Evening Roundup: Judge Tosses Lawsuits Alleging Sexual Abuse at Juvenile Detention Centers, Gov. Hochul Warns Against Scams Targeting Refund Checks, and Unde...

Title: Evening Roundup: Judge Tosses Lawsuits Alleging Sexual Abuse at Juvenile Detention Centers, Gov. Hochul Warns Against Scams Targeting Refund Checks, and Understanding Food Price Inflation

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Janae Pierre: A judge tosses over 400 lawsuits alleging sexual abuse at juvenile detention centers, Governor Hochul warns against scams targeting refund checks, and understanding food price inflation. From WNYC, this is NYC Now. I'm Janae Pierre.

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Janae Pierre: A Bronx judge recently dismissed more than 450 lawsuits brought by people who claimed they were sexually abused while in juvenile detention. The cases were filed under a recent city law that allowed New Yorkers to sue people and institutions for enabling gender-based violence. The judge said enablers should not be held accountable for things that allegedly happened before the new law took effect. A bill is pending in the city council that would allow lawsuits against alleged enablers of abuse to move forward. Governor Kathy Hochul is warning New Yorkers about scams targeting the state's refund checks. WNYC's Phil Corso has more.

Phil Corso: Scammers are texting, calling, and emailing people to trick them into handing over personal info, claiming it's required to get an inflation refund check, but the state says no action is needed. If you're eligible, your check will arrive by mail automatically. The checks range from $150 to $400 and started going out Friday. They'll be delivered in batches through November. To qualify, you must have filed a 2023 tax return, meet income limits, and not be claimed as a dependent.

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Janae Pierre: The price of an avocado in New York City can range from $0.25 cents to $3, depending on where you live. Coming up, understanding food price inflation. That's after the break.

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Janae Pierre: Everyone is feeling the pinch of higher food prices. Next to rent and maybe child care for those with young kids, food costs are one of our biggest expenses. WNYC reporters Karen Yi and Joe Hong wanted to understand food price inflation in the city better, and so they started tracking and comparing prices for the same basket of items like milk, eggs, chicken, and beef across four grocery stores in each borough. They joined my colleague Michael Hill to talk about what they found.

Michael Hill: Karen, you wanted to focus on avocados today. Tell us why.

Karen: That's right. What we found is that of all the items we tracked, the avocado had the biggest price variation. One can cost as much as $3 in one place or as little as $0.25 in another, and it really, I think, illustrates the big and the small forces that affect grocery store prices. Shoppers we spoke to across the city had such a visceral reaction to avocado prices. Here's 35-year-old Blue Carter in East Harlem talking about how much costs have gone up.

Blue Carter: Oh my god, avocado? Please. It used to be a couple cents. Now it's so expensive. The avocado is ridiculous. I'll tell you that right [chuckles] now. My daughter loves avocado, and I'm just like, "Are you sure you want this? [laughs] Are you positive?" [chuckles]

Karen: Joe and I went to some stores, like the Union Market in Park Slope, where one avocado was $2.69, but at the Asian Jmart in Flushing, we found a pretty good deal.

Joe: Four for $1? Oh my god.

Michael Hill: Joe, why do avocado prices change so much?

Joe: If you want to understand why these prices are so different, you have to start further back in the supply chain before the avocado reaches your produce aisle at the Hunts Point Terminal Market in the Bronx. Karen and I went there earlier this month, and even during off-hours, Hunts Point is bustling.

Karen: At 1 million square feet, this is the largest distribution center in the world. Avocados, mostly from Mexico, get trucked into loading docks where restaurants, grocery stores, and bodegas will come at night or early morning to pick the best or most affordable produce for their shoppers.

Dan Spoerel: Miguel, where do we have $0.65 avocados?

Karen: This is where we meet Dan Spoerel from Pan Hellenic Food.

Dan Spoerel: Let's go find some avocados.

Karen: He's the middleman, buying produce from growers from different parts of the world and trucking it into the South Bronx. He says avocado prices are actually pretty low right now. He pulls a case of 60 avocados from the back of a refrigerated truck that only cost him $20.

Dan Spoerel: This is as cheap as I've seen at any time recently.

Karen: Other weeks, the same case can cost as much as $80 or more. What is affecting prices? Spoerel says at the moment, the city is getting a lot of avocados from California. All that supply is keeping prices low. Spoerel says the California growing season ends in just a few days, and that means buyers like him will have to turn more to Mexico, and Mexican avocados aren't only more expensive. He says they're more popular.

