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Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, and usually on Fridays we have a weekly Ask the Mayor segment with Mayor Bill de Blasio. The mayor is unable to join us this week because he's attending the September 11th Victim's Families' Commemoration in Lower Manhattan. We certainly understand that priority but never fear. We have the official next in line in the chain of succession in New York City, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams who was also observing the ceremonies but doesn't have the same exact schedule as the mayor and is able to join us. Public Advocate, it's always good to have you on, welcome back to WNYC.

Jumaane Williams: Always a pleasure Brian, thanks for having me.

Brian: Listeners we can take your cause for Public Advocate Jumaane Williams on anything relevant to him as the people's advocate to other city agencies 646-435-7280, 646-435- 7280. Public Advocate, what have you been doing this morning so far and how different does it all feel than any other September 11th commemoration and anniversary in this year of the pandemic and movement for social justice?

Jumaane: I think like most of America, I'll be taking some time out to remember exactly where you were when you first started figuring out what happened, remembering the feelings, thinking about people who lost their lives. I am coming from the ceremony at 9/11 where the mayor is headed to another one now in central Brooklyn. I also try to remember after that horror, how people came together. We had a good few months there, close to a year, where people were really just focused on what it meant to be here and what it meant to be united and really focused on what unites us more than what divides us.

That would be an awesome place to try to get back to, even if it wasn't just a memory of the people we've lost and actually are still using, and you juxtapose that to where we are now as a country. It's a lot different.

Brian: It's a lot different. What are some of those things that unite us that you might've been reflecting on today? Maybe it's good to say some of them out loud in our polarized country.

Jumaane: I found, just as a public servant, that every community wants the same thing. Everybody wants to be able to live in a safe, affordable home, and in a neighborhood that they feel comfortable with. They want to put some good food on the table and they want their children to be able to do better than they are. Everybody wants that. As a public servant, my job is to try to figure out what are the impediments that are preventing different communities from having that done.

I think there was a lot more clarity on that kind of stuff right after, and there was a lot more clarity in even people as Americans trying to get that same thing. That has obviously now, a lot more cloudy and there's less wanting to remove some of those impediments in a fair, just, and equitable way and we have to get back to that.

Brian: To that point, Public Advocate, I've been thinking about how these big shocks to our city when they come all have disparate impact. 9/11, in addition, first and foremost, to the people who were murdered by the attacks and those made sick from having to work in rescue and recovery and clean up, them first and foremost,, but after that, the long-term impact on Muslim Americans for whom life has been included being seen as suspect ever since. Not that they weren't before, but much more so, innocent people, and the financial crisis shock of 2008 Black and brown homeowners foreclosed on at disproportionate rates because the banks had sold them more balloon mortgages and things like that.

Now the pandemic, again, working class people disproportionately Black and brown for all the reasons we know these last few months. I'm just curious if you've also been thinking about the pattern of disparities in the severity of the outcomes, and any lessons we might hope to actually learn this time, about how to minimize those for whatever future shocks may lie ahead because there'll always be things.

Jumaane: Yes, I know. I think it's interesting that you put it in that way, or linking it to all these horrible thing, human catastrophe, and whom they affect. They tend to affect everyone, but as you mentioned, certain communities get hit the hardest. After 9/11 I was a housing director in a place called Flatbush Development Corporation, doing organizing around housing markets. It's now commonly called Little Pakistan, one of the the areas that I was in, and it was just terrible to see what happened to that community. People just started disappearing literally in the middle of the night, and it seemed very ghostly.

That was probably the worst in us that made that community feel that way and even look that way, but in the best of who we are, our community doubled down on their belief in the country and their belief the city, and now that community is thriving. To your point, it was disparate impact, and the financial crisis, and the pandemic, all disparate impact. I was going to say, what we need to do is really begin to just be honest that this stuff is not happening by accident. That there's a systemic and structural issue here, and the way we can do that is relieved everyone's-- I think some of the hardest parts to admit is that you no one, me or you, Brian, no matter our color, designed this structural inequity.

You can acknowledge it without saying, "I did this," or, "I am such and such," or, "I'm a bigot or racist." You don't necessarily have to be to help further that system. What we all have to do is say none of us are responsible for the structural inequities that we received but all of us are responsible for what part we played in removing those inequities and putting a different structure forward. Until we are able to do that, we're going to keep seeing the cycles of disparate impact.

Brian: I was even thinking as we were taking live some of the reading of the names just before you came on, I don't know if you were on the phone yet to be hearing that. You know they read the names in alphabetical order. Just before we went to a break and then you came on, there was this whole string of people named Lopez. I was thinking, it's not the image that people have of who died on 9/11. Certainly there are people who work in finance and the World Trade Center, were probably the most explicit targets of the attack. A lot of them were killed. We know about the 343 firefighters, the dozens of police officers who rushed to the danger while other people were being evacuated away from it and they got killed.

