AOC AWOL

Respectfully, she ran on breathing our air. I do see the other neighboring congressional representatives quite often. I’ve met w Meng and others. Seems there’s different standards for folks. We’ve been through some bad crises and never a phone call. I’ve tried many times.

— Jessica Ramos (@jessicaramos) July 25, 2022

 

 NY Post

A progressive state lawmaker from Queens took a shot at Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for being “absent” and out of touch — accusing the left-wing icon of blowing off a meeting.

Sen. Jessica Ramos, whose western and central Queens district overlaps with AOC’s congressional district and who has been an ally, unloaded on the congresswoman after a med student complained about her canceling a health care forum.

“A couple of the most highly respected health policy academics recently set up a meeting with AOC’s office to discuss NHS-style healthcare reform,” said the medical student, who uses the Twitter handle @jai_lies.

“They were told bluntly by AOC’s staff, ‘we’re not doing healthcare right now.'”

The health activist added: “So while she’s doing performative resistance art for the cameras she’s ‘not doing healthcare right now. We are in the middle of two pandemics & people are still dying because they lack healthcare. this is not fighting.”

He was referring to AOC getting arrested during an abortion protest and faking that her hands were handcuffed behind her back. 

Ramos then began a series of attack tweets on the congresswoman.

“Maybe if you spent more time in your office and with your team you’d know what goes on. Just saying it would be nice if you breathed our air,” Ramos, who chairs the Senate Labor Committee and is backed by the left-leaning Working Families Party, said in a tweet.

“So, as an employer, what happens with the staffer who said this?”

Nursing home magnate buys future hotel in LIC

 

 The Real Deal

A hotel to become a Staybridge Suites in Long Island City now belongs to a nursing home operator who has been active in New York City dealmaking.

Centers Health Care’s Daryl Hagler bought the property at 38-59 11th Street where the unopened 240-key hotel stands for $63 million from an entity called 559 Development LLC, according to city records filed Monday.

Centers Health Care declined to comment. It wasn’t immediately clear who controls the entity that sold the property. The seller of 38-59 11th Street paid $6.2 million for the site in 2013, according to city property records.

The hotel was complete at the time of its sale, said Josh Zegen of Madison Realty Capital, which lent developer Teddy Li $46 million in 2019 to help finish the 183,000-square-foot hotel and community facility. Construction had begun in 2018.

It’s unclear when the 24-floor Staybridge Suites will open. IHG Hotels & Resorts, Staybridge’s parent company, did not comment by press time.

 Hagler has been involved in several deals across New York City in recent months. In May he purchased the nearby 100,000-square-foot former DeNobili cigar factory at 35-11 9th Street in Astoria and its 6,000-square-foot parking lot for $26.4 million from real estate investor Bruce Brickman.

 

AOC has forsaken political courage

Impunity City

This has been quite the new beginning for re-elected wunderkind Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. After easily winning the primary and the general election last November along with Trump falling to a guy who didn’t make any effort to win, AOC became the most culturally powerful figure in Congress with a massive social media following bigger than most celebrity figures in movies and pop music. With this much status and power in presumably good hands, it seem the iconic Latinx from the Bronx had solid momentum to get progressive policies and programs for the working people and working families ratified into laws.

Then all of sudden, a jagoff comedian dared her to back her words and foment change…

Wills suing city over Rikers treatment

From the Times Ledger:

During his stay in prison at Rikers Island over the summer on the grand larceny charges, Wills claimed to have been mistreated and denied medical care for a chronic condition due to a botched surgery from a year and a half ago, according to his lawyer, Natraj Bhushan.

Bhushan said that for days Wills did not receive proper treatment, because the staff did not have his medical records on file to meet his medical needs. His lawyer also says that Wills was not in the proper unit for someone with a chronic condition.

“You’d notice that during his trial [for grand larceny], the judge allowed him to sit on a special cushion, because due to a botched surgery the lower half of his body is permanently, partially disabled,” Bhushan said. “He had atrophy and nerve damage, and it really affected his ability to tend to his constituents for a year and a half.”

According to Bhushan, the pain medicine that Wills is on has side effects, which could affect his psyche, and during his stay at Rikers he did not get placed in a unit where he could have psychological treatment that was ordered in a court directive.

“This is someone who had well-documented medical issues,” Bhushan said. “This was taken into account when they were sentencing him.”

