NYC NOW - December 8, 2023: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: December 8, 2023

A federal appeals court ruled that most of New York’s concealed carry regulations can stay in effect while the courts weigh in on lawsuits challenging them. Plus, WNYC’s Arun Venugopal looks into New York City’s faith-based shelter program. And finally, WNYC’s Sean Carlson and Ryan Kailath discuss a WNYC investigation that finds that less than a fifth of the money raised from SantaCon, an annual charity event and pub crawl, has gone to registered nonprofits.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. I'm Jeney. Most of New York's sweeping concealed carry regulations can stay in effect while the courts weigh in on lawsuits challenging them. That's the result of a federal court appeal ruling this week. But there are a few exceptions. Judges said the state cannot enforce a requirement that applicants for concealed carry permits provide a list of all their social media handles. They also temporarily struck down a ban on carrying firearms on private properties open to the public,

like restaurants and stores, and on carrying guns in places of worship. Second Amendment advocates say they're considering appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court. It can be hard to find mental health care, and the New York State Attorney General says that's partly because of inaccurate insurance listings. WNYC's Caroline Lewis has more. New York Attorney General Letitia James deployed a team of secret shoppers to call up the therapists listed as in-network for 13 different insurance carriers. According to her office's findings, only 14% of those attempts resulted in the caller being offered an appointment. In other cases, the mental health provider didn't really take the insurance or wasn't accepting new patients.

In some cases, the contact information was out of date. James is recommending more enforcement to ensure health plans follow laws requiring them to maintain adequate and accurate mental health networks. The New York Health Plan Association, which represents insurers, says it needs more help for mental health providers to keep the information up to date. Stay close. There's more after the break. A city initiative meant to shelter nearly 1,000 migrants in houses of worship has been slow to get off the ground. But now, interfaith and immigrant rights groups say, there are signs the initiative will bear fruit. WMYC's Arun Venegal Paul has more.

In June, Mayor Eric Adams stood flanked by religious leaders and announced that the city was select 50 houses of worship to help shelter the city's migrant population. Scripture reminds us, love thy neighbor as thyself and welcome the stranger among us. The $75 million faith-based shelter program would reimburse each of the institutions and cap occupancy at 19 adults per site.

But at a council oversight hearing in late October, a city official told council member Gail Brewer that hardly any houses of worship had been approved. Two so far out of the 50, correct? Two so far out of the 50. Not a good number. Activists and interfaith leaders say institutions were often rejected by the fire department

because they didn't have $80,000 sprinklers or a costly fire detection system. Adam Abba, an immigrant rights activist, who runs the Africana Community Center in Harlem, says the confusion alienated houses of worship that were encouraged to apply, then rejected. It was a slap in their face because they were already doing this for free, and then they announced this program.

Former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is the president and CEO of Wynn, the city's largest shelter provider. She says the bigger problem was infighting within the Adams administration and a loss of momentum. And when many faith leaders, stepped forward to say, yes, call on us. The answer they got was bureaucratic red tape and no can do. But then a new coalition came together, made up of interfaith leaders,

immigrant rights activists, and labor groups. They applied renewed pressure on City Hall. Now, Quinn says their discussions with the city and the fire department have translated into new life for the faith-based shelter program. So people are really around the table, drilling down on the possibilities, with the fire department wrecks. The Adams administration didn't provide a comment for this story, only noting that it's considering all options.

But people outside City Hall working on the issue say these include lowering the capacity at certain spaces from 19 to 15 people. Josh Goldfein is a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society who's been part of these discussions. We understand that the city is imminently going to announce that they have worked out these issues. But many people who have been involved in the issue, say with the migrant population that keeps growing and the onset of winter, this is something that needs to be resolved soon.

That's WMYC's Aroon Venetapal. Santa Con is happening this Saturday. It's a day-long pub crawl where up to 30,000 people party their way through Manhattan. The annual event has long deflected public complaints by claiming the event is a charity fundraiser. But a WMYC investigation finds that less than a fifth of the month, raised from Santa Con has gone to registered nonprofits. For more, my colleague Sean Carlson talked with arts and culture reporter Ryan Kylath. So Santa Con itself is actually a nonprofit?

