NYC NOW - August 28, 2023: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: August 28, 2023

According to a new report from New York City’s comptroller, thousands of special education students are still not getting the services they need, despite a dramatic increase in spending. Plus, the embattled East Williamsburg entertainment venue Avant Gardner is being hit with another lawsuit. And finally, WNYC’s Arya Sundaram reports from a shelter in Queens, where many people were relocated after their stints sleeping on the sidewalk outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown

Good evening and welcome to NYC Now. I'm Jenae Pierre for WNYC. Thousands of special education students are still not getting the services they need despite a dramatic increase in spending. That's according to a new report from New York City's controller. The report also says children in black, brown, and low-income communities are less likely to get support like physical therapy, speech therapy, or counseling. Face with these challenges, more and more families are

suing the city to pay for services delivered by outside providers. Comptroller Brad Lander says that's costly and increases the potential for fraud. The Adams administration says it agrees that more work must be done to improve special education. They say the goal is to serve more students within public schools. One of Brooklyn's biggest music venues is being hit with a second lawsuit. WNYC's Veronica Del Valle has more. Avant Gardner is being sued for more than $2.5 million dollars in damages by T&M USA, the investigations company that used to oversee it. In a lawsuit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court last week, T&M claims Avant Gardner illegally ended its monitorship and breached its contract. In 2020, the state's liquor authority mandated that

Avant Gardner appoint an overseer after it was issued more than 50 disciplinary charges. The music venue also faces a $7.5 million lawsuit from past partygoers who claimed they were harassed at a Pride Month event. Stick around. There's more after the break. A shortage of housing for the recent surge of migrant arrivals in New York City reached what some called a breaking point earlier this summer. Hundreds slept outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown, waiting for a place to stay. But for many of the migrants themselves, those days were just, another difficult milepost in their long journeys to the U.S. And they still have a tough road ahead.

WNYC's Aria Sundaram reports from a shelter in Queens where many people were relocated after their stents on the sidewalk in Midtown. Home, at least for now, is a cluster of tents the city set up in a parking lot on the campus of a state psychiatric hospital in a quiet, residential, suburban neighborhood. Just across the street, there's a park and playground where dozens of migrants. all men staying in the shelter hang out. Some smoke, play music, or collect bottles to trade in for cash.

CS is sitting on one of the benches, with a group of other young men from Senegal. He only speaks Wolof, so he talked through an interpreter. He's wary about publicly sharing his full name and voice. He worries it would threaten his immigration case, and he wants to avoid more of the shame he says he felt in the days he was sleeping on the sidewalk. especially after his face was already on international news and social media. Wow. He said his family saw him in the TikTok in Senegal, and that's bad.

The media blitz three weeks ago showed migrants, mostly black men, laying on flattened cardboard boxes, using their backpacks as pillows as office workers and tourists pass by. For days now, we've seen many forced to sleep on the sidewalk outside the intake center at the Roosevelt The South Hotel in Midtown. In Newtown, the United States were in the country around

of the Hotel Roosevelt, that are in the heart of Manhattan. The United States wasn't C.S.'s dream. But he thought he'd be in a better situation.

At least with a roof over his head, that's what his family thought too. If you hadn't known who would be outside sleeping, it wouldn't even come. The city has since been able to find space, with the help of local churches and the state and federal government. But local officials and activists have warned that more migrants could sleep on the street,

with limited space and new limits on shelter stays. Nearby, another migrant man from Senegal, Morris, is sitting at a stone chest table. He says he slept on the sidewalk for six days and talked to family members every day on WhatsApp. But he waited to tell them about where he'd been living until after he found another place to stay. Because if you ask your people your problem, and then they will always see you like need it. And you didn't want to be seen like that? Savi Khalil is sitting a few feet away, farther from the street, on a bench in the middle of the playground.

He just came from praying at a nearby mosque. Khalil says he knew he'd face issues on his journey coming to the U.S. from Mauritania. But I'm ready for them no matter where. Sleeping on the street, sleeping on the ground, sleeping on the range, under rain. I don't care. It's going to happen. And it happens. He shows me an interview he did with the New York Times that was posted on TikTok.

Three days or four days. I've been here. His mother back home in Mauritania saw it too. I'm telling them I was, I was sending a letter to the mayor where I was sleeping on the street. I was like asking a question. USA is the most powerful country around the world. How is the most powerful country around the world, they have this vision.

They have this immigrants, sleeping on the ground, sleep on the street. That stretch of pavement is now miles away and weeks behind them, and they're all glad to be off the sidewalk. But above all, what they want most is a job, or a permit to work legally. Those could take years to get if they ever come, unless federal immigration rules change. Until then, many of the men will continue to search for a job off the books.

All come here for a better living. We cannot find it. And then you're here also not finding nothing. They're canvassing nearby restaurants, car washes and hardware stores until maybe they get lucky and find a gig. To make enough money to leave the shelter across the street and find what they were looking for. That's WNYC's Aria Sundaram.

It's been a big summer for hip-hop as the culture celebrates 50 years since it emerged on the streets of the Bronx. We're marking the occasion by amplifying the voices of women from our area who have been influenced by the genre. My name is Sharon Lee de la Cruz. I'm an artist, educator, and activist from New York City. Hip-hop first influenced my life from the very beginning. Literally, I'm born and raised in the South Bronx, so it's all over, you know, like it's all over the place. And I have vivid memories of like huge Tats crew murals, always just like vivid memories around color and murals and like just a lot of graffiti around.

Not that I knew at the time, but like a couple of years ago when I stepped back and looked at my work, you know, I totally see graffiti influence, especially around like the color usage. You know, I really love characters. But those characters are definitely, or at least the characters that I gravitate towards the most

have an influence of graffiti culture and graffiti like characters of like narrative on walls and these kind of like exaggerations. There's a long visual history of hip hop that's like intertwined with like loony tunes or at least kind of like characters that were, you know, fashioned in like hip hop clothes like echo, fubu, you know? So just kind of this like fun intertwine of like popular media culture and then like what is considered like hip-hop.

I think at its core hip-hop is about storytelling. There's this story of rebellion that is like really beautiful and powerful. And so when I listen to like hip-hop tracks, sometimes I laugh, sometimes I cry. Sometimes I'm like, oof, like moved. I'm always, I think, curious about the tracks that just like make me want to punch something. You know, like those songs that like make me feel like I can run faster, you know, or punch harder, right? And so that's the part of hip hop that's like, that's the story and that's the part that like motivates me to like be better, make better art and just kind of like even just like a visceral reaction to just like feel better. Sharon Lee De La Cruz is an artist, educator, and activist from New York City.

Thanks for listening to NYC now from WNYC. Catch us every weekday, three times a day. We'll be back tomorrow.