Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, and now we want to open up the phones to taxi drivers listening. How do you feel about the deal reached last week with the city regarding medallion debt if you're a yellow cab owner? Turning back to this today even though I asked the mayor about it briefly on last Friday's show, and it's because with all of last week's election news and other things that were going on, this story managed to get a blip of coverage, but not as much as we thought it deserved. We're turning back to it now and giving you, taxi drivers, the voice.

The basic headline was the taxi drivers won. After receiving a debt relief package earlier that many drivers felt was woefully insufficient from the city, the union representing drivers organized 46 days of picketing, and most drastically a hunger strike that lasted over two weeks before the city and lenders came back with terms that were finally worth celebrating. Here's the director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, Bhairavi Desai, on the morning of the win.

Bhairavi Desai: These terms mean that over 4,000 to 6,000 families can get their lives back.

[applause]

These terms mean that our brothers and sisters will no longer have a lifetime of debt.

[applause]

Brian Lehrer: Taxi drivers, medallion owners, in particular, call in and tell us did you participate in the hunger strike or the picketing, and how do you feel about this deal? Some of the details of the new package, in case you missed it, listeners, the biggest medallion lender, known as Marblegate - that's the name of the company - has agreed to reduce the amount that each driver owes to $170,000, and that's down from an average of about $500,000 per driver.

That's how much it costs. That's the kind of mortgage, in effect, they had to take out just to buy the medallion, the license, to operate a yellow cab. Driver payments, in addition, will be capped at a maximum of about $1,100 per month. It had, under the earlier deal that the mayor was offering, been $2,000 a month. Maybe most significantly, the city has agreed to guarantee every loan, promising to repay if the driver actually cannot and defaults. That loan guarantee without necessarily a dollar coming out of taxpayers' pockets, just that loan guarantee reduces confidence in the financial marketplace and, I guess, allowed Marblegate to ease the terms of those loans.

Drivers, how do you feel about those terms? They are much more generous than the previous deal, but some say they come up short from what the union had asked for in their counter. How involved were you in the fight, do you see a way out of debt for yourself, and what should the rules of the road be for hire vehicles of any kind? Idris in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in. Hi, Idris.

Idris: Hi. How are you, Brian?

Brian Lehrer: Good.

Idris: Nice show.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. [crosstalk] You're a medallion owner?

Idris: No, I'm a taxi driver for a long time.

Brian Lehrer: Aha. You're a driver but you don't own your own medallion?

Idris: I don't own my own medallion, no. I think the deal still is not enough for the taxi driver because the debt is still too much. The competition from the Uber and Lyft is very high. The customer in the street are not like before, so even if they make this deal the yellow driver still cannot make it because the cost is really so high. If you take that besides the regular rent or mortgage or any other expenses, it's really the taxi driver, especially the medallion, is still suffering in the street, and you know that many of the medallions it's now on the bench, so it's really hard. But it at least make it less painful than before.

Brian Lehrer: Do you blame this on the proliferation of other cars like Uber and Lyft cars in the last decade?

Idris: Both. I blame the city first, which is give this car more opportunities than the yellow cab. I also believe the garage owner also because they oppress the taxi driver and they make them look for other choices. It's a complicated issue.

Brian Lehrer: I understand. Idris, thank you very much. Good luck out there. When he talks about the city responsibility, one of the other things that got revealed, I believe by The New York Times a couple of years ago, was that the city was doing things to push up the price of the medallion, which basically the city makes money from. They had a conflict of interest and were doing things to push up the price of the medallions just before the crash. That's another reason that drivers were so, so angry and felt that the city should do something to bail them out. Zohran in Astoria, you're on WNYC. Hi, Zohran. Thanks for calling in.

Zohran: You're so welcome. Thank you for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Tell us your story.

Zohran: I am actually the Assemblymember representing Astoria, and I've been working very closely with the union for many months as the issue of taxi drivers and medallions is one that is of immense concern to so many in my neighborhood and to myself as well.

Brian Lehrer: You're Assembly then, Mamdani?

Zohran: Yes, I am.

Brian Lehrer: Got it. Go ahead.

Zohran: I think that for me fundamentally, what fills my heart with joy about the deal that was made and the struggle that was fought and waged by the New York Taxi Workers Alliance is that it resolves the fundamental call which was for a city-backed guarantee. For those that don't know, what that means is every single loan that is covered by this deal is insured by the city. If any driver were to default on their loan it would mean that the lender could not then pursue all of the driver's other personal assets such as their car or their home.

For the 15 days that I was on hunger strike with these drivers, and the more than 30 days that we were outside of City Hall 24/7 protesting, and the many months of meetings prior to that, this was one of the central concerns that I heard from drivers again and again, was the possibility of everything that they had built up over decades of driving being taken away from them because of an artificially inflated medallion whose payments they could never meet.

Brian Lehrer: It's really worth emphasizing that it wasn't just the loans for the medallions themselves, but that the medallion owners then borrowed against the value of their medallion to pay for other things like a home or college tuition. Like a second mortgage, right?

