NYC NOW - August 31, 2023: Midday News

Episode Date: August 31, 2023

The Hochul and Biden Administrations are teaming up to champion a new program that would expedite work permits for certain migrants. Meanwhile, the New York City area is seeing a spike in COVID-19 transmission due to new variants. On Staten Island, some residents are protesting the city’s plan to house migrants in a former Catholic school. Borough President Vito Fossella joins WNYC’s Sean Carlson to discuss the situation.

NYC now. Welcome to NYC now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Thursday, August 31st. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill. The Hogle and Biden administrations have agreed on a new program to help some migrants get work permits more quickly. They plan to reach migrants by text messages and emails in different languages through September. The White House also pledged to send in more people. personnel from a federal, a few of the federal agencies to help support the migrants through the process. Data show that many recent arrivals are eligible for work, but they aren't applying for permits because they may not know how. Governor Hokel says she's grateful to the Biden

administration for helping with this initiative. Still, she warns it won't be enough to solve the ongoing migrant crisis in New York State. Some contagious new variants have COVID-19 transmission picking up in the area. Double U.S.A.S.A. Jack Jeffrey Wilensky reports. About 520 New Yorkers are currently hospitalized with COVID. That's more than triple what New York City was seeing in late June, but it's still less than last winter's surge. Samples of New York City sewage are also showing that transmission is on the rise. The cases are caused by an alphabet soup of different COVID variants, but city health officials are especially worried about BA-286. They said this week that the new strain has been detected in New York City

wastewater and that it may be better than its predecessors at sidestepping previous COVID immunity. The good news is that experts say so far the BA286 variant doesn't seem to be more likely to cause severe disease. 74 and mostly sunny now. Mostly sunny today and 77. A repeat tomorrow and then on Saturday, back up to near 80 again and Sunday, mostly sunny and near 90. I'm Sean Carlson for D. WNYC. Crowns gathered on Staten Island earlier this week to protest the city's decision to use a shuttered Catholic school to house hundreds of migrants.

It's just the latest migrant shelter location in the city to elicit protests from local residents. Staten Island Borough President Vita Fasela attended the protest on Monday. He's been an outspoken critic of the city's policy toward housing the thousands of people arriving the five boroughs each month. He joins us now to share his perspective on the issue. Borough President Ficella, thanks for joining us. Welcome back to WNMIC. Great tipy with you. I appreciate you having me on. So there have been a bunch of protests across the city against some of these shelters,

whether it's a high school gym on Coney Island, a psychiatric center in Queens. Why are Staten Island residents and elected so opposed to this shelter? So if I may, I just want to go back and turn the clock back to about this time or so last year. When folks started arriving in New York City and New York City said, come on in, you know, we're a right to shelter city. and we'll put you up and we'll feed you. And I think that's noble, right? But it's wrong, policy,

because it ultimately, what we said last year was going to be unsustainable. And how can we expect to put 50,000, 100,000, half a million people up in hotels for an indefinite period of time and feed them? And we said it then and we repeated today because not only was it going to just be sort of places that, oh, there's no concern and no opposition, But as people just kept on coming and coming, and they continue to come to arrive in the city, they're going to start looking elsewhere. And that's what the city is saying. We're desperate for locations.

So they end up in a place called Arakar, which is a beautiful residential community, and what was an old Catholic school now owned by the city of New York. And it's across the street from an old girls Catholic high school. When I say across the street, I don't mean a city block. I mean about 50 feet away. And then an elementary school, that's St. Joseph Hill Academy. And then a block away is PS39, which is an elementary school, which by the way, is my album out. I used to walk those streets every day when I was a kid. And it's just not right.