We don't think as much about people who were working in the Windows on the World restaurant, or maybe some of those people named Lopez were the stockbrokers, but it's not the stereotypic image that people have of stockbrokers. I just thought that was interesting that there was this string of Lopez names that got read in the reading of the names of the dead from 9/11. I thought it was different than a lot of people might have in their conjured image of who the victims were.

Jumaane: I wasn't as impacted in people close to me as many folks may have lost a loved one, but Linda Rivera was a classmate of mine. I remember very vividly, she brought so much to any space that she was in, she lost her life at the tower. Then even people who didn't lose their lives but still deal with the trauma. My staff member, who you may remember actually, she was working with you in WNYC Leticia Theodore-Green, Tish, who had to evacuate with all of you, and was in the powder window when it crumbled and she actually never shared it until today. I know there's a lot of people who are impacted that people may not realize as you mentioned, and are still dealing with that trauma now.

You said something else, that I want to make sure I'm grieving, as we are trying to deal with public safety and policing, and it's always important to remember on a day like this, and frankly everyday. If something were to happen right now, there are people who are going to run to the danger. There are people whose jobs it is to run to the danger while we run away. That shouldn't be something that's lost even if we have the important discussion and needed discussion that we're all having now.

Brian: Indeed. How do you hold those conflicting thoughts about our people in law enforcement in your head on a day like today? Because one of the other topics that we'll get to is some of the new revelations about police accountability or lack of accountability that have come out in some of the latest reporting and releases. You've been so active in this, way before this year, way before people started to get their heads around it, in the granular detail that you've been involved with it for years. How do you get your head around this conflicting thoughts about our people in law enforcement when this is 9/11, and it brings that aspect of what they do to the floor, but you've spoken so loudly and forcefully about misconduct?

Jumaane: The first thing is taking away the notion that it's conflicting. I don't think that they are conflicting thoughts at all. Just how we spoke about you can be moving forward a system that has structural inequity without having created it or be yourself a person being bigot or racist. Those are not conflicting thoughts. They just exist at the same time. I think what I know, that those two things exist at the same time. The men and women, factually will run to danger and when people are running away.

At the same time, factually, there are issues of transparency and accountability, and issues of reframing and readjusting what people think it was publicly. This is life. Life is complicated, but that doesn't mean it's always conflicted. People benefit from pushing that matter that somehow they're conflicting, that somehow it's a binary conversation or position, and it's absolutely not. We have to have leaders who are able to push forward with both of those conversations in a very real way.

Brian: Nicely said. New York City public advocate Jumaane Williams, my guest. Let's go to the phones and on a different topic Sumiya in Bed-Stuy, you're on WNYC with the public advocate. Hello Sumiya.

Sumiya: Hi, Brian. Hi Public Advocate Williams. Thank you so much for all you guys are doing and particularly on the really challenging memorial of the day. I have a question about housing and I know you have some experience with it. We, our family we've constantly been moved out of the expensive neighborhoods, of course, as the city shifts, and we've been in Bed-Stuy for a number of years, and our house was sold by the owner last year. It took us a year to find the place we're in and it seems great, the owners were friendly.

After being here for a little while and of course with COVID, we've been furloughed from jobs and our owners, they had asked us to be upfront about it. We've told them we don't have any money coming in, and so of course, rent may or may not be late. We've been hustling, we've been paying rent, but they've been extremely combative, and intimidating and hostile towards us, on a number of levels, not just rent.

The challenge that we found out since then, which is making us nervous, is we feel like we actually aren't supposed to be living in this house, we're not supposed to be renting it because it's new house housing and this is the owner-occupied unit. They're not actually supposed to be renting to us, and I think breaching a whole bunch of illegal things, including charging above the mortgage, and all of these different factors. We don't know if we can say anything, if we have a leg to stand on, because our family would become homeless. I think we try to report this to any agency or to get any support.

Brian: Let me let me get a reaction for you from the public advocate, because this is a complex story, and I do want to get some other callers with him as well, but you hear the dilemma that she has about how she's being taken advantage of in her telling, by the landlord, and doesn't feel like she's got the structure to file a formal complaint.

Jumaane: Brian did you hear? I missed the part, what she said what type of housing it was. Did you hear that part?

Brian: I think and Sumiya we can go back to you on this if we need to, but I think the fact that technically, it's an illegal rental.

Jumaane: Thank you and I just want to be clear, you are far from the only person in this situation right now. There are a lot of people who are in situations like that, but may not have known the status of their apartment until right now, until folks are having trouble paying rent, and thus, sometimes, the owners are having trouble paying mortgage. I think everybody is struggling right now and we have to find a way out. I would say that I want to make sure I give my information so you can reach out to our Sonstituent Service department directly.

