NYC NOW - September 25, 2023: Midday News

Episode Date: September 25, 2023

City lawmakers convene today over threats to events hosted by drag performers after a false bomb thread forced an evacuation from a drag queen story hour in Brooklyn. Meanwhile, remnants of tropical storm Ophelia might bring several days of rain to the NYC area. Plus, a free bus pilot program launches in all boroughs for the next six months, with WNYC’s Stephen Nessen puts it to the test. Finally, It’s been two years since remnants of Hurricane Ida hit New York City, with officials vowing to shield those in illegal basement homes. As hurricane season continues, WNYC’s Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky updates us on the city’s efforts.

Welcome to NYC Now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Monday, September 25th. Here's the midday news from Lance Lucky. City lawmakers are meeting today to discuss the ongoing threats to events hosted by drag performers. It comes after a false bomb threat forced police to evacuate a drag queen's story hour event in Brooklyn over the weekend. Councilmember Rita Joseph represents the district where the event was scheduled Saturday. She says officials are meeting to discuss legislation that could help stop this from happening again.

It's scary at the same time to evacuate young children. It's story time. It's family time. I just don't like the notion of putting fear into people over something that is so innocent reading of story. It's not the first time readings hosted by drag queen performers have been targeted, Protesters also gathered outside of Queens Library last year. The tri-state region continues. It's steady soaking as the remnants of tropical storm Ophelia make their way east of New York City. Jim Connolly is with the National Weather Service.

Yeah, it's generally going to be a steady, light rain with pockets of moderate to maybe locally heavy rain at times through the day. Connolly's forecasting possible breaks in the clouds tomorrow afternoon, and then the rain finally stopping tomorrow night. There's a coastal flood warning, in effect, from southern New Jersey to Montauk and up to Hudson County. More specifically, a coastal flood advisory for Brooklyn from 3 until 8 this evening, along with a high-rip current risk through tomorrow and some brief minor coastal flooding is possible today.

Between 4 and 7 p.m. in Manhattan and New Jersey, those vulnerable locations near the waterfront and shoreline during high tide. NYC. For WNYC, I'm Michael Hill. Some New York City bus riders are getting a free ride. Starting yesterday, riders don't need to pay to board the BX-18 AB in the Bronx, the M-116 in Manhattan, the B-60 in Brooklyn, the Q4 in Queens, and the S-4696 in Staten Island.

The buses will remain free for six months as part of a pilot program the MTA is trying out. WNYC, Stephen Nesson, is aboard one of those buses right. now and he joins us to talk about it. Stephen, tell us where you are. I believe I am in Brownsville now on that B-60 bus you are describing. We're picking up a bunch of folks heading to work mostly at this point. Is it crowded? It is crowded. Almost every seat is taken. So there were a lot of students. Now it's working folks. Stephen, give us a sense what people are saying about this free ride. Are they excited? Are they surprised?

Well, in this part of Brooklyn, I would say low-key excited is about the best I can do. for you. There is no fist pumping this morning or high-fiving or woo-hooing. It's just sort of either low-key, like, okay, cool, or somewhat confusion about why is this bus free? There's not a lot of information. There's just a sign on the outside

that says free bus. And inside, the Omni readers are covered with a little sticker that says fair free. I will note the reader in the back, the sticker's already been ripped off at this point in the morning. Oh, boy. And Stephen, remind us why the MTA is doing this?

Well, it was part of the state budget deal. Remember, there was the agreement this year to increase the payroll mobility tax. Lawmakers did increase the subsidy to the MTA, but they also extracted this six-month free bus pilot. I should add, they are paying for it. It's $15 million. But the idea, anyways, is for the MTA to study it, see how it goes, see how it impacts ridership. I don't think the MTA is particularly thrilled about this. It's a little bit of work for them. And then in six months, they do want to return to pay fare. The MTA loses hundreds of millions of dollars from bus fare evasion.

They've reported one in three bus riders don't pay. In fact, I spoke to many riders this morning. One of the reasons they weren't so excited is because they say, yeah, a lot of times I don't pay anyway. This bus is so crowded. They have to board in the back. They can't pay in the front. So that's an ongoing issue. And I don't think a free bus for six months will alleviate the fare evasion issue.

