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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer, on WNYC. Now, as usual, on Wednesdays, our lead Eric Adams reporter, Elizabeth Kim, with clips from, and analysis of, and to take your calls about the Mayor's weekly news conference. Topics today will include the possibility of banning masks on the subways. Is it increasing COVID risks for the vulnerable, for extra protection against hate crimes?

Also, the rent-stabilized department rent hike, just approved, the mayor and New York City's Palestinian and other Muslim communities, and as the heat dome caps the city today, why the pools and libraries, both used to cool down, are closed? Hi, Liz. Welcome back to the show. Happy Wednesday.

Elizabeth Kim: Good morning, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Let's start with this Kathy Hochul idea of banning masks on the subways and the mayor's reaction. Before we play the clip, remind us of the context here, and what question the mayor was actually asked.

Elizabeth Kim: The governor, last week, talked about banning masks. This was in response to an incident that had occurred on a Manhattan subway train. It was after a protest or rally that happened around Union Square. It was a pro-Palestinian rally, and some participants from that rally got onto the train and started using harassing language, asking so-called Zionists to get off the train. There was a video of that incident, which went viral.

That prompted the governor to say that she was considering having an anti-mask policy put in place in public spaces, but also specifically the subway. Now, the state had an anti-mask rule in place, it was put in place a century ago, that allows the police to charge someone for loitering if they are concealing or disguising their face in some way, but it was changed in the wake of COVID because, as we all know, people needed to wear masks in public.

Especially because of the George Floyd protests, protestors wanted to wear masks, and health experts were advising everyone to wear a mask, even outdoors, at the time. That's when they changed the law and, since then, masks have been allowed in public places. In fact, it's become more widely acceptable too, to wear masks. People now, in the city, as they do in other countries, they wear masks not only to protect themselves from getting ill, but also to protect others from spreading their own illnesses to others.

Brian Lehrer: The CDC guidelines now, on COVID, are-- You can go out after a few days, or even before that, but wear a high-quality mask. Now we have a possible contradiction to that. The mayor was asked if he supports this idea, and he said this--

Mayor Eric Adams: Masks are not new, and covering your face while you do terrible things is not new. There were these guys that used to ride around with hoods in the Deep South. Cowards cover their faces. If you believe in something, then stand up, show your face, believe it, and talk about it, but standing on our trains, telling people, "If you're a Zionist, raise your hand, and get off." Show your face and say that.

Brian Lehrer: Was that an explicit endorsement of this policy and that it should actually go forward, and if so, did he address what the governor said about how there could be exemptions for religious or health reasons?

Elizabeth Kim: Yes, the mayor is absolutely supporting the governor's proposal, which would have to go through the legislature, and we're yet to hear from state lawmakers as to whether they would support passing a law like this. The mayor had previously expressed concerns about people wearing masks, but specifically at protests, and you hear him talk about it right there. He thinks that by covering your face, you might feel emboldened to say something or do something that you might not normally be willing to say.

It also inhibits the ability of police to identify people who are suspected of criminal activity. He has previously, even prior to this being an issue at protests, he has asked bodega owners to ask their customers to remove their masks upon entering the bodega, because he was worried that, again, if something happens, if there's any kind of criminal activity, it makes it that much harder for police to find the suspect.

Brian Lehrer: We're entering this new world, if congestion pricing ever comes back, where to come to work in the business district in the morning, if you're a person with risk factors and no great subway options, you'll have to check if you're exempt from the mask mandate or the congestion pricing toll, and make your best choice.

Elizabeth Kim: Now, the mayor didn't directly address this. This is the tricky issue here, is how is this enforced, how does it allow for the exceptions of people who are wearing masks for health reasons? The governor had said something like surgical masks or N95s, for example, would be exempted, but people wear many different kinds of masks. This immediately drew a lot of criticism, at best, skepticism, because how is this going to be enforced?

Are police going to be expected to somehow check every single subway rider before they get on a train, and who's to say why someone is wearing a mask for legitimate reasons, and it doesn't just have to be health. There are also people who wear it for religious and cultural reasons.

Brian Lehrer: I'm thinking about what you said about the mayor's position on people who wear masks at protests when they're peaceful protestors. That clearly seemed like a hate crime, what happened on the subways, that inspired all of this, or at least an act of hate, that's disgusting. A lot of people wear masks at peaceful protests because they're law-abiding, but they don't want to get doxed by people who are worse than them in terms of their behavior.

They're on the other side of an issue and willing to put them at the risk of physical harm by publicizing their photos because they're at a protest, or, for that matter, there are sometimes police actions where law-abiding citizens are rounded up and have to go through the criminal justice system before they get themselves off, and protecting themselves against that. I think it raises the question about legitimate mask-wearing in a protest context.