Zohran: Yes. In many ways, that was what they were encouraged to do because they were told that the medallion was better than the stock market. They were told that the medallion was their ticket to the middle class, and they were told that this would only continue to rise. For so many who had believed what they had been told, they found themselves in a moment of devastation that they never could have foresaw. When a medallion was being sold for a million dollars, it was as if it would only ever continue to grow, when in reality it was a bubble that had been created and a bubble that was now bursting.

Brian Lehrer: Will the city guarantee those secondary loans too, or reduce the debt burden from them?

Zohran: My understanding is the guarantee extends only to the medallion loan itself. I think that for so many of these drivers, that is of immense relief. Even though it does not cover the house or it may not cover the car, it is the knowledge that if they cannot make these payments, that then those agreements are separate. The other thing about a guarantee that is so critical is that it then also reduces the actual payments required on the loan because it eliminates risk for the lenders.

When you have a city-backed guarantee, all of a sudden you had loan payments. I was speaking to one driver. He was being asked to pay more than $3,500 a month, and now because of the city-backed guarantee, he's going to pay $1,122 a month.

Brian Lehrer: Tell me one other thing, and then I'm going to go on to a medallion owner who's our next caller. The loan guarantee, once the city guarantees these loans, I'm sure some listeners are wondering and asking themselves, "Why would any of the drivers pay up on the loans out of their own pockets?"

Zohran: I think the answer to that question comes back to the fact that these medallions, these are the only means for these individuals to earn a livelihood. If they default on their loan they cannot continue to drive.

Brian Lehrer: Ah.

Zohran: For these drivers, this is all that they know. This is all that they have. What they've been protesting, underlying all of their calls for justice, is a desire to get back on the road and get New Yorkers to their homes and their businesses and wherever they want to go.

Brian Lehrer: Right. There's the answer. They would lose their license, their ability to drive, even though the city would cover the loan. Assemblyman, thank you for calling in. We really appreciate it.

Zohran: You're very welcome. Have a lovely day, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Here's Diop in Manhattan, a medallion owner. Diop, thank you for calling in. Hi there.

Diop: Hi, Brian. Thank you very much for taking my call. I am a medallion owner. Go ahead.

Brian Lehrer: Do you want to tell us your story a little bit? Like how much you owed and what this deal with the city will do for you?

Diop: This is a great deal because for me I bought a medallion very late, around 2014, and I paid $800,000. My down payment was supposed to be 20%, which is $160,000. That was my life saving and money I borrow from my lawyer. We get through 2014 and the medallion price start going way down, down, down, and my mortgage was $3,400 a month for the first time. When the bank loan was due three years later I was with Melrose Credit Union, which Marblegate bought later. I ended up paying $3,800, which was crazy. I had to work 15 hours a day, 7 days a week. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: $3,800 a month?

Diop: Yes, that's what I was paying pre-pandemic. I had to stop the payment and try to push Marblegate to-- After that Marblegate bought my medallion, bought it from Melrose. I had to push Marblegate to reduce my payment, and they took it down to $2,500. It was still very expensive. It took this union to fight so hard and to make the media in New York pay attention for us to get to this point. I cannot thank enough this union for fighting so hard, going through a lot of pain to get to this point. [crosstalk] $1,100--

Brian Lehrer: Do you think there's a lesson even for workers in other fields about unions or about successful organizing to get something done that you couldn't get done as an individual victim?

Diop: Absolutely. Even in our union, some of us was really getting skeptic about it because we were just beating the drum and tried to find something that ended up sticking. But organize, organize, organize; that's the only way I can say. If you believe in whatever you do because where we come from, from almost $3,000 a month to $1,122 a month, that's a sign of relief. I can work 10 hours, 8 hours, go home, take my Sunday off, take time with my family. This is what the deal is; time for family. That very expensive mortgage was pushing us into a death trap. You had to work crazy hours.

What people don't understand, the congestion price. Every driver, if you were caught every day, you put 25, 30 pickup, every month you have to pay to the New York State Department of Taxation around $1,800 plus the 30 cents, which is something like $600, plus another 50 cents that MTA collects. The charge, the overhead of operating a yellow cab is unbelievable. People don't understand, so they see the gross, you can see like $1,000, $1,500 a week, but after the city takes everything you have nothing left. This is what we've been going through for years.

Brian Lehrer: It's still competitive, I hear it, but I hear the sigh of relief in your voice. I'm glad you brought up the family time. It's not just money, money, money. It's that you don't have to work so, so many hours every day and every week to feed your family. That you can now spend some time with your family. Diop, thank you very much.

Diop: Absolutely.

Brian Lehrer: Good luck out there, and-

Diop: Thanks.

Brian Lehrer: -to all of you who called in or just listened, good luck out there, whether you're driving yellow, Uber, Lyft, black car service, anything else. Brian Lehrer on WNYC.

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