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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now, we continue our series, 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks, as we're talking to every New York City Council Member this year, all 46 Democrats, all five Republicans, touching every neighborhood in this year when most of the council is new because of term limits and it's majority female for the first time ever. Today, we're happy to welcome one of those new and female members, Pierina Sanchez from District 14 in the Bronx, which covers Kingsbridge, Fordham, University Heights, Mount Eden, and Mount Hope.

For those of you who only drive by the Bronx, if you're going up the Deegan, this is the district that runs just to the right of the highway from around the Cross Bronx Expressway up until just before Van Cortlandt Park. Councilmember Sanchez grew up around there, went to PS 46, not far from Fordham University, but went to Harvard undergrad, Princeton for grad school. She was an advisor to Mayor de Blasio, where her bio says she advocated for progressive housing, economic development, and land-use policies and resources for NYCHA among other things. Councilmember Sanchez, thanks for joining our 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks series. Welcome to WNYC.

Pierina Sanchez: Good morning, Brian. Thank you so much for having me.

Brian Lehrer: The bit of your bio that I did there. Did I get that much right?

Pierina Sanchez: That's right. The only thing I would say is that if you are driving by the 14th District, you should stop in because we're amazing and we're the best.

Brian Lehrer: That's the right answer. What was it like growing up there in the Fordham area and going to PS 46, also, I believe, known as the Edgar Allan Poe School?

Pierina Sanchez: That's right. That's right. Poetry School. It was two things, Brian. One, it was incredibly happy, filled with family, filled with love, filled with District 14's music, food, there's a huge Dominican community, Puerto Rican, African-American. We are about 97%, 98% people of color. There was just a lot of vibrancy in the community. At the same time, we went through a lot.

My family comes from the Dominican Republic, very humble roots. We struggled with rent, we struggled with landlord harassment. The many issues that are still facing neighbors today, that's how I grew up. For me, constituents who walk into the office, that's my [unintelligible 00:02:34] that's my [unintelligible 00:02:35] because we've been through so much together. It's why I fight today.

Brian Lehrer: Who lives in District 14, demographically or any way that you would like to describe who you feel you were elected to represent?

Pierina Sanchez: A beautiful, incredible, resilient people who make lemonade every single day from lemons. We are 45% foreign-born. We are about 70% Latino, the majority of which are from the Dominican Republic, but then you have many Puerto Ricans, Colombians, Mexican. Then we have a growing West African population, as well as African-American and Caribbean Black like Jamaicans. It's a beautiful, beautiful community of strivers, is what I always say. If you close your eyes and you think about New York City during the pandemic, that was not District 14, we never stopped. We were always working. We are essential workers. We're a community of workers and strivers.

Brian Lehrer: As a measure of what's urgent for people in your district, what have your constituents contacted you about the most since you took office in January?

Pierina Sanchez: Housing, housing, and then some more housing and then food and security, but absolutely it's housing day in and day out. I can't afford my rent. The ERAP Program hasn't been responsive to me. We're behind. We're facing eviction. Our landlord is not providing heat and hot water. There's rodents. It's housing quality and housing concerns, big, big, big issues of affordability in our community.

Brian Lehrer: You told us off the air before the segment that your top priority is for real and deep affordable housing. How far are we from that in your district today in terms of who pays how much of their income for rent?

Pierina Sanchez: That's absolutely right, Brian. We are ways away. Before the pandemic, District 14, we are a low-income community. Our median income is $21,000 a year for a worker. Before the pandemic, we had a rate of 70% of our households, were one income shock away from crisis. Whether that's falling behind on their rent and then facing eviction or getting sick and not being able to work and similarly being economically destabilized. That figure looms large and it happened. COVID-19 happened. The Bronx has something like double the unemployment rate of the City of New York and the City of New York is lagging in the nation for a variety of reasons.

It's always that story, that the Bronx, and it's driven by communities like mine in the West Bronx, we just face such stark inequalities. We have a huge affordability gap and I always get-- I talk to neighbors and they're like, "You're crazy. Why would you do this? Why would you run for office?" I'm like, "Well, we've got to do something." Saying the affordable housing crisis in New York City is not worth tackling, and affordable housing is not worth working on, is like saying, "Why be a doctor? Why be a scientist? You're never going to solve disease." No, you still have to do it and you can save people in the process.

That's really what drives me in fighting for affordable housing. It turned out to be my career. I came fresh out of college, graduated from Harvard, which was a whole nother weird thing coming from the hood to go to Harvard and then to come back. I worked for the local council member, so full circle, and it was the thing that kept me the most busy then. I've been working on affordable housing policy, economic development, and really, I've been planning ever since.

Brian Lehrer: My guest, if you're just joining us, is Pierina Sanchez, City Council Member from District 14 in the Bronx, which covers Kingsbridge, Fordham, University Heights, Mount Eden, and Mount Hope, as we are in our 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks series. Let me get at what you think a real and deep affordable housing policy would look like compared to what we have now this way. The state just passed this big new budget, as you know. Governor Hochul was on the show yesterday. She touted some of the housing portions of the budget like this.

