NYC NOW - May 15, 2024: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: May 15, 2024

DoorDash will reconsider how it treats prospective hires with criminal convictions after reaching a settlement with New York’s attorney general’s office. Plus, Volunteers of America-Greater New York says it might be forced to reduce the number of new backpacks it distributes to students living in shelters before the start of school. And finally, WNYC's data reporter, Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky, crunched twenty years worth of data since the Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Act was passed.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City. From WNYC, I'm Jenae Pierre. DoorDash says it will reconsider how it treats prospective hires with criminal convictions after reaching a settlement with New York Attorney General Letitia James. The food delivery app will pay out $75,000 to the state in fines and re-review applications for delivery employees it rejected on the basis of their records. An investigation from the AG's office found that in 2022, it rejected almost 3,000 applications from potential employees based on their criminal history, which is illegal in New York.

Doordash says it remains committed to a fair and transparent background check process for all employees. The nonprofit Volunteers of America, Greater New York, says proposed city budget cuts will force it to reduce the number of new backpacks it distributes to students living in shelters before the start. of school. WNYC's Karen Ye has the details. The anti-poverty organization has been gifting new backpacks to children in homeless shelters for more than 20 years. Last year, the Department of Education donated $250,000 worth of supplies. It came as the shelter population reached new record high numbers. Catherine Tripani is with Volunteers of America and says less funding means fewer students will be helped. We never want a child living in temporary housing to have to feel different from their housed peers.

The city's Department of Education says they're working with individual districts to make sure every student has what they need. 20 years ago, New York City passed the Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Act. Though childhood lead exposure rates have dropped since then, many of the same apartments are still racking up lead paint violations. More on that after the break. It's been two decades since a sweeping set of rules were made law to protect New York City children from permanent brain damage from exposure to lead paint.

It's called the Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Act. Since it's been implemented, childhood lead exposure rates have dropped by more than 90%. But that still leaves thousands of kids each year with elevated blood lead levels. WMYC's data reporter Jacqueline Jeffrey Wilensky crunched 20 years worth of data since the law was passed. When the Rivas family moved into their apartment in Mott Haven in the Bronx, in 2019, the location seemed perfect. Close to the six train, close to the park, and the school that the Rivas' four small children

would eventually attend as they got older. I'm six years old. You're six? And five years. But within four years, all of the children had been poisoned by crumbling lead paint. Carlos Rivas says city inspectors found it

on a window sill, on kitchen cabinets, and other parts of the apartment. This ball, have a let, this molding, have a lead, and also this one right here. What he and his wife, Ingrid, didn't know, is that their kids might not have been the first to be poisoned there. City housing records show it was cited for lead paint violations three separate times,

more than 10 years ago. Those records don't say whether or not a child was exposed at the time, but a positive blood lead test in a kid is a common reason city inspectors visit an apartment in the first place. Rivas said he was still waiting on the last. landlord to remove lead paint from a set of doors and a window as required by city law. In here, they still are left inside a bathroom. There's still lead paint.

Yes. The city's lead laws were supposed to put an end to patterns of lead exposure like this by requiring landlords to inspect for deteriorating lead paint and fix it when they find it, and to fully remove lead paint from what are known as friction surfaces, areas like doors and windows that make a lot of lead dust and can put children at risk. But in the 20 years since the laws have been in place, city data shows that more than one fifth of all homes cited for lead paint have racked up repeated violations year over year. That makes the Rivas's apartment just one of over 12,000 units in the city that may have

poisoned multiple children as tenants moved in and out over the decades. To understand why, you have to start by looking at what happened when the city council was drafting those lead laws more than two decades ago. That's according to Matthew Schashear, an attorney who helped write the legislation. Now, the original proposal was that all that paint was going to be abated on friction surfaces by 2007. That was just one of the measures. But Cheshire says then Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his administration pushed back against the bill because of how much it would cost the city to track violations and make sure landlords complied. Bloomberg even threatened to veto it.

We're not interested in having costs that are, you know, going to really spend a lot of city money on something that isn't effective. In November 2003, Bloomberg's housing commissioner, Jera Lynn Perrine, testified at the city council. You know, let's not build a big bureaucracy and spend all our money on that. Matthew Schashear says Bloomberg demanded a number of concessions. So the city council got rid of a requirement that landlords inspired. for lead paint in building common areas, like lobbies and stairwells, and a requirement that the city proactively inspect a short list of old buildings most likely to endanger children. They also struck the provision to remove lead paint on doors and windows by 2007.

Instead, landlords would only have to do that when a tenant moved out. And in the end, Michael Bloomberg vetoed the bill anyway, which the council then overrode. Bloomberg wouldn't agree to an interview for this story. His spokesperson, Stu Lozer, said that at the time, the administration thought it would increase housing costs and make landlords less willing to rent to families with young children. And Cheshire says after the law took effect, the city often chose not to fully enforce key provisions, like getting rid of lead paint on doors and windows when a tenant moves out, or that landlords check for peeling lead paint at least once a year. Measures that were specifically designed to prevent dangerous conditions before a child is exposed. As of 2019, the city had written tens and tens of thousands of violations for peeling lead paint. They'd issued exactly two violations in all that time against landlords for not doing their self-inspections.

Coincidentally, both of those were cases where I actually sued the landlord in the city. Since then, the city has issued thousands more violations to landlords for not doing inspections. And the city's housing department told WNYC, it will sometimes step in. to fix the paint on the landlord's behalf. But as the data shows, many of the same apartments keep getting violations year after year. This cabinet is definitely 100% let, this cabinet. Here, the windows, here, and you can notice that it's all cracking up there.

Debeva Lobo and her girlfriend live in the apartment building in Brooklyn Sunset Park where Lobo herself grew up. Also, this side of you come into the hallway, all this right here, it's let positive. Lobo's apartment has gotten 11 lead paint violations in seven separate years since 2016. That puts it among some of the worst performers in the data WNYC analyzed. The couple's two young kids haven't tested positive for lead, and they want to keep it that way. We do a lot of cleaning.

I mean, we sweep here every day. Sometimes the kids play in the floor, but we also have them watch fans for every time to eat or whenever, you know, it's needed. Lobo says her family can't afford to live anywhere else, but the Rivas's were able to escape. Shortly after I visited their apartment in the Bronx, Ingrid Rivas and the kids moved into a shelter to get away from the lead paint, but also from rat and roach infestations along with other problems. The Rivas's landlord said the building was falling apart when he bought it two years ago. He says he's been working on a huge backlog of repairs ever since. Lobo's landlord didn't respond to requests for comment. What does it feel like, you know, raising young kids in this apartment?

It doesn't feel good, you know why? Because we haven't really enjoy the apartment the way we want to enjoy the apartment. Like, for instance, we haven't have people over in a long time in a while. Many parts of the lead law that the Bloomberg administration got rid of are slowly being added back. For example, landlords now have to inspect the common areas in their buildings. Starting in September, they'll have to do more testing for lead paint and keep detailed records. And when it comes to those friction surfaces like windows and doors, landlords will finally have to remove all lead paint from those by 2027.

It'll be on the city to ensure that actually happens. That's WNYC's Jacqueline Jeffrey Walensky. To see more of Jacqueline's data, check out her story on our news site, Got the Mist. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WMYC. Catch us every weekday, three times a day. I'm Jene Pierre. We'll be back tomorrow.