city in the last two years. The NYPD was present nearly every time. Starting late last summer, the cleanups intensified to an average of 500 a month. That's why nurse sponsors were. a law requiring the administration report how much the sweeps cost and how many people receive permanent housing or shelter as a result of them. We're going to see an alarming amount of resources going into just literally sweeping homelessness under the road. But a city spokesperson says the sweeps work and most encampments don't pop up again after they're cleared. The spokesperson says

the approach is helping connect more people to shelter than under Adams' predecessor, Bill de Blasio. But it's unclear how many remains. sheltered or are now in permanent housing. It can be really, really traumatizing. Natalie Druse is a staff attorney for the homeless advocacy group, the Safety Net Project. She called the sweeps punitive and harmful. To get woken up in the early hours of the morning, told to just take what they can carry and go, and then just have to watch while the city kind of disposes of all of their worldly belongings. At 14th Street and 1st Avenue, the city conducted 199 sweeps. the most in the 22-month period WNYC analyzed.

Business owners say the area is an open street market, and people frequently sleep there overnight, leaving behind their trash in the morning. This is a family business. Jimmy John owns a smoothie shop. He says the block is better now, thanks to the increased police presence. People get scared, even because fighting, draw, drinking.

So, of course, business is going to be very bad. Outside of mosque on 29th and 5th Avenue, The city conducted 192 sweeps over the same 22-month period. Four years, I slept right there in front of Sadu store, right there in the three steps. Sikina Wahab used to be homeless. She's blind and used to sell products to the Muslim and African mosque members to make a living. She says her things were thrown out three times during the cleanups. I would panhandle like I'm doing now and I would go buy it and I would start over and then I would build up

and then one day they would come and take it again. Wahab has a place to live now, but says she didn't find help during the sweeps. It was the local community, she says, who helped her get off the streets. That's WNYC reporter Karen Yee. Up next, in response to a WNYC investigation of Rikers Island, where over 700 detainees filed lawsuits alleging sexual assault at the hands of prison staff, the Bronx District Attorney has put a team together to look into the claims. That story is after the break.

The Bronx District Attorney's Office is assembling a team of prosecutors to look into allegations of sexual assault from former Rikers Island detainees. That's in response to a WNYC investigation into more than 700 lawsuits that accuse guards and other employees of sexual abuse. Public safety reporter Samantha Max sat with our own Sean Carlson to tell us what this means. Sam, first, you and your colleague, Jesse Edwards, have spent months from. reporting on this story. Can you remind us what the lawsuits are about? Yeah, so these are lawsuits that were filed under the Adult Survivors Act. That is a state law that allowed people who claimed that they had been sexually assaulted to bring civil lawsuits, even if the statute of limitations had passed. And there was a window that closed last November. And we found that in New York City,

almost 60% of lawsuits that were filed in state courts here were related to Rikers Island. And those lawsuits alleged sexual abuse of Rikers detainees over almost five decades. And they were mostly brought by women who were detained at the women's jail, the Rose M. Singer Center. And those allegations ranged from, you know, roping and forcible kissing to even forced oral sex or rape. What was the initial response to your findings from the Bronx DA's office? So the Bronx DA's office first is to explain it has a jurisdiction over crimes that are

committed on Rikers Island. The DA's office even has a trailer on the island where prosecutors who are investigating those crimes can work. And at first, when we brought these allegations to the DA's office, they said that they were just solely related. lying on plaintiffs and their attorneys to come forward if they, you know, wanted to share their story. So what a prosecutor say they are going to do now? So now the office says it's going to take a bit more of a proactive approach. That doesn't mean they're going to sit down and read every

single one of these 719 lawsuits like Jesse and I did. But they are reaching out directly to attorneys who have filed a bunch of these lawsuits to kind of just get the law suits. Um, to kind of just get the lines of communication open, instead of waiting for the attorneys to come to them. They have also set up an email address that survivors can reach out to if they want to get directly in touch with the prosecutor's office. And then for the cases where people do come forward and, you know, they want to see if there's a chance for a criminal case, those cases will be monitored by various different prosecutors. So there's the Riker's Island. prosecution bureau. That is a team that specifically investigates crimes committed by people

who are detained on Rikers Island, as well as by visitors who come to and from the island. It'll also be monitored by the public integrity unit. That's a team in the prosecutor's office that looks specifically into allegations against people who work in Rikers Island. And in almost all these cases that we're talking about, these are guards and other jail staff who have been accused of sexual assaults. And then also the sex crimes unit, which just generally deals with sex crimes cases. So for survivors who do want to work with the DA's office, essentially they'll have the chance to speak with the prosecutors who will assess their case and see whether charges should be pursued. there's of course no guarantee every case is unique also i should note that these cases many of them are older and you know sex crimes cases are already notoriously very difficult to bring as time goes

on they only get even more difficult but you know they will have a chance to at least speak with prosecutors if they want to and then prosecutors can assess whether it's the type of thing where they can go forward and pursue charges. And even in the cases where it's not possible to pursue criminal charges, the DA's office has said that their unit that deals specifically with victims is available with different resources and supports. That's WNYC's public safety reporter, Samantha Max, in conversation with Sean Carlson.

Thanks for listening to NYC's. now, but before we go, you want to give a birthday shout out to ourselves as NYC now turns a year old today. And to mark the moment, I'm here with executive producer Ave Carillo and host, Jene Pierre. Hey, you two. Hello. Hey, Jared. What's up? Nothing much. Really quick, let's just talk about some of our big wins this past year. Yeah, it's an exciting time for NYC now. We started off doing three episodes a day and we were shaking while we were doing it. We weren't sure. But, you know, a year later, we can say that was the right call, right? Yeah, I mean, I think it was honestly a big experiment, you know, this idea of having a podcast that is just for local news and would have like three

episodes a day and each episode was going to be really short. I hadn't really heard of that being done anywhere else. And the fact that it was successful is a huge testament, mostly really to you guys, honestly. Yeah. Thank you. Not only to us, though, but to the entire WNYC Newsroom, right? That's the thing I love most about NYC now. It's an opportunity to highlight the journalism out of our newsroom on a different platform. So, Avae, as we look ahead, what can listeners expect? Well, you're going to hear a lot more from the newsroom, just like you're going to hear those three episodes a day on weekdays.

You're also going to really start to hear and see an increase of episodes on the weekend. We're going to have a place for narrative stories. And this is work where the reporters in the newsroom can really dig into stories that will take a lot longer than just a few days, you know. And I think that's an amazing opportunity for us to really hear some incredible reporting from the newsroom. And also, this is a real chance for us to hear from our listeners. And we'd really love to hear, what do you like about NYC now? Does it work for you? what do you like the most?

What would you really love to hear more of? So we have an email, and that is NYCNow at WNYCBeth.org. And we'd love for you to reach out to us, wish us happy birthday. Could they give us story ideas too? Yeah. Sure. Story ideas, tips. Why not?

Why not? Our inbox is open. NYC now at WNYC.org. Ave Korea was executive producer of WNYC. local news podcasts, and you of course hear from Jenae Pierre, our host every day on NYC now. I'm Jared Marcel. We'll be back tomorrow.