Transcript: Mayor Mamdani Administration Applauds Launch of Housing Court Fast Track to Get Tenants Urgent Relief Faster
Zohran Mamdani on NYC Mayor's Office transcripts.
Passages
It is a privilege to be here today at the New York City Housing Court alongside partners in government, City Hall leaders, and the dedicated legal services providers, tenants and advocates who have long devoted themselves to the fight for justice. I want to acknowledge specifically we have our State Senator Julia Salazar, who is here with us. We have our deputy mayor for Housing and Planning, Leila Bozorg; our HPD commissioner, Dina Levy; our DOB commissioner, Ahmed Tigani; our director, Cea Weaver, of the Mayor's Office to Protect Tenants. We also have Honorable Jack Stoller, a New York City Housing Court supervising judge. We also have Adriene Holder, the chief attorney of the Civil Practice of the Legal Aid Society. And once again, I do want to just give a special acknowledgment to all of the legal service providers and the tenant organizations that are here, seated in the audience and also here standing behind us. Now — well, yes, I think there was one clap there. You can clap for them. Every day, New Yorkers walk through the doors of this courthouse, some of whom are living in explicitly dangerous conditions and cannot afford to do so for a day longer. Older New Yorkers who have to walk down 12 flights of stairs because the elevator in their apartment building has sat out of service for months. Parents who fear for their children's health because there is lead paint in the living room, black mold in the bathroom and cockroaches crawling in through the floorboards. Families who have been forced into temporary living situations because their home has been damaged by a fire or floodwaters and their landlord refuses to make the necessary repairs. And yet, because of the volume of cases in New York City Housing Court, people living in the worst conditions regularly wait weeks — if not months — for a case to be heard, for a decision to come, for critical repairs to be completed, for their situation to improve. Today, we take a critical step toward ending that. I am proud to announce that the Unified Court System will now fast-track emergency housing court cases where the health, safety and well-being of New Yorkers is at risk. This is the fulfillment of a commitment made in our recently released Rental Ripoff report, and it is a core part of our Fix the City campaign. I'm grateful for the partnership and leadership of the Honorary Judge Ally, who has issued a memorandum to all Housing Court judges across the city that will expedite emergency cases immediately. This fast track will accelerate the cases that are both the most egregious and the most complex. Cases where at least one-third of units in a building are subject to an open vacate order, where families have been forced from their homes. Cases where at least one-third of the units have an open and immediately hazardous violation for essential services, like a lack of heat, hot water, electricity or gas. Cases where elevators in a building are out of service and documented as such by an open DOB Class 1 violation issued within the past year. And 7A cases where conditions have gotten so bad that the city or tenants themselves asked the court to appoint new management for a building due to persistent and egregious negligence. In these cases, judges will now require parties to return to court within five days after service is completed. This is the kind of change tenants have long called for, and the kind of change that tenants deserve. City Hall is fighting for the nearly 70 percent of New Yorkers who do not own their homes. On our first day in office, we relaunched the Mayor's Office to Protect Tenants and appointed Cea Weaver to lead it; we have held Rental Ripoff Hearings across the five boroughs and released New York City's first-ever Rental Ripoff report; and we are revamping the city's code enforcement system, including interagency enforcement days with HPD, DOB and many more. Taken together, each of these reforms reflect our all-encompassing approach to solving the housing crisis, including a historic $22 billion investment in improving public housing, building new affordable housing and preserving the affordable homes we already have. Mayor Fiorello La Guardia once wrote that the basic function of government was to deliver justice on the broadest scale. “Justice,” he said, “gives everyone some chance for the beauty and better things of life.” Having a home with heat and hot water, a home free of pests and mold, a home you can live in, raise a family in — that is justice on the broad scale, one that makes better things possible in the life of every New Yorker. And that is exactly what we are here to deliver today. Thank you. And now I will pass it over to our emcee for this morning, Commissioner Levy.