WNYC, Stephen Ness is on a newly free bus in Brooklyn. Thank you, Stephen. Thank you. On WNYC, I'm Tiffany Hanson. It's been just over two years since the remnants of Hurricane Ida hit New York City. More than a dozen residents died in the catastrophic flooding, and most of them were living in illegal basement apartments. After the storm, city officials promised to protect the vulnerable who live underground. With hurricane season still brewing, WNYC's science data report, reporter Jacqueline Jeffrey Wollenski joins us to talk about the city's progress. Hi, Jacqueline. Hi, thanks for having me. All right. So do we have a sense of how many people are living in these basement apartments and explain for us just briefly why are they so dangerous? Yeah, so it's a little

tricky to know exactly how many basement apartments there are because they're illegal. So they fly under the radar. The city does have an estimate. They think there are about 100,000 people living in 50,000 apartments. At the same time, the researchers and advocates that I spoke with say that there are a lot more, like hundreds of thousands more. And as for why they're dangerous, there are special rules for basement apartments to make them safe. Things like a second exit, a big enough window, proper ventilation, and these illegal conversions tend not to have them.

And what that means is that these apartments can become death traps in the case of a fire or a flood. that's what we saw during Ida when entire families were killed by the sudden rush of water. Yeah, that all sounds very scary for folks living in those underground basements. Should they even be there is the question? It's a really complicated question. A lot of people say that basement apartments are just fundamentally unsafe, you know, especially with climate change driving up the odds of severe weather. But honestly, we're in a housing crisis and these basement apartments are some of the only affordable options left for,

low-income and immigrant New Yorkers. And the people living in these apartments are by and large just that. They're new immigrants, their low-income New Yorkers. I looked at this analysis by the Pratt Center, and they found that these occupied basement units kind of cluster in poorer neighborhoods with more New Yorkers of color. So you've got these apartments that may be helping people stay close to their support systems, to their families, to their communities, when they wouldn't be able to otherwise. I chatted with Annetta Cicteron from Chaya. That's a group that advocates for the legalization of basement apartments. New York City has been facing an affordable housing crisis. These folks will have no place else to go. They will continue to live in basement

apartments, whether we like it or not, because they have no other option. And that's why over time, and especially since Ida, the focus has kind of shifted from penalizing these basement apartments to making them safer and protecting the people who live there. And just to get a sense of the scope of this, I looked at data on violations issued by the city for illegal basement apartments over the years. And I found that even after the storm, there were still fewer violations issued per year than we saw before the pandemic. I should note, though, that so far this year, I think we're back on track to pre-pandemic levels. But still, it seems like most people are in agreement that we should be making these apartments safer rather than kicking people out of them. Well, have you

heard from those folks about ways we can make these apartments safer? Yeah, I have. And there are a bunch of them. Even before Hurricane Ida, the city had a pilot program where they would work with homeowners in East New York to upgrade the basement apartments to add the safety features that they needed. But the program kind of stalled out after like just a couple of houses, both because of budget cuts, but also because the state law for multiple dwellings is just really complicated and it's hard to comply with. And so the advocates that I talked to for this story, they're focusing on amending the law to ease some of those requirements, especially the ones that like don't have anything to do with basement safety, like adding a guardrail to a roof. Like it doesn't really make

sense for like a residential house. And there were actually two bills in Albany in the aftermath of Ida that would have done that, but neither of them made it through the process. And I talked to Harvey Epstein. He's the New York State Assembly member who sponsored the bills. And he's said, said that they focused not just on basements, but on other types of housing, and so they may have been too broad to succeed. I think the problem sometimes is when you have a big, robust housing agenda, you make a lot of little enemies on different topics. When you create a lot of little enemies, you create a package that no one can buy into. But Epstein and the advocates I spoke with say that they're going to try again next year. Well, the process is clearly taking a while. So what can be

done in the meantime to stop people from dying in these basement apartments during our next storm, for example? Yeah, the city does have a couple of stopgap measures in the works while we wait on action from Albany. One of them are these special text alerts that you can sign up for through Notify NYC, and that tells you if there's weather that would be a threat for basement dwellers, like extreme rainfall. The city also installed these solar-powered flood sensors so they can get real-time data on which parts of the city might need emergency assistance during a rainstorm. The mayor's office also says they used a big chunk of federal funding to study basement apartments and they've even upgraded a few houses in flood-prone areas. But ultimately, the fact of the matter is

until the basement apartments get the upgrades, their tenants are just always going to be in danger. Jacqueline, thank you so much for all of your important reporting on this. We appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Thanks for listening. This is NYC Now from WNYC. Be sure to catch us every weekday, three times a day, for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives. And subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

We'll be back this evening.