Testimony: COVID-19 Impact on Communities of Color

City Council Oversight and Investigations Committee Hearing

Thursday, April 30, 2020

Good Afternoon – I am David Jones, President and CEO of the Community Service Society (CSS).

CSS has been around for more than 175 years advocating for the city’s working poor and addressing the root causes of poverty through research, advocacy, direct programs, litigation and innovative policy interventions that help low-income New Yorkers get ahead and achieve economic mobility.

Thank you Mr. Speaker, Chair Torres and distinguished members of the Oversight and Investigations Committee for holding this hearing.

Let me state the obvious: New York is in the midst of a crisis that will dramatically change who we are as a city, one that will disproportionately impact lower-income black and brown New Yorkers.

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed how underlying racial disparities in access to health care, housing and economic opportunity determines one’s life chances. Data released earlier this month underscore the pandemic’s broader racial context.

Appalling, but not unfamiliar, statistics from the New York State Department of Health found that black New Yorkers have been more than twice as likely to die from COVID-19 as white residents. More specifically, black New Yorkers represent 28 percent of deaths in New York City and 18 percent of deaths in New York State, despite being 22 percent and 9 percent of the population, respectively; Latinos, who are 29 percent of the population in New York City and 11 percent statewide, represent 34 percent and 14 percent of the COVID-19 deaths. 

If you go to places like Chicago, Los Angeles County, or Milwaukee, the statistics are equally grim. Further evidence that differential death rates track systemic exclusions from labor, housing, healthcare and society-at-large.

People are literally dying based on their income and race. And those deaths track systemic exclusions and privations in terms of jobs, housing, healthcare and society at large.

The underlying issues deserve repeating:

• Structural racism produces negative health outcomes for black and brown New Yorkers.
• Health providers in communities of color are grossly under-resourced.
• State health financing and planning policies privilege hospitals in affluent communities.
• A deregulated health care financing regime coupled with a paucity of state health planning have accelerated the pace of hospital mergers and consolidations – a growing trend in the corporate health care model that places profit over care – have led to hospital closures in poor communities.
• The ACA and Medicaid – rightfully credited with cutting uninsured rates by half in New York – are under withering attack by this White House. This comes at a time when many – particularly immigrants – remain without health coverage, go without care because they cannot afford it, and go to overstretched emergency rooms at our cash-starved, bed-deprived public hospitals when needs become critical. 
• Essential workers in our city – transit workers, healthcare, grocery and warehouse workers, first responders, childcare, home attendants, postal employees and cleaning service workers, among others – are disproportionately people of color with higher exposure to the virus.
• The hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants in NYC have been ruthlessly excluded from federal aid including pandemic unemployment assistance.
• NYC is not reporting COVID-19 race data on a daily or weekly basis. Similarly, the CDC has failed to prioritize reporting by race and ethnicity making it harder to tailor targeted responses to the pandemic.

Where do we go from here?

In the short term, we must do everything to keep black, brown, and all communities safe.

That includes:

• Ensuring the adequate distribution of personal protective equipment (PPE) and disinfectant to community members, businesses, NYCHA residents and workers;
• Ensuring that testing resources are prioritized and targeted for those zip codes with the highest rates of morbidity and mortality (i.e. the outer boroughs).
• Providing more funding and support for H+H facilities, which is on the front lines of the pandemic
• Making grants and no interest loans available for community businesses to purchase equipment and make modifications for safe operations;
• Making COVID-19 medical treatment, not just testing, free of charge;
• Establishing a moratorium on rent and mortgage payments for those directly impacted by the pandemic.

It’s also clearly the time for the state to look at all revenue generators, and not use this crisis as a convenient excuse for extreme austerity. A “pied-a-terre tax” and a “stock transfer tax” – which has been proposed by several lawmakers – should be on the table. Taxing the ultra-rich is controversial, but this is the time for state legislators in both houses to stand up, and show leadership at this critical moment when communities are hurting.  

Over the longer term, we need to treat this crisis as an opportunity to rebuild and reimagine systems and institutions that are not serving communities.

In short, we need a new social contract that provides for what people need to live – housing, healthcare, education and living-wage employment with essential standards like paid leave, predictable schedules and the right to organize.  

These should not be considered “amenities” to be secured by class, race, or citizenship status – but rights.

City Council Coronavirus Legislation

I commend the City Council for proposing several bills to aid and protect New Yorkers during this pandemic. Particularly legislation extending Paid Sick Days for gig workers, and other independent contractors, as well as prohibiting the firing of essential workers without just cause.

Related to that, we need to strengthen the safety-net and permanently fix holes, especially for immigrants and non-traditional workers. 

Bill for Public Education Campaign to Raise Awareness of Paid Sick Leave

Our recent Unheard Third poll tells us that there is a need for more public outreach to inform New Yorkers of the benefits available to them. It suggests that most workers are probably unaware of the federal CARES Act and its benefits, including: 80 hours of paid sick leave; or that State COVID-19 sick leave fills some of the holes in the federal bill and provides 14 days of job protection and pay during periods of quarantine or isolation regardless of employer size.

As the City and State move to more testing, contact tracing and away from self-quarantine, these benefits will become increasingly important, especially for essential workers. 

But many, if not most, workers are unaware of even basic NYC paid sick days rights, let alone the new federal and state provisions. The New York City law goes beyond most local and state sick leave laws to say that sick leave can be used when businesses, schools or day care are closed because of a public health emergency.