He is suing the city for $10 million because of how he was treated and he hopes his claim, which was acknowledged by the comptroller, would force changes at Rikers.

Waiting for care at Queens hospitals could kill you

From the Queens Tribune:

The status of hospitals in Queens has been a major topic for years, notably the care that’s given to patients. Patients being treated in hallways, wait times in the emergency care units and the short staff within the hospitals have topped the list of problems.

Emergency Room times in Queens hospitals can be anywhere from three to six hours.

Hospitals such as Flushing Hospital Medical Center, Jamaica Hospital and Elmhurst Hospital are three of the largest in Queens, especially after St. Johns Hospital closed in 2009. The vacant building is now being turned into a residential building for the surrounding community.

The total emergency room wait time for Elmhurst Hospital is on average about five hours and 57 minutes, Jamaica Hospital averages to about four hours and 48 minutes and Flushing Hospital averages to about three hours and 10 minutes, according to hospitalstats.org. These times, of course, depend upon the severity of your condition and any ambulance that was sent out during that time.

The total average wait time in an emergency room before being seen by a doctor in New York State as a whole was 27 minutes, time on average for a patient spending time in the emergency room before being sent home was two hours and 44 minutes and the average wait time for a patient to be taken to their room was two and a half hours, according to propublica.org.

Schumer says ObamaCare was the wrong priority

From Forbes:

Despite the enduring unpopularity of Obamacare, Congressional Democrats have up to now stood by their health care law, allowing that “it’s not perfect” but that they are proud of their votes to pass it. That all changed on Tuesday, when the Senate’s third-highest-ranking Democrat—New York’s Chuck Schumer—declared that “we took [the public’s] mandate and put all our focus on the wrong problem—health care reform…When Democrats focused on health care, the average middle-class person thought, ‘The Democrats aren’t paying enough attention to me.’”

Sen. Schumer made his remarks at the National Press Club in Washington. “Democrats blew the opportunity the American people gave them…Now, the plight of uninsured Americans and the hardships caused by unfair insurance company practices certainly needed to be addressed,” Schumer maintained. “But it wasn’t the change we were hired to make. Americans were crying out for the end to the recession, for better wages and more jobs—not changes in health care.”

“This makes sense,” Schumer continued, “considering 85 percent of all Americans got their health care from either the government, Medicare, Medicaid, or their employer. And if health care costs were going up, it really did not affect them. The Affordable Care Act was aimed at the 36 million Americans who were not covered. It has been reported that only a third of the uninsured are even registered to vote…it made no political sense.”

Good jobs sit out there unfilled

From Crains:

Thousands of New York City health care and technology jobs that require middle-level skills could be filled if companies embrace an employer-led, sector-based workforce development initiative, according to an analysis by JPMorgan Chase.

The financial powerhouse crunched data on the misalignment of jobs and skills in the two sectors as part of a five-year, $250 million New Skills at Work initiative. Among the findings: About 45% of all open job postings listed in the city between July 2013 and June 2014 were middle-skill jobs in health care and information technology.

Those health care postings go unfilled for more than a month, compared with a few weeks for entry-level positions. Analysts estimated there will be 44,000 new job openings annually for middle-skill workers in the city over the next five years.

The health care and technology sectors both have a strong concentration of high-demand, high-growth, middle-skill occupations. There are about 423,000 health care workers in the city, with a projected 14% growth rate over the next five years. In the technology sector, middle-skill jobs account for 16% of all of middle-skill job postings in the city, or about 8,100 jobs.

Maybe if middle class residents weren't taxed to death and had housing they could afford, they'd fill these jobs faster.

Duh.

Grim news for Grimm

From Capital New York:

Rep. Michael Grimm surrendered to federal authorities on Monday morning, shortly before prosecutors at the U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn unsealed a 20-count indictment related to Grimm's ownership of a health foods store in Manhattan.

Loretta Lynch, the U.S. Attorney for New York's Eastern District, presented the indictment at a press conference in Brooklyn, detailing a tax-evasion scheme that she said was "almost breathtaking in its simplicity."

The indictment accuses Grimm of pocketing more than a million dollars in cash payments at the Upper East Side store called Healthalicious.

"When it came to his restaurant, Michael Grimm never met a tax he didn't lie to evade," Lynch said.

