NYC NOW - January 31, 2024: Midday News

Episode Date: January 31, 2024

Thousands of New Yorkers depending on public benefits face worsening delays in processing aid. Meanwhile, New York City officials say Illegal lockout complaints are on the rise in East New York, Brooklyn. WNYC's David Brand accompanied a group of city workers trying to educate renters there about their rights. Plus, the Biden administration is releasing funds to communities in Brooklyn and New York City suburbs after widespread flooding in September 2023 from the remnants of Tropical Storm Ophelia. Finally, New York City is set to roll out a whole new way to have the trash picked up at private buildings. WNYC’s Michael Hill sits with Brooklyn borough president Antonio Reynoso who was chair of the sanitation committee when the plan was created.

Welcome to NYC Now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Wednesday, January 31st. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill. Thousands of New Yorkers who rely on public benefits are still waiting longer for help. WNIC's Karen Ye reports New City data show worsening delays in processing aid. Between July and October last year, just 14% of cash assistance applications were processing. within 30 days as required. That rate was even worse than the dismal record set the year before, when just 28% of applications were processed on time. Diana Ramos is a benefits recipient and volunteers with safety net activists, a nonprofit group. You went from an F to an F minus. You had your A, man. You had your A four years ago. What's going on? Processing times for food stamp benefits improved slightly in the four-month period.

But six and ten applicants are still waiting too long. The city has been under fire for ongoing delays and attributed the slowdown to a record number of applications. New York City officials say illegal lockout complaints are on the rise in East New York, Brooklyn. WNIC's David Brand accompanied a group of city workers yesterday trying to educate renters there about their rights. About two dozen members of the city's public engagement unit were knocking on doors and handing out flyers along Liberty Avenue. The local real estate market is. red hot with a lot of new development and investors coming in, flipping homes, and sometimes forcing out tenants without a formal eviction warrant from a court. Outreach specialist Harriet

Lambert says East New York leads Brooklyn in illegal lockout complaints. Only a judge can sign off on an eviction or to vacate someone, and people need to know that. So a landlord telling you to get out is not enough. You should never voluntarily leave your unit, ever. She and her team stopped to talk with a woman carrying bags. Just giving people the information about their rights. Yeah, that would be fine, because something like that just happened to me. You know, I was just, exit from my apartment, just practically just like that. My husband died.

They give me no rights to do nothing. I want you to call 311 and ask for the tenant helpline. And act to speak to a specialist so that they can help you out and guide you with the next possible steps. I will do that. Okay. I appreciate you. I will. Thank you.

You are welcome. Have a great thing. City officials said they also plan to canvas other neighborhoods. David Brand, WNY, CERN. News. The Biden administration is releasing funds to communities in Brooklyn and New York City suburbs after widespread flooding in September from the remnants of tropical storm Ophelia. Governor Kathy Hochle says federal funding from the disaster declaration will go toward recovery efforts in Brooklyn, Nassau and Westchester counties, including infrastructure repairs and

fortification efforts. Brooklyn got more than eight inches of rainfall in 24 hours with parts of on Westchester County is getting more than six inches of rain. 39 and cloudy right now, mostly cloudy and 41 for a high in the city today. And then tomorrow, mostly cloudy, up near 50, Friday, partly sunny in 47, then Saturday and Sunday, sunshine and high temperatures in the lower 40s. 39 in cloudy. Michael Hill, W.N.YC News. Stay close. There's more after the break. It's a garbage plan almost a decade in the next.

making. New York City is finally set to roll out a whole new way to have the trash picked up at private buildings. Joining us now is Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Raynoso. He was chair of the City Council Sanitation Committee when the plan was hatched back in 2016 and later became law in 2019. Let's start by helping all of us understand just what exactly is going to change and which garbage trucks will this affect. Thank you so much for having me. So this is going to change the entire private sanitation industry. As we know it, in New York City, we have public sanitation that picks up residential trash and private sanitation that picks up commercial or office trash. And that's going to change the private sector while the New York City public system or DSNY has new

trucks, pays their workers well, the significant amounts of training, have routes that are as efficient as they could logistically be in the private market that didn't exist. What we have is a truck that can go from northern Bronx to Coney Island and Brooklyn, one truck picking up trash along a route that's deeply inefficient. Their workers are not trained appropriately. They don't have safety gear. There's many things that this private industry didn't have that really put workers in danger, hurt our environment, and we're finally going to change that.

So this does not have any impact on residential garbage, right? No impact on residential garbage. Tell us more about the history of private carding in New York City and how their workers have been treated. Why was this necessary? So originally, the private carding industry went through its last, before this, its last significant change during the Giuliani era when they were trying to take the mob. out of the trash industry in New York City. He created BIC or the Business Integrity Commission.

And in doing so, started investigating these companies to see who was part of the mafia because that's how people got routes. That's how businesses had a pay, a set price, depending on how they negotiated with the mob and so forth. And after they took all of that out, it became a free market system to some degree. and it was, I guess, the race to the bottom, who could charge businesses the least, which meant they had trucks that were 50 years old

that had brake issues, light issues, workers that they were paying off the books. In some cases, some workers that were dying because of the way they got hit by a truck. Sometimes they got hit by the trash containers. So it was just a very dangerous industry that you didn't want to be a part of. And also, because the routes were so inefficient,

they would give you 80 stops on a route that you could only complete in eight hours if you were driving 100 miles an hour, which is very dangerous for us because they were running stop signs and red lights throughout the day. So we wanted to change that. We wanted to make it safer and more efficient and make it so that the price points were more or less the same across the board. Mr. Reno, so what exactly was your?

your role in getting all this accomplished? Well, I passed the commercial wage zone law. So now we have zones in the city of New York. So instead of in one block, you can have 10 businesses that use 10 different carding companies to pick up their trash. So you will see 10 trucks run through that block to pick up each individual business is trash. So I decided I would do the commercial waste zoning. There would be no more than three carding companies per zones in the city of New York. That would make it so that on that one block, instead of 10 Carter's maximum, it would be three. We've done 20 zones in the city of New York. The bids already have gone out and come back. And we know exactly who's going to be doing the work. With

that, we're going to cut one million truck miles a month or 12 million a year, which is a 50% reduction from what it was last year. So not only is an environmental justice, it's a high quality trash pickup because the carters that are getting contracts with the city are the best carters and hopefully the workers are getting better trained and have hours that are more efficient or that would make it so that they can complete their task in a more efficient manner. Ms. Raino, so just a minute left here. I'm curious. We mentioned that this past more than four years ago. What's taking us so long to roll this out to do this? I want to say it's bureaucracy is the number one reason.

why it's taking so long, but also COVID. We could have done this about two years ago, which is when we were supposed to start it. And COVID really delayed us in a meaningful way. Also, businesses to have them go through a process that is a complete change, 180 from what they're used to during COVID. We just didn't feel like it was good for small businesses. So we said, let's hold out into the cities in a better place. So I want to say the holdout from when we passed the legislation until today, has been more of COVID and bureaucracy than it has been about political war and intention

because Commissioner Tish of the Department of Sanitation was committed to getting this done once she came into the United States. Mr. Raynosa, I'm sorry, we're going to have to leave it there. Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Raynosa, please come back and see us again. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WNYC.

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