I never make any promises, but to the extent that we can help, we definitely want. We are very supportive of both the eviction moratoriums, but we have to do more actually, because if people aren't working by the time the moratorium ends, they still won't be able to pay the rent. We also want to get some relief for people who are paying mortgages because it's hard to say hold the rent or pay the mortgage. We're working on exploring both of those things but I will give you the number, 212-669-7250. You can also email gethelp@advocate.nyc.gov.

Brian: You know what might be the easiest, what we do when the mayor comes on and people have some things that he's willing to follow up with them on. We'll take Sumiya's contact information off the air and pass it on to your office and you guys can get in touch with her, is that okay?

Jumaane: That'd be awesome.

Brian: Sumiya, you hang on. We're going to take your contact information if you want to give it and pass it on to the Public Advocate's Office. Tina in Harlem, you're on WNYC with Public Advocate Jumaane Williams. Hello, Tina.

Tina: Hi, Brian. Thanks for taking the call, a long-time listener before and I'm a sustaining member and thank you for everything that you do. I wanted to ask you about, I don't know if Mr. Williams can help with this, but I'm an eighth generation New Yorker. I grew up in the late '60s, early '70s, and you know how seedy the city was, and how it smelled like urine in all the subways and all of that.

We came so far in getting things cleaned up and really creating a much more embracing city, more livable city. Now, it took the pandemic and of course the economic crisis, to create tremendous problems with garbage. There's illegal dumping on sidewalks. The amount of litter cars open their doors and dump it out, and then the parks. The Parks Department too, there are fewer trash cans. People have a big party in the park and leave all their garbage, because there's not enough trash cans even to put them in.

It's really demoralizing to people who really put down their roots and work hard to create a community and there's not the support for it. I know Commissioner Garcia seems to have stepped down because they got budget cuts in sanitation but this is also Parks Department with the cells in the parks. Of course, Central Park's not affected because they have the Central Park Conservancy taking care of it.

Brian: Right, they're private money. Tina, let me get your response, and Public Advocate I'm going to even broaden Tina's question to include something else that's in the news today. As you probably know, as the New York Times puts it, more than 150 business leaders in New York City joined together yesterday to warn Mayor de Blasio that he needs to take more decisive action to address crime and other quality of life issues that they said were jeopardizing the city's economic recovery.

Maybe those CEOs from places like Goldman Sachs, and Vornado Realty, and JetBlue, may not be the best messengers. They're cited by the Times in the piece, but between her and regular New Yorkers like Tina in Harlem calling in, is there something that needs to be done that's not being done?

Jumaane: There are a few things. One, is we do need leadership to step up and take decisive action across the board. We also need to make sure people, we're clear in the fact that just today is not as sunny as it has been in the past for a bunch of reasons, but I know that it can't be again. In order to do that, we're going to have to do this together. As was pointed out, pre-pandemic, we were moving into a very good space, and post-pandemic, we haven't seen new problems, but we actually seen problems exacerbate that were already there.

Brian: Can get specific about solutions?

Jumaane: Yes, but one of the things is recognizing that even as the city was getting better, there was certain communities that were not keeping pace. When it comes to crime which is a big one. Just on the top of it, economically, there are some things that we have to do. I'm going to be clear, we have only bad options, they're not great, but our job is to choose the best of the bad options and it seems sometimes we're choosing the worst of the bad options. Financially, off the bat, the state has to be giving the city borrowing authority, this has to be done. I don't know why we're still debating whether we're taxing the people actually who are the only ones making money during this pandemic. We have a tax law. Those are two things right now that we can do to help our services.

When it comes to something like crime, particularly around violence, we see this increasing all across the nation. We again have to re-imagine what public safety is. We know that when communities have needs met, this is not an excuse, because we have to make sure people are held accountable, you cannot shoot into a crowd of people, and hit five of them and a six-year child, you can't do that, but we do know when we address the issues around these communities, public safety looks different.

We do know that funding community groups, like Cure Violence, like others, to directly get in and interrupt the violence, that works and so we have to see that happen more. We don't know when it comes to homelessness and housing, the answer to most homelessness issues is housing. The next largest part is to make sure that there's supportive housing for people who need it. What we have to stop doing is pretending that we've addressed something like homelessness because people can't see it.

What we saw the mayor did was horrific in the Upper West Side, when he started moving people around like chess pieces instead of saying, "There are people who have never seen this type of poverty, let's not really try to address it." Because I can take you to Queensbridge right now and some of those same problems are happening there, but nobody seems to care because they don't have a lot of funding.

I'm not sure exactly what's going on with the trash., I have heard there's been an increase in dumping and increase in people not getting pickups, so I have to look into that. We we have to first, as a city, assess where we are right now, and as a city, put some of these things into place. What's most frustrating is we've been getting- I call myself progressive, blame for progressive policies, but many of those policies were never put into place.

