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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. We've been talking a lot about homelessness on the show recently and did you know that if you qualify for Section 8 housing voucher from the federal government, it doesn't mean you'll get one. That's a cruel failure, isn't it on the part of the federal government? Established the fact that if you're poor enough, you qualify for a rent voucher but then not provide the funding to actually have those vouchers.

Meanwhile, in Newark, you may have heard our New Jersey correspondent Karen Yi's report this morning on Mayor Ras Baraka trying to use federal housing funds in a different way, not just to subsidize rent but subsidize home ownership.

Mayor Ras Baraka: Home ownership is the largest reason that there's a huge wealth gap between Black and brown, and white families in America and in the state, while we have the largest wealth gap in the state because of home ownership.

Brian Lehrer: How big is that ownership gap? Well, according to the Urban League, 72% of white Americans own the home they live in, just 42% of Black Americans. In Newark, it's 22%. We'll talk to Bronx Congressman Ritchie Torres now about his new bill to get those Section 8 vouchers to exist in people's lives, not just on paper. We'll also get his take on city politics now.

He was one of Andrew Yang's most prominent supporters in the mayoral primary. Torres has also been talking lately about voting rights and the filibuster. We'll see what he thinks about Mayor de Blasio's new plan to force public hospital healthcare workers to get vaccinated or get tested. The South Bronx was the hardest hit by the pandemic last year but also has some of the city's lowest vaccination rates.

According to the stats that I've seen, that includes Hunts Point, Morrisania, the Tremont section, and others, all under 40% vaccinated in the Bronx. Federal statistics show life expectancy in the US, life expectancy declined last year by more than any year since people were dying in large numbers in World War II, that's because of all the years lost to more than 600,000 COVID deaths with Black and Latino Americans as a group suffering the worst shortening of their lives by far, around three years shorter life expectancy compared to one year shorter for whites according to stats in the New York Times.

With all that as prelude, Congressman Ritchie Torres, always great to have you. Welcome back to WNYC.

Ritchie Torres: It's a pleasure to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Can we start with COVID? What are the vaccination rates in your district and how do you account for them? Good or bad?

Ritchie Torres: Look, we are certainly outperforming states like Missouri, which have among the lowest vaccination rates in the country, but in relation to the rest of the city, the Bronx is lagging the farthest behind, more than 50% of residents in the Bronx have at least one dose of vaccination, but we need to ensure that as many people are vaccinated as possible. I'm concerned about the emergence of variants that could potentially evade the vaccine. I worry that we've seen more breakthrough infections than I would've anticipated. The more vaccinations, the better, no question about it.

Brian Lehrer: Do you support Mayor de Blasio's new policy for healthcare workers in the public hospital system get vaccinated or get tested every week and should he do at least that for all city workers, the NYPD from what I read has only around 40% vaccinated, the FDNY, Fire Department, including the EMTs, only around 50%.

Ritchie Torres: I know it's controversial, but I do favor mandatory vaccinations because without mandatory vaccinations, I have trouble imagining how we're going to achieve a herd immunity and prevent the emergence of variants that could potentially evade the present vaccine that we have. I'm in favor of exhausting every means of ensuring that we come close to reaching herd immunity.

Brian Lehrer: Reno, San Francisco, and a few other cities are requiring that now for all city workers. What more needs to be done before we get onto housing? What more needs to be done in your opinion to get more people in your district, elsewhere too, but in your case, for your district, to get vaccinated voluntarily?

Ritchie Torres: Look, we should conduct individualized door-to-door outreach to those who might have structural barriers to accessing the vaccine, those who might have disabilities or those who might have no access to the internet. Whatever the structural barriers might be, we should do a direct individualized outreach to them.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Section 8 vouchers. Explain to people unfamiliar with how they work, why you can be eligible for vouchers based on your income but still not be able to get them?

Ritchie Torres: Well, the demand for Section 8 vouchers far exceeds the supply. The program is so oversubscribed that you can die on the waiting list. A Section 8 voucher ensures that you pay no more than 30% of your income toward your rent. There are hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who are on the waiting list for Section 8. New York City in the country has become so dangerously unaffordable, that there are 7 million people who are behind on their rents and who face an imminent danger of eviction the moment the moratorium expires.