The charges include mail, wire, health care and tax fraud, along with two counts of perjury.

According to the indictment, "Grimm paid a large portion of Healthalicious’ employees’ wages in cash and did not report those cash wages to federal and state authorities, thereby lowering the restaurant’s payroll tax costs."

In 2013, two former Healthalicious employees filed a federal civil lawsuit against Grimm alleging the congressman did not pay them minimum or overtime wages as required by law. During a deposition hearing for the case, Grimm allegedly lied "about several material matters in connection with the lawsuit including whether he paid his employees in cash, and if he had interacted with a payroll processing company," according to prosecutors.

The indictment comes after a two-year investigation that was believed to focus on Grimm's congressional fund-raising.

Yet another city hospital likely to close

From Capital New York:

SUNY's board of trustees may be forced in the next two months to consider closing Downstate Medical Center, given the financial picture at Long Island College Hospital, a SUNY official said Monday.

The hospital continues to cost the state about $13 million per month and SUNY has been borrowing cash from Downstate Medical Center to pay the bills. That money isn't expected to last beyond March, said Bob Haelen, SUNY's interim Chief Financial Officer at a meeting of the trustees.

Lora Lefebvre, SUNY's associate vice chancellor for health affairs, said, “The numbers are so large that closing a campus will have to be discussed. That is going to be a difficult discussion.”

Selling the hospital won't solve all of SUNY's problem. If the property were bought for its appraised value, SUNY would still take a $300 million loss.

More hospital closings on the horizon?

From Crains:

Two events defined 2013 for New York City hospitals: the battle to keep two failing Brooklyn hospitals open, and Mount Sinai Medical Center's takeover of the former Continuum Health Partners. Closures and consolidations will again set the tone for hospitals in 2014. New York City hospitals need fewer beds—and fewer employees, too.

This isn't news to New Yorkers who have witnessed the death of St. Vincent's Hospital and other recent bankruptcies. Hospitals have been struggling with reimbursement cuts for years. But in 2014, a convergence of trends will accelerate consolidations and closings.

One trend is the way insurers are paring their network of hospitals and doctors under Obamacare. Low-priced health plans sold on the new insurance exchange are less costly because they offer a limited choice of providers, often only a quarter of the number in more traditional insurance policies. Some hospitals will find their patients steered elsewhere.

Insurers and companies that pay employee health care costs have -realized they "don't need a phone book of providers," said one hospital executive. "That is a revolution. Hospital utilization is dropping because the plan benefits are changing."

Another factor that will drive down hospitalization in 2014 is an ambitious new plan by New York state to cut the rate of avoidable hospitalizations by 25% over five years. That means shifting care from institutional settings to outpatient clinics and other alternatives.

The fall in hospital employment may begin in early 2014. Mayor Bill de Blasio may try to keep Brooklyn's money-losing Long Island College Hospital open, but the Cobble Hill facility filed a notice of mass layoffs with the state Department of Labor, specifying that 1,442 employees could lose their jobs between Jan. 21 and Feb. 3.

Likewise, bankrupt Interfaith Medical Center had been set to fire 1,545 workers late last month until the state promised funding to keep the hospital open through March 7.

Mount Sinai Health System cut 70 positions—a fraction of its 35,000 employees—shortly after its merger with Continuum, but the possibility remains that more consolidation could lie ahead.

ER reopening at St. Vincent's site

From the NY Times:

A 200-foot-long shiplike structure floated into its berth on Seventh Avenue half a century ago. Unable to ignore it, Greenwich Villagers have loved or hated it ever since.

Their descendants will have the same privilege. The structure — originally the Joseph Curran Building of the National Maritime Union, then the Edward and Theresa O’Toole Medical Services Building of St. Vincent’s Hospital — is emerging in its third form, as a stand-alone emergency room and medical care center.

The O’Toole Building’s newly restored concrete facade, glowing white even on an overcast day, is a surprise. With the removal of the one-inch-square tiles that had been applied in 1966, the building has gained freshness and power. Its porthole-shaped cusps have never looked more shipshape. The prows at the West 12th Street and West 13th Street corners seem as if they could cleave a sea lane.

More surprising yet is that the building survived to see this day. In October 2008, the Landmarks Preservation Commission granted St. Vincent’s hardship application, asserting that it could not perform and sustain its charitable mission unless it were permitted to raze the O’Toole Building and replace it with a hospital tower.

