Council District 7 is facing a housing crisis that disproportionately affects working class communities of color. Living in Harlem my whole life, I have seen increasing rent, the expansion of corporate interests that have led to gentrification, and politicians who have failed to stand up for communities like mine. My grassroots campaign does not accept funding from powerful real estate interests. I am ready to fight against greedy developers and those in power who are selling out our communities.

I will fight for affordable housing for all New Yorkers, ensuring that our neighbors no longer spend over 30 percent of their income on rent and have access to safe, dignified housing. We will do this by:

• Investing in community land trusts, a powerful solution for reliable affordability and allowing people to remain in our community.
• Using subsidies to ensure that abandoned and tax- and mortgage-delinquent properties are converted to limited equity cooperatives and community land trusts.  
• Support HDFC homeowners through relief and support to avoid foreclosures and expand HDFCs.
• Enacting legislation that gives tenants the right to purchase their building if it faces foreclosure, demolition, or sale so that the property can become tenant-owned, permanently affordable cooperatives.
• Repealing the developer-friendly Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) and instead implement a transparent and community based procedure to make land use decisions, while co-governing with the community.
• Imposing financial penalties on landlords who warehouse rent-regulated apartments.
• Combatting widespread discrimination against tenants with vouchers or other public benefits and expanding voucher programs.
• Prioritizing seniors and the LGBTQIA+ community for affordable housing units. We must advocate for affordable housing opportunities for the trans community in particular who so often face descrimination in housing.

I will put a stop to rezonings that place developer interests over our right to affordable housing, and ensure that our community’s voices are heard throughout these processes. I will:

• Declare an immediate moratorium on luxury development in NYC until the city’s rezoning process is completely rebuilt to account for residential segregation. Then, all rezoning must meet minimum affordability requirements.
• Ensure that our community boards are truly reflective of our community by establishing democratic processes for appointment. Board meetings must also be widely publicized so that all community members may attend and voice concerns.

I will fight to end homelessness. In one of the richest cities in the world, it is unacceptable that we have over 80,000 neighbors without a roof over their heads. We will fight for their right to a dignified home.

• In the short term, we must permanently rehouse homeless New Yorkers in vacant units developers are holding empty for profit. The city’s current reliance upon a broken and corrupt shelter system must end. In fact, a recent study found that 92% of shelters in New York City had health or safety violations.
• We must also plan and change city policy for the long term to prevent homelessness. To create long-term affordable housing, the city must make significant investments in public housing, co-ops, and new community land trusts.  Award-winning community land trusts in other American cities have been recognized by the United Nations as effective and highly desirable means of providing working and middle class communities with secure, affordable, housing.  We need to bring this transformative change to district 7.

I will fight for our public housing: recognizing its crisis and finding solutions. We will implement solutions to protect our neighbors in public housing and ensure their right to a dignified home.

• Public housing complexes are deteriorating and tenants’ rights are being ignored. Despite the current conditions in public housing, we must recognize its benefits and potential. Rather than privatizing public housing - a real estate developer-friendly strategy unfortunately being pursued by our current Mayor - we should be funding and expanding it. 
• We must oppose RAD. With RAD, the Mayor will put 62,000 apartments into the hands of private landlords. We have seen how such policies in other cities have led to an erosion of tenant rights and housing security. RAD would raise rent for families in NYCHA and force tenants to continue to settle for unlivable conditions. 
• We must fully fund and expand public housing and give democratic control to public housing tenants. To this end, I support the People’s Budget for Housing, Justice and Dignity.  Created in conversation with NYCHA residents and advocates, The People’s Budget seeks to create new, just policies to fully fund public housing by raising taxes on corporations and the rich and reallocating funds from gentrification development plans. 
• I will strongly support a Green New Deal for NYCHA, a plan that creates thousands of high quality, unionized jobs implementing needed repairs in our public housing. All maintenance and construction at NYCHA facilities must rely exclusively on union labor that prioritizes safety, sustainability, a living wage, and negotiable contracts. We must prioritize hiring tenants for this work. 

I will fight to end tenant abuse by corrupt landlords by:

• Expanding and fully funding the Right to Counsel program, ensuring free, comprehensive legal representation for our tenants. 
• Partnering with organizations engaged in tenant organizing work and opening my office as an organizing space for tenants, empowering them to come together in their collective power to fight back against abusive landlords. I will hold organizing workshops and back the fights tenants in our district lead.
• Creating a tenant anti-harassment task force to enforce the existing anti-harassment laws for tenants against abusive landlords. We see landlords given fines for their abusive conduct that they never pay. We must ensure that landlords are held accountable just like everyone else.

