VOTE411 Voter Guide

I’m a former tenant rights lawyer and current City Council member running for reelection to keep fighting for the place where I grew up and where I’m now raising my own family. My family was evicted from our home in Washington Heights when I was young, and we moved to the Upper West Side after my mom got a job at Zabar’s, where she still works today. Our experience has driven me to focus on several key issues: affordable housing, safer, cleaner streets, and health and mental health. I’ve secured funding for affordable housing, expanded access to free legal services, and fought bad landlords. As Chair of the Sanitation Committee, I’ve led efforts to containerize trash, restore composting, and cut rat sightings in half. And I’ve passed major laws to fight height and weight discrimination, make it easier to access mental health services, and help seniors age in place. I’m proud of what we’ve done—but there’s more work ahead.

Across all of our priority areas, I’m building on the progress we’ve made and pushing creative reforms. On housing, we need to build more affordable units, preserve existing homes, and expand paths to homeownership. I’ve approved new housing across the city, expanded access to rental vouchers, banned unfair broker fees, and stood up for HDFCs as a vital source of community stability. For cleaner streets, I led the city’s first residential trash containerization pilot, which we are spreading across the district and city. I restored composting programs and increased trash pickups near schools and parks–next, we have to support New Yorkers to pick up the composting habit. On health, I’ve led efforts to require hospital price transparency, expanded access to mental health care, hosted free mammogram events, and launched free sleep apnea screenings—an often overlooked condition that impacts thousands. The successful implementation of these laws and programs in the coming year will be key.

Next year, our city government will look different, with new agency leaders and likely a new mayor. In my first 100 days, I will prioritize the City Council’s oversight responsibilities and set expectations for our new partners in government. First, I’ll work with the next mayor to secure the long-promised affordable housing units at 100th Street and Amsterdam and identify underused sites for new development. Second, I’ll meet with the Sanitation Commissioner to identify opportunities to expand trash containerization, reduce street litter, and improve composting education. Third, I will coordinate with the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to launch our sleep apnea screening and treatment program, secure more psychiatric beds, and support community-based mental health providers. Food access and nutrition education will also be a focus as we work to address health inequities at the root.

I want every single New Yorker to feel comfortable in our neighborhoods. That means that they have a stable, permanent home. When they walk outside, their street is clean. When they go to work, they are paid fairly and treated with dignity. When the school day ends, their child has an afterschool program to attend, and then they can come home to a healthy, affordable dinner. These should be the baseline quality of life in our city. But the absence of this basic level of comfort is fueling a mental health crisis and driving families to move out of our city.

Fear of change and bureaucratic inertia are our biggest enemies. Cities all over the world have containerized their trash successfully, but still people worry whether we can do it in New York. Shelters are much more expensive than permanent housing, yet we don’t build enough permanent housing for all of our families that need it. After school programs are much more effective at reducing juvenile crime than almost any other tool, yet we make it hard for parents to find them. We can’t be afraid to make changes to our neighborhoods, and we can’t accept leaders who won’t invest in the practices that make our city truly safer and more successful.

The short answer is degradation of quality of life. We shouldn’t be surprised that New York lost a Congressional seat after the last census (https://www.empirecenter.org/publications/eight-in-10-new-york-towns-and-cities-have-lost-population-since-2020/ ) and is projected to lose two more Congressional seats by 2030!

New York City had the greatest population loss and communities like West Harlem, Washington Heights and Morningside face certain risks, which mainstream political pundits don’t address sufficiently, if at all. We need a city council member who understands this downward trend and how to improve quality of life through:

1) permanent affordable housing, 2) education keeping apace with the real world and, as such, leading to gainful employment, 3) health and the environment.

Real permanent affordable housing We need to give New Yorkers, whether they went off to college and are returning home, retired, are back from serving our country or whatever their trajectory, a home that will not consume more than 30% of their income. As a leader at the Met Council on Housing, I fought for the passage of New York’s strongest tenant’s rights laws, the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act and the inclusion of NYCHA residents on our C4 Board. Permanent Affordable Housing also includes coops, particularly Mitchell Llamas and HDFCs. I am a staunch supporter of these housing programs (as well as a resident) and to that end, support legislation like the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA) and CLTs run by genuine community groups. This is not a new trend I am following. Two years ago, I authored practical reforms that the city could implement to improve programs that would help low-middle income New Yorkers purchase their apartments/homes through a city grant program. My resolution was unanimously passed by Manhattan Community Boards 9 and most recently unanimously passed by CB12s Housing & Human Services Committee. As your council member, and first woman in this seat, I would enforce the requests in my resolution and remove other barriers to program entry. From my childhood East Flatbush Brooklyn, to adopted West Harlem, I have seen how home ownership helps to stabilize entire neighborhoods, so such programs benefit many beyond the applicants.

Education for the Real World Now & Beyond I worked as a literacy tutor when Bill Clinton rolled out the America Reads Program in 1998 while I was studying at NYU’s Steinhardt School of Education and later studied then worked abroad for over a decade; six of those years included teaching in cities from Paris to Beijing. My forthcoming op ed is an introduction to how we can reform the public school curriculum to prepare students for an already globalized world. I am the only candidate in this race with extensive international experience, along with an education background and the analytical ability to investigate why it is that nearly 70% of our fourth graders are reading and math proficient. Whether we have grown kids or no kids, the academic outcomes of the 1 million plus students in NYC’s public and charter schools play a significant role in everything from paying into social security to enhancing public safety.