St. Vincent’s closed in April 2010, before it could put its plans into effect. The hardship application was shelved. Now, the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System is developing the new emergency room and medical care center by reusing the O’Toole Building and rehabilitating many of its architectural features.

Manhattan gets some health care back. Queens gets 2 stalled sites at Mary Immaculate and St. John's.

Crowley takes credit for things she didn't do

Ooooh, I can't wait to hear this!

"When a house is sold in my neighborhood, I no longer worry about a developer tearing it down to build an oversized eyesore. Thanks to Elizabeth's rezoning, we will never have to worry about overdevelopment again."

Is this guy serious? First of all, the rezoning process for Maspeth-Middle Village-Glendale was started in 2004 by community volunteers, 3 years after Elizabeth Crowley initially ran for City Council, lost, and promptly disappeared. While civic groups were going door-to-door collecting building information, Elizabeth Crowley had a no-show job courtesy of Brian McLaughlin. She resurfaced only in 2008 to run for Council again. The ULURP for the rezone started a few months after Elizabeth assumed power in 2009, mainly because Amanda Burden insisted on personally touring the area before giving her seal of approval. Although the rezoning provides more protection from overdevelopment, there still is plenty of it around these neighborhoods. You'll still see 3 or 4-family houses being built in the future where there currently are one-family houses. And a lot of the area was not rezoned because City Planning couldn't decide which zone it fell into or felt the zoning already matched the housing stock.

Crowley doesn't send her kids to the Maspeth High School. And I guess she thinks we forgot that she voted against the construction of the school and that a lot of Maspeth moms can't send their kids to the school because Crowley failed to obtain the necessary concessions from the DOE. We didn't.

She's fighting for good schools, but the one she is at apparently has a teacher that can't spell the word "repercussion". Hmm. They must have known she was coming, however, because the words "fallacy" "manic" "recession" and "indict" appear next to her head on the blackboard.

This is the creepiest mailer of the bunch. A woman appears on the cover of the folded mailer. When you open it up...

Crowley appears next to her. (She apparently was photoshopped out of the cover.)

Crowley's office referred a constituent to a social worker who enrolled her in Medicaid. That's a basic function of a council member, not fodder for a mailer.

The Forum endorsed Crowley's opponent, Craig Caruana:

The 30th Council District is facing a laundry list of intimidating issues: A woeful lack of senior housing, overcrowded classrooms, an arts center that aims to serve liquor to thousands of patrons in a residential area inhabited by many older residents and families, and not enough green space.

There is much that needs to happen for the district’s residents, and in order for that to happen there must be an elected official who is not only responsive to constituents’ needs but able to get along with the City Council’s top brass, including the Speaker.

That person is Craig Caruana.

We know that Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley has done some good. She has put money into schools and parks. But she has not done nearly enough. Fairly or not, she couldn’t get along with Council Speaker Christine Quinn – and that has hurt the district financially. She is routinely missing in action when it comes to responding to constituent complaints, and, when asked if she would run for a third term – something she repeatedly slammed Mayor Bloomberg for pushing – she didn’t say no. Additionally, she is supporting the Knockdown Center, despite almost every other elected official and numerous civic groups in the area raising a litany of concerns about the facility’s request to serve alcohol to up to 5,000 people at the site.

We need someone who will listen to, and fight for, the people.

Craig Caruana grew up in Middle Village – he knows this district. An involved civic activist, he is committed to this neighborhood and will fight for his constituents – whether they are Democrats or Republicans.

It’s time to vote in someone who aims to reduce property taxes and bring more resources to area schools. Who will return phone calls and get along with other legislators. Who won’t say, with a wink, sure, I’d love for that to happen – and then never follow through.

Vote Craig Caruana Nov. 5.

For comparison, here are some of his mailers:

City hospitals rejecting Obamacare

From the NY Post:

ObamaCare was supposed to offer more choices — but New Yorkers shopping for medical coverage stand to be shut out of two of the city’s most prestigious hospitals.

Only three of the nine plans being offered on the New York State Health Exchange cover bills at NYU and New York-Presbyterian medical centers, The Post has learned.

Those who opt for the other six plans will either have to go elsewhere or pay steep out-of-pocket costs, officials said.

