NYC NOW - June 30, 2023: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: June 30, 2023

New York City Mayor Eric Adams and the City Council have a deal on a $107 billion budget for the fiscal year that starts on Saturday. Also, the New York City Board of Elections updates the numbers on voter turnout in this week's Primary Election. Plus, WNYC’s Michael Hill talks with The City’s investigative reporter Rosalind Adams about allegations of sexual harassment at a housing facility for new migrants. And finally, we close out Pride month with a personal story from the LGBTQ+ community. 

Good evening and welcome to NYC now. I'm Jene Pierre for WNYC. We're out to say we have successfully navigated through these many cross-comments to arrive at a strong and fiscally responsible budget. It took months of back and forth, but New York City's $107 billion budget is finally here, with just a day to spare before Saturday's deadline. Mayor Eric Adams and the City Council finalized the budget for the upcoming fiscal year. The spending plan doesn't contain any cuts to libraries, which was a major concern. But Council Speaker Adrian Adams didn't shy from reflecting on some of the cuts the city will now contend with.

Critical programs in our communities require far more resources. There's more that must be done on every front of our budgets and policymaking. Our council understands this. The city is facing a host of financial woes linked to the ongoing arrival of migrants to the city, the end of pandemic aid, and the increased cost of living. The New York City Board of Elections is sharing updated numbers about how many people turned out to vote in this week's primary election. WNYC's Bridget Bergen has the details. Between votes cast in-person and absentee, just over 200,000 people cast ballots in this week's primary.

That's according to data from the City Board of Elections. That's a turnout of about 7% of eligible voters. That's less than half of the turnout for last June. primary when 15% of voters cast ballots. That election included primaries for governor for both major parties. The results are still not final. The first ranked choice tally for city council contests where the top vote getter did not receive more than 50% of the vote will be published next Wednesday, July 5th. Stay close. There's more after the break. New York City has welcomed plenty of new residents since last year, as thousands of migrants

continue to make the Big Apple their home. But as nonprofits jumped into how some of these new New Yorkers, a pattern of misconduct and sexual harassment has plagued at least one of them. Rosalind Adams is an investigative reporter with the news site The City. She's been uncovering the allegations at the Glow Hotel in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. She shared her findings with WMYC's Michael Hill. Tell us more about this facility, the Glow Hotel and your investigation and what you looked into. What is it and who runs it?

Basically last summer, when we have this wave of migrants coming to the city, DHS found lots of hotels where migrants could live. At first, DHS, the Department of Homeless Services, was running those hotels. And then they started to contract with nonprofits to take over because they simply did not have the capacity to run so many hotels around the city. This hotel is run by a nonprofit. It's called 163rd Improvement Council. They're based on the Bronx. They're one of the nonprofits that answered this emergency call for operators, and they started running the Glow Hotel.

It's in Sunset Park. So the person that they hired to take over, his name is Mark Desmond Leary, sort of immediately hired friends and family, and the situation sort of quickly got off the rest of. rails at the hotel. And what pattern of behavior has your reporting uncovered at Glow Hotel? So this nonprofit is based in the Bronx. They didn't really have a track record of working in Brooklyn before the program director that they brought on to run the hotel. He kind of quickly

hired a number of his friends and family and at the same time was keeping a second job. It seems like he wasn't there that much. And then one of his cousins was accused of while handing out meals to the migrants during these meal times that were supposed to be provided for migrants, very consistently harassing the women, waving cash in their face, saying that he could pay them for sex, you know, talking down to them, saying all the women here charged. And, you know, making them feel very uncomfortable just when they're in their daily kind of. of lives of trying to like take care of their families, adjust to a new country, and get their daily meals. And then, you know, on top of that, a lot of these staff did not speak Spanish. They couldn't communicate with the migrants. And there was just like a lot of demeaning behavior towards these families. Did you find there were any allegations of misconduct pegged against

Leary himself? Well, yes, we did find that, you know, a lot of the both the employees working there complained about kind of the environment that he had created. He frequently had outbursts against staff. He threatened to fire them a lot. He screamed at the migrants. He said he could throw them out at any time. But I think really the fact that he had kind of hired friends and family, there was this culture where he had people around him that kind of supported this behavior. Let me ask you this, Roslyn, the 163rd Street Improvement Council, who at the city level vetted them, which department? And do we know what it concluded, what it resulted in? We're not sure what vetting they went through.

We asked this question to DHS. We haven't gotten a clear answer. I think, you know, the city is in a position where they're trying to just find housing for these migrants, the line from city of has often been, you know, nobody has done as much for migrants as we have. But, you know, any time there's sort of this rush in an emergency, bad actors can kind of like slide in or there's just less oversight and these sorts of things can happen. You know, we've seen this time and time again in lots of different situations. That's the city's investigative reporter Rosalind Adams, talking with WNYC's Michael Hill. Pride Month is coming to an end. As we cap it off, we're sharing

the personal journeys and reflections of older New Yorkers in the LGBTQ Plus community. My name is Marie Spivey. I identify as a lesbian. I am 69 years young. I grew up in Harlem. I moved to the Bronx, had a family, had a husband. I've been involved with the community for most of my life. But coming out and really being a lesbian, I was in my 50s. When my youngest child went away to school. I decided, you know, I'm in the community, I'm involved, and I found somebody of interest. I did the damn thing. It was easy in one sense because I was always involved in the community, activists, advocating for the community, and I have family members who are in the community.

That part was easy. But dealing with my children, even today, it is a problem with my own children. I have five children. I don't really feel that I missed out. I think that I could have had some more experiences, but not missed out in a personal way. It taught me that whatever it is that you want to do, you just have to be brave and do it.

Be you, those who love you and care about you, going to be there with you. And those who don't, you know, you just keep moving forward and leave them on the wayside. I really led an ordinary life. I really believe that. And just being a human being that cares about other people and advocating and getting involved, that's all that I've been.

Nothing has changed. I'm still out there fighting for LGBT elders, making sure that we're heard, that we're integrated into the community. It's been a journey. Pride means celebration. Pride means just letting it all out, you know, with enthusiasm, letting people know who we are and how happy we are to be living in these times. That was Bronx resident Marie Spivey, reflecting on her personal journey as we mark Pride Month. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WNYC.

Shout out to our production team. It includes Sean Boutage, Afe Carrillo, Audrey Cooper, Liora Norm Kravitz, Jared Marcel and Wayne Schilmeister with help from the entire WNYC newsroom. Our show art was designed by the folks at Buck, and our music was composed by Alexis Quadrado.

I'm Jene Pierre. We'll be back Monday.