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceYou know, it is hard to give an exact sense of how many New Yorkers will be impacted. However, we do know that these types of cases, the ones that we've listed earlier, are exactly the ones that tend to be the most complicated to resolve. And the extended timeline that they have taken historically, as well as the backlog that it creates, it not only means consequences for those New Yorkers who are bringing these cases to this court but also ramifications that extend beyond that for the entire Housing Court system. I'm going to pass it over to our deputy mayor for Housing and Planning to speak to a little additional detail on 7A. Oh, actually, we'll have Commissioner Dina Levy come up.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceYou know, I think just to first lay out very clearly that one of the critical parts of our housing agenda is delivering for public housing residents who have for far too long been overlooked and left behind by government policy. And one of the key ways that we've sought to do that is through the allocation of a multibillion-dollar housing plan specifically for public housing and then also looking for additional ways that we can make targeted investments beyond that. One of the early investments we made was in heat pumps in the Rockaways to transform a specific NYCHA housing development. I'll pass it over to our deputy mayor to add some additional details there.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI think we're going to get back to you on that bill. Do you have the bill number? Okay. Thank you.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceWhat we are talking about today are some of the most severe cases. We're talking about cases where a third of the building is facing some kind of a serious violation [and] cases where we have elevators broken down. And when it comes to the law, everyone has to follow it. And for far too long, that has somehow not been understood when it comes to housing in our city. If a landlord is not able to follow the law, then they should not be a landlord of that property. And what we are talking about are things that have incredible consequences for New Yorkers. At one of the Rental Ripoff Hearings, I sat across from a tenant who showed me a video of one of her neighbors having to carry her disabled child up the stairs because that elevator was broken. We’re talking about seniors who live on the 10th floor of a building. How are they supposed to get up there or get down from there? And these are things that do not exist in isolation. And what I mean by that is every so often, I'm standing in front of the press corps and our cameras, and I'm talking about a heat emergency. I'm talking about the cold weather that's coming. And we are trying to reach New Yorkers wherever they are. These are the kinds of things that also intensify the isolation of those New Yorkers. We have to make sure that these laws are actually being followed.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI first just want to thank and acknowledge OCA for all of the work that made today possible. And I think it's worthy of a round of applause. We know that this is the right thing to do. There is still a lot of work to actually follow through on it. And that is what OCA and so many others in this room are making possible. I'll pass it over to a member of my admin to speak additionally on that question.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceThank you, and just before we move over, I just want to introduce State Senator Kavanagh to share some words on this.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI think that our campaign showed that the current system is not incongruent with getting more people to participate. And in fact, it comes out to the way in which you build your campaign, the way you reach out to people and also if you are encouraging more and more people to register, to change their location of registration to where they actually live, and also that they actually have a home in whatever political coalition that you're building.And at the end of the election calendar, I think we received more than a million votes, which was the first mayoral campaign to receive that, I think, since the '60s it may have been. Since Lindsay. And so what that showed to me is that it is possible to bring more New Yorkers in. It's not a question of the rules that you set up. It's a question also of how you want to engage with them. So that's how I navigate that question. And then, you know, I also stand here as the first Indian American mayor in our city's history, and my mother's family is all still in India. And the vision of India that I was taught by my family and the one that I grew up being very familiar with was of a pluralistic society, of a secular republic that believed in the belonging of each and every person who was from India. And it has been incredibly troubling to see the rise of a movement that is predicated on an exclusionary vision of any country, frankly. And so it is one that I find myself in deep opposition to, not only as an Indian American, but also as the mayor of a city that believes deeply in the belonging of each and every person, no matter their color, their creed, their religion, their faith, wherever they're from.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI don't support the rally, but I don't know if the city has any jurisdiction on canceling a private event. [Crosstalk.]