Records show that New York-Presbyterian, the largest hospital system in the nation with 2,236 beds, is an in-network choice only for the United, Emblem and Aetna plans when chosen through the exchange.

The New York University system, which as 1,069 beds at its main Langone medical facility as well as its Hospital for Joint Diseases, has deals with Affinity, Fidelis and United, and for individuals with Oxford-United for small groups.

NYU and New York-Presbyterian continue to accept most commercial health insurance that is not regulated by ObamaCare.

Public employees need to pony up

From Crain's:

Public employees should contribute to their health premiums to help stem the steady increase in health costs for the city, a new report by the Citizens Budget Commission recommends.

Today, more than 90% of city workers are enrolled in health insurance plans that require no employee contribution toward the cost of the premium, the budget watchdog found. Requiring current workers and retirees to chip in for their health insurance would drive down the city’s deficit and bring New York in line with other large cities that have employee contributions.

“The city has an unusual arrangement as compared to the private sector,” said Maria Doulis, director of city studies at the CBC, and the report’s principal author. “Nobody is offering health insurance to employees and retirees on as generous a basis as the city of New York.”

The cost of health insurance for city public employees and retirees has skyrocketed in the last 10 years to $4.8 billion in 2012 from $2 billion in 2002. The CBC cites this growth as a major driver of projected budget gaps. While the total city budget is projected to grow 11% from fiscal years 2012 to 2016, health insurance costs will grow by almost 40% and comprise 70% of the projected budget gap in 2016.

Another hospital closure?

From the NY Post:

Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn faces closure -- just two years after the state approved a merger to save the financially ailing 155-year old facility, source told the Post.

SUNY Downstate Medical Center, which acquired LICH in 2011, has sent out word that its eying shutting down the Cobble Hill hospital — the only one that provides emergency room service in Brownstone Brooklyn.

A New York State Nurses Association rep visited the hospital to warn staffers that the hospital could close as soon as March 15.

NY's financial health in jeopardy

From the NY Times:

New York State faces long-term budget problems that are compounded by the teetering finances of its local governments, an aging infrastructure and the possibility of severe cuts in federal funding, a panel of fiscal experts said Tuesday.

The State Budget Crisis Task Force, a nonpartisan group, said that New York’s problems had been “papered over with gimmicks” for decades, and that while Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo had taken some steps to rein in spending, the state was still saddled with burdens that would leave it unable to make ends meet in the long run. Over the past decade, the report said, New York had postponed a reckoning by using one-time measures to produce $25 billion in revenue.

Former Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch, a co-chairman of the group, said the math spoke for itself. “There are expenditures that are growing at a rate faster than revenues,” Mr. Ravitch said. “As long as that happens, then we are on an unsustainable course.”

A report released on Tuesday by the panel, which was also led by Paul A. Volcker, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve, offered a sobering assessment of the state’s finances, raising concerns about its outsize spending on health care and education, its vulnerability to the ups and downs of Wall Street, and the struggles of its local governments to pay retirement obligations.

As one major area of concern, the report highlighted the state’s enormous Medicaid budget, which is larger than those of Florida, Pennsylvania and Texas combined. The report said that while the Cuomo administration had put in place a cap on annual increases in health care spending, it was not certain the measure would drive down costs over the long run.

City Council introduces flood mitigation bill

From Crains:

The City Council on Tuesday proposed legislation to improve the city’s ability to withstand powerful storms like Hurricane Sandy. The package of bills would raise elevation requirements for new or substantially renovated buildings—including health care facilities—as well as boilers and other critical equipment in flood zones.

The legislation is to be introduced during the council’s main monthly meeting. A series of oversight hearings have been scheduled before more than 20 council committees over seven weeks. Substantially renovated means upgrades that amount to 50% or more of a property’s value, a City Council spokesman said.

According to a press release released by the office of council Speaker Christine Quinn, the bills would:

Study the feasibility of relocating power lines underground. The council Committee on Consumer Affairs will examine a bill that would require the mayor’s Office of Long Term Planning and Sustainability to conduct a study over the next six months on the feasibility of placing power lines underground. The study will review recent power outages in the city and include a list of areas that would most benefit by burying power lines.

Adopt new flood elevation maps. Legislation would adopt the new FEMA flood advisory maps, expected to be released this week. The maps would expand the areas that must adhere to flood-proofing requirements in the city’s building code.

