For decades, our government has touted free-market principles while regularly intervening to protect corporate interests. Intervention on behalf of corporations to stimulate the economy and then trickle down to the everyday person has not worked. Surging housing costs, higher electricity, utility, and medical care costs, plus mounting debt, stagnant wages, and a volatile job market, have made it difficult for anyone to maintain any semblance of financial stability. The affordability crisis and its symptoms are impacting everyone across the board: the millennial saddled with student loan debt, the person living check to check despite having a degree, our seniors, the middle class, the working class, and the small business trying to stay afloat.

We need strategic policies that give pathways toward financial stability rather than continued subsidies for the ultra-wealthy and corporations or continuing the social welfare trap that keeps people in a cycle of poverty.

My plan will:

1. Implement a monthly option for the OMNY!

2. Legislate guardrails on AI and automation to ensure they are used as tools rather than as replacements for the workforce.

3. Strengthen labor rights and broaden opportunities for collective bargaining the implementation of new technologies in the workplace.

4. Target workforce programs, including apprenticeship programs, to give pathways to higher-paying union jobs.

5. Improve and pass a property tax circuit breaker credit for homeowners and renters, to provide state refunds to those whose property tax payments go beyond a certain share of income, as well as for a predetermined amount for renters. To account for the high cost of living and high property taxes in NYC, income limits should be increased, and a mechanism for renters to apply should be established.

6. Target workforce development for people with disabilities and seniors, which centers on their capabilities and meets their needs.

7. Advocate for economic justice for LGBTQ+ people, particularly for Transgender communities. Studies show Transgender people face significantly higher unemployment rates, workplace discrimination, and higher rates of poverty. We need to ensure workforce development is targeted but also include protections against workplace discrimination and ensure that non-profits and government are a model for safe, empowering, and inclusive workplaces for our Transgender community.

 

Tackling the Millennial Crisis and Investing in the Next Generation

1. Absent the federal government cancelling student debt, the state needs to create a student loan forgiveness or reduction program.

2. Increase education about New York State-based 529 college savings plans and make it more accessible for families to apply. Create an incentive to contribute by adding progressive matching features to the state-based 529 plan.

3. Support more cost-effective alternatives to four-year degree programs, such as community college, apprenticeships, vocational training, and other meaningful certificate programs.

4. Incentivize the adoption of employee stock ownership and profit-sharing plans.

5. Increase funding for programs that help first-time homebuyers to purchase co-ops, condos, shared equity housing, and multi-family homes.

Moving from “righto-to-shelter” to “right-to-housing”

While the right-to-shelter mandate is unique and provided the legal framework for temporary shelter, it simultaneously bolstered a shelter industrial complex. Year after year, billions are invested to address the homelessness crisis. Yet the homeless and unhoused population increases, there is a continued pay disparity for direct service providers, and a failed model that focuses on the number of beds rather than permanent housing. Many of our existing shelters have prison-like conditions, violence, fear of being unsafe,  poor quality of food, or no mechanism to hear the voices of shelter residents, ultimately punishing people for being in need. As non-profits have done their best to manage the results of gentrification, displacement, and the affordability crisis, the honest reality is that, as we have built moderate amounts of housing, it seems as if the homeless and displaced populations just keep increasing, particularly for Black people. We need to fundamentally transform how we approach homelessness because putting more money into a system that is structurally broken will not help our neighbors receive permanent housing:

1. Advocate for a state and city integrated housing plan to end homelessness and promote racial equity. Bring all agencies, non-profit providers, and impacted people together to coordinate efforts and strategy, develop metrics from bed numbers to number of placements in permanent housing and immediate needs, as well as (but not limited to) ways to streamline housing applications like Housing Connect with the Department of Homeless Services.

2. Pay parity for direct service providers and staff in the shelter and supportive housing system.

3. Investments to transition all shelters to dorm-style or innovative smart pods that allow for privacy and more dignified short-term living conditions.

4. Investments to convert hotels used to house migrants, vacant hotels and office buildings to permanent housing with priority for unhoused people.

5. Increased funding for the Housing Access Voucher Program, which is a four-year pilot program providing rental assistance to low-income New Yorkers(at or below 50% area median income)  who are homeless or at risk of losing housing.

6. Fund and evaluate a pilot universal basic income for young New Yorkers and people experiencing homelessness.