[music]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now we continue our series, 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks. This is a year of tremendous change in New York City Council with so many old members having left because of term limits, and the council having a she-her-hers majority for the first time ever. We are going district by district this year, 1 through 51 to meet all the current council members over the 52 weeks of 2022 and talk about their neighborhoods and the city as a whole. This is week 3, so we're up to District 3 where the former Council Speaker, Corey Johnson, was term-limited out and has now been succeeded by his own former Chief of Staff, Erik Bottcher.

District 3 is on the West Side of Manhattan from Greenwich Village, up to Columbus Circle. Erik Bottcher's bio on his council bio page starts with him growing up in a small Adirondacks town as the only gay kid he knew. He was the LGBTQ state liaison for Governor Cuomo's office at the time marriage equality passed in New York State. Fast-forwarding to the present, two of Bottcher's first policy initiatives in these first two weeks in office are around sanitation and mental health. We'll talk about both. With that, we welcome freshman City Council Member Erik Bottcher. Councilman, thanks for joining the 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks series. Welcome to WNYC.

Erik Bottcher: Thank you so much for having me, Brian. As a long-term listener, this is very exciting for me.

Brian Lehrer: Can we start with some of your bio? I have to ask you as someone who has gone to the Adirondacks a million times and loves the Adirondacks, which town in the Adirondacks did you grow up in?

Erik Bottcher: I grew up in Wilmington, New York, which is just outside of Lake Placid, New York. Population 1,300. Best known as the home of Whiteface Mountain, the ski center. My mom and dad run a fly-fishing motel on the Ausable River called The Hungry Trout.

Brian Lehrer: What was it like being the only gay kid you knew there at The Hungry Trout and around it?

Erik Bottcher: It was a great childhood until I reached adolescence. Like many LGBTQ people, growing up in a rural area, especially back in the early '90s, it was not easy. I really saw no real future for myself and had a real hard time when I was 15 years old. I talk openly about this because it's part of the reason why I'm in public service today and it ties into so much of the work that we're doing now. When I was 15 years old, I spent a month in a mental health hospital following a series of suicide attempts, because I at that point had decided that I didn't want to live anymore.

That treatment really saved my life. I went to a place called Four Winds Hospital in Saratoga, New York. I was there with other young people from across the state who were there. They were there for everything from substance use disorder to sexual abuse to gang involvement. That was a pretty formative experience for me, needless to say, and the beginning of my political awakening.

Brian Lehrer: We'll certainly get into your mental health initiatives that you're already putting forward in your first weeks in council. Let me ask you one other thing about the Adirondacks, and this is more in a national politics contest context. Why do you think the Adirondacks is as right-wing as it apparently is now? One of the biggest Trump supporters in Congress, Elise Stefanik, is elected from there, though they also have some famous environmentalists like Bill McKibben. Why are the Adirondacks right here in New York State so Trumpy in your opinion?

Erik Bottcher: It's interesting. The Adirondacks is a really interesting place. It's actually not as right-wing as one would think. Believe it or not, I believe that Joe Biden won Wilmington by a couple of votes. I could be wrong, but the Adirondackers have a real independent streak. It does go red. My own parents are Republicans. Hi, mom and dad, who are listening. It's not a religious or--

Brian Lehrer: Hi, mom too. Hi, mom and dad. Go ahead. You gave me license to do that. Go ahead.

Erik Bottcher: It's not motivated by evangelical means or anything like that. I think rural America is very different than places like New York City.

Brian Lehrer: Now you represent a district that is famous for some of its gay communities like in Chelsea and the West Village. Two of the last three speakers of the Council were LGBTQ council members from that district, Corey Johnson and Christine Quinn. How do you see the place of your district in the life of New York or even in the life of the nation and the world?

Erik Bottcher: This is one of the reasons why me and so many other LGBTQ people and straight people come to New York and have come to New York for generation over generation. People who felt like outcasts where they were. New York City Council District 3 is the home of the Stonewall and birthplace of the modern LGBTQ rights movement, a place that I heard about from a young age home of Broadway and queer culture. Things that drew me here, and things that allowed me to find a home here when I moved here 20 years ago. Council District 3, we're the cradle of that. I'm very proud to be the fourth consecutive openly gay person to represent this district after Tom Duane, Christine Quinn, and Corey Johnson.

Brian Lehrer: Having said that, some of the other demographics of the district as reported by the new site City & State are that it's 69% white according to census data, and 14% from the Hispanic origin is the next largest group. About 76% of households are non-family, City & State, and almost 80% of housing in the area is renter-occupied. I haven't seen income data, but I imagine it's one of the wealthiest districts in the city. I read that you were among the most successful fundraisers of any council candidate last year, but certainly with pockets of poverty too in your district. How do you represent all the people in a district like that?

