NYC NOW - July 17, 2023: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: July 17, 2023

New Yorkers could see two new migrant shelters coming to Queens in the near future. Plus, Senator Chuck Schumer has introduced legislation that declares international fentanyl trafficking a national emergency. And finally, WNYC’s Karen Yi takes us to Franklin Township, New Jersey where affordable housing seems to be the key to diversity in public schools.

Good evening and welcome to NYC now. I'm Jene Pierre for WNYC. Just preparing for the worst because that's what I do. So preparing for the worst, you know, it's better to be prepared. We begin in Queens, where two new migrant shelters could be coming in the near future. But Borough President Donovan Richards Jr. says the move could overwhelm residents if it's not done the right way. And I think there will be plenty of questions in the days to come if you're adding thousands of people to local. neighborhoods, and those are rightful questions that our constituent should raise.

Richard says he's concerned about public safety, access to public transportation, and schooling if thousands of new migrants come to Queens. He's expecting to find out whether the shelters will be approved later this week. The spokesperson from Mayor Eric Adams' office says all options are on the table. Senator Chuck Schumer is trying to stop fentanyl from flowing into New York City through a national defense bill. He's introducing legislation that declares international. Fentanyl trafficking a national emergency.

That gives President Biden the power to impose sanctions on China, Mexico, and other fentanyl supply chain hubs. Schumer says labs in China have been cooking fentanyl and trafficking it to the U.S. Fentanyl is deadly. It's killing so many young New Yorkers and so many young Americans. We need these, the highest and toughest of sanctions to go against the Chinese government. Research shows that fentanyl has become the most common drug in deadly, overdoses in New York City. More than 72,000 Americans died from fentanyl overdoses last year.

Stay close. There's more after the break. Now to New Jersey, Franklin Township in Somerset County, to be exact, it has one of the most diverse public school districts in the Garden State. Housing advocates say that diversity thrives because it embraced a 50-year-old court ruling mandating affordable housing. While some towns tried to dodge affordable housing, Franklin Township embraced it. WNYC's Karen Yee has the story. story. How many degrees? 90. The fourth graders at Claremont Elementary School are deep into a geometry lesson. They stretch their arms wide, one arm reaching for the ceiling, slightly off center, the other sticking out straight toward the wall. Greater than 90, up to, give me up to. Teacher Ebony Blissitt

shimmies her angled arms. Her students, shimmy theirs too. And now give me a smaller than 90 degree angle. She pinches her thumb and forefinger together. What do we call that? The students grab protractors and break into groups around poster board-sized sticky pads. They're plotting out their own neighborhoods, environmentally safe ones. There's Michael Jordan Lane and Bus and Bus and Drive, slaying for something really great. Bust and Besson Bustin was supposed to be a good road, but look at it. Nine-year-old Janelli Rodriguez wants to put her house close to the park, but far enough from the power plant and gas stations, unlike other communities she's been learning about.

People don't have really good, safe environments, and it's like for poor people, they don't have it. This exercise doesn't just touch on pollution. It also opens up conversations about diversity, which Franklin Public Schools has. The 7,000 students here speak more than 65 languages and are a third black, a little over a third Latino, 15% Asian, and 10% white. 40% receive free or reduced lunch. Across the state, the picture is. different. Studies show New Jersey schools are among the most segregated

for black and Latino students in the U.S. What explains that difference? A big factor is housing. Housing policy determines what communities look like, and in New Jersey, what the student body looks like in its nearly 600 school districts. Adam Gordon

is the executive director of the nonprofit Fair Share Housing Center. He says the school's mirror residential segregation, and undoing that legacy takes time. Housing is the most powerful driver of segregation, especially when we have a state that assigns schools based on municipal lines. He says one of the most effective tools for overcoming segregation in New Jersey

