Caption honorary African American Brad Lander

 

Diverse discrimination

NY Post 

A controversial new city law that will allow non-citizens to vote in local elections would unconstitutionally bolster the political clout of Hispanic and Asian New Yorkers — at the expense of African-Americans, according to a new lawsuit.

The suit, filed Wednesday in Staten Island Supreme Court by longtime political commentator Deroy Murdock and three other black New Yorkers, claims the City Council violated the 15th Amendment by approving the measure in December with the “discriminatory intent” to strengthen the voting clout of some racial groups over others.

“The Foreign Citizen Voting Bill accomplishes precisely what advocates intended: shifting the electoral power in New York City municipal elections along racial lines to Hispanic and Asian voters and reducing the power of other racial groups,” the suit says. 

J. Christian Adams, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a nonprofit representing the plaintiffs, said the process of getting the new law passed was “infested with racial motivation.”

 The suit claims former Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez (D-Manhattan), who sponsored the bill that later became law, has publicly said he drafted it with the intention of “increasing the power” of some racial groups.

This is the second suit challenging the measure, which became law last month. Last month, local Republican elected officials filed legal papers arguing that under state law only US citizens can participate in the city’s elections.

Housing while Black

  

BRKLNR

 A new report by the Black Homeownership Project highlights the alarming decline in Black homeownership in New York City over the past 20 years, and the increased costs Black homeowners face compared to their white counterparts.

The project, an initiative from the Center for NYC Neighborhoods, found Black homeownership has declined 13% since 2000 and Black homeowners pay on average $7,000 more in closing costs than white homeowners.

In Brooklyn, 1,742 loans were originated for Black households in 2007. In 2017, that number was 881.

As part of the project, dozens of Black homeowners, housing counselors and program practitioners were surveyed over the last year to address the existing systemic issues that have led to a vast racial wealth gap and decline in Black homeownership – which has only been further exacerbated by the pandemic.

The Center said in a press release the findings supported a proposed slate of pilot programs that would increase homeownership among Black communities in NYC and work to close the racial homeownership and wealth gaps. Those programs include assistance with down payments, matched savings and tenant opportunities to purchase.

Center for NYC Neighborhoods CEO and Executive Director Christie Peale said in New York City, Black families made up only 18% of homeowners, yet they represented more than 60% of the Center’s clients looking for assistance in buying and keeping their homes.

“The homeownership gap is worse for Black Americans now than ever before and has only grown wider amid the pandemic,” she said.

“Through the Black Homeownership Project, we are uncovering new details of how these national trends show up locally and proposing NYC specific programs to create meaningful change so that Black homeowners can buy homes and stay in the communities they love.”

The five new pilot programs recommended by the Center include a down payment assistance navigator, with the research finding assembling a down payment was one of the greatest barriers to homeownership for Black New Yorkers; a savings accelerator, to help low- to moderate-income New Yorkers out of the feedback loop where a lack of access to safe and affordable financing can push them towards extractive financial products; and a homeowner landlord program focused on support services for mom-and-pop landlords to help preserve their source of affordable rentals, including education from City housing agencies, connecting with trusted lenders and contractors for repairs and support and more.

Apparently, this crisis has not been acknowledged by de Blasio in his recovery for all of us.

AirBnB helps gentrifiers more

From the Daily News:

It’s mostly white residents cashing in as Airbnb hosts in the city’s predominantly black neighborhoods, according to a new report by a watchdog website.

Using host photographs, Inside Airbnb determined that across 72 mostly African-American neighborhoods, the Airbnb host population is 74% white — compared to just a 13.9% overall white population in those neighborhoods.

They estimate that white Airbnb hosts in black neighborhoods earned $159.7 million, compared to $48.3 million for black hosts.

“It’s clear that it’s a racial gentrification tool,” said Inside Airbnb founder Murray Cox. “They’ve been using people of color and black faces in their marketing and lobbying campaign, but they’re not fundamentally the people who are using it.”It’s mostly white residents cashing in as Airbnb hosts in the city’s predominantly black neighborhoods, according to a new report by a watchdog website.

NYC schools are pretty segregated

From Crains:

New York state has the most segregated public schools in the nation, with many black and Latino students attending schools with virtually no white classmates, according to a report released Wednesday.

The report by the Civil Rights Project at the University of California at Los Angeles looks at enrollment trends from 1989 to 2010.

In New York City, the largest school system in the U.S. with 1.1 million pupils, the study notes that many of the charter schools created over the last dozen years are among the least diverse of all, with less than 1% white enrollment at 73% of charter schools.

"To create a whole new system that's even worse than what you've got really takes some effort," said Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project and an author of the report.

He and his fellow researchers say segregation has the effect of concentrating black and Latino students in schools with high ratios of poor students compared with the statewide average. Black and Latino students who attend schools that are integrated by race and income level perform significantly better than their peers in segregated schools, the authors note.

The study suggests that New York's segregation is largely due to housing patterns, but that it could be mitigated through policies intended to promote diversity.

City public schools highly segregated

From the NY Times:

In the broad resegregation of the nation’s schools that has transpired over recent decades, New York’s public-school system looms as one of the most segregated. While the city’s public-school population looks diverse — 40.3 percent Hispanic, 32 percent black, 14.9 percent white and 13.7 percent Asian — many of its schools are nothing of the sort.

About 650 of the nearly 1,700 schools in the system have populations that are 70 percent a single race, a New York Times analysis of schools data for the 2009-10 school year found; more than half the city’s schools are at least 90 percent black and Hispanic. Explore Charter is one of them: of the school’s 502 students from kindergarten through eighth grade this school year, 92.7 percent are black, 5.7 percent are Hispanic, and a scattering are of mixed race. None are white or Asian. There is a good deal of cultural diversity, with students, for instance, of Haitian, Guyanese and Nigerian heritage. But not of class. Nearly 80 percent of the students qualify for subsidized lunch, a mark of poverty. The school’s makeup is in line with charter schools nationally, which are over all less integrated than traditional public schools.