NYC NOW - January 11, 2024 : Evening Roundup

Episode Date: January 11, 2024

New York City Mayor Eric Adams is reversing budget cuts to the NYPD and the Fire Department. Plus, F train service is back in Brooklyn after Wednesday's train derailment on Coney Island. And finally, WNYC’s Sean Carlson and David Brand discuss the New York City Council’s plan to sue the mayor and social services agency if they block housing aid to more low-income New Yorkers.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. I'm Jene Pierre. New York City Mayor Eric Adams is reversing budget cuts to the NYPD and the fire department. The mayor says that will allow 600 Police Academy recruits to join the NYPD in April and permit 20 fire engine companies to keep a fifth firefighter position. Adams credits the funding restorations on better than expected tax revenue, and other cost-cutting measures. This is about looking at the asylum-seeker course and really finding ways to reduce the cost,

and this is something we're doing, dealing with each household. Adams did not announce reversals of controversial budget cuts to other city agencies, like schools, libraries, or parks, and he's set to cut more spending when he releases his preliminary budget for 2025 next week. The first set of migrant families affected by Mayor Adams, Adams's new time limits on shelter stays began moving out this week. WMYC's Caring-Y reports, some left the city's care, but the administration says no one slept on the street.

Families with nowhere to go have to reapply for a shelter bed at the city's main intake center in Midtown. A few say they had to wait eight or nine hours, often with their kids, until they were finally given a bed in another shelter. The city says it needs to restrict how long families can shelter in one place, because it's out of room to house newer arrivals. Josh Goldfine is a staff attorney for legal aid. He says it's a waste of city resources

to have families on a merry-go-round seeking shelter. Moving people around arbitrarily only will delay people from being able to make a plan to move out. City Hall says about 1,600 families will have to move out by the end of the month. F-Train Service is back in Brooklyn after yesterday's train derailment in Coney Island. New York City Transit President Richard Davies says there were 34 riders on the derailed train,

but no one was injured. Davy says the train was moving at a slow speed through a construction zone. You know, derailments do happen. They shouldn't, but they do from time to time. And as I said, we'll take a look to see what the issue was here. But customers should feel safe taking the service. As I said, I will be tonight. Last week, two trains on the one line jumped the tracks and collided.

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating that derailment and says it's looking into the operations of the entire subway system. Stick around. There's more after the break. New York City Mayor Eric Adams is locked in a fight with the City Council over the future of a housing assistance program that helps pay the rent for tenants leaving homeless shelters. The Council passed a series of measures to expand the housing voucher program last summer, in spite of the mayor's opposition. The new laws were supposed to take effect Tuesday, but Adams is blocking them.

Now the council is planning to sue. For more, my colleague Sean Carlson talked with WMYC's David Brand. Tell us about the CityFEPs program. What is it and who qualifies for it? Well, it's a rent subsidy for low-income New Yorkers who are or who have been homeless. And CityFEPs is an acronym. It stands for Family Homelessness and Eviction Prevention Supplement Program. No one really calls it that.

But it's similar to the federal Section 8 program, but on a local level. So the city will pay the majority of the rent for low-income New Yorkers up to a certain amount. People with the vouchers pay 30% of their income toward the rent. The city's Department of Social Services says there are about 36,000 households in apartments thanks to city thefts. It's a crucial program, given the city's affordability crisis, and last year, about 6,000 households moved out of shelters with the vouchers. So what are the new laws that were supposed to take effect yesterday? So this is a package of three new laws meant to expand access to city FEPs or tweak the rules. They're supposed to make it easier or faster for people to use the vouchers.

There's three main parts here. One of the laws would raise the income threshold so that more people could qualify. Another would allow people to get the voucher if they have an active eviction case against them. And a third piece lifts a rule that forces people to go into shelter and then stay there for 90 days just to qualify. What's the problem here then? While the city council passed the bills last May, and that was in spite of the mayor's opposition, he vetoed them. In July, the council overrode that veto, meaning the bills became law. But Adams is still refusing to implement them because he says it's just too expensive.

Adam says the rule change would end up costing the city an additional $17 billion over five years at a time when he says the city's financial resources are already strained. He says his administration has already advanced. the program in other ways. For instance, he circumvented the council over the summer by removing that 90-day shelter stay rule through executive order. He also expanded city FEPs so city residents could take the voucher to other parts of the state. We have the largest number of people with the FEPs voucher in the history of the program. But the city council says the administration's cost estimates are way off base. So the council says the cost is probably more like $10 million versus that $17 billion price tag, the mayor says.

One of the main reasons people are having a hard time using the voucher now is preventable, they say. There's staff shortages at the agency that administers them. There's chronic bureaucratic hurdles. There's discrimination from owners and real estate agents. The city's independent budget office has a new report out this week saying, Adams is inflating the estimate, but it's actually really hard to know the price of this program. That's because it depends on how many people are able to find. find housing and whether the agency

administering the program has enough staff to make it work. IBO also says we can't really gauge the social and economic benefits associated with stopping evictions or getting people out of shelters. And oh yeah, Speaker Adams says she's going to sue the administration over their failure

to implement the program. She's not the only one. Legal aid also says it's going to sue. What about New Yorkers who might qualify for the vouchers? What are they saying? Well, the voucher program has some problems. A lot of landlords won't accept it. the city doesn't really do anything about that. There are some arcane rules and bureaucratic delays that can lead to denials or make the moving process take too long.

But it's really a crucial tool for tens of thousands of people. And people on the verge of eviction say they really know where to go that they can afford without the aid. Colette Baird lives in the Bronx and she's supposed to be out of her apartment this month. But she's on a fixed income and she says she can't afford another place on her own. We're looking for apartments now, but that voucher, if I could just get that voucher and look, because I find a couple of places that take vouchers, but I don't have it yet. You know, if Baird ends up going into a homeless shelter, that's going to end up costing the city a lot more than the amount of just housing voucher. But it's not just people facing eviction.

Right now, homeless young people are forced to go into the city's adult system to get a voucher. People who work full-time jobs but still can't afford rent don't qualify because they make just a little too much. What happens next here, David? We'll see. You know, Adams in the city's Department of Social Services. aren't backing down, and they say they have legal authority to block the laws even after the council overrode that veto. Council Speaker Adrian Adams says she's going to sue. If they don't implement the laws by February 7th, and like we said before, legal aids also planning to sue.

You know, in the meantime, New York City's homelessness crisis is just getting worse and evictions are on the rise. During the second half of 2023, the eviction rate was about the same as it was before the COVID pandemic. That's WMYC's David Brand, talking with my colleague, Sean Carlson. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WMYC. Catch us every weekday, three times a day. I'm Jene Pierre. We'll be back tomorrow.