When we see rezonings that don't have many real affordable housing on it, we're making the situation worse. When we see we can put homeless shelters everywhere except Upper West Side and even worse, people are not even taking time to figure out that most of their problems had to do with the chronic street homelessness that's increasing, not actually the people who live in a hotel, it's a problem. We have to prevent people from running to their sides and really try to have this conversation as a city with all of us involved.

Brian: What's the situation for that particular population? Because I know you have been very critical of the mayor for caving to, I think you've characterized as nimby pressure from the people on the Upper West Side. I heard you just now characterize that people just haven't been confronted with that kind of poverty in their midst, getting a pass on not having to deal with it. They were reporting men menacing pedestrians, and urinating, and defecating on the street, and that they sold drugs in the open.

What's the consistent solution? Like quality of life for neighbors in any neighborhood, housing and concentration of people with certain problems, because I gather that group in the Lucerne hotel were specifically men recovering from substance abuse problems. If that's the case, and those behaviors were prevalent, as reported, is there a set of best practices for everyone's interests, including theirs, or how do you approach it?

Jumaane: When I took the tour, I saw a gentleman who was recently divorced getting a college degree so he can take care of his daughter, and the gentleman in a wheelchair who was just getting his supportive housing, so I don't know if we can lump them all in, but I'm sure there was some substance abuse. I'm sure there was some mental health issues. There's a few things. As you mentioned, nobody wants that. If that was an issue, we haven't solved the problem, we just moved it to another neighborhood and these neighborhoods now who have been dealing with it for many, many years, and we're not addressing it again, because they can't hire a Randy Mastro who's just for sale at this point, how to deal with this kind of issue.

Brian: A high-priced lawyer.

Jumaane: The question is solving the problem, that makes all New Yorkers better. The first part is making sure that we have housing that is affordable to everyone, which we have failed miserably on. The second part is to make sure that there are supportive services, that people who have mental illnesses have a different set of needs and supportive services that they need than someone who has substance abuse, or someone who is homeless simply because they lost their job.

We have to make sure those supportive services are there. As a matter of fact, I believe that of Riverside and others, who are actually going to be bringing in some supplemental assistance starting this month to address that. Because people don't want to see the things he described, nobody wants to see that. Another part to get in the middle with more community groups, because law enforcement by themselves, can't also solve the problem. We can't arrest our way out of a problem and solving is not moving it to another neighborhood.

As a matter of fact, moving it to another neighborhood, where people don't respond as quickly probably makes it worse, because it just stays there and languishes. If everybody sees it and everybody has to deal with it, you might actually get to solve the root problems. As I was mentioning, some of those things that we may see because there's been an increase of street homelessness, while there's been a slight decrease in shelter. Some of the issues that people were seeing were people who are still going to be on that street because they didn't actually live in the Lucerne Hotel.

We have to take the time to get the solutions correct and actually find the solutions. Now, all of them, so many of these issues, there were community groups that we found do better at helping solve the issue than government. We have to be able to fund them and then move out of the way. We also have to bring community in more to let them know what we're doing, how we're doing it, and then we are actually in this together. That again, moving this, like chess pieces does nothing to solve the actual problem.

Brian: We're just about out of time, I want to come full circle to where we started, which was observing together this anniversary of the September 11th attacks. I want to just say out loud one more time, as I did at the opening of the show an hour ago, a reference to another group besides the nearly 3,000 people, the 2,753 people in New York, the 2,977 overall killed on the day by the attacks, and just come back to people who get less publicity and maybe less sympathy, but there's an ongoing issue with. That's the, as Newsday characterizes it, more than 125,000 people, including 79,000 first responders have enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Program.

It says, at least 18,000 have been diagnosed with a 9/11-related cancer citing federal statistics. More than 2,000 first responders, office workers and residents of Lower Manhattan have died from a 9/11-related illness and officials anticipate that figure will eventually exceed the nearly 3,000 deaths that occurred on 9/11 itself. I just wanted to make sure that just we both say something out loud about that population that is still struggling, still dying, but also still fighting for proper care.

Jumaane: That's 100% correct. It's shameful and embarrassing that they had to fight to get the care to begin with, and now they have to fight to keep the care. If we want to memorialize this day continually, we should do so by making sure everybody who was affected, all of those on that day, all of those who stayed to help, all of those who stayed to help rebuild, either by being on the site or being in an area to help rebuild the community, and do their jobs or volunteer, they need to be taken care of as well.

Brian: New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, thank you so much for taking some time on this of all days to be with us. We always appreciate your thoughtfulness.

Jumaane: Thank you so much, and just New York City, we can get through this together and I believe we will.

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