Where the Mayoral Candidates Stand on Issues That Matter Most to Low-Income New Yorkers
In a few months, New Yorkers will hit the ballot box and decide who will lead the city out of this ongoing public health crisis. Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic’s devastating effects have extended far past what’s traditionally considered “public health.” The virus has already claimed the lives of 30,000 people in New York City, but we also continue to deal with its crippling economic consequences: widespread job and wage loss, increased food insecurity, health care affordability issues, and the looming threat of eviction and homelessness.
This crisis has highlighted the truth about public health: it's a combination that spans all of these issues and can't be confined to what happens in doctors’ offices and hospitals.
Structural inequities anywhere — in health, housing, employment, food, education, criminal justice, transportation — create the devastating, disparate health and economic impacts that existed long before 2020, but have been laid bare over the last year. Nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of low-income families with children reported that they experienced three or more economic hardships since the start of the pandemic. Compare that with 39 percent of families with moderate to higher incomes.
It’s essential that the next mayor takes bold, urgent, and effective action to ensure an equitable and just recovery, one that puts low-income New Yorkers and communities of color at its center. In the public conversation about an equitable COVID-19 recovery, the opinions of low-income New Yorkers remain neglected. These New Yorkers — whom we call “the Unheard Third” — make up 1 in 3 voting-age citizens in New York City. That’s almost 1.9 million potential voters.
Every year, the Community Service Society surveys these New Yorkers. Our Unheard Third survey is the first and one of the only regular public opinion poll of low-income households in the United States. (While we’re proud to wear that badge, the fact that we have little company in this endeavor is enough evidence that poor and working people — in New York and throughout the U.S. — are regularly overlooked when creating policy agendas.)
Based on findings from our 2020 Unheard Third, we asked the mayoral candidates how they will ensure that this group’s voices are integrated into all of the city’s recovery efforts. The result is our newly released voter guide, The Unheard Third Vote 2021, which includes candidates’ answers to 19 questions on the issues low-income New Yorkers say are most important to them.
Our questions focused on five areas:
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Addressing the disparate economic impact of COVID-19
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Ensuring a more equitable future for New York City
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Preserving New York’s affordable housing
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Addressing health disparities
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Reforming New York’s criminal justice system
Below is the complete list of questions we asked the candidates. The questionnaire was sent to candidates who met an internal criteria that included but was not limited to fundraising and polling, and the following candidates answered: Eric Adams, Art Chang, Shaun Donovan, Kathryn Garcia, Ray McGuire, Carlos Menchaca, Dianne Morales, Scott Stringer, Maya Wiley, and Andrew Yang. You can find their answers in the voter guide.
Addressing the disparate economic impact of COVID-19
1. Workers who have been hit hardest by pandemic-related job losses worked overwhelmingly in low-paid service industries such as restaurants, hotels, and other sectors requiring in-person interactions. These sectors have experienced widespread layoffs and business closures. How will your administration ensure that these workers can transition back to full-time employment?
2. The coronavirus epidemic has exposed the absence of an adequate social safety net for undocumented workers, app-based gig workers and other New Yorkers in nonstandard work arrangements. These workers are ineligible for employer-provided health coverage, unemployment benefits and emergency government relief. What is your position on providing more financial assistance and workplace protections to these workers?
3. The pandemic and ensuing recession has destabilized the city’s low-income families, who were twice as likely as those with higher incomes to suffer permanent job loss related to COVID-19. The most vulnerable are children in households reeling from loss of income, food insecurity, and housing instability. What steps would you take to provide relief for low-income families struggling to survive as the city begins its economic recovery?
Ensuring a more equitable future for New York City
4. According to a recent report from the New York State Comptroller, New York City is currently facing a $4 billion budget gap. How would you strengthen the city’s fiscal outlook while minimizing the impact of potential cuts in critical public services on low-income New Yorkers?
5. The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the devastating racial inequities that exist in our city – from healthcare access to housing discrimination to education resources. What will you do as Mayor to address racial disparities in city policymaking
6. Student loan debt is impacting about one million New York City residents, and first-generation college students and communities of color are bearing the brunt of this debt. What role can New York City play in tackling student loan debt and how would you start to address these disparities?
