City Council Candidate Responses

District 35

1. Please briefly share your background and note any experiences you may have in engaging older adults, whether professionally or personally, and in connecting with the non-profit sector.

Renee Collymore

From the age of 15 years old, my family were Family Care Providers, who provided safety and love for elderly mentally ill patients, as they lived in our home for 15 years. We provided food, living quarters, family times, recreational activities, exercise, medicine oversight, family trips, meditation, fun talk and more. The elderly patients became apart of our family and lived with us until they passed away, which was painful for the entire family. My mom, now, 80 years old, still lives with our family as I am her caretaker and Power of Attorney. I understand that I must provide that for my mom, not only because she is my mom, but because I must make sure that she is not taken advantage of, by the outside world.

Crystal Hudson

While I have been in relationship with older adults throughout my lifetime, my most relevant personal and lived experience is the fact that I am the only child of a single mother who is living with Alzheimer’s disease, and thus pro-worker, pro-family and pro-caregiver issues hit particularly close to home for me. For the past eight years, I have been a staunch advocate not only for those living with Alzheimer’s disease and their loved ones, but for all seniors. In fact, it has been through my caregiving experience that I was called to public service, knowing that families like mine shouldn’t have to struggle as much as we have to ensure that our loved ones can age safely and in place. I have engaged with many non-profit organizations through my activism - including, but not limited to CaringKind, National Domestic Workers Alliance, the Alzheimer’s Association, and Caring Across Generations - and know firsthand that without the non-profit sector, so many of us would not have access to the services and resources that these organizations make possible.

Michael Hollingsworth

I was born in Fort Greene and raised in Clinton Hill and Crown Heights, the son of an immigrant father from Guyana and a farmer’s daughter from Alabama. Raised alongside four brothers and one sister, I couldn’t have asked for a better neighborhood in which to grow up. While my childhood was idyllic in many ways, my teen years were not. After a family fracture, I had to take on more responsibility than most children should. I got a part-time job after school, while also helping to raise my two nieces. I watched my friends head off to college out of state as I remained behind in Brooklyn in order to support my family. I found a job at an architectural firm, where I rose from a site surveyor to a project manager. As my parents aged, I became their caregiver; I helped care for my ailing father until his passing in 2002 at the age of 58. I eventually graduated from New York City College of Technology at the City University of New York (CUNY) and have worked as a graphic designer ever since—and have zero regrets over postponing my education so I could help my family when they needed me most. In 2016, I started organizing my tenant association when our landlord tried to convert our rent-stabilized building into condos while refusing repairs to long-term tenants. After joining the Crown Heights Tenant Union (CHTU), I realized my tenant association had to organize all the Crown Heights buildings in our landlord’s portfolio, so we started a local and won repairs across multiple buildings. Older adults in New York City and across the US are especially vulnerable to landlord predation and negligence, including by NYCHA. They are also particularly vulnerable to eviction and other forms of forced displacement hastened by rent hikes, financial exploitation, and wholly inadequate income supports, rent exemptions, and voucher programs. With a dearth of affordable housing, older adults increasingly end up in the City’s shelter system; between 2004 and 2017, the number of adults aged 65 and over living in city shelters increased by 300 percent and is expected to triple again by 2030. As CHTU’s representative in city and statewide coalitions like Housing Justice for All, the Rent Justice Coalition, and Right To Counsel NYC, I have organized with older adults to win massive victories for tenants all across this city and state. Together we’ve organized new tenant associations to win repairs and stop illegal overcharge, passed the historic rent laws of 2019 for the entire state, passed a rent freeze in 2020 for all rent-stabilized tenants in NYC, put our bodies on the line this entire summer to stop illegal evictions, and pressured the governor to extend the eviction moratorium multiple times, including the recent extension until May 2021. This spring, I have been organizing with older Brooklyners, particularly those active in the Movement to Protect the People, to fight against the eviction of our local Associated Supermarket—one of the only supermarkets in Crown Heights that is accessible to older adults and carries reasonably priced groceries; its loss would create a food desert and increase food insecurity for older adults.