There are 37 million Americans who pay more than 30% of their income toward their rent, and half of those Americans pay more than half of their income for their rent, putting them at elevated risk of displacement and eviction, and even more troubling, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, there is no county in America where a full-time minimum wage worker can afford a two-bedroom apartment.

There are only 7 out of 3,000 counties where a full-time minimum wage worker can afford a one-bedroom apartment, and keep in mind, these are essential workers, essential workers who put their lives at risk during the peak of the pandemic so that the rest of the city and the country could safely shelter in place. I believe that our essential workers should have the ability to afford to live in a city that cannot succeed and survive without them.

In partnership with Chair Maxine Waters, I've introduced legislation, the ending the Homelessness Act, which would establish housing vouchers for all. Every family struggling with housing insecurity or homelessness would receive a housing voucher, which ensures that you pay no more than 30% of your income toward your rent. In my view, housing vouchers for all would bring us closer than we've ever been to ending homelessness in America and addressing the root cause of the affordability crisis.

Brian Lehrer: Talk about the different parts of that, housing vouchers for all, guaranteeing that you're not paying more than 30% of your income toward rent. Is that different than the way the Section 8 vouchers work today for people who can access them?

Ritchie Torres: It's the same program, but we're universalizing it. The trouble is when the subject of affordable housing is brought up. The question that often comes to mind is affordable for whom. The majority of the housing that the government creates is unaffordable to the lowest income Americans, so a Section 8 voucher would ensure that the affordable housing that we do create is well within the reach of the poorest Americans.

Brian Lehrer: How do you determine what rents that would apply to and what income? For example, just to take a relatively easy math example, if you're making $30,000 a year, 30% of that would be $9,000, I believe. If you can't get decent housing in the Bronx for $9,000 a year, then it wouldn't work. How do you match up the available rental units with that 30% of the income?

Ritchie Torres: Well, tenant share is 30% of the income and the government would cover the rest with a subsidy. That's typically how the program works, and it's been a successful program. There are hundreds of thousands of people here in New York City who depend on a Section 8 voucher for their housing and keep in mind that the majority of people in our shelter system are simply there because of the affordability prices. Half of the household heads in the shelter system are working people who cannot afford market rate rents. Housing vouchers for all could essentially end almost all homelessness in New York City.

Brian Lehrer: Because it's a budget item that you're proposing here, could you get that through Congress without the filibuster? Budget items are often exempt.

Ritchie Torres: It could in theory go through reconciliation because it's not an appropriation. We're attempting to establish housing as a human right, the housing voucher program as a federal entitlement, which is permanent rather than an annual budget item, and so that could potentially go through reconciliation.

Brian Lehrer: Reconciliation is that process for people who don't know, that gets it around the filibuster in the Senate. Talk about that a little bit more conceptually, because I think this is really interesting for people. When we talk about the word entitlement, we're talking about things that people automatically qualify based on their status, so if you're 65, you automatically qualify for Social Security or anywhere over 62, depending on at what age you want to sign up. I know there are variations in that, but Social Security is an entitlement program. Medicare is an entitlement program.

Section 8 housing vouchers are not an entitlement program, and yet, you qualify for them if you're under a certain income, so explain the difference in what your bill would change in that respect.

Ritchie Torres: Most programs are dependent on annual appropriations, annual budget allocations from Congress. If a program is an entitlement, it is no longer subject to annual appropriations. It is part of the permanent social safety net, and the classic examples are Social Security for senior citizens and Medicare for senior citizens. Those are entitlements regardless of annual appropriations, and I'm hoping that eventually, the child tax credit becomes permanent. I would love to live in a world where every family receives a child tax credit and a housing voucher as part of the American Social Contract.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, your call is welcome for Congressman Ritchie Torres on his Section 8 housing vouchers bill, on COVID vaccination policy, the filibuster and voting rights which we'll get to, or anything else relevant to his work. Congressman Ritchie Torres from the Bronx. 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280, or tweet at @BrianLehrer.

Congressman, we played the clip of Mayor Baraka from Newark on redirecting federal housing assistance from rental to home ownership, such a source of the racial wealth gap in the United States from the legacy of redlining and other racist housing policies still affecting people's lives generations later, as well as current disparities in policy perpetuating themselves. Is that home ownership push something that could apply to your district or is the Bronx too different from New Jersey in this respect?