Erik Bottcher: That was a great description of Council District 3. In recent decades, it has become much, much wealthier and much wider, which is a reflection of, in my view, big problems we had with our rent laws. We lost tens of thousands of units of rent-stabilized and rent-controlled apartments. When the laws were changed in the '90s to allow for the deregulation of those apartments, we just hemorrhaged those year over year. It's an interesting story. I lived down on Jones Street in the village before I moved to Chelsea, and there's a butcher called Florence Butcher, which has been there for 75 years.

On the wall, they've got photos of Jones Street over the years and they've got a photo of Jones Street filled with people. A street festival with a big banner that says Jones Street Block Association. You've got people hanging out windows and people on stoops and kids playing in the street. John Street today is still a wonderful place with many wonderful people, but you don't see that many people. You've got a lot more NYU students and transient people who are coming for one year or two years. That's in large part because of the loss of all that affordable housing.

Luckily, the state legislature tightened up the laws a couple of years ago and I fought hard to help make that happen. That really in large part stopped the hemorrhaging of rent-stabilized apartments. We have seen a lot of gentrification. We do have a lot of affordable housing. Still, we've got some incredible affordable housing developments like Penn South and Chelsea, a huge limited-equity co-op that's really helping to maintain the middle-class core in Chelsea. Up in Hell's Kitchen, we have Manhattan Plaza, which is an affordable development with primarily artists, which is so important up there, the home of Broadway.

We also have two public housing developments in Chelsea, NYCHA Fulton houses and NYCHA Elliot Chelsea houses, who I got to tell you, have been very poorly served by the city over the years. This is one of the things I ran on, is addressing the inequities in our district because you have two public housing developments where people are living in horrid conditions, Brian, across the street from Google, across the street from Hudson Yards. That's not okay with me. That's one of the reasons why I ran for city council.

Brian Lehrer: My guest is City Council Member Erik Bottcher from District 3 on the West Side of Manhattan, from the village up to Columbus Circle. Month, month, week 3 in our series, 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks in which we're interviewing all 51 members of the New York City Council this year. I see you've already launched at least two policy initiatives. I mentioned them before, we'll dive into each now a little bit. One that you call "Clean District 3, a new vision for sanitation," and another that you call "Confronting The Shadow Pandemic: Mental Illness in New York."

Listeners, for this segment, I'd love to take calls for Council Member Erik Bottcher on these two topics, his first two policy initiatives, sanitation and mental health. Listeners, you don't have to be from District 3, what do you want from city policy on either of these things? Sanitation or mental health policy? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Or what other questions do you have for the new council member who's focusing on them? 212-433-9692 or tweet, especially on city sanitation policy and city mental health policy, tweet @BrianLehrer.

Councilman, "Confronting The Shadow Pandemic: Mental Illness in New York," you're open as you were before about having experienced mental health issues yourself. Where do you see the city failing at this and what's in your initiative?

Erik Bottcher: The City, State and Federal Governments have been failing on this issue for a long time. Last Saturday, we saw the most extreme example of failure on this issue with the murder in the Times Square station. I do want to say though, that it's very important that we emphasize that the vast majority of people with mental health issues are not violent and did not commit crimes. That having been said, what we're really seeing now is the manifestation of decades of failed policy. What happened decades ago is we began deinstitutionalizing.

We had these terrible State psychiatric facilities that were really horrible places, and we began deinstitutionalizing with the goal of moving people towards community-based outpatient service. That is a good goal and a noble goal. Unfortunately, although many good programs were established, we primarily moved people from those institutions into the criminal justice system, to the point where a huge number of people in jail and prison suffer from mental illness. A large percentage of the people at Rikers Island. The biggest provider of mental health services in the United States are the prisons and jails.

We should all be ashamed by that. Now we are decarcerating, and that's a good thing, but what is the plan? What is the plan now? That's what I've really tried to call attention to. It's not being talked about enough. I've put forward some ideas, but we can't let people die on the street with untreated mental illness. We're so much better than that as a people.

Brian Lehrer: Mayor de Blasio launched a mental health initiative that people have heard of, if they've used it or not, called Thrive, headed up by his wife, Chirlane McCray. It's gotten a lot of criticism from opponents of the former mayor. Do you think Thrive succeeded in any way or lay the groundwork that you can build on?