Public education should be fully funded and desegregated, and all students should have accessibility to enrichment programs. Growing up in the NYC public school system I have firsthand seen how segregated the system can be. In one of the most segregated school systems in the country, working class students of color do not receive the same quality education and opportunities that they deserve. We need to take funding out of our racist police system, the NYPD, and provide it to schools in working class communities so that a child’s zip code does not define their academic future. We need to diversify the amount of students that attend specialized high schools, in order to allow students in the surrounding communities to have the opportunity to attend as well. However, most importantly, we need to provide resources and funding to non-specialized high schools so that all high school students have an equal opportunity at receiving quality education and preparation for college. Every public school should provide students with updated materials and free SAT/ACT testing preparation, so every student has the opportunity to attend the college of their choice.

Additionally, at school, to ensure a child’s health and well-being should be our priority. This is why it is critical that we demand that the Department of Education (DOE) provides enough funding so every school can have a nurse, a social worker, and can provide healthy lunches. I will also demand that the DOE provide enough funding to public schools so that no school can go without a library, students can receive quality physical education, a quality arts education, and a quality civics education. The children of New York are our future and more than 50 million children go through our public school system to receive an education. We need to fully fund our public schools and truly provide a quality education for the future of our city.

• Pass a Green New Deal for NYC that will reduce the city's emissions, address issues within NYCHA (through a comprehensive GND for NYCHA proposal), create quality green jobs with union access, and create green spaces.

• Pass a Green New Deal for public schools where we fully fund and provide all students with high quality, hands-on science instruction and exposure to climate science.

• Advocate for and work towards Public Power, where we will have publicly owned, democratically run utilities that are reliable, affordable, and renewable energy.

• Transition towards completely energy efficient public transportation and completely replace all buses with electric-powered buses.

• Advocate and support the Renewable Rikers plan for renewable energy and a wastewater treatment facility. This plan would be an example of a just transition where, through restorative justice, we are addressing the climate crisis in a just and equitable way.

• Support and enforce the Climate Mobilization Act, that would help us move towards a zero-carbon city.

• Support and advocate for Public Advocate Jumaane Williams’ proposal for municipalizing NYC’s electric grid that will allow us to begin a transition towards renewable energy.

• Advocate and work to create rooftop solar panels and more community gardens.

• A just economic transition with job trainings and access to quality, green, and union jobs where we prioritize working class communities of color.

• Ensure that every New Yorker has access to healthy, climate-friendly food, as this is a crucial step towards making progress on environmental, health, racial, and food justice.

• Eliminate food deserts by providing working people with access to fresh locally sourced food.

• Awareness campaigns in partnership with the community to ensure that residents understand the importance of climate justice and join the movement towards an environmentally just NYC.

• Promote community composting and recycling, while ensuring that every community has access to trash, composting, and recycling bins.

• Decommission existing fossil fuel infrastructure and oppose all fossil fuel infrastructure, while advocating for renewable energy sources to ultimately transition towards a carbon neutral city by 2030.

• Ensure we have infrastructure in place to protect our shorelines, while keeping them publicly accessible and away from real estate interests.

• Protect bus lanes and create more bike as well as pedestrian lanes.

• Ensure that everyone, especially the most vulnerable, have access to cooling centers, ACs, and public spaces like pools and parks.

• Promote open streets and create more green spaces.

• Ensure we are centering the voices and experiences of frontline communities as we co-create environmental justice legislation, because for too long our government has ignored us. There is no justice without environmental justice!

The 99% is being ignored at City Hall. Our politicians are failing us. Workers continue to struggle to make a living in one the wealthiest cities in the world. As a city council member I will fight for a City Hall for the people. We will use legislation and constituent services to ensure that New Yorkers have the tools and resources necessary to organize within their communities and workplaces. While organizing for environmental justice, women’s rights, and tenants’ rights it was clear that when average people organize we begin to democratize and transform our communities. With a City Hall for the people we will work closely with mass working class organizations. We will be fighting under a platform that is ready to fight for truly affordable housing, pass single-payer health care, and for a working class revolution.