Curtis Harris

Curtis Harris is the Executive Director of Green Earth Poets Cafe a 501 C 3 non profit performing arts poetry company. Our experience engaging older adults includes working with SuCasa for three years in Brooklyn and Queens with the honorable NYC Council member I.Daneek Miller and Robert Cornegy, Jr. We have many older adults performing at our poetry events, readings, and poetry slams. Our theater division employs and engages older adults as stage hands, managers and counsel. Curtis is 63 and has recently retired after 40 years as an Accountant. In that role he has engaged many older adults in a professional.

2. As we live longer and healthier lives, what are your priorities with respect to promoting equity across all ages in our City?

Renee Collymore

My priorities, in this regard, is having more access to healthy food choices, quality free healthcare for all, free college education, and affordable living.

Crystal Hudson

My top three issues are based on the idea that everyone in New York City from birth to death is able to not just survive, but thrive with the dignity and respect that we all deserve. The diversity of New York City and the richness of our local history reminds us that there is a place for all of us. To that end, my top three priorities are investing in new affordable housing along with strengthening and protecting current tenants; ensuring that every young person in our city has access to a high-quality, comprehensive education that meets their needs; and shifting away from punitive justice and towards true community accountability.

Michael Hollingsworth

Achieving equity for New Yorkers of all ages requires building a movement to prevent displacement and keep our families, neighborhoods, and communities together and safe. Our movement is going to put people over profits, our communities over corporations, and solidarity over individual economic gain.

At the policy level, this means taking aggressive action on housing, economic security, education, and environment and transportation. We need to ensure that New Yorkers of all ages have a just and equitable future.

Housing
It is our moral imperative to take cure of our most vulnerable neighbors, including our elders. We must build social housing that is resident-controlled, committed to social equality, and deeply and permanently affordable to make sure that our older neighbors have safe places to live. Rather than let speculators buy up the distressed properties, the city must proactively fight against environmentally damaging luxury developments that fail to offer housing for poor and working-class people and older adult renters, over 60 percent of whom are rent-burdened. Instead, we’ll fight for truly affordable housing that benefits our marginalized neighbors, focus on repairing NYCHA, organize to make our buildings less dependent on fossil fuels, and fund affordable senior housing with services. There are a number of ways that the City Council can intervene to spur on the creation and protection of social housing:

- Halting all City- and developer-initiated rezonings, with exceptions for justice-centered, community-produced plans
- Building a movement to force federal, state, and local governments to build more social housing for poor and working people, including affordable senior housing with services, and ensuring that this housing meets the needs of an aging population and supports independence for people with disabilities.
- Fighting for funds to make critical infrastructure improvements for residential buildings—including NYCHA and NORCs—that will eliminate their dependence on fossil fuels, ensure accessibility, remove environmental hazards, and improve community space.
- Completely overhauling Land Use Review procedures to prevent corruption and prioritize people over profits
- Banning selling or leasing city-owned property to private entities, including the privatization of NYCHA
- Fully allocating funding for Senior Centers in NYCHA buildings, NORCs, and beyond
- Fully funding nonprofit service providers operating in NYCHA and prevent city agencies from citing and fining them for building conditions that are out of their control
- Passing Community Opportunity to Purchase (COPA) at the city level to allow qualified nonprofits first dibs on residential buildings that are going to market
- Abolishing the Tax Lien Sale, a Giuliani-era program that allows the City of New York to sell outstanding tax debt to investors, and in cases in which liens are for slumlords’ unpaid Housing Code violations, use the liens instead to convert them into municipal holdings and ultimately social housing
- Creating a municipal land bank and convert municipal holdings into democratically controlled social housing and community spaces
- Securing new State and City funding to build new social housing. Support state-level efforts (such as the Invest In Our New York Act) to generate the necessary tax revenue for housing, while pushing the city to issue new bonds to increase our capital budget

Economic security
We need to guarantee that all New Yorkers are economically secure. As of 2017, one in five New Yorkers over 65 were living in poverty—a number that has likely increased with the pandemic. The high cost of survival in NYC—shelter, food, healthcare, and medication—combined with inadequate income supports and economic crises that led to lost jobs, pensions, and retirement savings have generated serious financial insecurity for older New York City residents.