Erik Bottcher: I want to commend former First Lady Chirlane McCray for highlighting this issue, for making it a topic of discussion and for making it her main priority. I don't think that the initiative was a success. I think that it did some good things, but it didn't hone in on the people who are suffering the most. It really didn't address some of the systemic flaws in the system. One of the main flaws that I'm calling attention to is the fact that we've closed so many inpatient psychiatric beds and inpatient psychiatric services, and we're continuing to do that.

The New York State Nurses Association, the union that represents nurses, has been beating the drum on this for a long time. Why are we closing inpatient psychiatric services at a time when we need them more than ever? That's why I've called for a halt to that and a reversal to that.

Brian Lehrer: By the way, we mentioned the breaking news at the top of the show this morning, that de Blasio has just announced this morning that he will not run in the Democratic primary for governor. Listeners, if it's the first time you're hearing that, there it is, Bill de Blasio not running for governor after all. Any reaction to that or are you supporting anyone yet?

Erik Bottcher: I have endorsed Kathy Hochul for governor. I've known her for a long time and I think she's been a real breath of fresh air for our state. Imagine the mayor and the governor actually talking to each other. [chuckles] It's silly that that's where we were. I think it's a breath of fresh air and I really look forward to partnering with her and our mayor.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a mental health question from Van in Brooklyn. Van, you're on WNYC with City Council Member Erik Bottcher. Hi, Van.

Van: Hi, thank you so much for taking my call. I just wanted to mention in terms of mental health, I'm looking forward for more affordable options for those individuals that either have Medicaid or are uninsured. That's something I think that's a crucial thing that the city and the state just in general should focus on.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. Councilman?

Erik Bottcher: Thank you for bringing that up. Our insurance system writ large is terrible on the issue of mental health. There's those uninsured, those with Medicaid and Medicare, even if you have insurance-- Brian, do you know that my government insurance won't cover the cost of a therapist? I believe it covers the first $50, I haven't been able to get therapy. For many people including me, depression is a lifelong condition. I take antidepressants every day. Therapy is one of the things that prevent serious mental illness from developing.

Our federal partners need to turn around the payment structure for mental health services. It's something that Obamacare attempted to do, hasn't succeeded at doing. We have to address it. The people who you see on the street, who are in our subways, who are suffering so terribly, they are human beings like you and I. They were kids with hopes and dreams and they're people with hopes and dreams. That was preventable. These are preventable situations if they have access to therapy, medication, and counseling, but it costs money and it's not happening.

Brian Lehrer: The health insurance that you said is so bad that you have when it comes to therapy, is that the insurance that you get as a City Council Member? Is that the insurance that all the city workers get? Is it that bad on psychotherapy?

Erik Bottcher: Brian, that is the insurance as a City Council Member, correct.

Brian Lehrer: Let's go on to your sanitation agenda. I'm going to let Nicole in Bushwick launch this thread. Nicole, you're on WNYC, I see you run a cleanup group in your neighborhood?

Nicole: Hi, yes, thank you. I do, I run the Clean Bushwick Initiative in Bushwick. We did a cleanup yesterday for Martin Luther King Day. It's something I've been doing for six years. The litter issue is not just an aesthetic issue, this is a mental health issue, this is a physical health issue, it's an environmental issue. We're creating too much garbage and we're really not disposing of it properly. We need to pass more legislation around how we can reduce garbage corporations to take some accountability. Skip the Stuff bill didn't pass through before de Blasio went out.

Things like that need to change. Pushing forward companies like Cup Zero, DeliverZero. We need to make less trash and we need to find a better way to get rid of it. Putting bags on the street, it's all over and it's connected to the flooding issue also. I'm wondering what ideas you might have for groups like mine, people who really want this issue to be addressed. I dealt with some third graders recently and that was the number one community issue that was upsetting to them, was the litter.

Brian Lehrer: Nicole, thank you. Councilman?

Erik Bottcher: Nicole, thank you so much for that call. You've just said so much of what I was planning to say today. We've also in our neighborhood, in our council district, we have some great community cleanup groups. No one is more fed up with the sanitation crisis than our cleanup groups. People have been going out since the pandemic. I went out every Sunday for a very long time with volunteers cleaning up garbage, another issue that we're just failing so badly at, and people have had it. I've had it. As a New Yorker, I can't ever remember the city being this filthy in my 20 years in New York. It is more than an aesthetic issue.

People are in decision-making mode right now, "Should we stay in New York or should we leave?" New York's never been the easiest place to live. We put up with a lot to live here, but there is a limit and overflowing corner baskets, trash on the sidewalk, mountains of trash on the sidewalk on collection day. I put out a plan when I was running for city council and I've been making a lot of noise about this because people are fed up with the trash situation, but they're also fed up that they're not hearing their leaders talk about it, so I've been talking about it. We had a force change on it.