Elizabeth Kim: That's absolutely right, Brian. We saw that this summer, during the protests on college campuses across the country, but also in New York City, we saw many students who were wearing masks. When they were asked about it, it wasn't specifically for a health reason. It was because they were worried, by somehow having their identities revealed, that they would become targeted by people who were critical of their stance on the war.

Brian Lehrer: Next topic. This year's rent hike, now approved by the Rent Guidelines board for the city's rent-stabilized apartments, about a million apartments. It's two and three-quarters percent for a one-year lease. What was the mayor asked about this?

Elizabeth Kim: This question was put to the mayor prior to the vote. This week's off-topic press conference was held on a Monday, and the vote was that evening. The mayor was asked to weigh in, because he appoints all nine members of the rent guidelines board. He has been under pressure to call for a rent freeze. Listeners may remember that former mayor, Bill de Blasio, actually called for three rent freezes while he was mayor.

After that precedent being set, there is even more intensified pressure on Mayor Adams to do the same thing, especially with the cost of living being so high in New York City.

Brian Lehrer: The mayor said this--

Mayor Eric Adams: When people think of rent, they often think of the folks who own hundreds and thousands of apartments. You look at that landlord that has a 16-unit and all of their resources are in there, and they're providing a clean, safe place for people. We have to find a sweet spot. We have to find a middle ground. I know New Yorkers are hurting, I know that this city and country is becoming-- Inflation is real.

Just the other day, what $100 bought me a little while ago, it's not buying me now. We have to find a way that we don't run out those landlords, particularly those small property owners, that are seeing this increase, also.

Brian Lehrer: That's classic Eric Adams. He certainly makes a fair point that the landlords are subject to inflation, just like the tenants are, but he's always said he identifies largely with small landlords, often working-class people of color, just trying to defray some of their own housing costs, right?

Elizabeth Kim: If you listen to his language there, it's very interesting, because he's talking about being worried about running out landlords. A lot of the focus from council members and tenant activists have been about the New Yorkers residents, renters, being unable to afford the city and having to leave. I thought that language there was very interesting, that he's worried that somehow landlords are going to be forced to sell their properties and leave the city because the inflation and cost of upkeep is becoming impossible for them.

Brian Lehrer: [crosstalk] They're not going to make enough money. Yes. I always wonder, and I often ask officials if there could be more of a stratification in the housing laws, where the genuine small landlords, like the mayor was identifying, get treated differently than the corporate shark landlords, who the mayor referred to there as owning hundreds and thousands of apartments.

I don't know that that means the percentage increase in the rent stabilization rates would go up at different paces every year, but other kinds of restrictions. Did that come up at all, that distinction, and maybe they shouldn't all be treated the same, the big landlord corporations and the small family?

Elizabeth Kim: No, but this idea of the small landlord is a little bit of a fallacy when it comes to rent-stabilized apartments. There have been studies done of how many small landlords own rent-stabilized apartments. One group that that crunched the data found that 1.2% of the city's total stock of rent-stabilized apartments are owned by these so-called small landlords.

Yet, time and time again, they are held up as the reason why rents need to go up, because there is this small landlord with six units that is somehow struggling to maintain their apartments.

Brian Lehrer: We can take some phone calls, as always, for Liz, on the topics that came up at the mayor's news conference this week. The heat, with the pools and the libraries closed today, and libraries closed on Sundays. We'll get to that. Hate crimes, COVID risks, and masks, Mayor Adams and New York's Palestinian and other Muslim communities, we'll get to that. If you rent or own a rent-stabilized apartment, the two and three-quarter percent rent hike approved for the year, that begins October 1st.

212-433-WNYC, 433-9692. The news conference, as you say, Liz, was on Monday this week. Usually Tuesday, but this week, on Monday, which happened to be Eid al-Adha celebrating Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son to show devotion to God, a pillar of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam alike. We could do a separate segment on what kind of God would even want to test somebody's faith in that particular way, but that's definitely a different show.

You asked the mayor a question about something the public advocate Jumaane Williams said about the mayor and New York's Muslim communities, and here it is--

Elizabeth Kim: I wanted to ask you to respond to a statement that the public advocate Jumaane Williams made recently on social media. He said, "I hope that New York City mayor, at some point, lifts up the pain that Palestinian and Muslim New Yorkers are in, and have yet to hear one word from him about." I also wanted to point out, today is Eid al-Adha. It's a very important festival, as you know.

Last year, you were the first mayor to have a celebration for Muslims, in Gracie Mansion, for Eid. I think that was for the end of Ramadan. I was wondering if there will be one again this year, and if not, why not?

Brian Lehrer: If not, why not? Here's a minute and a half of the mayor's response.