Dan Spoerel: Mexican avocados will always outsell by 10 to 1. Peruvian or Colombian or Dominican makes better guacamole. It's got a higher oil content, which makes it creamy. In Mexico, avocados are always more money than the others, and they're probably worth it.

Karen: They're also vulnerable to other market forces. Last year, for example, a criminal cartel got involved in the avocado trade, and it held up avocado exports from Mexico. As a result, prices skyrocketed by 40%. When guacamole demand spikes during, say, the Super Bowl?

Dan Spoerel: Mexico doesn't care that we're having a Super Bowl. They're not picking extra, but there'll be extra demand here for sure.

Karen: Now, when you think of rising prices for anything coming from Mexico, you might be thinking tariffs, but at least for now, avocados are exempt from the Trump administration's tariffs on the country. If that changes, that could also cause prices to rise. No matter how high they get, Spoerel knows they'll sell. The USDA says US demand for avocados has tripled in the last two decades. On average, we eat roughly eight pounds of avocados every year.

Dan Spoerel: There's no substitute for an avocado. If you want an avocado, you need an avocado. If there's no iceberg lettuce, what do you buy? Green leaf, romaine, spring mix. If there's no broccoli, you buy cauliflower.

Karen: That's how avocado prices fluctuate for wholesalers. What about prices in the grocery aisle, where we all buy them as customers?

Joe: To answer that question, we went to Jubilee Marketplace in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The store went viral last year for its $2.75 sliders. The price of a single avocado $2.99. Jubilee's CEO, Young Kim, says he is very familiar with those wildly fluctuating wholesale costs.

Young Kim: In our case, the avocado, the cheapest last year we had it for was $30 for 40 pounds, and the most expensive was like $98 or $110.

Joe: The question for him is what to do when avocado prices spike. Unlike big chain retailers, Jubilee doesn't have the purchasing power that a Jmart in Flushing or a Whole Foods has. These big companies can negotiate lower avocado prices by buying huge quantities. That's how you get $0.25 avocados in Queens. Kim is buying by the case, not the truckload, which means he either has to charge more or he has to eat the cost.

Young Kim: Sometimes we have to, just because at the times when it becomes like $110, we will be losing, I believe, $1 or $2 per avocado.

Joe: That's even with avocados at around $3 a piece, which is hard. Groceries are generally a low-profit business. People like Kim are happy if they're making 2% on their investment, and they face a lot of overhead costs like rent and electricity. Kim says it costs him nearly $0.5 million a year just to insure one of his stores.

Young Kim: We don't make any money, but customers still would be like, "Why is it so expensive?"

Joe: You see, Karen, avocado pricing is tough no matter how you slice it.

Karen: Oh, come on, Joe.

Joe: Do you have something better?

Karen: Yes. Avocado pricing is the pits.

Michael Hill: [chuckles] Karen, Joe, $3 is a lot. I'm definitely going to be on the lookout for those $0.25 avocados. Karen, are there other takeaways you learned from the grocers you spoke to?

Karen: Really, that pricing is more art than science. Grocers are taking a lot of factors into consideration, and that means some items are sold at a loss, and instead, profits are made off of other more premium items like prime rib, sea moss, or sometimes the avocado is a premium item. They're charging $2 or $3 because they'll know we'll pay for it.

Michael Hill: Joe, Karen, this reporting is part of a bigger project about grocery prices you're doing. What are some of the other products you're tracking?

Joe: We selected 11 items after consulting with researchers. We generally tried to pick staple items, and we also tried to include some items with high price volatility. One of the items we looked at was whole milk, which was more stable across three months, whereas a pound of ground beef varied by $7 between stores in the same month. Another sort of interesting finding was that stores in low-income neighborhoods didn't always have the cheapest prices. Moving forward, every month, we'll be focusing on a different trend or storyline we see in our data.

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Janae Pierre: That's WNYC reporters Joe Hong and Karen Yi talking with my colleague, Michael Hill.

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Janae Pierre: Before we go, some welcome news for NYCHA residents. The Adams administration is extending free high-speed internet and basic cable access for public housing residents by three years. The city says the Big Apple Connect program serves about 330,000 residents and saves them $1,700 annually. The extension includes $1.2 million from Optimum and Spectrum for digital literacy programming at libraries across the five boroughs. It also includes a new online digital literacy training hub for NYCHA residents. The program will now run through June of 2028.

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Janae Pierre: Thanks for listening to NYC Now from WNYC. I'm Janae Pierre. We'll be back tomorrow.

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