NYC NOW - August 18, 2023: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: August 18, 2023

New York City Mayor Eric Adams hopes to streamline the process for office to housing conversions. Plus, giant trash bins have arrived in Harlem. Will the new bins keep rats away or just take up space? And finally, WNYC’s Tiffany Hanssen talks with Jordan Salama about his recent article for New York Magazine, The Candy Sellers, with Nathaly Rubio-Torio, director of Voces Latinas.

Good evening and welcome to NYC Now. I'm Jenae Pierre for WNYC. New York City Mayor Eric Adams is seeking to streamline the process for converting office space to housing. The mayor is aiming to cut the approval process down the six months from the current time, which is up to a year. Eugene Flotterin is the architect behind the conversion of the former Daily News headquarters to residential space. Depth of office buildings, they're much larger floor plates than residential buildings, and they're much wider than a residential building. building which would be designed to. So the biggest challenge is really getting the light and air that you need for a residential apartment to actually work with a very deep office floor plate.

Adams also says he'll be changing the city's zoning laws to allow buildings built before 1990 to be converted to housing. He also plans to allow conversions anywhere in the city that's already zoned for it. That's pending public approval next year. Harlem is getting new trash bins this week. And when it comes to garbage collection, they're unlike anything New York City has ever seen. WNYC's Sophia Chang has more. A row of bins now takes up about four parking spaces outside of PSIS 210 on West 150 Second Street. Black, blue, green, and brown, each about eight feet long for trash, recycling, and compost. They're part of the sanitation department's pilot program to rid sidewalks of giant bags of trash that feed rats. But to Lisa Matthews, who lives

about 40 feet away from the bins. It's like the city put eight dumpsters near her house. I don't like the design of it. If it's not taken out in a timely manner, it's going to smell, right? And it's just ugly. These first bins are just for the school, but more will be installed around Harlem for a resident use this fall. Stay close.

There's more after the break. As more migrants find their way to New York City, many of them are finding different ways to make money. One frequent site is of women selling candy and snacks on subway platforms and trains, sometimes with their children at their side. For more, WNYC's Tiffany Hansen talked with reporter Jordan Salama, who profiled a few of the sellers in an article published by New York Magazine. Also in the conversation is Natalie Rubio Torio, director of Voices Latinas, a queens-based nonprofit that supports migrants from Latin America. Jordan, let's start with you. Tell us about the candy sellers that you've met, some work in.

groups, some work alone, some are working with very young children. So just paint a picture for us. So the candy sellers who I spoke with, I spent much of June and July down in the subways getting to know several of them. They are largely Kichwa speaking and Spanish speaking indigenous people from Ecuador who've arrived to the country over the course of the last year and the majority of them in the last few months. They sell, as you had said at the beginning, in small family groups. Usually it's a woman with an infant on her back, a young woman, or a family with small children. Sometimes those small children appear to be completely by themselves, but usually a parent or another family member is nearby keeping watch.

I think that one of the biggest things that I learned about these families is that their experiences are not uniform across the board. Some sell every day from 10 to 6. Some have their children in school and then bring their children with them after school to sell on the subways, and some go out just when they need to make some extra money. So it really depends on the family situation, how long they've been here. But it was really interesting to hear about their experiences. Natalie, is there a general sense of what a typical day might look like for people selling candy in the subways? I can imagine long days, for example. Yes, they're very

long days, and they make very little at the end of the day. So one often wonders how they can even survive on such a small amount of money that they make. We asked one woman, what would be the amount that would tell you, okay, it's enough for the day, you know, we made enough? And she said around $40. Well, and I would imagine the cost of the candy comes out of that $40, right? So where are they getting the candy? One of the principal people in the story, who we call Gloria, she gave me very meticulous instructions to the place where she goes to buy her candy. She didn't know what it was called, but she said, I take the R train almost to the end back through Queens, and then I get on the Q59 bus, and she repeated that Q59 buses, as if she was repeating the instructions exactly as they'd been given to her. And so one day I took the R train to the end and took the Q59 bus, exactly 22 stops.

And I got off in an industrial park in Maspeth Queens and came across a wholesaler that seems to cater mostly to bodega owners in the city, but also there were plenty of Ecuadorian families buying candy and beverages and other snacks. to sell on the trains. And everybody knew that this was happening. Jordan, you mentioned that some of the kids come with their parents after school to sell. So does that mean that kids are in school or is it sort of across the board? Some kids are going to school and some kids aren't in school. Some kids are going to school and some kids aren't. And we deal with both cases in the story. So one of the families was a woman who we call Anna and her two children aged nine and five.

they're in school during the day, and then they come with her to sell candy and beverages after school. And then we speak with another family, whom we call the Vega family, and that is a large cast of different cousins. And those children work through the weekday in June when school's in session. So they are not currently going to school. And in fact, when I spoke with one of those girls, she had said that, you know, she would like to go to school someday, but she has to work because She has to support her family. She has to support herself. And she even has to support the rest of her relatives who are still in Central America,

making their way towards the United States. Natalie, I do want to get to the role of Vosas Latinas here now. So what are the families saying they're needing in terms of resources and is your group able to help them with that? What we're hearing most is obviously work. They need to work and they want to work. So a lot of them also are looking for legal assistance. So, you know, with applications for work authorization and all. But also there's a big need for shelters, for apartments, for rooms.

We talked to a young man. He has a job in a bar, but the job is at night. And he's hesitant to go into a shelter because he knows that the shelter, you need to be in by a certain time. You need to sign in. You need to register. And so he's sleeping on the streets because he needs to keep his job. And also, you know, it's unbelievable how much food they're in. need of because the food that's offered in the shelters is not their, you know, their food that

they're used to and the cultural food, the Spanish food. And it's really hard to start working with family or in any individual when somebody's hungry. Natalie, I can imagine these folks are feeling afraid, often vulnerable. So I'm wondering how that affects your approach. Oh, so we have the promotora model, which many people know it as the community health worker model. And that is training the very same individuals from the community who overcame similar issues that are related to our mission. And we train them to do community outreach, engagement, resources to connect individuals, trust among, you know, the community. So we use that model and we used that model when we had the group come down to the subway and engage women and their children. Once those

promoters connect the individuals back to our services, then our social service workers come in and they also come from the community and they're also Latin American and had the experience of immigration, being undocumented, language barriers. They now work with these individuals to walk them through and navigate them through the whatever, whether it's the healthcare system, the criminal justice system, the child welfare system. And it does wonders in connection and trust. Jordan, before I let you go, I just want to ask you of the folks that you've spoken with selling candy in the soap, way. Do you sense an optimism still? It's a very, very difficult question to answer because people are in very, very dire situation right now. So it's hard to see that optimism far ahead. But everybody that

I spoke with when I asked them, are you better off here right now than where you came from? The Nekweiler, or in the cases of most of the candy selling families. And everybody said yes. Everybody said the possibility of being here is better, even if right now is challenging. But I I think that it's getting harder and harder to feel that way when this is their daily life and daily occurrence. That's reporter Jordan Salama and Natalie Rubio Torrio, director of Voices Latinas, talking with WNYC's Tiffany Hanson. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WNYC. Shout out to our production team. It includes Sean Boutage, Ave Carrillo, Audrey Cooper, Leora Norm Kravitz, Jared Marcel, Wayne Schoemmeister, and Gina Vosty, with help from the entire

entire WNYC newsroom. Our show art was designed by the folks at Buck, and our music was composed by Alexis Quadrato. I'm Jenae Pierre. We'll be back Monday.