My plan is some short-term things, simple stuff. We have to restore corner basket pickup to pre-pandemic levels. Do you know that there were 736 truck routes in Manhattan for corner baskets? We're still at 440, but we have to get back to where we were with the corner baskets pickups before the pandemic.

Brian Lehrer: Is that funding or is that [unintelligible 00:22:47] sanitation workers?

Erik Bottcher: It's funding. We have to restore that funding. We got to go back to two day a week street sweeping, something called Alternate Side Parking reform, cut it down to one day a week. That's litter in the gutter that gets washed into the drains, blocks the drains, part of the reason why we see such terrible flooding. We need to bring back curbside composting service. The DSNY, very popular program that hasn't yet been restored in our district. We have to bring that back because if you take the compost, the organic waste out of trash, that is really what feeds the rats on the street. Let's get the compostable material out of the trash.

By the way, I just want to say that last week I had a really great meeting with Sanitation Commissioner Grayson and his team. They are fantastic, and they share our sense of urgency on this issue. I look forward to working with him on these short-term wins, but also the long-term reforms. We have to change the way we put out trash on collection day. Mountains of trash on the sidewalk. Sometimes you got to walk in the street to get around the trash. We should be containerizing it or piloting ways to put it in the roadbed on trash collection day. People go to other cities and they come back to New York and they're like, "Wow, that was a clean city. New York is not. They do it so much better there."

Let's take the best practices from around the world and pilot them here, make them work for New York City. Something that I want to work with our new Mayor on, our new sanitation commissioner on, because the status quo is not acceptable. People have had it, and we can't let it continue.

Brian Lehrer: Few more minutes in this week's edition of 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks, in which we're interviewing every member of the new New York City Council this year, right now with a New City Council Member from District 3 here on week 3, Erik Bottcher, who might have just become the only council member, the only elected official ever to call for more alternate side of the street parking, I'm kidding. On these best practices that you're proposing, some of the things, increased trash pickups, strike teams that respond to 311 calls in real-time, containers on the street, can require more funding for sanitation as you just said, and yet Mayor Adams has called for a 3% cut for nearly all city agencies including sanitation. Can the city improve the trust situation while slashing the budget? Or are you calling for a carve-out for sanitation or anything like that?

Erik Bottcher: This is the kind of thing that gets New Yorkers so frustrated. Under de Blasio, the city budget increased 25% to over $100 billion-

Brian Lehrer: Each year.

Erik Bottcher: -yet people's trashes aren't getting picked up. What's that about? I think that people want their government to get priorities straight. Yes, they want government to address all the major issues of our time, but they want the trash to get picked up. They want to walk down the street and be safe. They want to be in our subways and be safe. They want schools that educate, they want public transportation that runs on time. I think that it's fair to expect government to deliver those things while spending $100 billion, which is bigger than most states and many countries around the world.

Brian Lehrer: Have you spoken to Mayor Adams about this?

Erik Bottcher: I'm actually really excited to work with Mayor Adams. I'm just really getting to know him and his team, and I know that this is the kind of thing that he's been talking about. He is, like me, not satisfied with the way things are. I'm excited to work with him and his team and my colleagues in the City Council and Borough presidents and others to address these issues. I think people are really sensing the beginning of a new era of politics in New York City, a new burst of energy, and we have to ensure that it is a new era and that we're just not continuing to go along, get along the way things have been.

Brian Lehrer: Some tweets coming in on the sanitation question, one listener writes, "Please talk about 'Composting: The Next Frontier.'" You did that. Someone else writes, "The trash situation is hugely exacerbated by Amazon and all the deliveries people get now." Someone else writes, "Make a pickup of used furniture and clothes, sad seeing good furniture being thrown out in garbage to fill up dumps." Sir, you can respond to any of those if you want, but I also want to ask, do you support or oppose making outdoor dining permanent? In your district, I'm sure you have a ton of restaurants surviving because of it and a ton of residents of buildings above those restaurants feeling oppressed by it, so where are you on that?

Erik Bottcher: I like outdoor dining and do favor a permanent program. I think that we need to make changes to it. By the way, Brian, when I go around, I'm always asking people what they think. "What do you think about this? What do you think about that?" I'd say about eight out of 10 people I talk to in the community, they like outdoor dining, but they want to see it done differently. You've got some of these outdoor setups are like indoor dining in the street with air conditioning and that's not really outdoor dining. I think it should be less obtrusive.