By 2040, people ages 65 and over will comprise 20 percent of the City’s population, yet the budget for the City’s Department for the Aging (DFTA) remains at less than one-half of one percent and, accordingly, its funding for critical DFTA services like home-delivered meals is way below the national average.

I will fight to increase the DFTA’s budget and protect and honor funding initiatives like the Indirect Cost Rate and Cost of Living Adjustments that create economic security for the nonprofit community serving older New Yorkers. I will use my office to coordinate with city, state, and federal officials to fight for increased income supports for older New Yorkers.
I will also fight to achieve economic security and opportunity for the essential workers who care for older New Yorkers, most of whom are women of color from marginalized communities. Our city and state need to ensure that care workers and all workers:
- Make a living wage
- Have paid sick leave, vacation time, and parental leave
- Have the right to organize and collectively bargain
- Are protected by legislation ensuring just cause protections, safe staffing ratios, and an end to misclassification
- Have a right to health and healthcare

Education
I’m a proud CUNY graduate and attended public schools throughout my childhood. I believe in well-funded, integrated public schools. Education is a lifelong pursuit; it doesn’t end with schooling. New Yorkers of all ages should have opportunities to pursue education and learning opportunities. My education platform prioritizes:

- Fully funding NYC public schools and universal pre-K by taxing the wealthiest five percent of earners and asset-holders and reallocating the NYPD’s bloated budget to our public schools
- Dividing PTA funds equitably across all schools citywide
- Advocating for NY State to pay the money it owes to NYC schools
- Demilitarizing schools and ending the school-to-prison pipeline
- Integrating, unscreening, and rezoning our schools
- Fighting against education privatization by ending charter school openings; bringing charter schools under public control; ending charter school co-location; and building new public schools and facilities
- Empowering young people through expanded paid internship programs, the creation of a Youth Oversight Board for the Department of Education, and the elimination of standardized testing from high school graduation requirements
- Passing a New Deal for CUNY with free tuition for students of all ages
- Making internet access a human right and funding classes to close the generational and income-based digital divide such that older adults and poor and working-class communities know how to access and use the internet and a range of technologies
- Fully funding and expanding Senior Centers, which provide classes and educational programming.

Curtis Harris

As an older adult I find it extremely important to help our demographic live longer and healthier lives. This is a priority for I am now a senior at age 63.

3. Do you support increasing the budget for the Department for the Aging (DFTA), which funds programs such as Senior Centers, NORCs, home-delivered meals, and more? Please give rationale for your response and specify any specific funding changes you are most committed to achieving.

Renee Collymore

Yes, I absolutely support increasing the budget for the Department of Aging. I feel that we must not only have the mandated service, but an expansion of services that could include areas such as financial management, grief counselors for seniors who may have lost children or other loved ones, mental health counselors, medical professional visits to Senior Centers, meditation time, and provide Civic Education classes and professional chefs to cook lunch at our centers.

Crystal Hudson

Yes, absolutely. Currently, seniors — a majority of whom are people of color in New York City — represent almost 20% of our city’s population but receive less than 1% of our city’s budget; and our city’s senior population is projected to grow even more over the coming decades as the Baby Boomer generation ages. Moreover, nearly 30% of our city’s seniors live alone and 21% are facing poverty. It’s clear we are simply not doing enough for our seniors, a demographic that cuts across all races, genders, sexual orientations, ethnicities, and religions. We must bolster our financial commitment to seniors to ensure all seniors, like my mother who is homebound and in the final stages of Alzheimer’s disease, can access critical services regardless of where they live in our city.

Currently, our city’s meal delivery program is funded for five days a week with supplemental meals on weekends and holidays funded by nonprofits. I advocate for increasing city funding for meal service providers so meals are available and delivered to homebound and independent seniors seven days a week, 365 days a year. I also support working with local restaurants — targeting those close to NORCs or in neighborhoods with high senior populations — to provide seniors hot meals. Additionally, I support providing funding for the operational costs of these providers, including gas, insurance, parking, and maintenance costs for drivers.

