Rights

The Right to a Living Wage

Raise the Minimum Wage

$15 is no longer a sufficient minimum wage for New Yorkers. As the cost of living goes up, so should the minimum wage. In 2021, the minimum wage is for New York City is $21.77. We'll fight to raise the minimum wage so that it's at level with the minimum wage and continues to increase as does the living wage so that they can afford to stay in New York City and not have to decide between paying rent or buying food.

Source: https://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/36061

The Right to Housing

The City needs to take an active role in housing its citizens, and our campaign seeks to advocate for the rights of our residents; this includes ending the privatization of public lands. Public lands should be used for conservation, community spaces, or public housing projects that can house our homeless and low-income citizens. Properties like Hudson Yards serve as playgrounds for the rich and are massively undertaxed. New York City needs this revenue to fund social welfare programs and public housing projects directly. The City should raise taxes on these existing properties to increase its revenue in these trying times.

A New AMI

We need to reform the Area Median Income formula to reflect the cost of life in local communities more accurately. Currently, when we discuss AMI in NYC, we include income levels from across the 5 boroughs, Westchester, Putnam County, and Rockland County. Not only is this wildly inaccurate, but it also limits housing options for low-income New Yorkers in an already expensive city.

Fully Fund NYCHA

We need to end the privatization of NYCHA full stop. It is the City’s responsibility to provide for its residents, and we can’t afford to shore off responsibilities to private companies due to a poorly run government with a consistent disinterest in the lives of low-income residents. New York City needs to invest in our residents, and that means investing in NYCHA, funding capital projects, and repairs, so our residents are living comfortably and not forced to stay in poor living conditions because of their income status.

Privatization often includes a staggering lack of transparency between the building management company and the residents, along with a lack of communication. These private management companies have no oversight and face no accountability while providing the same poor living standard to residents.

Public Land for Public Use

It's time we focus on protecting public land for a) environmental protection purposes and b) for further development of low-cost public housing that is open to homeless and low-income New Yorkers. We have the opportunity to explore innovative ways to give city land a new purpose and ability to service the needs of neighborhoods, and we can potentially do this through public land trusts. Public land trusts allow the people to take ownership of the land and democratically elect people who will oversee land use. Let's work to create more public land trusts and let communities decide how land should be used.

Establish Good Cause Eviction

We need to protect tenants from unlawful and unjust evictions by establishing good cause eviction. I will make sure that similar legislation is enacted in the City Council, and I'm in full support of passing Good Cause eviction statewide.

The Right to Healthcare

Healthcare for All

Expanding and improving the City’s public health care option is a must. We must increase funding to the NYC Cares Program, subsidize private healthcare coverage for the uninsured, and lower prescription drug costs. We need to focus on community health, which centers food justice, environmental justice, and mental health resources that are safe, accessible and have an impact.

Create a Long Term Care Task Force to Analyze Nursing Home’s Response to COVID-19 and Better Prepare Nursing Homes for Future Public Health Emergencies

New York City needs its own Long Term Care Task Force because the state has its unique conditions that are different from other states, and New York City needs to be able to independently research and determine its own public health emergency response since following federal guidelines has proven to be disastrous. The Governor has chosen to hide the true reality of the toll of COVID on our nursing homes. This task force will help the City deal with the on-going and developing COVID-19 pandemic and better prepare for future public health emergencies. The task force would serve the essential functions of liaison to stakeholders on the ground, formulators of procedures and protocols to best prepare and deal with public health emergencies, and researchers of the pandemic’s effect on New York’s most impacted communities.

Increase Access to LARCs

The lack of access and information on different contraception methods, specifically long-acting removable contraceptives (LARCs), can lead to increased risk of personal health and family planning with issues such as abortion and bodily autonomy. The NYC community deserves the proper education, options, and access when it comes to exercising their right to personal health and safety as they choose which form of contraceptive to use. Offering LARCs at the facilities of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) and supporting funding for these contraceptives ultimately benefits every community as it will lower the risk of unwanted pregnancies and ensure that women can use the form of contraception that is best suited to their needs and safety. We will fully support this bill to implement these changes and increase access to LARCs.

