In the News

“The governor’s proposal is essentially a real estate subsidy,” said Paulette Soltani, political director of the housing advocacy group VOCAL-NY. Although the proposal does not contain new subsidies, real estate developers are eligible for other subsidies when they create affordable housing, and Cuomo’s plan would make it easier to convert commercial buildings.

“The Assembly and the Senate modeled what democracy actually looks like when the legislature allows progressive movements to lead towards justice,” Jawanza James Williams, the director of organizing at VOCAL-NY, said in a statement Tuesday night.

“Homelessness in particular is the kind of issue where a lot of the solutions are thought about in rooms that don’t include any people who are actually impacted by the problem,” Joseph Loonam, housing campaign coordinator for VOCAL-NY, told The Appeal. “[The forum has] really been led by, not just homeless New Yorkers, but specifically homeless New Yorkers that have … come under a lot of NIMBY-ist attacks.”

The city’s process lacks the transparency and the inclusivity that activists are looking for, said Luke Grandis, an organizer with Vocal NY who helped put together the event, along with several other social justice groups. Organizers are calling their event a forum, rather than a demonstration, in hope of avoiding a police presence in case anyone is uncomfortable speaking in front of officers.

“It could happen in the middle of the night,” Feliz Guzman, 39, an organizer with Vocal NY, told protesters.

”You find out you are being moved and you do not know where you are going to go. So in the middle of all your issues you are having and trying to preserve your humanity, you end up being told that you are not welcome there anymore.”

Programs in big cities are adapting, too. For example, VOCAL-NY, a statewide grassroots organization that helps low-income people affected by HIV/AIDS, runs a syringe services program out of Brooklyn. When the pandemic struck New York City, the organization started providing people with personal protective equipment and hand sanitizer.

Following weeks of demonstrations calling for a reduction in NYPD spending — part of a national reckoning over police brutality — VOCAL-NY learned it lost out on $2.25 million the Council had previously allocated to help the group buy a permanent headquarters in Brooklyn.

“We wanted to make sure that the whole world knew that if you’re calling to defund the NYPD, that you need to be here to make sure those folks in the building behind us know what’s happening,” Jawanza James Williams, the 30-year-old director of organizing for Vocal, told BuzzFeed News.

Roger Clark, a 48-year-old VOCAL-NY community leader, called the bill’s passage “a very big deal.”

“I have been fighting for years to pass this 50-A bill, and for years the police unions have been blocking the legislation, telling [lawmakers] that it was wrong, that it’s gonna put officers at risk, which we know is not true,” Clark said. “It’s a step in the right direction.”

Outreach and peer education manager Paula Santiago, who joined VOCAL in 2014 after decades working in harm reduction, created the organization’s peer education program and grew the outreach team, which covers Brooklyn neighborhoods including Sunset Park, Red Hook and Bed-Stuy.