NYC NOW - June 28, 2023: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: June 28, 2023

A court has ruled that New York City can go ahead with its plan to replace a lower Manhattan community garden with a housing complex. Plus, the city’s budget is due this Saturday. Also, a legal challenge to New York City’s housing lottery has been cleared for federal trial. And finally, WNYC’s Caroline Lewis reports on a nonprofit that wants to open the first overdose prevention center this summer in the Bronx.

Good evening and welcome to NYC Now. I'm Jene Pierre for WNYC. A judge says New York City can go ahead with its plan to replace a Lower Manhattan Community Garden with a housing complex. The Elizabeth Street Garden sits on city-owned land between Prince and Spring Streets in Soho. This week, the court ruled that it can now be developed into housing for low-income seniors. The decision follows nearly a decade of first. back and forth between organizers and the city. In 2018, a judge ordered the Department of Housing Preservation and Development to conduct an environmental impact assessment on the plan. The HPD said

the development would not have a significant negative impact. Organizers with the Garden are now working with their legal team to decide the next steps. New York City's budget is due this Saturday, and it could be the biggest in the city's history. WNYC's Elizabeth Kim explains why that hasn't stopped negotiations from getting heated. This year's handshake budget deal will come on the heels of a primary election and a widening policy divide between Mayor Eric Adams and the city council. Adams has made cuts to city agencies, including libraries and senior programs. He says the city needs to tighten its belt as it faces a slowing economy

and the unexpected cost of caring for tens of thousands of newly arrived migrants. Council members say cuts need to be strategic, or else they'll hurt the most vulnerable residents at a time when rents and other costs have soared. Both sides are under pressure to get a deal done soon. A late budget could affect the city's bond rating. Stay close. There's more after the break. A legal challenge to New York City's housing lottery has been cleared for federal trial. As it stands, the current rule gives local residents a leg up to win a below-market rate apartment. in their neighborhood. WNYC's ARIA Sundaram has more.

Millions of people apply each year for just a few thousand units across the city. The competition's so fierce that it's inspired a whole YouTube subgenre. I won the housing lottery. The prize could be a downtown Brooklyn studio for $2,500 a month, or a two-bedroom in the financial district for a thousand. but eligibility depends on your household income and size. In any given new building, eligible neighborhood residents get first dibs at half of the affordable units under a policy called community preference. The problem, the lawsuit says, is that it restricts people's ability to move elsewhere.

One of the plaintiffs who was black and was living in Queens when she was denied said she was looking for another neighborhood with better schools and supermarkets. Just honor the choices that people are making. Her attorney, Craig Gurian, says the policy violates federal fair housing law and perpetuate segregation in one of the most segregated cities in the country. Give everybody a level playing field to compete for the affordable housing they need. The city originally adopted the policy in the late 80s to help the long-neglected residents of lower-income neighborhoods get better housing. Longtime community development leader, Harry DiRienzo, says the policy is one of the few that, directly targets displacement, though it's imperfect. This was like community groups fighting for their residents, for their members, and being thrown

a few crumbs. He says the lawsuit threatens to take those few crumbs away. Historically, white, wealthier suburbs have used similar affordable housing rules to effectively exclude black and brown people living nearby. New York City neighborhoods have used their own segregationist tactics. And that history worries fair housing attorney Thomas Silverstein at the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. He supports the legal challenge. For me, it's very hard to justify the city's policy overall, as it's written, when you think about the context of those affluent, historically exclusionary neighborhoods.

Attorney Craig Gurian anticipates going to trial early next year. That's WNYC's Arias Sundar. Now to the South Bronx, which has the highest rate of drug overdose debts in New York City. A nonprofit wants to open the borough's first overdose prevention center this summer. Facilities like this one let people use risky drugs under staff supervision and are shown to save lives. But the group is facing pressure to find a new location. WNYC's Caroline Lewis has the story. It's lunchtime at St. Anne's Corner of Harm Reduction.

in Longwood, and CEO, Joyce Rivera, is greeting visitors in the cafeteria. I'm going to be in a television show. I can't wait. Yeah, boy! St. Anne started with Rivera handing out clean needles in a nearby park in 1990. It was a time when shared syringes were major spreaders of HIV. Rivera's underground experiment grew into a state-sanctioned syringe exchange site that now also offers hot meals, health services, and group activities.

You know, really, we would have been very successful. successful with injection-related AIDS. It's less than 3% in New York State. Despite this progress, combating the spread of HIV, plenty of New Yorkers are still injecting drugs, and overdoses have become more common with the rise of synthetic opioids like fentanyl. St. Anne's has long wanted to add a room where people can use drugs openly, so that staff can supervise and intervene more quickly if someone starts to OD. Employees are already stationed outside the bathrooms at all times, so they can time. how long people are inside.

They also receive training on how to prevent overdoses from becoming fatal by administering oxygen or the nasal spray naloxone. It's very difficult because we didn't hire these folks to become bathroom monitors. We have to rotate them every hour. It gets very anxiety producing for them. In late 2021, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio said he would support St. Anne's plan to add a supervised injection room. But Rivera initially hesitated.

We wanted to make sure that our community would be receptive to it. Another nonprofit, On Point NYC, became the first to openly pilot overdose prevention centers in the United States. Staff at OnPoint's locations in Harlem and Washington Heights say they have intervened in nearly a thousand potentially fatal overdoses in just 18 months. But they have also faced pushback. In Harlem, some groups are calling for a moratorium on new services for drug users, saying the neighborhood has more than its fair share. There have also been reports of participants using drugs at nearby subway stations

during the center's off hours. On Point has responded by extending when they're open with the goal of eventually operating 24-7. And with drug deaths reaching record numbers, Mayor Eric Adams has said he wants to open five new overdose prevention centers by 2025. I do support the safe injection sites. My only concern is the locations of where you're

put them. That city councilman Raphael Salamanca, he represents the South Bronx and his office is just a few blocks from St. Anne's. He says that area doesn't have as much drug use as other parts of his district, and he doesn't want to attract more. As the local elected official in the area, I don't want my quality of life to go down. Salamanca and the chair of the local community board are instead pushing for the program to launch near the hub, a commercial center in the Melrose neighborhood. They say it's the epicenter for drug use in the borough. And Rivera agrees the hub would be ideal. But this plan would take a lot longer

because it would mean moving the whole operation to a new site. Rivera says she was hoping to at least launch the project on a temporary basis at her current location this summer. We can't have any more deaths. We're in a position to stop that. And if not us, then who? And why are we working in public health? Facing pushback from Salamanca and other community leaders,

Rivera ultimately agreed to wait until she could find another space. She's now scoping out potential sites for a new facility, including the ground floor of 600 Bergen Avenue, a building with affordable housing that sits on a tree-lined plaza a few blocks from the hub. Residents there are split on the idea. Here's local mom Patricia Payne. I don't think it's a good idea because there's a lot of children here with families, and this is what we see outside.

Needles, we see a lot of druggies. around. Anwar Burt, who lives nearby, says that's exactly why the neighborhood needs a less public space where drug users can go. That would only better the community, and it would also help clean up a little bit because there's a lot of hyperdermic needle litter that's, you know, up and down the block, and like, it's just, you know, just sad to see. Rivera says she won't let community push back, deter her from her over. mission, but she has estimated that purchasing and building out 600 Bergen would cost $11 million. Raising that money could take a while. Mayor Adams and Governor Kathy Hokel have declined to put up

public dollars for overdose prevention centers in the past over concerns that their activities are still federally illegal. That's WNYC's Caroline Lewis. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WNYC. Catch us every weekday three times a day. We'll be back tomorrow.