Opposing Ban on Sex-Selective Abortions

We oppose the ban on “sex-selection abortion,” known as the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Acts (PRENDA), which criminalizes abortions based on the fetus’s sex and places an extra burden on women seeking abortions. PRENDA forces healthcare providers to interrogate their patients about the intention of their abortion, report them if they suspect sex-selective reasoning, and stop the patient from getting an abortion. Given that women of color, specifically Asian women, are frequently subject to stereotypes based on sex selection, this ban makes it difficult for women of color to get an abortion and seek the reproductive health care they need, thereby jeopardizing women’s health. Every woman deserves the option to safely get an abortion without risking unfair accusations based on racial stereotypes. In order to protect the women in our community, we must make sure abortions remain accessible and safe to all by opposing this racially charged ban on sex-selective abortions.

The Right to an Equitable Education

We have to take the window for change that COVID has opened, as an opportunity to make meaningful, long lasting, targeted changes that holistically benefit each of our individual students, teachers, and parents. And we have to communicate and work with them every step of the way to ensure their well-being and success.

It’s no secret that our education system is not working for all of our students, teachers, and parents. This fact became even more evident through the effect of COVID-19 on our everyday lives. Once it became clear that in-person learning was no longer possible for all students in New York back in March of 2019, there was a very quick transition to remote learning. Since then, our teachers have been working nonstop, on the frontlines of this pandemic, with ever-changing guidance and regulations from all levels of government, and many are burning out. We have to recognize and support them in this battle. Our students, in both K-12 and higher education, are under constant stress, and New York City parents from all walks of life are doing the best they can to simultaneously be working adults and caretakers. This is all on top of the inequitable education system that socioeconomically disadvantaged students have been dealing with since before the pandemic exacerbated the gaps.

We are going to work to change all of that. We have been diligently developing policy and program solutions for the issues that face our city, and when we enter the city council chambers on day 1:

1. We will work with the Mayor’s Office to expand access for our students to broadband and digital devices.
2. We will work with the School Construction Authority (SCA) and the Mayor’s Office to make sure we prioritize the construction of new schools to alleviate overcrowding.
3. We will work alongside our students, teachers, and parents, as well as with the city’s Department of Education and teacher’s unions, to accurately determine and address the academic and mental health impact of the pandemic on each of our students. Some of our initiatives include expanding the community school model to more schools throughout the city; this wraparound model could be the key to ensuring each of our students receive the right help they need to address the effect of the pandemic on their overall well-being. We are also looking at ways of alleviating the pressure on teachers to make sure their students are catching up academically.
4. We will work with the state’s Board of Regents and the state Department of Education at-large to revive the proposal to reevaluate the necessity and value of the regents and propose that we phase out this exam in favor of the Consortium school Performance-Based Assessment Tasks model.

We want to ensure that we use this time as a reflection and transitional period, to expand upon the practices that have worked well for our students, teachers, and parents, and to develop and adopt new strategies to address what has, and continues not to, work well in our education system.

The Right to a Clean and Safe Environment

Waste Reduction

Our goal is to have cleaner and greener NYC. In order to do this, we need a multi-faceted approach that includes day-to-day and overall execution of waste collection and waste reduction programs. First and foremost, we have to ensure that the City’s system is well equipped to handle this.

We all know that addressing climate change goes beyond individual actions. Still, if New York City is going to lead the country in reducing waste, we need a comprehensive city-wide program that makes participation easy and accessible for everyone, which is why we need city-wide programming that prevents unnecessary waste from going to landfills. We need to re-activate and expand curbside composting but reintroduce it in a way that makes sense and is intuitive for our residents.

Green Roofs

We are in full support of expanding New York City's Green Roof Policy. We need to set a standard for any other developments across NYC so that green technology is built right into these buildings and making it a key part of any future applications that are submitted to the City.

Green Spaces for All

Parks are essential to New Yorkers, and as such, they should be places that promote the safety and health of those who use them. The City should take responsibility for maintaining park spaces, including upkeep of equipment and facilities, and monitoring and eliminating any health risks, like lead in the soil or pesticides on playground equipment. Parks provide places to enjoy nature and the outdoors and should be centers for environmentally friendly initiatives.

Parks are vital spaces, and we need to make sure that the City is working to maintain them and improve these public spaces. New green spaces that are introduced into neighborhoods need to be created so that they address the immediate need for green space in a neighborhood while also having long-term goals in mind, like reducing urban heat and being centers in neighborhoods for activities and community work. If elected, I'll make sure that we're working to create more green spaces across our district.