is drawn from an arcane pair of rulings the state Supreme Court made nearly 50 years ago, and it helps explain why Franklin schools remain so diverse. In 1975, the court did what no other court in the nation had done. In the first mandate of its kind in the country, New Jersey's highest court ruled municipalities needed to create, affordable housing opportunities. It's not exactly a requirement that towns build homes,

but rather that they loosen their zoning rules that prevent affordable housing from being built. It's known as the Mount Laurel doctrine. It ruled that restrictive zoning of the sort practiced in Mount Laurel discriminated against the poor and thereby violated the state constitution. News reports at the time

covered the groundbreaking case that started in a South Jersey town called Mount Laurel. Black families couldn't afford the average single-family homes, on half or one-acre lots. They lived in small-frame homes poorly maintained by landlords or in converted chicken coops. We were the first stop north for freedom

for a lot of people who were enslaved. There were these very strong communities in places that were largely rural. And as suburbanization, white flight started to happen in the 50s and 60s, a lot of those communities became targeted for development. Mount Laurel officials began demolishing these poorly maintained homes and rejected plans to allow the black community to build multifamily houses.

Ethel Lawrence, a black daycare worker, challenged those decisions in court and won. We didn't ask them outlaw to build low-income housing. We only asked them to relax the zoning laws, they're planning, to allow us the opportunity to build. Everyone involved in the cases knows that that was the ultimate goal, integration. Peter O'Connor is one of the original lawyers in the lawsuit. He says the legal argument may have focused on zoning, but that the Mount Laurel case was always about race. Our goal was to try to get the children, particularly,

into having access to a safe environment and better schools. Initially, town mayors ignore the mandate. I'll go to jail before I'll surrender my town to the courts, to the judges. In 1985, lawmakers took enforcement of the doctrine away from the courts. They created a state agency to assign each municipality the number of affordable housing units they needed to provide. Then Governor Tom Cain signed off on the legislation that also included a loophole. It allowed wealthier towns to transfer up to half their obligations along with funding to cities. Judges should not be in the possession of determining how much housing is needed.

An analysis by WNYC found 90% of towns that use this now-banned loophole, known as regional contribution agreements, send their students to schools that are wider than the state average. Franklin also used this loophole for a few units, but met the rest of its obligations within its borders. Of that pool of towns WNYC analyzed, Franklin stands out. It is the most racially diverse district. Taisa Kelly is dropping her two youngest kids at school in Franklin

on one of the last days of the year. Her kids run to the front doors. Someone's eager? Yes. Kelly is the CEO of Monarch Housing, a nonprofit that develops affordable housing. She's driving me around the 46th square mile municipality, bookended by Rutgers University to the North,

and Princeton University to the South. This is the side of Franklin where the incomes are a little bit lower. There are some beautiful houses out here, but there's a bigger mix of lower income and apartment rentals. So it's kind of like a mix of everything. Kelly says the town has always been diverse, and that diversity has increased in the years since she's moved in. And she can see it reflected in her kids' classrooms. It's a really good thing for kids to learn that in an early age, that the world is bigger than them. School Superintendent John Ravale says the district implemented an anti-racism policy,

hired an equity supervisor, and is training teachers to be more culturally responsive to students. If you're not making a child feel comfortable, they're not going to be able to grow to their full potential. In every single class, there is somebody that looks like me, somebody that I can directly relate to. Chloe Jackson is a rising junior at Franklin High. So is Jaden Gordine, who plays sports against other sports. school districts. When we have track meets, I can really see how diverse like our school is compared to the other schools. A third of the other districts in Somerset County are majority white. And half of the districts have less than 10% of their students receiving free or reduced lunch. But that

could start to change. In 2015, the courts took back enforcement of the Mount Laurel Doctrine. And Governor Phil Murphy has earmarked money to help towns build low-income homes. Experts say, as new buildings go up across the state, it could finally open the suburbs up to affordable housing and impact the next generation of students. That's WNYC's Karen Yee. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WNYC. Catch us every weekday, three times a day. We'll be back tomorrow.