Ritchie Torres: The United States should have a national home ownership program specifically targeting communities of color. The majority of wealth in America is based on home ownership, and I see Black and brown home ownership as the key to bridging the wealth gap in America. June of 2021 was the centennial commemoration of the Tulsa Race Massacre, which refers to the burning of Black Wall Street.

Before the burning of Black Wall Street, in Tulsa, Black and white home ownership was actually identical, and a century after Tulsa, Black home ownership is one-sixth of white home ownership, so there's no question that the historical exclusion of communities of color from home ownership has left behind a legacy that remains with us till this day. It's no accident that the wealth gap, the racial wealth gap is much wider than the racial income gap.

In the post-war era, African Americans in particular, were systematically excluded from programs providing higher education and home ownership, and if you have no home to own, you have no equity to build, and if you have no equity to build, you have no wealth to pass from one generation to the next, and so instead of intergenerational wealth, communities of color were condemned by public policy to intergenerational property.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Sarah in Mineola, you're on WNYC with Congressman Ritchie Torres. Hi, Sarah.

Sarah: Hi, Congressman. It's very admirable the desire to increase the number of vouchers, but I just want to say that the lack of landlords and apartments that will actually take vouchers remains a problem. Just by flooding the market for a limited supply might increase the problem. Do you have a solution for available apartments?

Ritchie Torres: It's an excellent question and your question refers to source of income discrimination, so the legislation would ban source of income discrimination at the federal level. It would invest resources in enforcement against source of income discrimination, and keep in mind that the vouchers could apply to affordable housing units, which are accessible to the lowest-income New Yorkers, but you're exactly right that there are landlords who have a pattern of illegally refusing Section 8 vouchers, which is why we're going to invest more resources and enforcement and why we're going to ban it at the federal level.

Brian Lehrer: Does this connect with the program that the city just enacted, City Council passed it, Mayor de Blasio signed it to increase the value of the city's housing vouchers so that more landlords voluntarily take them?

Ritchie Torres: The federal government's voucher is different from the city's, but federal vouchers tend to command far more acceptance from landlords. Landlords tend to be skeptical about city and state voucher programs which have been dissolved in the past, whereas everyone has confidence that Section 8 is here to stay, it's going nowhere, so there's far more confidence in federal voucher programs than they would be in state or city voucher programs.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take another call. Matt in Morris Park in the Bronx, you're on WNYC with Congressman Torres. Hi, Matt.

Matt: Hey, thanks for the opportunity to speak directly with the Congressman. Congressman Torres, I'm just curious if you're aware of [unintelligible 00:16:31]. To my understanding, it's the largest industrial development happening close to your district. It's 2505 Bruckner Boulevard. Are you aware of the development?

Ritchie Torres: I was not aware of it until I saw a Bronx Times article mentioning Congress member Ocasio-Cortez and myself. That's something that my staff is looking into as we speak, so I'm seeking a briefing on [crosstalk].

Matt: Yes. I contacted your office about it recently, and they kind of honestly blew me off, and it's been really frustrating. A lot of times, I feel like my representatives here in the Bronx are kind of living in the clouds and very unaware of what's really affecting us day-to-day.

Brian Lehrer: What's the issue, Matt? Describe the issue if you see it.

Matt: The issue is 2505 Bruckner Boulevard is kind of a slap in the face to the progressive agenda of fixing air quality, especially along the Cross Bronx. It's being built as the largest multi-story fulfillment center in the United States. It's just going to dump truck traffic onto the Cross Bronx and the Bruckner Expressway, and it just seems like nobody is talking about it.

Brian Lehrer: Fulfillment center. Does that mean it's a warehouse from Amazon or something like that that will hold a lot of stuff that gets delivered to addresses in New York?

Matt: Exactly and it is a private development, so it is limited what our representatives can do for us and the government can do, but the DOT is replacing the Unionport Bridge that allows the fulfillment center to access the highways, so in my view, it looks like the city is literally just subsidizing more pollution in the Bronx.

Brian Lehrer: Is it Amazon per se?

Matt: It has not been announced, but that would be [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Oh, some kind of fulfillment center, so you don't know if it's Amazon or Walmart or what it's going to be. Well, Congressman, what about that? On a general basis, this is not the only place in the city where issues like this are coming up. Someone who lives in Queens was just talking to me off the air the other day about a big fulfillment center that opened near their building, and they can hear the noise of trucks going in and out 24 hours a day, which didn't used to be there because everybody is ordering for delivery more, things like that. Is there an overarching policy that can address this?