As we recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, we must ensure seniors have safe public spaces where they can participate in quality, free programming. I support increasing Council funding for senior programming at public facilities and nonprofits (e.g. public libraries, parks, community centers, museums) and ensuring seniors have free admission to more cultural nonprofit institutions by subsidizing the cost of admission for senior-targeted programming. I also support allocating more Council funding for intergenerational programming so everyone from members of Generation Z to the Silent Generation can attend events together and learn from one another so we can build a strong, tight-knit community.

Michael Hollingsworth

Yes, I fully support increasing the budget for the DFTA. The DFTA’s current budget allocation—one-half of one percent—is an insult to the over one million older adults who call New York City home and the thousands of workers who serve them. The City has routinely failed on its promises to fund Senior Centers, all while cutting to financial initiatives that support nonprofits serving older adults. We all have a right to live and age with dignity and compassion; as it stands, the DFTA’s budget stands in the way of that right being realized.

Following LiveOn NY’s lead, I support the following funding changes:

- A ~$17 million increase to the funding available for home-delivered meals
- A fulfillment of the City’s promise of $10 million in Senior Center funding and $5 million senior center kitchen staff funding
- A substantial increase in funding for technological infrastructure at senior centers and other nonprofit providers
- Sufficient funding to honor the Indirect Cost Rate Initiative
- The restoration of a Cost of Living Adjustment for human service workers
- Comprehensive emergency pay retroactive to March 2020 for human service workers mandated to stay home.
- The restoration and sustainable baselining of all funding for NYCHA Social Clubs
- The creation of a NYCHA liaison position within DFTA

Curtis Harris

Yes, DFTA and other senior agencies and programs must be funded increasing their budgets. The senior population in Brooklyn and NYC is greatly increasing and we must earmark spending for this population to experience aging in a healthy way.

4. Do you support implementing a Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) increase for city-contracted human service workers and the full implementation of the Indirect Cost Rate (ICR) initiative for non-profits? Please explain your response.

Renee Collymore

Yes, certainly

Crystal Hudson

Yes, absolutely. New Yorkers deserve a true living wage, a paycheck guarantee, and protections from persistent inequities like gender pay disparity. We must ensure that all employees - regardless of their type of employment - have the job protections and financial stability needed to succeed. Social and human service workers do their jobs with such care and compassion, and they are owed dignity, respect, and the opportunity to earn a true living wage that includes annual COLA adjustments and the full implementation of the ICR for the non-profits who employ them.

Michael Hollingsworth

Yes, I support implementing a COLA increase and fully implementing the ICR. The ICR was designed to increase nonprofit providers’ financial stability by providing additional funding for organizational indirect costs like administrative expenses and rent. The ICR agreement requires the City to cover the full indirect costs of programs delivered by non-profit providers contracted by the City to provide essential health and social services to millions of New Yorkers including older adults. Importantly, the ICR funding initiative was achieved with deep agreement between the coalitions, providers, and city agencies and officials. Yet, despite this agreement and the importance of the ICR to the stability of nonprofits, their workers, and the communities they serve, the City retroactively cut fiscal year 2020 ICR funding by 40 percent and maintained the reduction in the budget for fiscal year 2021. The ICR cut and reduction were attempts to close the budget gap on the backs of nonprofit organizations and the communities they serve, putting them at major financial risk in the midst of a global pandemic when human service providers were needed more than ever. As a City Council Member, I will fight against this kind of budget manipulation and for the full implementation of the original ICR initiative.

I will also fight for a COLA increase for City-contracted human service workers. The City relies on these workers, whose wages are already low, to provide essential services to New Yorkers. While they’ve stood up for New York City, the City has not stood up for them.

Curtis Harris

Yes, I support COLA and ICR for non-profits. As the executive director of a non-profit many of our revenue items are fixed or dependent on government guidelines. AS the cost to service our aging population changes non-profits should be able to support their workforce with reasonable increases.

5. Given that many older New Yorkers rely on limited fixed incomes and would prefer to age in community, rather than entering costly nursing homes, how will you address the need for affordable senior housing with services for a growing older population? How will you evaluate/respond to affordable senior housing proposals during ULURP?