Governor Hochul: I have a strong commitment to achieving affordable housing for all. That is why I have literally $25 billion, unprecedented amount of money, on the table for a housing plan with 100,000 affordable homes. That does include 100,000 units of supportive housing, much of which will go for people with substance abuse problems, mental health challenges, people who have been recently incarcerated. I really want to make sure those who are back in our community have a chance to live a full life, get a job, and have a home.

Brian Lehrer: Governor Hochul, here yesterday. Councilmember, how far does that go to meet what you would like to see?

Pierina Sanchez: First and foremost, that is fantastic. $25 billion coming in from the state is a record amount coming in to us. We have to be in close coordination with them. You know what, Brian, we also spend $17 billion in tax expenditure every year on a program called 421-a, a tax expenditure that we give tax breaks to developers to build new housing in the City of New York. It's supposed to be affordable housing, but almost 60% of that is out of reach for most New Yorkers. It's built at 130% of AMI, which if you're a normal person and don't speak in terms of AMI, is not affordable to the vast majority of New Yorkers and is affordable to no one in district 14.

At the same time, as you know, it's fantastic that the Governor is putting more resources into affordable housing, supportive housing, which is sorely needed. We have a major gap. We also have to calibrate our tax incentives to make sure that we're getting what we need. We have an opportunity to do that because 421-a as a program expires on June 15 of this year. That's certainly going to be a very big conversation because the state is putting in $25 billion, but every single year, every single year, we spend $17 billion in tax expenditures. We're not actually getting the affordability that we need.

When we talk about solving and dealing with the affordable housing crisis, we're in a capitalist society. Capitalism in our society is going to deliver for certain income levels and it is not ever going to deliver for the lowest incomes. When we talk about how we use the resources that we have, our tax expenditures, our subsidies, the money that comes down from the Federal Government in terms of now federal stimulus, but also LIHTC, which has been for funding affordable housing throughout the country since 1986 tax reform.

We have to be really prudent about how we use those dollars. I call it dating with strings attached. If you want subsidies from the state or from the city or from the Federal Government, there should be real strings attached that are going to get us as a society, as a city, the things that we need in the City of New York.

Brian Lehrer: On 421-a, which expires in its current form in June, as you say, if the current tax break system subsidizes developers to build "affordable housing" that isn't affordable enough to enough new Yorkers, there's a debate among activists, as I'm sure you know, should 421-a just be scrapped or should it be revised so that in order to qualify for those tax breaks, the developers have to build more deeply affordable housing for more people? Which side of that are you on?

Pierina Sanchez: You're going to get me in trouble.

[laughter]

Pierina Sanchez: Well, look, fundamentally, we need a program like 421-a that does the right thing. What I hear activists saying, what I hear some of my colleagues saying in elected office is, there's a lot of problems with taxation in New York City with our property tax system and with the way that we have inequities throughout it. We treat homeowners differently than renters, we treat co-op owners differently than commercial properties, in ways that are inequitable. I hear and I respect and I actually think it's something that we should do, is address the bigger picture of property tax reform.

I do think that on the narrow question of a tax incentive program that builds the bulk of housing in the City of New York, we have to get that right. For me, the priority is let's get it right, let's target those deep affordability levels that the market is not going to deliver on and let's have those conversations in the context of all of the different tools that we have at our disposal. I do think that 421-a or 485-w or some version of a tax expenditure that helps us to build deeply affordable housing is important in the toolkit for new construction in New York City.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Now you're in trouble with somebody, but probably not a lot of people. Listeners, we're obviously going to follow-- this is such a big thing for New York City and New York state. We're going to follow this as the June deadline approaches for the state legislature to change or just renew or scrap altogether that 421-a law that's supposed to create a lot of new affordable housing.

Councilmember, let me shift to the topic of crime. In the previous segment, we talked about how besides the subway shooting, there were eight other shootings in the city in the 24 hours that followed the subway shooting, including three people killed in separate incidents in the Bronx, all in their early 20s. Were any of those in your district, do you know?

Pierina Sanchez: No, but we did have a fatal shooting just last week of Doña Juana Perdomo who passed away after a stray bullet from an unrelated altercation hit her last week. We're very much feeling it and we're all [unintelligible 00:13:12] in District 14, I think unfortunately in some ways, and we're constantly getting alerts, there's a lot of tension and fear in our community.

Brian Lehrer: How supportive are you, how supportive do you think your constituents in your Bronx District are of Mayor Adams anti-gun violence policies, including the ones that are breaking out as the most controversial, what he wanted with bail reform and the anti-crime neighborhoods safety teams as he calls them? How supportive are you? How torn between fear of civilian crime and fear of over-policing are your constituents?

Pierina Sanchez: No, I appreciate this conversation and it's one that we're having every single day in the community. I think for me, the most important thing is just to not lose sight of where we are. In historical context, what the data and the research and just history tells us, which is, you have less crime, you have fewer gun crimes in all of this when the economy is better. Let's keep that in the back pocket. We have to do everything that we can to get our city back on track from an economic standpoint, reducing inequality in all of this. I will say very honestly, that my community, the folks that walk into my office, a lot of older women, Latinas, African-American, and things like that.