You've got some, especially down the village where you have a huge concentration of it, like MacDougal and Thompson Street, it's basically one long shed, the whole street. That's not the kind of outdoor dining that I envision. I think more of a European style, café tables, people really like that, and they don't want to see that go away. It should end at a relatively early hour. We should charge for it and that money should stay in the community and be used in the community. The community should decide how all that money should be spent to help maybe with augmented sanitation services and youth programming.

There's a lot of potential here, and from what I understand, this is going to be coming to the council this year. I really want to involve the community in coming up with a program that works.

Brian Lehrer: We have just a few minutes left in this segment, let's touch on a few final things. One, we have a feature on this, Every City Council Member series called Show and Tell as you know, in which each member can describe a person, place, or thing in your district of your choice. For your District 3 on the West Side of Manhattan from the village up to Columbus Circle, what have you brought us for Show and Tell?

Erik Bottcher: Brian, I have brought you a bar named Julius. It's on West 10th Street and Waverly Place in the village. It's one of the oldest gay bars in New York City. I think most of your listeners probably know about the Stonewall Inn, and the Stonewall Rebellion, which set off the modern-day LGBT civil rights movement. Folks might not know that three years before that, there was an act of civil disobedience at the Julius Bar, where three gentlemen; Dick Leitsch, Craig Rodwell, and Randy Wicker, who's still with us, they went into the bar, because there was a rule in place; the State Liquor Authority had a rule that an establishment that served homosexuals, as they called us, at that time, could not serve liquor.

These three gentlemen, they called up the press, they brought press and photographers with them, went in and said, "We are homosexuals, and we would like a drink." The bartender said, "I can't do it." There's a great photo that's hanging over the bar. By the way, the bar looks exactly the way it did then. Folks should go check it out. There's a great photo where the bartender has his hand on the glass.

What happened is, they then worked with the-- they were members of the Mattachine Society, one of the earliest LGBTQ rights organizations. They worked with the ACLU and pursued legal action against the State Liquor Authority. The city's Human Rights Commission got involved and actually stated that they had the right to be served, so that rule got overturned, and that was a precursor to Stonewall. That was one of the things that really changed the way that our community felt, and at a certain point, we weren't going to take it anymore. That's what helped change history.

Brian Lehrer: A piece of history from District 3, Erik Bottcher's Show and Tell. All right, short lightning round to finish up. You ready? Really short answers, really lightning round pace. Some of these policies. Some of these are "let the public know who you are better" questions. One, what's the most common reason that constituents contact your office?

Erik Bottcher: Sanitation, quality of life issues in the neighborhood, and for the residents of NYCHA loss of heat, loss of running water, rats, leaks. Most common.

Brian Lehrer: What's one area of policy where you've seen actual progress during your lifetime in the city?

Erik Bottcher: I think the way our streetscapes have changed and the introduction of more pedestrian-friendly street features with bike lanes and pedestrian islands. Many corridors in our district, like 9th Avenue, 8th Avenue, used to be basically four-lane highways, are now much much better. We have to do 10th Avenue and 11th Avenue. That's one of my main priorities.

Brian Lehrer: Did you have any political heroes growing up who were top of mind?

Erik Bottcher: Barack Obama was a big hero of mine. Got to meet him at one point, which is one of the highlights of my life.

Brian Lehrer: What's one food from your family tradition or Adirondacks Fair that our downstaters could learn from, that people might like to try?

Erik Bottcher: [laughs] My parents' restaurant was called The Hungry Trout. As you might imagine, the specialty was trout, and they've got all different kinds of trout; pan-fried trout, baked trout. If you haven't had trout recently, you should check it out. If you're in the Adirondacks, you should stop by The Hungry Trout.

Brian Lehrer: Last one, what's one recent book or movie or TV show you'd recommend to the listeners to read or see?

Erik Bottcher: When I had COVID in October, I had to stay home for 10 days, which I hadn't done in a long time. My colleague Lincoln Restler in Brooklyn recommended The Wire, so I started watching The Wire on HBO and I'm on season four and it is addictive. I am warning folks. It is a good show.

Brian Lehrer: It holds up, doesn't it?

Erik Bottcher: It does. It sure does.

Brian Lehrer: Erik Bottcher, the New City Council Member from District 3 on the West Side of Manhattan, from Greenwich Village up to Columbus Circle, guest 3 on week 3 in our series 51 Council Members and 52 Weeks. Next week, it's on to District 4. Council Bottcher, congratulations on your election one more time. We look forward to having you on, on other occasions. Thanks so much for coming on in this series today.

Erik Bottcher: Thank you so much, Brian. Take care.

Copyright © 2022 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.