And we're trying to be the voice of the people to say, you know, go please pick another location. Well, so as you said, folks are coming here by the thousands. So do you think the city has any role whatsoever in providing some sort of housing and relief to folks who are coming here? And if we don't use these sites, like these big underutilized sites, what are we supposed to do? If you're coming to this country, chances are you're not in good shape financially to begin with and you're fleeing your home country, wherever it may be. Why wouldn't you come here? Why wouldn't you want to come to New York City and be accommodated for free? Well, what we have said is the right to shelter consent decree has been morphed and misapplied and misrepresented of what it's a realtyment.

original intent was. It was not, in my opinion, and I don't think I'm alone, was it ever intended to say, if you come to New York City from any place around the world and demand free accommodations, you will get it. And I think people should sort of sit around and say, okay, we recognize there's a problem here. Let's figure it out. There's a lot of finger-pointing that's taken place right now, and that's not going to solve the problem. The problem is going to say, we can't sustain this, which is what we said last year. Less than a year ago, we had. We had, the Independent Budget Office to say, you know, predict or project how much it would cost to accommodate the migrants at that point in time. And it was about a half a billion dollars.

So it's grown from a half a billion to 12 billion in less than a year and it continues to grow. So you've called on Governor Kathy Hochle to call a special legislative session to deal with this. What do you think that the state lawmakers can do here in dealing with the crisis? I just think that, again, to address this whole right to shelter consent decree, people think it's a law, it's not a law. They say it's in the near state constitution. We don't believe it says anything like that in the New York State Constitution. So this is a growing city slash state problem, and we would hope that maybe the state legislature would convene and clarify, you know, and put to bed what this is really or truly, what it was truly intended to do. We're not saying no to anybody.

And I just don't think we can afford it. And now we've asked for things on Staten Island, whether it be parks or a school. About a year and a half ago, we said we should have a school for the performing arts on Staten Island. It's the only borough without one. To date, we don't have not received an answer in part because we're told we may not have the money. We have a expressway, the Staten Island Expressway. They're granted it's a state issue, but money is fungible. and there's an HOV lane on the expressway.

It goes about seven-eighths of the way on the island, and it merges. We would like to see that extended, and we were told a couple of months ago, we don't have any money. Things that we'd like to do, and we understand when there's no money, it's not a bottomless pit, but how is it that we don't have a few bucks to take care of things that can help Staten Island residents and taxpayers, but yet we turn around and we find $12 billion to accommodate folks who were in here a week?

So we would like the state to just convene a special session to address the right to shelter and anything else that can alleviate the burden that is currently being imposed, not just on Staten Island, but also throughout, as I see it, the rest of New York. Congresswoman Nicole Maliatakis went so far as to say that Staten Island should consider seceding from New York City over this issue. Of course, it's been a pretty long simmering debate regardless of this issue. Is this something you'd support? I've been a proponent of secession and, you know, personally, supported it 30 years ago. One of the reasons is I felt that I believe strongly that a community should be represented and decisions should be made on behalf of the government, the consent of the governed, right? People come together, they compromise, they want a new school, they want a new road, they want a new park,

and then the political sort of representatives decide how to best do what the people want, consistent with one's principles and consistent with one's judgment as to what the best thing to do is. And what's happening is, and the feeling, I believe, it's leading to this clamor of secession, is the people of Staten Island are getting things that they do not want, that the political representatives are saying we don't want it. And by the way, the villa site was opposed by Democrats, too. It's not just a Republican issue. Democratic representatives opposed the siting there, too.

So the people don't want it. The political representatives don't want it. The local associations and community boards don't want it. And yet we get it. So after a while, you sort of say, well, if we don't want this stuff and we're getting it anyway, why should we be part of New York City? Or that is exactly what's happening. and I would be open to that to have that discussion.

I wouldn't just say we're going to do it tomorrow. I think it would be we'd have to figure out the costs and benefits or the pros and the cons. But when you get to a point where folks around, and it's common sense, I don't matter anymore. You know, nobody hears us anymore. We don't want this anymore. Or we want A and B and not C and D.

You get to a point of like enough is enough. So I think that's why that conversation is occurring. Staten Island Borough President, Vito Fasela. Thanks so much for joining us. We appreciate it. Thank you so much. Have a good day. Bye back.

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