Ritchie Torres: Yes and keep in mind, the facility he references is not in my district, but it certainly would have implications because of the truck traffic that it would contribute, so that's something that we're going to looking into closely. I've expressed concern about the heavy concentration of truck traffic, diesel truck traffic in the South Bronx, in the Hunts Point Terminal Market. There are about 15,000 trucks every day that travel to and from the market, and those trucks are congesting the Cross Bronx Expressway, and those in the South Bronx have an asthma hospitalization rate that is double to triple the city-wide average.

The House of Representatives recently passed the Reinvest Act, our infrastructure investment, and in that bill, I included a provision that would study a proposal for capping the Cross Bronx Expressway with a deck park in order to prevent diesel carbon emissions. In my view, capping the Cross Bronx Expressway, transforming it into a green space would be the greatest possible investment we could make in the life expectancy and public health of the South Bronx.

Brian Lehrer: What does capping the Cross Bronx Expressway mean? Matt, thank you for your call. Thank you for raising that issue, call us again. What does capping the Cross Bronx Expressway and turning it into green space mean? No more Cross Bronx Expressway? That would all be a park or something different from that?

Ritchie Torres: Not quite. We're not dismantling the Cross Bronx Expressway, because doing so could be prohibitively expensive. The most cost-effective means of preventing air pollution is to cover the part of the Cross Bronx Expressway that is below ground, below grade with a deck park, which is something that has been done elsewhere in the United States. The combination of covering it with a deck park and installing filtration systems could prevent those who live near the Cross Bronx Expressway from breathing in pollutants that cause respiratory diseases like asthma.

Brian Lehrer: Leah in Manhattan is calling in saying she's a staffer in a governmental office in the city and has had experience working on behalf of constituents regarding their housing needs. Let's see how this intersects with your Section 8 housing proposal, Congressman. Leah, you're on WNYC. Hi.

Leah: Yes. Good morning. Thank you. I just want to say that as someone who has worked assiduously in trying to help the homeless who were qualified for NYCHA units to present, have applications processed, amount of bureaucracy, the number of different NYCHA staffers, the time lag between when the person first proffers all the necessary documents and when they are finally given the keys, is just shameless.

In addition to that, it's been made aware to us in the office that about half of the people on New York City payroll are living in some aspects of the shelter system because they simply cannot afford as the Congressman was stating any of the housing that might be available to them.

Then, the final outrage is that where you have private landlords who are willing to take vouchers, the bar is so high, it's near draconian to get people into those voucher positive, shall we say, housing situations. The amount of time that has to be expended on behalf of these very worthy candidates who just want to put a secure roof over theirs and their family's heads, it's an obscenity. I'm just not sure what can be done about that. I have one more question, and this is out of purely personal basis. I want to say Congressman Torres, I speak for myself and many members of my community. Thank you for your robust support at the state of Israel.

Brian Lehrer: Leah, thank you very much. On that red tape, actually getting the vouchers to the people who qualify, what can you say to her?

Ritchie Torres: Look, I agree that NYCHA is less efficient than it should be as both an administrator of Section 8 and public housing, but there's no question that housing vouchers for all, if implemented, is projected to benefit nearly 20 million Americans who live in more than 8 million households. It would lift 9 million people out of poverty. It would benefit 1.3 million people in New York State, including 800,000 in New York City. It would be a game-changer for the affordability of both our country and cities. Is it a magic bullet? No but would it represent a transformative improvement in the affordability of our country? There's no question about it.

Brian Lehrer: You grew up in public housing in the Bronx, right?

Ritchie Torres: I did. I'm a product of public housing.

Brian Lehrer: How do you think that contributed to your own success to this point in your life? You're 33 and you're in Congress.

Ritchie Torres: I would not be where I am today were it not for public housing and the stability it gave me and my family. If not for public housing, I would have been homeless, and there's no telling what impact the loss of a home would have had on the trajectory of my life. I'm grateful to the New York City Housing Authority for giving me a fighting chance at a decent life.