Renee Collymore

I would establish additional senior housing in our communities. I have found that the majority of seniors appreciate living in Natural Occurring retiring Communities (NORC). I would get Capital funding from the Council to assist with developing new and existing living structures for our senior population. I would find available land that needs to be in ULURP and an affordable development partner or sponsor, such as Impacct or Habitat for Humanity, to build new spaces for senior housing. I would also work with any landlord who may want to abandon their property to negotiate acquiring their building for the purpose of seniors housing as well. I would utilize the Council's discretionary funding to expand, maintain and improve existing senior programs in the new potential senior housing. Lastly, I would work with Labor Unions to build senior housing, just as many unions provide housing for their employees.

Crystal Hudson

One of the core tenets of my campaign is making sure that seniors can safely age in place with dignity, and without fear of eviction, displacement, or deed theft. We need to make sure that our seniors can afford to stay in their residences. The Senior Citizen Rent Increase Exemption (SCRIE) program ensures qualified seniors can have their rent frozen at the current level and exempts them from any further rent increases. In tandem with the Disability Rent Increase Exemption (DRIE) program, which freezes rent increases for qualified people with disabilities, SCRIE is vital to ensuring older New Yorkers can remain in their homes and age in place. However, many seniors are unaware of this program and do not take full advantage of its benefits. I support automatically enrolling eligible seniors in SCRIE while also requiring the Department of Finance (DOF) and the Department for the Aging (DFTA) to notify all seniors about the program when they turn 60 years old to ensure they are aware of the program and its impact on their rent bill when they turn 62 years old. Automatic enrollment could extend the benefit to 26,000 more seniors, as only half of the eligible population is currently enrolled. I also support having the DOF automatically readjust a tenant’s rent if their income drops, as currently SCRIE is frozen at the level participants enter unless they reapply; and I support bolstering SCRIE/DRIE funding to account for the growth in our senior population over the next few decades.

Five years ago, New York City passed a right to counsel law that provides free legal representation for tenants in eviction proceedings if their household income is under 200% of the poverty level. The program has been extended into specific ZIP codes over the past few years (two are in the 35th District—11215 and 11225) and is on track to be fully implemented by next year. The program has already proven successful in its first few years, with evictions dropping 11 percent in ZIP codes where the program was implemented compared to those without it. Despite this and other protections, seniors — many of whom do not work and have no retirement savings — are at risk of eviction. I support working with the Office of the Civil Justice Coordinator to ensure the law is properly enforced and will work to provide funding for community-based tenants rights organizations and legal services who represent those facing evictions. I also support raising the threshold for qualification to all tenants earning under 400% of the poverty level and will work toward securing a universal right to counsel.

We also need to make sure that seniors are prioritized when projects are being considered in the ULURP process. Currently, 200,000 seniors are on waiting lists for affordable housing in our state, including 110,000 seniors in our city and more than 5,000 in the 35th District. A recent report found that seniors wait an average of seven years on these waiting lists. I support working with communities and developers like the New York Foundation for Senior Citizens to expand construction of affordable housing built specifically for seniors and includes adequate funding for supportive services like on-site social workers and social services. In addition, many LGBTQ+ seniors were unable to access the benefits won by younger advocates — ranging from marriage to employment nondiscrimination to widespread social acceptance. As such, they are more likely to live alone or have less income. Others may feel uncomfortable being out because of concerns surrounding acceptance in the senior community. I would be an advocate for the development of more affordable, LGBTQ+ friendly senior housing developments like the Stonewall House in Fort Greene.

Michael Hollingsworth

Affordable senior housing with services, in which residents 62 and older pay no more than 30 percent of their income for housing and have access to supportive services that promote independence, is essential to making NYC a better place to live and age. I would address the need for this kind of housing by advocating for increases to the HUD 202 program, and securing new State and City funding to build new social housing, including senior housing with supportive services. The State needs to increase its capital funding for affordable senior housing and provide resources for service coordinators in senior housing. I will support state-level efforts like the Invest in New York Act to generate the necessary tax revenue for housing, while pushing the city to issue new bonds to increase our capital budget. I will also support expanding service eligibility under the City’s Senior Affordable Rental Apartments (SARA) program such that residents of non-formerly homeless units can receive services.