• We defund the NYPD and instate a hiring freeze and a reduction in officer overtime spending.
• We protect people from the excessive use of police force and restrict the standards for use of force and ban chokeholds.
• We disarm the NYPD and immediately stop providing military equipment such as pepper spray, tear gas, and long range acoustic devices to the police.
• We decarcerate by permanently closing Rikers Island and opposing the construction of new jails. The solution should focus on ending “broken-windows” policing and the school to prison pipeline, which disproportionately targets working class people of color.
• We support the state legislature’s repeal of 50-A, which currently allows for police misconduct to go unchecked. Now more than ever, when communities of color are being threatened by police brutality, we need to keep police accountable.
• We remove the NYPD from schools and parks.
• We expand community oversight of law enforcement. We will establish an Elected Civilian Review Board (ECRB) with board members elected by members of the community, with the power to use an independent prosecutor to prosecute cases of criminal police misconduct.
• We invest in youth programs and ensure that every school has a librarian, social worker, and a nurse. We need to end the system that views children of color as criminals.
• We provide public housing and healthcare for our communities by diverting funds from the NYPD and taxing the rich to mitigate the conditions in our communities that cause crime.

• I will work to make NYC a genuine sanctuary city for undocumented people by preventing ICE from deporting our neighbors and loved ones and halting collaboration with federal deportation programs. We will do this by:
  • Disentangling the relationship between immigration enforcement and the criminal legal system including by ending all forms of collaboration between the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the NYPD, the NYC Probation Department, the Department of Corrections, and other city agencies, expanding on existing detainer laws that limit the scope of this collaboration;
  • Expanding oversight to ensure that the NYPD is complying with existing protocols in this regard to not refer our neighbors to ICE;
  • Closing loopholes that enable ICE to undertake enforcement activities in courts, jails, shelters and other locations in our city;
  • Stopping ICE from using ruses such as impersonating police officers to undertake immigration enforcement;
  • Collaborate with community leaders and local organizations to ensure that “know your rights” information is widely accessible to all New Yorkers in their languages, particularly in light of home raids and ICE activity in our communities;
  • Supporting Int 1092-2018 introduced by Councilmember Menchaca to prohibit NYC from contracting with entities engaged in immigration enforcement;
• I will work to expand access to and adoption of IDNYC, and expand oversight to ensure that IDNYC is accepted throughout the city as a valid form of identification;
• I will support efforts to expand access to voting rights for municipal elections to all New Yorkers, regardless of immigration status and citizenship, so that all members of our communities are able to participate in our democracy.
  • Additionally, I will support Int 1994-2020 (Ampray-Samuel) to expand voter education efforts regarding ranked choice voting, including language outreach efforts for individuals with limited English proficiency.
• The current COVID-19 pandemic has made it clearer than ever how vital it is to have accessible public information available to all members of our communities. We will promote language justice by championing efforts to expand accessibility of translation and interpretation services so all New Yorkers can access the services and information they need. I will:
  • Expand translation and interpretation services so that all New Yorkers can access all public services, public information (including public health information; voting information, and court proceedings in their language(s) of proficiency;
  • Ensure that all city documents are uniformly and predictably available in the languages of widest diffusion in NYC;
  • Fund community-level interpretation and translation services that are culturally accessible;
  • Increase resources for captioning and sign language interpretation;
  • Collaborate with community leaders and community-based translators and interpreters to ensure that resources and services are accessible also to New Yorkers who speak languages of limited diffusion in NYC.
• Provide additional funding to expand existing programs that provide free legal services, including immigration counsel, to immigrant New Yorkers, and provide funding for deportation defense;
• Systematically work with community-based organizations and immigrant rights advocacy organizations to ensure that our policies on a city level are upholding the rights of undocumented and other immigrant communities, by incorporating their perspectives and demands into the policymaking process;
• Support the rights of undocumented workers by working against wage theft and harassment in the workplace by collaborating with with community organizations like Make the Road that advocate and train workers on their rights;
• Increase adult literacy (including digital) within the immigrant population, including by supporting Int 2221-2021 (Menchaca) which establishes an office of continuing education and adult literacy, including a focus on adult educational programming for the immigrant community. This would help address barriers to accessing vital services;
• Advance economic justice for immigrant communities by:
  • Supporting Res 1399-2020 introduced by Councilmembers Menchaca and Chin calling on NYS to enable state agencies, municipalities, and authorities to provide state and local public benefits regardless of immigration status;
  • Supporting street vendors, including through efforts to further expand the availability of food vendor permits, creating an office of street vendor enforcement, and establishing a street vendor advisory board, such as through Int 1116-2018 (Chin)
  • Working closely with state and federal elected officials to raise and allocate funding to specifically provide support for undocumented New Yorkers for rent assistance and meeting other basic needs. This funding should be raised through measures including taxes on the wealthy and large businesses;
  • Specifically with regards to COVID-19 response, work with state and federal officials to provide dedicated emergency funding for undocumented communities and ensure that all immigrant New Yorkers, regardless of immigration status, have access to social services and stimulus benefits;
    • Support resolutions in Council such as the recently adopted Res 1419-2020 (Moya) which calls on the United States Congress to pass, and the President to sign, legislation that would provide immigration relief for family members who derive lawful immigration status from a frontline worker who passed away due to COVID-19.