A bill before the City Council would require the City to create posters on Paid Sick Days to be distributed at pharmacies, which will now be involved in COVID-19 testing, informing the public about their right to sick leave that could now be extended to describe temporary federal and state COVID-19 sick leave as well. Pass this bill.

Housing

COVID-19 is putting tremendous pressure on city and state budgets.

The mayor is proposing huge cuts to the capital budget for affordable housing. And he proposed totally eliminating summer youth employment, rather than reimagining it as a remote training experience. These are two examples of exactly the wrong cuts. 

When the moratorium on evictions expires in mid-June – or later if extended – we are going to see a major spike in evictions. As an interim step, the city should be considering some form of rent relief right now that is universally available and easily accessible to anyone impacted by COVID-19. This includes undocumented New Yorkers.

At the same time, the city and state need to develop programs that allow mission-driven nonprofit developers, or tenants themselves, to acquire multi-family properties that come up for sale – or go into foreclosure – during the pandemic-related economic downturn. Programs should be augmented by law to give tenants, nonprofits, or the city the right of first refusal, paired with targeted funding to support acquisition. 

The NYC Public Advocate has proposed the repurposing of vacant and abandoned buildings for the long-term permanent housing needs of the homeless and low-income New Yorkers. This is something worth considering.

NYCHA

NYCHA residents have also been deeply impacted by this pandemic. The data on cases and deaths has not been tracked, and should be, to target assistance.

As you know, the federal CARES package provided $685 million for public housing to cover increases in operating costs due to the pandemic – sanitizing, outreach, protective equipment, etc. That may not be enough to cover the short-staffing at NYCHA developments even before the outbreak. To allow NYCHA to staff up to the need – and make up for recent severe staff cuts – the city and state should consider resuming the operating subsidies they terminated 20 years ago. NYCHA needs to streamline the process and increase its capacity to respond quickly to the requests.

Residents can apply for an interim income recertification to reduce their rents accordingly (set at 30 percent of income). But it can take months to approve the requests. We have already heard that recertification requests are already 20 percent higher than last year.

Healthcare

As I stated earlier, when it comes to healthcare resources, we must prioritize testing for those communities with the highest rates of morbidity and mortality. And support our public hospitals which are on the frontlines of this pandemic.   

We also should protect funding for community-based initiatives like the Managed Consumer Care Assistance Program – MCCAP, and Access Health, that are best positioned to reach and connect low-income communities of color to healthcare resources.

The city should also leverage resources being offered through Bloomberg Philanthropies to provide support to CBOs to do contact tracing and that have program models proven to be effective at addressing structural racism and social determinants of health and other risk factors associated with chronic health conditions (e.g., diabetes, hypertension, asthma) that affect low-income, communities of color disproportionally. 

Finally, we should continue expansion of H+H’s NYC Care program to Queens and Manhattan as soon as possible, providing funding for CBOs to do outreach, and including community health centers, which provide quality healthcare services to many vulnerable communities, as part of the program.

Diversify the Economy

A lot of attention and energy is being placed on how we open the economy in a safe way. How we restore confidence in New York as a business center. That’s important for obvious reasons.

But we must invest the same energy towards addressing structural inequities and strive to create an economy that shares prosperity across income groups.

To that end we need to figure out how to raise labor standards for gig workers who make up a growing share of the low-wage workforce. And those who have been left out of the economy and hit the hardest by the health and economic implications of the pandemic, including people with conviction histories and those released from jails and prisons to avoid pandemic spread.

Some of the questions we need to pose are:

• What are the needs of the city’s homegrown millennials who have been left behind by largely better-educated newcomers to the city who compete for jobs and housing? They represent a disproportionate share of workers in low-wage service industries like retail and restaurants that have been decimated by the pandemic.
• What is our plan for helping them get ahead when the economy comes back?
• If tourism and retail are slow to recover, where will the new jobs be? How can we diversify our economy to be more resilient?

As we look at growth sectors for jobs that pay a living wage, including tackling our long-neglected infrastructure through a public works programs, we need to draw on New Yorkers’ talents, skills, and dedication, and specifically include individuals with conviction histories.

The city will need to spend tens of billions of dollars to invest in our transit system and upgrade public housing. We need to leverage these opportunities to develop good jobs for people without a 4-year college degree. But before we do that, we need to create a pipeline of training and hiring to connect the people in need to these jobs.

When competition for jobs ramps up, and we know it will, we must make sure that people with conviction histories are given a fair chance, that systems are in place to guard against discrimination and biased job denials, and that criminal record status not be used as a knee-jerk – and illegal – sorting mechanism to keep people from the opportunity to earn a living.

During the Great Depression, Congress enacted New Deal programs like the Works Progress Administration (WPA), recognizing that the economy is fueled from the bottom up. We need this kind of broad vision and wide-ranging programs if we are to recover as a nation.

Yet today, instead of resources, the federal government – and at times the state and local government – have given people austerity. Austerity cannot form the basis of the new social contract we so desperately need if we are to climb out of this. Austerity cannot be the answer to a history of assigning life chances by race and income. We can and must do better. We owe it to everyone who makes this city whole, including those we needlessly, cruelly lost due to poor planning and biased decision-making. Leaving people of color out in the cold – to die – must stop, and real change begin.

Thank you.

Issues Covered

Economic Mobility & Security