I would end the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP): ULURP as a process is fundamentally broken and needs to be scrapped completely. Under the status quo, communities have no leverage against developers as long as developers have the ULURP escape hatch, and the City has no incentive to do the hard work of long-term planning as long as ULURP keeps outsourcing that responsibility to developers themselves. I would replace ULURP with a people-first, community-based planning process that empowers tenant associations and excludes developers and corporations. Centered as it is on the interests of developers, the ULURP process is unable to respond justly to affordable senior housing proposals. We need a process that encourages the creation, preservation, and equitable distribution of resilient and sustainable social housing that enables people to live and age with dignity.

Curtis Harris

Housing is a human right. Our seniors must have age specific housing that meets their needs. During the ULURP process in the 35th district I will require senior housing to be built and developed.

6. While many older adults wish to be connected, many lack the financial resources or training necessary to fully access technology, exacerbating the digital divide. How would you encourage the City to address this?

Renee Collymore

I think there are non profits that do technology for senior work, especially an organization like O.A.T.S that the Council has worked with for years. We should be leveraging their work and adopting their model because there is a much greater need than they can reach with their capacity. We should be matching that type of resource with existing DFTA programs like the NORCs , Case Management system, and Senior Centers to coordinate these services. We have an amazing network of senior service providers that we chronically underfund-they know what seniors need and are still in touch with them.

Crystal Hudson

I think the most relevant example - and one I talk about all the time - is access to the vaccine for older adults. We saw how government (at all levels) said that people over 65 years of age were prioritized, but then we made it nearly impossible for those same folks to actually book their appointments and ultimately get the vaccine. Most appointments were made online, and when you called the phone numbers provided, you couldn’t get through. For most of March, I used my campaign resources to make calls to seniors in my district who were eligible to visit the newly opened FEMA vaccination site at Medgar Evers College -- and we did that because the government failed older New Yorkers, particularly those of color and who are low-income.

There is no reason why anyone in New York City - regardless of age - should go without reliable access to WiFi; technological devices needed to learn, grow, and sustain themselves; or without an alternative to technological requirements. We need to ensure the city is actually rolling out access to WiFi and 5G broadband to the communities who are most in need, including NORCs and older adults, and that we are also providing real-time, live support (via telephone or in-person) to those who may not have the skills to fully access technology.

Michael Hollingsworth

According to census data, nearly 30 percent of adults over 65 living in New York City don’t have a computer or broadband internet access and nearly half of New Yorkers over 80 years old lack internet access. The COVID-19 pandemic has made more apparent than ever the importance of internet access; it is a means of communication, telehealth access, vaccine scheduling, education, and entertainment.

New York City needs to build citywide infrastructure to expand internet adoption, access, use, and facility among older adults. The City can do this by:
- Funding both technology and technological instruction at Senior Centers, public libraries, public schools, nonprofit organizations, and other places older adults feel comfortable accessing and learning the skills necessary to use the internet.
- Centering educational programming on the needs and interests of older adults—on the skills they say they need and want to learn—which means funding community-based studies of older adults’ priorities.
- Identifying and training a group of peer instructors who can help older adults learn to use the internet.
- Creating tech support hotlines run by nonprofit organizations
- Adapting programs for multiple connection modalities for people with different skills and abilities
- Ensuring that the CTO’s NYC Digital Safety Program engages older adults and trains its program staff on how to work with older adults on tech-related issues
- Supporting the capacity of NYC Health and Hospitals to expand telehealth and ensure they are reaching marginalized patients
- Providing funding to train home health aides to help their clients access telehealth
- Ensuring that internet is a human right, free of cost to everyone
- Creating programs that enable nonprofits to freely distribute devices to older adults who don’t currently have them.

Curtis Harris

While engaging seniors in our poetry workshop we discovered that many seniors do not have access to computers, internet services, and only have phones. I will be offering free technology classes to seniors, free computer access if seniors do not have the resources, as well as free training. During the pandemic this was a necessity and a matter of keeping our seniors connected to the outside world while we all sheltered in place. Having internet access is no longer a luxury but a necessity and our seniors have the intelligence and energy to engage.