7. More than 220,000 New Yorkers have enrolled in Fair Fares, a program that provides half-priced MetroCards to New Yorkers living at or below poverty. Yet the program was slashed by $65 million—from $106 million to $41 million—in New York City’s Fiscal Year 2021 budget. These cuts have occurred at a time when the need for the program is expected to grow—not shrink—as most low-income New Yorkers continue to rely on public transit for their daily commute and jobless New Yorkers struggle to afford the fare as they attempt to return to the workforce. What is your position on ensuring adequate funding for the continued expansion of Fair Fares?
Preserving New York’s affordable housing
8. Under the de Blasio mayoralty, affordable housing has been a key priority, but the housing that has been produced has not met the needs of the bottom 40 percent of income earners. How would you re-align both the city’s affordable housing programs and its land use policies to promote deeper levels of affordability at a larger scale?
9. NYCHA and its 500,000 residents are an integral part of the city, and homelessness has reached record highs. Yet public housing and homelessness are often treated as afterthoughts or outliers in city planning discussions. How should the next mayor integrate preserving public housing and ending homelessness into their comprehensive affordable housing plan?
10. Despite new city investments in NYCHA public housing during the de Blasio administration, the data indicates these investments have not kept pace with worsening, accelerating deterioration of resident living conditions. What initiatives would you take to improve NYCHA living conditions and address its $40 billion capital backlog?
11. Decades of risky financial practices have left rental buildings overleveraged and vulnerable to foreclosures or debt buy-outs, with pandemic-related rent arrears adding to their financial distress. As a result, many landlords are having difficulty maintaining payments on their buildings. What would you do as mayor to prevent speculative investors from buying up these buildings and their debt, and to instead promote their preservation as permanently affordable forms of social housing?
Addressing health disparities
12. Immigrants are disproportionately uninsured due to federal and state policies that limit eligibility and discourage access to health programs available to citizens and lawful residents. As mayor, what types of programs or policies would you champion to maximize enrollment of immigrants in quality insurance coverage that they can afford?
13. In 2020, Manhattan had 6.4 hospital beds for every 1,000 residents, while Queens had only 1.5 hospital beds for every 1,000 residents. Similar disparities exist in the Bronx and Brooklyn. The COVID-19 pandemic is exposing the devastating toll these maldistributions have had on New York’s communities of color in the outer boroughs. What would you do as mayor to ensure that health care infrastructure is distributed equitably?
14. Policy experts and advocates have long argued that New York City’s public Health and Hospitals system that serves hundreds of thousands of low-income uninsured patients annually, is under-funded by the State lawmakers that control the allocation of billions of Indigent Care Pool and Medicaid dollars. Mayors typically have been unable to turn this situation around. What would you do to improve the financial stability of New York Health and Hospitals?
15. Sixty percent of New York City residents say they faced a healthcare affordability burden in the prior year. And over 6,000 New York City residents have been sued by New York’s non-profit charitable hospitals for medical bills, often at a 9 percent commercial interest rate. Hospital lawyers usually win these cases on default – most patients do not appear in court and none have lawyers. What would you do as mayor to protect patients and prevent non-profit hospitals from filing these lawsuits and other unfair and/or discriminatory hospital policies?
16. Black women in New York City are much more likely than white women to die from pregnancy-related causes. What would you do as mayor to address the maternal mortality crisis experienced by Black and Brown women in New York City?
Reforming New York’s criminal justice system
17. Following a series of highly publicized police killings of civilians, including George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Daniel Prude among many others, police reform is on the nation’s agenda. Here in New York City we’ve been concerned over the NYPD’s troubling lack of accountability for officer misconduct, as well as general lack of transparency and apparent lack of real action concerning disciplinary issues. What would you do as Mayor to hold officers accountable for misconduct, and how would you reform the NYPD to minimize that misconduct, if not eliminate it?
18. The enduring consequences of a criminal conviction history can result in a “civil life sentence” that denies individuals access to jobs, housing, higher education, bank accounts and credit. Given this reality, how would you work to ensure that fewer New Yorkers become entangled with the criminal justice system in the first place? In your answer please include any diversion programs you think should be introduced or expanded, particularly those that could obviate the need for arrest in certain circumstances.
19. Of the 13.3 percent of Americans currently looking for work, individuals with a criminal record will almost certainly be among those last hired once jobs do reappear. What are your thoughts on legislation that allows individuals to have their record expunged after a certain period of time?
Read the candidates' answers here.