Mayor Adams: I'm sure Ingrid can go back to on the Senate floor, debating with a Islamophobic Greg Ball, of what I've done when women was attacked for wearing a hijab. How I visited mosques when others weren't, how I called for peace in Yemen, how I called for what is happening in West Africa, what's happening in the Sudan, where you have a large, significant Muslim population. I'm consistent.

I talk about the awful, barbaric action of Hezbollah and Hamas, and throughout the years, I didn't start doing this, did not. The Muslim Officers Society was started with my attorney after their wives were being attacked after 9/11. They came to me and asked me to assist them during those times. I have a long record of not just talking about what is wrong, what's happening. I've talked about what's happening in Gaza and what's happening across our entire globe.

No innocent person should die. I just find it challenging that people don't realize how despicable it is to go to a place like the Nova exhibit and wave flags of Hamas, calling themselves Hamas, make a mockery, and desecrate the pain that people are experiencing even while hostages were not turned around.

Brian Lehrer: The mayor, on Monday. Liz, based on that answer alone, he really did not address public advocate Jumaane Williams' complaint that he's not been talking about the suffering that the Palestinians are experiencing right now, regardless of the things that he said in there that are completely legit about the horrors of Hamas.

Elizabeth Kim: That's right. He kind of contradicts himself in that statement. He says, "I have been consistent." He goes on through a very long list of places, points in time where he has talked about Muslim suffering, or Muslim discrimination in which he stood up for Muslim New Yorkers. What we're talking about this moment, and that was the public advocate's criticism, is that in this moment, the public advocate and some Muslim New Yorkers feel that the mayor hasn't spoken enough about Palestinian casualties in Gaza.

He points to Hezbollah and Hamas in that statement but it doesn't seem like he's willing to touch on Palestinian casualties at the hands of the Israeli army. I think that that is, in fact, a glaring difference in how the mayor is talking to the Muslim community in this moment. I don't think there is a question that the mayor has done a lot over his career to build this relationship. That's partly why now, there is so much criticism from Muslim New Yorkers, because, in a way, they very much feel betrayed by him.

Brian Lehrer: Mehal, in Manhattan, on the idea of a subway mask ban. You're on WNYC. Hello, Mehal.

Mehal: Hi. I am pretty nervous, because I love your show so much, and because this issue is so important to me.

Brian Lehrer: Relax. We're all friends here. We'll give you a good listen.

Mehal: Thank you. I'm pretty worked up about this proposed mask ban. It would not make us safer. It would not fix antisemitism. It would only put vulnerable New Yorkers more at risk. That's true of any kind of mask ban, even if there is a "medical exception." If you ask law enforcement officers to determine who's wearing a mask for legitimate reasons or not legitimate reasons, to try to determine who's unhealthy enough to be wearing one, or who deserves to wear one, it would invite civil rights violations.

Banning masks, even in some specific setting, like a protest, would mean that vulnerable people are excluded from those settings. I would like to be allowed to attend a protest in my N95, and if masks were banned on the subway, I wouldn't be able to go anywhere anymore. This is pretty important to me.

Brian Lehrer: Mehal, thank you very much. Call us again. Frank, in Manhattan, on landlording, as I think he put it to our screener. Frank, you're on WNYC. Hello?

Frank: Hi, can you hear me? Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. We got you.

Frank: Yes. I have a little bit of an insight. I don't want to speak too much about that, but landlording is literally the most rigged business in New York City. There's no other business that people turn themselves inside out trying to figure out how to guarantee that people who ply the trade make money. We put ourselves through all these fights and arguments. If you can't afford to look at a building as a business, you can't afford to run that business. You shouldn't be in that business.

You're not qualified, you didn't make it, just like thousands and thousands of other businesses in this city. If we just let the market decide, if we cap the rents at a certain rate and these businesses were failing, the people who charge them for gas, and repair, and all of the other things that they say are putting them out of business, would lower their prices or they, too, would go out of business, because they'd have no place to ply their trade.

It's an artificially inflated, held-up business that we destroy morale in the city, year after year, after year, I just don't--

Brian Lehrer: Frank, thank you. Thank you very much. He makes a point that I think often gets overlooked. We've talked about it on this show a few times. The rent stabilization laws, in addition to protecting tenants, do, by law, exactly what Frank said. They make sure they inspect the ability of the landlords to make a reasonable profit on their investment, and they set rate hikes based on that, as well as based on what they think would be fair to the tenant.

It's one of the few industries where the government literally looks at the books every year and guarantees that the business people make a profit.

Elizabeth Kim: That's correct, Brian. One point I should add is that another reason why the mayor is heavily scrutinized on this issue is because his platform is rooted in protecting working-class New Yorkers. Here, again, we see a conflict between his allegiance to landlords, albeit what he says, small landlords, and to the working-class New Yorkers that he says he represents, and that he's about. That's another reason why this mayor in particular faces criticism about his position on this issue.