7. During COVID-19, Senior Centers continued to work remotely, offering services in new ways to ensure their clients’ needs were met. To date, providers have not been authorized to operate in-person, despite restaurants, movies, and other entities, which older adults could also attend, being open. Further, community-based organizations, in many cases, have not been leveraged in the new meal delivery system. What are ways that you feel the City should work with nonprofits and engage older adults in the event of a future emergency?

Renee Collymore

The City must stand in collaboration in the new meal delivery service. Many seniors totally depend on organizations such as Meals on Wheels that is crucial to the survival of many seniors living on a fixed income. We must supply additional funding for such needed services and the like.

Crystal Hudson

While many of us have experienced social isolation during the pandemic, it is older adults who have borne the brunt of its impact. I know this firsthand - my mother took advantage of countless programs for seniors living with Alzheimer’s through CBOs and cultural institutions across the city, but has not been able to engage in any of them through the pandemic. As excellent as virtual programming is, it's not quite the same as in-person interaction.

As we look to the future, we must mandate emergency planning protocols and standards for all city agencies and service providers. I will empower New York City Emergency Management (NYCEM) to create unique emergency planning protocols and standards for all city agencies, including unique plans for each Department of Education facility, and major service providers, including but not limited to shelters, nursing homes, group homes, and mental health facilities, to ensure our city is prepared for any future public health emergency, natural disaster, or other adverse event.

Additionally, we need to make sure we are doing everything in our power to wrap older adults in all of the love, resources, services, and programming we possibly can. This means the city needs to actually prioritize our senior population, and that nonprofits serving older adults should have their budgets whole, at minimum. We also need to ensure community-based organizations are actually being leveraged to deliver innovative, culturally responsive programming to elders across communities in New York City so that basic needs like food and connection to social services, and human needs like connection and community building, can be met. Our infrastructure to support seniors to recover from the devastating isolation of the last year will be a key component of our recovery - and I am eager to be a champion for the wide range of organizations that currently and could potentially provide critical services to seniors to fill the gaps, both now and in the future.

Michael Hollingsworth

In the event of a future emergency, the City should prioritize funding, personal protective equipment, and tailored safety protocols for organizations serving people most vulnerable to the emergent risks, who, in the case of COVID-19, were people older than 65, especially those living in segregated, under-resourced communities. The City should have approached nonprofits serving older adults, especially Senior Centers, at the outset of the pandemic to find out how it could help nonprofits continue to engage older adults in a safe and responsible manner. The City’s response to the pandemic has been haphazard, inconsistent, and difficult for residents to follow or understand. The City should learn from the work nonprofits have done to adapt to the pandemic conditions and seek their recommendations to create policies before the next emergency.

At a minimum, the City should:
- Loosen restrictions and deadlines on current contracts to allow for flexible emergency response
- Expand data sharing between city agencies and nonprofits
- Provide information on services for older adults in multiple languages
- Ensure that older adults have more-than-adequate food supply in case of disruption
- Target free meal distribution and services to NYCHA and NORCs and Senior Centers and create a centralized intake process for meal delivery to older adults.
- Re-employ Senior Center staff in ways that combat older adults’ social isolation, either as one-on-one socially distant home visitors or phonebankers
- Increase funding for meal delivery services
- Expand Access-A-Ride service
- Provide up-to-date information on facilities closures and workplace regulations
- Create interest-free loan programs and other grants for nonprofits

Curtis Harris

The City should be delivering meals to home bound seniors, providing internet access to them and the services our older generation has paid the price to obtain. Many have paid their dues and should be enjoying a standard quality of life that celebrates the contributions they have made to society, their families, and the City. We must increase funding for SuCASA, DFTA and every other agency that deals with seniors.

8. With 1 in 5 New Yorkers over the age of 60, what are the changes you would seek to make to create a more age-friendly district? Please consider addressing the physical infrastructure of your district (walkability, accessibility, etc.), health care access, safety net resources, and other district specific items of note.