Yeah, so the group that runs the event and actually has the trademark for the term Santa Con, they got 501C3 status in 2014. The official name of the organization is Participatory Safety, Inc. And their mission statement is to, quote, bring art to underserved communities. Art underserved communities, not necessarily what I think of when I think is Santa Con, but okay. Yeah, a little backstory. The same folks had been running Santa Con for years before that. It started off as a small group of friends in the late 90s or early 2000s, and then grew and grew.

Now, anybody can participate in Santa Con by just, you know, wearing a Santa Hat and binge drinking. But there actually is an official starting point and a route and more than 50 officially sanctioned venues, different big clubs and bars mostly in Midtown. And you need to buy a ticket to get the perks, a Santa badge, which Santa Con sells on its website. So the badges are 15 bucks, and they say on the site that your $15 goes, quote, directly to Santa's charity drive and that it'll be split between various charities they have listed there. City Harvest, the Food Bank, headcount, a voter registration group. So being a nonprofit, they have publicly available financial records, which you looked at. Yeah, I didn't get into journalism to be an accountant. But I got all the records from their start in 2014 through the latest filings, which run through the end of 2022.

So eight years and change. In that time, the group raised about $1.4 million from Santa Con programming. And they gave less than a fifth of that to register charities, 19.7%. I should say quickly, I am not an accountant, but I reviewed my analysis with three professors who teach nonprofit accounting, governance, and law. Okay, so like you said, less than 20% of the money Santa Con raised went to registered nonprofits. Ryan, what is normal for a nonprofit that sells tickets and says, hey, buy our tickets for events for charity?

Yeah, there's broad industry benchmarks, but it's kind of case by case. Some people might say, hey, you're organizing a bar crawl. You should give away almost all the money you raise. Like, what service are you providing here? But the director of participatory safety, Stefan Pildas, told me they actually do a lot. They have contracts with all 50-plus venues, temporary staff, permitting for street closures, sound, video, DJs, plus, you know, office space and accounting and banking fees. He says the costs add up. More than a third of the organization's total giving went to groups or people who appear to be connected to Burning Man.

Wow. the annual week-long festival in Nevada, including groups devoted to hula-hooping, dance parades, free costumes, et cetera. Sure, that sounds pretty on-brand for Burning Man. But what exactly does Burning Man have to do with Santa Khan? Yeah, so Burning Man, this big week-long festival in the desert, Santa Con actually started at Burning Man. Wow.

When some people there are all dressed up at their Santa-themed Burning Man camp. And these folks who've been running Santa Con in New York forever are big burners. That's what they call themselves. And the money they raised from Santa Con programming, they spend some of that on Burning Man stuff as well in their tax returns. The money they spend on Burning Man projects, they sometimes call that an expense of running the charity that organizes Santa Con. So what other things are they contributing to? The Santa Con folks gave 66,000 or so to a film documentary called At Your Servics. It's an expose about medical malpractice directed by someone who,

appears to be a burner, also a for-profit. In 2018, they lost 17 grand on Bitcoin, which was their only investment. And, you know, when you're a small nonprofit, you're not really supposed to invest your surplus funds in, like, the most famously risky security there is. Or at least that's what a nonprofit law professor told me. He said it's a question on his final exam this year. Well, honestly, that then begs the question. Is that kind of spending illegal? No. So that professor said charities pull stuff like this all the time. It's not fraud. It's not illegal. All the experts I talked to said it's just extremely misleading. Have you spoken with the Santa Con folks about this? What do they have to say? They don't have much to say, honestly. I talked to the president of the

nonprofit, Stefan Pildas, and he said basically, you know, it's all art. And art is our mission. You know, our mission is to bring more art out into the world. And I would like to think that we're doing it. We're bringing a sense of whimsy and joy. and absurdity into what tends to be a pretty banal city. And I want to continue to see more creative outlets and opportunities and more people in costume and more cheer being spread. That's where we come from for this. That's WNYC's Ryan Kyloth talking with my colleague, Sean Carlson.

Thanks for listening to NYC now from WMYC. Quick shout out to our production team. It includes Sean Bouthey. Amber Bruce, Ave Carrillo, Audrey Cooper, Leora Noam Kravitz, Jared Marcel, and Wayne Schoemeister, with help from all of my great colleagues in the WNYC Newsroom. Our show art was designed by the people at Buck, and our music, that groove, was composed by Alexis Quadrato. I'm Jenae Pierre. Have a great weekend.