Health and the Environment The surge in autoimmune diseases and unprecedented rates of cancer (across different cancer types) among younger populations including gen Xers and millennials is an issue that gets less fanfare. In fact, health and the environment have not been meaningfully discussed by leadership in district 7, yet cancer is the second leading cause of death in New York. If New York City were a country, its GDP would far surpass that of Spain and Italy. How is it possible that despite all of this wealth, we have such a comparatively short lifespan? Although district 7 has a handful of NORCs, I am concerned about the post boomer generation. We need a watchdog in the city council who will ensure that everything from carcinogenic hair relaxers to endocrine-disrupting food packaging is banned and that consumers are fully aware of them. I have been that person authoring op eds to bring attention to the need for safe staffing in hospitals and will continue to do so as your council member.

1) Fire evictions! As a tenant leader, I have been fighting landlords’ exploitation of fires as a means of evicting tenants and destabilizing entire buildings. I aspire to pass desperately needed legislation that would dissuade criminally negligent landlords from what I have been calling fire evictions. Moreover, these incidents often become tremendous financial burdens to taxpayers. DHCR and HDP need to begin collecting data on that. Lastly, too many have been profiteering from the shelter industrial complex. New York has a right to shelter, but what New Yorkers really need is a right to housing.

2) The Foundation Aid Formula is the lion’s share of state funding, which amounts to 37% of the public and charter school budget (compared to federal funding, which makes up 5%). Yet it is not getting the attention it merits. We shouldn’t have to watch one daycare after the other close or resort to GoFundMe to fill in cuts to afterschool, tutoring or other programs. Education consumes most of New York City’s education budget! Moreover, the Campaign for Fiscal Equity has twice proven that this school funding is long overdue. Now we need a formula revision. Though that is a state policy, I will never cease to be a bridge between families and the state to get the funding our kids’ public and charter schools deserve.

3) I hope to comb through the budget expenditures of certain city agencies to understand where wasteful expenditures have gone (e.g., the cost of renovating a TIL apartment is now over $500K), so that the excess can be re-allocated to servicing more of the public.

1) Ending incentives to wharehouse apartments including in NYCHA complexes

2) Certain education and curriculum reforms. One includes building a more robust (and exciting) STEAM curriculum for kids and even career transitioners alike by adopting practices to help the next (or current) generation secure jobs of the future.

Raising broad awareness including from the public. There are various types of wharehousing, so impediments differ. NYCHA might be the most complicated because part of its jurisdiction falls under the federal government.

Affordable housing, community safety, and protections for immigrants

Affordable Housing More luxury developments will not fix our affordability crisis. I want to drastically expand funding for social housing programs and fulfill the city’s commitment to NYCHA. As our district is home to Columbia, I will lead the fight to renegotiate the Community Benefits Agreement— or tax Columbia’s real estate holdings.

Community Safety We need to invest in community-oriented solutions that have been proven to make us all safer. We should drastically increase funding for the city’s mental health court program and Intensive Mobile Treatment teams, invest in a co-responder program, and provide people in need with permanent, supportive housing.

Immigration As a former asylum seeker and someone who has dedicated their life to serving immigrant communities, I bring a unique perspective to City Hall. We must fully funding legal services for asylum seekers, protect our status as a sanctuary city, and invest in a Welcome, Reception, and Integration Program.

In my first 100 days as Council Member, I plan to co-sponsor and push to immediately pass Intro 214 to ensure that the mayor abides by New York City’s sanctuary city laws. I will introduce a resolution demanding a 50% increase in NYCHA capital funding, begin oversight hearings on housing conditions in District 7, and work to block further NYCHA privatization. Finally, I will launch a campaign to renegotiate Columbia University’s Community Benefits Agreement, and I will work with state legislators to tax Columbia and NYU’s real estate holdings.

My most ambitious goal is to introduce universal access to childcare in New York City. I intend to pass legislation to increase funding for childcare at the city level, while also working with state legislators to secure full funding for universal childcare. New York City is losing families because they cannot afford to raise their children in the city. New York City families, on average, spend about a quarter of their income on childcare, and a family would need to make $300,000 per year to have childcare be deemed “affordable” by federal standards. Moreover, childcare workers are currently not paid fair wages, with one in four childcare workers in NYC living in poverty.

Providing universal childcare is not just the right thing to do— it also will benefit New York, which loses over $23 billion a year from lost economic activity due to parents leaving the city or being forced to take time off of work.

The biggest obstacle to universal childcare is a lack of political courage. Universal childcare will require serious public investment, and too many of our elected officials — such as my opponent— are willing to go along with Adams-style austerity measures that slash the city budget and undercut programs that would ensure a prosperous future for our children. They won’t stand up to the corporate class that fund their campaigns and prioritizes profits over people. That's why I am running a grassroots campaign that takes no money from corporate PACs. Because I know what it's like to struggle and have no access to essential programs. I was homeless when I arrived to New York, because there weren't resources to help people like me.

The working families of New York City don't have time wait for the political establishment to finally address their needs by finally providing programs like universal childcare.