NYC NOW - March 20, 2024 : Evening Roundup

Episode Date: March 20, 2024

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed a new law meant to get more affordable housing built faster. Plus, some book publishers are expressing alarm that books with diverse characters were found by the trash outside a Staten Island elementary school. Also, one group has figured out the trick to getting an appointment for a New York City municipal ID card. And finally, WNYC’s David Furst talks with epidemiologist, Dr. Stephanie Silvera about a report which finds that New Jersey isn’t ready for the next public health emergency.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City. From WMYC, I'm Jenae Pierre. We begin in New Jersey, where there's a new law on the books meant to get more affordable housing built faster. Governor Phil Murphy signed the law on Wednesday. Every Jersey town is responsible for developing affordable housing, and the new law will streamline the process of deciding just how much and enforcing those obligations. It'll also give towns incentives to put affordable housing mere resources people use, like transit stations and supermarkets.

New Jersey assigns towns their affordable housing obligations in rounds. The next one is coming up in 2025. Now to New York City. Some book publishers are expressing alarm that books with diverse characters and subjects were found by the trash outside of Staten Island Elementary School. WMYC's Jessica Gould has more. The letter to schools chancellor David Banks comes in response to a WNYC report that hundreds of books on black history and LGBTQ plus subjects were put out with the garbage at PS55 in Staten Island. Some books had sticky notes describing apparent concerns like negative slant on white people and teenage girls having a crush on another girl.

The publishers, including Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, say in the letter they're worried about, quote, silent censorship at city schools. They're requesting a meeting with top education officials. The education department says the investigation into what happened at PS-55 is ongoing. Looking to get an NYC ID card? Good luck, because it's tough. But after the break, we'll share the cheat code. Stay close. Appointments for New York City's municipal ID cards are getting harder to get as demand increases. But One group has figured out the trick. WMYC's Karen Yee has the details.

It's Friday afternoon at the Center for Family Life in Sunset Park. Benefits Specialist Sheena Molina is counting down the minutes to 3 o'clock. That's when the city releases what, for some, has become one of the most coveted slots in the five boroughs. An appointment to sign up for a New York City photo ID card. Three o'clock is a golden hour. I refreshed the page at 259. So I'm like there at 3 p.m. Every Friday, the city releases appointments for the following week.

The IDNYC cards help people open bank accounts, get into their child's school, or have IDs to show police. But demand has surged with the arrival of migrants. Once they see their card, they see New York ID, so they feel like they already have something that belongs to them, but also it's like New York is part of them too. The Adams administration has quietly closed enrollment centers. No longer allows walk-ins and instead requires people to make an appointment online or by calling 3-1-1.

Caledonia Hernandez says she's been trying to get an appointment for a month. The enrollment site near her closed, and 3-1 won't return her calls. A worker takes down Hernandez's info and promises to call her back later in the afternoon. A few hours later... You see? 3 p.m? IDN.YC.C. Molina and her colleagues get to work. I am so excited.

She goes through her pile of clients, each marched with a blue sticky note if they need an ID-NYC appointment. She inputs their name, email, address, and hits search. She calls each client to make sure the times that pop up work for them. Oh, she's not picking up. She makes the appointment anyway, hoping it'll work out. I don't play when it comes to these appointments. Oh, no, don't tell me it crashed. It crashed.

It's not responding, you see? But it comes back in a few seconds, and the next client has an appointment on Tuesday. She calls to confirm. A market. Okay, I'll send a message now, okay? Yeah. Okay, chow.

They know to pick us. They know to pick up. A quick 15 minutes later, with five of her clients signed up, Molina finally takes her lunch break. That's WMYC's Karen Yee. If the next public health emergency happens today or tomorrow, New Jersey simply isn't prepared for it. That's according to a report commissioned by the governor's office,

which comes four years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The independent postmortem from a South Jersey law firm says the state and others collectively failed residents at the height of the pandemic and haven't internalized the right lessons to make sure the Garden State does a better job managing the next crisis. For more, WMYC's David First talked with epidemiologist Dr. Stephanie Silvera, Professor of Public Health at Montclair State University. Before we move on to the look ahead, let's take a minute and look at New Jersey's management of the previous pandemic.

With the caveat that we're talking about a 900-page report here, can you briefly tell us where this collective failure of the state's initial pandemic response stems from? Well, I think the really basic. is a lack of investment in a public health infrastructure. I think we've seen this time and time again that when there are any sort of budget deficits, and this is not a New Jersey problem that happens across the country, that one of the first places that gets funding cuts is public health. And part of the reason for that is we only really notice the public health infrastructure when we are in a crisis. And unfortunately, when we are in those crises, we are almost always

playing catch-up. Well, let's get to some of the specific failures. The report says one of the key failures stemmed from the lack of awareness among senior leadership of a pandemic influenza plan that the state health department created back in 2015. The report called it an intelligence failure. Why is that plan so important? And could it have really made that much of a difference? Well, I think that any time there's a plan, you know, it provides a bit of a roadmap. Now, obviously, planning ahead for an influenza epidemic or pandemic was going to be different than the novel coronavirus that we faced. But it certainly would give us an idea of how to ramp up for PPE, for example. The report confirmed the pandemic's devastating impact on black and Latino residents

of the state. Why did the pandemic so disproportionately affect these communities? And what are some of the ways that the state government can prevent those iniquities next time? So I think that It impacted those communities for multiple reasons. One, we're talking about communities who are disproportionately impacted by other preexisting conditions. They also are more likely to live in crowded conditions. And by and large, we're more likely to be in occupations where they were not able to work from home.

There are a lot of ways to address this. These are not new. What's surprising is that these issues come up time and time again. And we have yet to do anything that has, meaningful impact on their lives. And there are ways to change that. We can provide additional training. For social mobility, we can look at investing in those communities so that they can have better access to good health. And so there's just a lot of work that needs to be done. Was New Jersey able to learn from any of its early miscues during the pandemic? And what are some of the things the administration

did well? One of the things the administration did well was trying their best to communicate directly with the state's population. So there were briefings and they were trying to get as much information out as possible. I think one of the challenges there is that the guidance from the CDC and from the World Health Organization was ever changing. But I do think that that was a strength. I do think that we came out with some pretty strong policy recommendations to try to keep people safe, certainly in comparison to other states. And I think that that was necessary given our location, the population density. And I think that the governor did a good job of that.

I think that there are still a lot of lessons to be learned. And my biggest fear is that this will be yet another report that sits on a shelf that doesn't become action. Looking ahead, the report also says the state is unprepared for the next outbreak. Where does New Jersey need to make up some ground and how encouraged are you that they will be able to do so? There are a few areas. Again, one of them is the public health infrastructure, making sure that we have increased funding for health care access. I think we need to do a much better job in terms of our information technology services and systems. And that includes having good data collection and the ability to disseminate that information quickly to local health departments. Unfortunately, that is going to take a pretty significant investment in education and workforce development. in the areas of public health and the affiliated fields, right?

So that includes areas like nursing and computer technology to make sure that our workforce that currently exists has the latest and greatest training, but also that we're bringing new people into these fields so that we can stay on top of what we need to do to prepare. That's Dr. Stephanie Silvera, epidemiologist and professor of public health at Montclair State University. talking with WMYC's David First. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WMYC. Catch us every weekday, three times a day.

I'm Jenae Pierre. We'll be back tomorrow.