Impose new flood-proofing requirements for buildings in vulnerable areas. Legislation would alter the city’s building code to raise elevation requirements for future buildings in flood zones as well as their boilers and other critical equipment. The bill would also establish more restrictive flood construction standards for buildings in coastal A-zones, which are areas that may be flooded by coastal waves.

Adopt more stringent codes for health care facilities.

Maybe we need more hospitals...

From CBS New York:

From Manhattan to Queens, hospitals remained closed Wednesday night while smaller facilities are being forced to pick up the slack. A lack of space at the city’s medical facilities is leaving no room for error.

In Manhattan, the shadow cast by two temporarily shuttered hospitals has many residents concerned about health care.

Sandy’s flood waters triggered evacuations at Bellevue and at NYU Langone, two hospitals that may not be able to reopen for months. As a result, many patients are being forced to travel for medical care.

Mount Sinai Hospital took in more than 100 evacuees from Bellevue, and Langone and is functioning fine for now, but with winter approaching some people are left questioning how long that will last.

Another major concern is money. Rebuilding damaged hospitals could cost more than $1 billion. The city has allocated $300 million for Bellevue and Coney Island hospitals, but neither is expected to be up and running any time soon.

From The Observer:

As if Sandy hadn’t made enough of a mess of the New York City, and particularly a number of its hospital, a new report from Independent Budget Office has found that 20 percent of hospital beds here are at risk of further destruction, being in or near potential flood zones. Of the city’s 62 hospitals, which have a combined capacity of 26,451 beds, five were evacuated during Superstorm Sandy, displacing more than 2,500 patients as a result.

With another eight hospitals in or adjacent to evacuation zone A, the study is a worrying indictment of how New York’s indisposed might be affected by future natural disasters if flooding as severe as that during Sandy is to happen again—as many officials, including the mayor and the governor, believe it probably will.

NY to pay more for illegal alien heath care

From the NY Times:

President Obama’s health care law is putting new strains on some of the nation’s most hard-pressed hospitals, by cutting aid they use to pay for emergency care for illegal immigrants, which they have long been required to provide.

The federal government has been spending $20 billion annually to reimburse these hospitals — most in poor urban and rural areas — for treating more than their share of the uninsured, including illegal immigrants. The health care law will eventually cut that money in half, based on the premise that fewer people will lack insurance after the law takes effect.

But the estimated 11 million people now living illegally in the United States are not covered by the health care law. Its sponsors, seeking to sidestep the contentious debate over immigration, excluded them from the law’s benefits.

As a result, so-called safety-net hospitals said the cuts would deal a severe blow to their finances.

The hospitals are coming under this pressure because many of their uninsured patients are illegal immigrants, and because their large pools of uninsured or poorly insured patients are not expected to be reduced significantly under the Affordable Care Act, even as federal aid shrinks.

In some states, including New York, hospitals caring for illegal immigrants in life-threatening situations can seek payment case by case, from a program known as emergency Medicaid. But the program has many restrictions and will not make up for the cuts in the $20 billion pool, hospital executives said.

Don't you find it interesting that Bloomberg, Cuomo, Gillibrand and Schumer have not mentioned one word about NY City & State taxpayers being forced to shoulder the burden of paying for this?

Is there a doctor in the house?

From DNA Info:

Tribeca Pediatrics' move into Hunters Point three weeks ago was greeted by relief from parents desperate for health care for their kids.

Luciana Lamberto-Kelley, a mother of 3-year old Emma and 21-month old Anna, was so excited she went to the facility’s opening on Vernon Boulevard and 47th Road.

She and other parents in the neighborhood welcomed the new health center in a neighborhood where, they said, the amount of medical care lagged behind booming population numbers.

“There are so many kids in this neighborhood,” said Lamberto-Kelley, who works in media. She moved to the area three years ago and until recently shuttled her family to the Tribeca Pediatrics branch on the Upper East Side, a trip that required at least one subway transfer.

“Traveling to Manhattan with two kids really wasn’t easy,” she noted.

Moms with children like Lamberto-Kelley are filling the streets of Hunters Point, an increasingly residential neighborhood where the population exploded in the last decade, spurred by an influx of new high-rises along the waterfront, just across the river from the United Nations.

Yet, residents say, many services, like doctors' offices, have not been able to keep pace with the residential buildings that have popped up.