Brian Lehrer: Nothing like massive public housing construction is politically feasible anymore. How much are Section 8 vouchers the centerpiece of fighting homelessness and rent-induced poverty in the city and how much combined with other things? It seems like such a patchwork compared to that time, almost a century ago now, where like 400,000 units. So unthinkable in today's political world, 400,000 units of public housing grew up in the city and now it doesn't grow.

Ritchie Torres: Well, in addition to expanding the Section 8 program, the president has proposed more than $200 billion in affordable housing construction, so we're going to see affordable housing development on a scale and at a pace that we have never seen before in nearly a century if we manage to pass the reconciliation bill, and I'm confident that we will.

Brian Lehrer: Diana in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi Diana.

Diana: Hi, thank you so much for taking my call. I am a small landlord in Brooklyn. We live in the lower floor, we rent out the two top floors. How would, for instance, someone comes to us with a voucher, Section 8, to rent one of our apartments, do we have to register as landlords? Because it seems to me that would be a great solution. These small landlords who, for instance, have a vacancy, could [unintelligible 00:26:30] Section 8 housing vouchers then.

Brian Lehrer: Great question. Congressman, you've got a volunteer. Tell Diana and tell other landlords what they have to do, if anything, to qualify, to accept Section 8 housing vouchers.

Ritchie Torres: My understanding is for a tenant to qualify you have to meet the income requirements, and for a landlord to qualify, you have to meet Section 8's housing quality standards. It has to be up to code not only by city standards but by federal standards. Section 8 will conduct an inspection of the units. Keep in mind that landlords who have had Section 8, particularly small property landlords, have had greater resilience during COVID-19, because even when tenants lost their income, the federal government kept paying their portion of the rent. Section 8 properties had a much more stable rental stream than those without Section 8.

Brian Lehrer: Before we go, and Diana, thank you for your call, I want to ask you two last things. One, I'm curious if you have an opinion. In the meantime, before we end homelessness in New York City, on Mayor de Blasio moving people who are temporarily being housed in private hotel rooms for the pandemic back to congregate shelters, on this show last week, I asked them, "How can you move people back to congregate shelters? A lot of people breathing the same air in big rooms with the Delta variant and the high unvaccinated rate in the city," and here's part of what he said.

Mayor de Blasio: I feel for anyone who is homeless, but I also know that homeless people should be treated with respect, and they are smart discerning people like everyone else. If you say to folks in shelter, "Hey, you need to get vaccinated to protect yourself and to protect all of us," I believe a lot of people can hear that, and we're making it available constantly.

Brian Lehrer: He's putting it on those people who'd be moved back into congregate shelters as a matter of personal responsibility to get vaccinated. Is that good enough in your opinion?

Ritchie Torres: I have concerns because we know that overcrowded shelter settings could become Petri dishes for the spread of COVID-19. It strikes me as unwise as a matter of public health to do what the mayor is proposing. We should not simply rely on personal responsibility. We should enact the policy that's most consistent with public health.

Brian Lehrer: For you, would that be keeping people in hotel rooms longer?

Ritchie Torres: I would leave that to the public health authorities, but I certainly would not want overcrowding in shelters. That would be the worst outcome for public health.

Brian Lehrer: Last thing, mayoral election politics. You were one of Andrew Yang's most important backers in the primary, but then close to election day, you announced Eric Adams as your number two on your ranked-choice voting ballot. Can you debrief how that made sense to you? Since they were prime competitors of each other, people say you were just jumping on the bandwagon of the apparent inevitable winner once Adams started to seem inevitable.

Ritchie Torres: Though there were several members of the delegation who had decided to rank at number two in order to communicate to our communities about the importance of ranking, we were concerned, particularly those of us representing communities of color, we were concerned about two levels of disenfranchisement, the disenfranchisement of not voting and then the disenfranchisement of not ranking while voting. We felt like, "How could we tell people to rank when we refuse to do so ourselves?" By ranking two candidates, we were communicating to our constituents the importance of ranking.

I chose Andrew as my number one, Eric as my number two. I have enormous respect for both of them. Ranked endorsements were actually the norm given ranked-choice voting. It was not a plurality voting election, so it was not unusual. There were, I think most people had at least two rankings.

Brian Lehrer: Congressman Ritchie Torres from the Bronx. We always appreciate when you come on with us, continued good luck in Washington.

Ritchie Torres: Of course, take care.

 

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