They're like, "Pierina, we're scared. Can you get us more police presence? Can you get us more folks? I want one in my corner." For me, it's this constant tug of war between knowing that what we really need to do is we need to be addressing the economy. We need to get guns off our streets. We know that they're not coming from New York City, they're coming from elsewhere. Coordination with state and federal agencies on getting guns off our streets is going to be really critical.

Then on the other hand, we know, and this is something that I really focused on in graduate school, was looking at the crime drop in America from the '90s onward and looking at programs like cure violence and ceasefire and these programs and interventions that try nouvelle ways to reduce violence. We know two things. We know one, that they really work, when you go after those folks that are the most violent and the most likely to be perpetrating violence at the community level. You do that with intelligence and tactics and all of that. It's really meaningful to go after them with police and it's really meaningful to go after them.

I think almost even more so, because it's preventative with cure violence organizations and community organizations. Then on the other hand, we know that just boots on the ground, just visibility of police has not proven to do much at all. To the extent that NST, the neighborhood safety teams, are going to be tactical, targeted, and thinking very strategically about who it is that they're looking at and going after, I think it could help. Although I have a lot of nervousness because the history of these kinds of teams before they used to not be uniformed is a lot of civil rights violations and abuses.

That's completely concerning to me, but where my community is, then thinking about that if you're tactical you can really reduce violence at the community level, okay. Then let's couple that with cure violence organizations, with ceasefire, with other interventions that are going to stop the violence before it even starts.

Brian Lehrer: A few minutes left with Councilmember Sanchez from the Bronx in our 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks series. Just one follow-up on that. Let me play you a clip of Mayor Adams on those Tuesday night shootings. He's on New York 1 here and being provocative.

Mayor Adams: Where are all those who stated Black Lives Matter? Then go do an analysis of who was killed or shot last night. I was up all night speaking to my commanders in the Bronx, in Brooklyn, the victims were Black. Many of the shooters were Black.

Brian Lehrer: What do you think as a representative of a largely Black and Latino District when you hear the mayor say that, when statistically he's correct?

Pierina Sanchez: He's right, he's right. Again, for me, it's going back to those drivers. I'm in an odd way comforted looking at just a few years ago, 2018. 2018 was one of the least violent years in the record of New York City since we started recording crime statistics and crime data. We look at what was going on at the policy level, we look at what's going on on the economic level and we see a couple of things. The economy was doing well, inequality indices were trending in the positive direction, inequality was going down.

Then on the policy level, in terms of public safety, arrests were down. Stop and frisk is gone. We have fewer arrests, we have fewer convictions, we have all of these things. Everything was going in the same direction at the same time in the way that works. That to me is the perfect example. What I always say to my neighbors about how we have to keep our eyes on the prize. We have to keep in mind the big picture, "Yes, it's us. We're suffering. I'm suffering." The shooting of Doña Juana, who, by the way, is my mother's age and could have easily been my mom because right by the train station was two blocks away from where I live. My staff member was walking by and heard the shots.

There's nobody that can come to District 14 or come to me and be like, "You don't know what--" No, I am living this every single day. I live next to one of the most dangerous intersections in high crime areas in my community on purpose. That's where my office is, but the thing here is that I don't blame that kid for being there entirely. That kid is growing up in a community, is growing up in a society, is growing up in a country that is completely oppressing us and not letting us have opportunities.

In high school I had a high school sweetheart that went off to Rutgers, when I was getting ready to go to Harvard. There's no difference between us. I'm not better than anyone. The only difference is opportunity. The only difference is what we're doing at the macro level to provide opportunities. I know, in my heart of hearts and through conversations with the mayor, I know he believes that, I know he knows that, and I know that we are aligned on this.

I always go back to the medical analogies, you're in a hospital, and you have a patient that is bleeding out. Literally, they have a gunshot wound and they're bleeding out. There's someone else who has a slow-burning cancer, which one does the doctor address? You have to address both. Yes, right now, today, you have to address that gunshot wound because you don't want to lose that individual.

Now, that is the violence that is going on in our communities now. That is what the mayor is responding to. We both well know, and many of us in the city know that there's also a cancer, and that cancer is a thing that we have to address. That's the inequality, that is the lack of opportunity, and that is the eyes on the prize for me for what we really have to focus on. I'm not going to take away from our focus on public safety and what can we do right now to get these guns off the streets right now and reduce these numbers right now, but I know ultimately, and I know that so many New Yorkers do, that this is a much bigger problem. We can't let this false dichotomy divide us because we have to address what is at the root.

Brian Lehrer: A powerful way to end our latest 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks segment with Pierina Ana Sanchez, the new council member from District 14 in the Bronx. Councilmember, thank you so much. We look forward to having you on through your four-year term. Thanks a lot.

Pierina Sanchez: Thank you so much, Brian. Take care.

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