Brian Lehrer: We do have a small landlord calling in, and we're going to let her give her view of this, which is a little different. Miriam, in Queens, you are on WNYC. Hello.

Miriam: Hi, Brian. I'm so excited, like your last caller, also very nervous. I've listened to you for years. I wanted to speak about the issue of the small landlords. I know your guest said that that's very few people in New York, and maybe that's correct. I certainly think it's going to be fewer. My family has owned a building in Astoria, Queens, since the 1970s. It's a six-family unit. My grandparents bought it.

They lived in the building. We all lived in the building for many years in our lives. We manage it like our home, and we do everything possible we can for the tenants. We want it to be a good place for them. At this point, and just to give you the numbers, I think the building gross is-- our net profit at the end of the year is something like $70,000, and it's a lot of work for that money.

When we have all of these limitations on the rent, a lot of our neighbors, who also were ethnic immigrants that bought these buildings, lived in the buildings, have just been selling them to bigger property companies that have lots of buildings, and this is the only one we own. It's just a lot of work for very limited returns at this point. It's getting [unintelligible 00:23:52].

Brian Lehrer: Are you making an argument that the rent stabilization laws, especially when there are rent increases that are small, actually lead to more concentration of rent stabilized departments in the hands of big corporations?

Miriam: Yes, I would say that. I don't know if the cap should be lifted, maybe an owner should just have this only piece if they own multiple buildings, maybe then that makes more sense. If it's your only property, that you live near and you're managing, it is difficult. We're actually in the process of trying to-- my parents are trying to sell it because it's just a lot of work for them. They're retired at this point. It's not profitable enough to keep.

Most likely, the people that are interested in picking up the property, they're all owners of multiple buildings. It's defeating, even to me, because I don't want that to happen, but it's just happening with the way it goes.

Brian Lehrer: Miriam, thank you for sharing your story, and you please call us again, too. Liz, interesting perspective, and a story that has other implications, if that's a part of a pattern.

Elizabeth Kim: Right. If what Miriam is saying is correct, then that does suggest that that's why there are so few small landlords left, because over the decades, if there's not a lot of return in it, if they feel like they're always subject to what they consider limited increases in rents, then they decide to sell them, and then that leads to these real estate companies which hold these huge portfolios and are able to make it work better financially for themselves. That's been the story of rent-stabilized units and real estate in New York City.

Brian Lehrer: We've just got three minutes left. One more clip of the mayor, and honestly, today we could do a whole separate segment on this. I know you just dropped a Gothamist story on this, about how 40% of the cooling centers in the city are closed today because it's a holiday, Juneteenth. In addition to the schools and the libraries, which are often places where people with little or no air conditioning go to cool off, the city pools aren't open for the season yet.

It was Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi who responded to a question about that.

Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi: Pools are scheduled to be open on June 27th, and there's a lot that goes into filling the pools, making sure the filtration systems work, and making sure they're adequately staffed. We have to stick to that schedule to make sure that everything is in order when they are open. In the meantime, though, our beaches are open and our sprinklers are open in the playgrounds.

Brian Lehrer: We're going to have to limit this to one aspect of that multi-angle question in your article. It's already controversial that the mayor's budget cuts have closed the libraries on Sunday. Now that we're in the heat of summer, libraries are used in that respect, and it adds another layer.

Elizabeth Kim: Right. It goes to this larger issue of climate change ushering in warmer temperatures, and how should the city respond, how should it adjust its age-old plan of cooling centers and pools opening on June 27th. I want to note that it's a smaller city, but DC opened all of their 19 outdoor pools today, because of the heat wave. One question that comes to New Yorkers' minds is-- Of course, New York is a bigger city, we have something like 79 outdoor pools, but could New York City adapt in this way as well?

If not, why not? Should we consider doing so?

Brian Lehrer: They didn't give an explicit answer to that, it sounds like.

Elizabeth Kim: No. She mentioned filtration testing, but then there's the question of, if it starts getting hotter earlier, can't we just move that testing earlier as well? The staffing issue is there because there is a national lifeguard shortage. That's expected to ease up because the city recently reached a new contract with the lifeguard unions. That makes it easier for the city to hire lifeguards.

I think that going into the future, not just for this summer, but future summers, I think city officials are going to face more pressure about adapting these types of plans, especially with cooling centers. The City Comptroller, Brad Lander, made a very important point. You can't predict when a heat wave will-- whether it lands on a Sunday, when most libraries are currently closed, or a holiday. The city needs to plan for those contingencies.

Brian Lehrer: Our Elizabeth Kim, covering Mayor Adams. Talk to you next Wednesday.

Elizabeth Kim: Thanks, Brian.

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