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceNot off the top of my head, but we will get back to you on that question.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceWe can get back to you on the exact number. What I can tell you is that these were city workers across a number of different agencies, workers who performed vital service to the city. And it's just one part of why I have spoken with the president directly about the importance of extending TPS for Haitian Americans, for Syrian Americans, for so many who have now been deprived of that status. We are also talking about a status that was created with the intention of shielding sets of people from having to return to home countries that were deemed to be unstable. And when you look at the conditions in Haiti today, the idea that we would send Haitian Americans back in this moment, to me, is a betrayal of what TPS actually stands for. And we continue to call on the federal government to change that decision.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI see anyone who is registered to vote as a potential supporter, and frankly, anyone who lives in our city. And as the mayor, my job is to respond to the needs of everyone, no matter how they feel about me or whether they voted for me or whether they voted at all. And when I'm running for office, I'm looking to speak to everyone. We're speaking about open primaries, but I'm also someone who ran through a competitive general. And that is the moment in which you speak to anyone regardless of their registration. And, you know, earlier we were talking — I think Holly had mentioned outreach to Trump voters. I think by the end of the election, one in 10 voters who voted for Trump in New York City voted for our campaign. And so, to me, it's not about classifying someone as whether they are with you or against you. It is about asking them, what is it that you're looking for from city government? What are the struggles you're facing in your life, and what are the ways in which we can actually help you with that?
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceYou know, the prior administration had reached out to Lyft in support of this as a measure, and when we came into office, we were informed of a number of the risks that would come with the implementation of this, risks that include the handling of data of minors in New York City and also questions as to the efficacy of this kind of data in asserting what the actual intent is of this program, whether it's age, what have you. And so I continue to have that skepticism after having been informed about those critiques of this kind of a program. And I think what we've seen in the last few weeks, the last few months, is that when it comes to a lack of safety with e-bikes, a lot of it is actually derived from the purchasing and sale of e-bikes that are clearly in violation of New York City law. And so one of the things that we have done is send out these cease-and-desist letters that have now taken effect to the more than 40 retailers who are found to still be selling e-bikes and e-scooters that are clearly operating at speeds that are not legal in the city.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceWell, yes, we're very excited that today we announced that we have secured 1,000 discounted tickets for New Yorkers to be sold at $100 a ticket. They will go on sale tomorrow at 10 a.m.And any New Yorker who lives in our city, all they will be required to do is provide their ZIP code. They can buy a ticket for themselves and one other lucky person. It'll be first come, first serve, pun intended. And we're excited about this because part of the beauty of living in our city is also the exposure to some of the greatest sporting events across the world. And the U.S. Open is one that so many New Yorkers have fond memories of, and yet what we've seen is, like with many sporting events, the cost has continued to increase, and many New Yorkers feel as if they don't have a chance at being a part of something like this. So just like we secured 1,000 tickets for the World Cup at a discounted price, we've done the same with the U.S. Open, and our mission is: how can we bring as many New Yorkers as possible to be a part of such a wonderful event?
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI don't have many thoughts on that. What I would say is that I continue to be in regular communication with Congressman Jeffries. And it's a communication that is always built on: how can we deliver for this city? How can we deliver for New Yorkers? It's something that both of us care very deeply about. And when it comes to what life looks like after the midterms, one, I hope that we would be celebrating taking back the House. And two, I would always hope that, at that point, we are articulating very clearly what we are standing for. We know for quite some time that we are standing up to a federal administration that is taking cruel and punitive action against the ability of many working-class Americans to afford their day-to-day life. But what is our agenda that we're fighting for? And that is something that we are looking to make clear here in New York City. It's an agenda for those who have been left behind. It's an agenda for those who work all day and still don't have enough money in their pocket to pay for their groceries. And I'm excited at seeing the number of Democrats who've been elected in primaries, whether it's Claire Valdez, Darializa Avila Chevalier, Brad Lander, others, and now that we could bring that, hopefully, into a majority.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceYou know, the D in DSA stands for Democratic, and I leave it to the organization in its own voting of who it is electing as its leaders.And I think what we've seen with Gustavo and what we're seeing to any others who are in the fight for a fairer, more affordable New York is that their focus is on making this a city that everyone can belong to, and I welcome anyone who's committed to that. ###
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the source
Every passage above is taken from this recording: NYC Mayor's Office transcripts, Transcript: Mayor Mamdani Administration Applauds Launch of Housing Court Fast Track to Get Tenants Urgent Relief Faster.