Ensure fully accessible jobs for all, by fighting hiring discrimination against people with disabilities and by incentivizing small businesses to create accessible workplaces. We will do this by:

• Implementing an oversight committee to hold employers accountable for discrimination against people with disabilities in hiring and in the workplace.

• Creating a certification process with resources and incentives for workplace accessibility. Support the Empowering Accessibility Program to make establishments accessible for all employees, in order to expand employment opportunities for people with disabilities. This includes:

  • Limiting high top seating and high ordering counters

  • Implementing ramps and wider walkways

  • Educating staff and managers about the needs of their employees with disabilities to ensure respect

Expand access to public transportation, by implementing strong physical and informational accessibility measures. Fewer than 25% of subway stations are fully accessible, and the disparity is even more stark in neighborhoods of color and in poor areas. I will change this by:

• Ensuring that the 2026 transportation master plan ordered by Intro 1557 has a bold emphasis on accessibility, including, but not limited to, the following:

  • Pushing to expedite the Fast Forward program, ensuring that all subway stations are accessible by 2030 and eliminating accessible transit deserts.

  • Expanding the ledge between the subway car and the platform to allow for full wheelchair accessibility in all cars.

  • Ensuring audio arrival estimates at all subway and bus stops to allow riders who are visually impaired to prepare to board the train or bus.

We all deserve to have our voices heard. I will implement comprehensive accessibility measures for voting rights, by:

• Making all polling locations fully accessible with ramps, wide walkways, and limited wait time.

• Ensuring that every polling station has auditory voting assistance machines to allow voters who are visually impaired to vote independently and confidentially.

I will fight for equal access to education for all students by:

• Upholding discrimination protections for student admissions and student treatment by their schools.

• Providing adequate funding to our schools in order to ensure physical accessibility, as well as building access to professional development for teachers to give them the needed tools to meet each student’s needs.

• Ensuring that our city’s budget prioritizes high quality mental health resources for students with mental and psychological disabilities in order to make school a safe, enriching place for all students. We need trained social workers and health professionals in our schools, not police.

I will make our parks more accessible to all by:

• Renovating water and bathroom stations where needed to ensure accessibility, considering steepness to approach these facilities.

• Pushing to create Upper Manhattan's universally accessible playground. Currently, accessible playgrounds are in New York’s wealthier areas. Looking to Aidan's Place as a model, centering architects with disabilities and kids with disabilities in its design, we must ensure that all children in our community have access to play.

I will ensure that all New Yorkers have access to the arts and culture that our city offers, by:

• Introducing legislation that will allow free or pay-as-you-wish admission or membership to city cultural institutions for visitors with disabilities and their caregivers.
• Requiring transparent accessibility information at theaters, museums, and concert halls, and providing incentives to local venues that implement adequate accessibility measures.

• Increase funding for non-profit animal rescue organizations and increase legal & safety protections for our city's wildlife.

• Ensure pet-friendly housing for everyone, especially the disabled and our seniors.

• Support and vote for Intro 1483, that will require that the Department of Homeless Services, in collaboration with the Department of Social Services, develop a plan to accommodate pets of homeless individuals in order to ensure we have pet-friendly shelters.

• Support and vote for Intro 1465, that would require that the Department of Education to report on humane animal treatment instruction in public elementary schools.

• Prohibit all NYC public schools from using eggs, live baby chickens ad ducks, or any animal for classroom projects.

• End factory farming.

• Support and vote on legislation that would enforce all firework displays to be silent.

• Support and vote for Res. 1151, that calls on all corporate and government entities to divest from agricultural industries that benefit from deforestation and the acceleration of global warming.

• Ban the shipment of live animals to NYC through mail.

• Ban the sale of products that contain animal fur.

• Make plant-based eating accessible to everyone.

• Cosponsor and vote for legislation to ban horse carriages in NYC.