Renee Collymore

The 35th District is already uniquely age-friendly. There are many more bus and subway lines than in any other district, for example. There are several healthcare facilities within the district and numerous Houses of Worship, Government agencies and non profit organizations that provide different services and recreational activities. We could provide better access to public parks and libraries, however, Fort Greene Park has many steps to utilize the restroom from the Northside and many steep inclines. Maybe we can have a golf cart style shuttle service to help seniors navigate the Park and similarly challenging locations. We could provide more assistance with traffic navigation, particularly for our bike lanes. Having crossing at key intersections would be helpful in both improving safety and the perception of safety. It works for children and it can work for our elderly. Within our NYCHA developments, we could have a small "concierge" service providing escorts and assistance to seniors who request it. It is also clear that food security and proper nutrition are challenges for many elderly residents. While many volunteers stepped up during COVID pandemic to help their neighbors by providing masks and food and running errands, we need to continue that spirit and capability when the perception of urgency fades. it is time for the City to bring the various service providers together so that the competition between them for dollars can end and the delivery of efficient and effective assistance to senior citizens can be optimized. This could allow 3-1-1 to make immediate referrals of relevant calls to one entity and facilitate quicker action.

Crystal Hudson

Senior citizens deserve transportation options that fit their needs. I will advocate for the MTA to spend part of its $1 billion in additional annual funding from congestion pricing to provide free ridership on all MTA subway, bus, and rail lines for seniors and to finance accessibility upgrades — including the installation of more elevators, expedited repair process of existing elevators, and more benches at bus and subway stations — to ensure New Yorkers with limited mobility can equitably access all available transit options. I will also work to ensure Access-A-Ride is available on-demand across the city without limitations to the number of monthly rides or caps on the per-ride subsidy.

I will also work to increase funding for snow removal assistance and expand the program’s requirements for senior-owned homes to include snow clearance to ensure access to the curb of the sidewalk, a parked automobile, and a driveway. Additionally, I support bolstering enforcement of the city’s snow removal laws to ensure owners of vacant lots or developing property remove snow in the legally required timeframe. I also support bolstering funding for snow removal day laborers program and strengthening oversight of snow removal at highly-frequented areas like MTA bus stops or street corners and ensuring paths to and from these areas are clear of snow or ice.

One of the biggest problems facing our seniors is social isolation. Research shows that social isolation comes with myriad health risks, including an increased risk of dementia, stroke, heart disease, mental illness, and premature death. To combat social isolation, I would champion the creation of a citywide, opt-in community buddy program that connects seniors with school-age children. The program would provide school-age children and their parents or guardians with the contact information of a senior who lives close to them. The program, staffed by licensed social workers, would work with participants and educate them on how to foster a relationship with a senior in their area — either through supervised in-person programming or via regular telephone conversations. I will work to identify five neighborhoods in Brooklyn, which has more seniors than any other borough, with large populations of seniors who live alone and pilot the program in these areas, in tandem with local nonprofits. I started a similar program through Greater Prospect Heights Mutual Aid, which I founded at the start of the pandemic because of my particular concern for seniors in my area, and all neighbors involved have had such positive experiences.

Michael Hollingsworth

Two neighborhoods in my district—Prospect Heights and Fort Greene—are in the top five Brooklyn neighborhoods projecting the most dramatic increases of older adults over the next ten years. It is crucial that we protect District 35’s age-friendly spaces and services and continue to make it a better place to live and age.

Freedom of movement is a human right. I would make movement in District 35 more age-friendly by:
- Creating busways, especially along heavily used corridors for routes like the B44 and B46. Buses are the unsung heroes of our transit system and the fastest way to bring mobility to our most marginalized communities. Most District 35 bus routes get a D or F grade.
- Upgrading sidewalks, intersections, subway stations, and bus stops, and broader public transit system to fully comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, prioritizing areas with vulnerable populations, such as seniors and children, and around healthcare facilities.
- Creating more public seating using the CityBench program and/or other funding initiatives
- Protecting improvements made under the Safe Streets for Seniors Program—clean and well-maintained sidewalks and well-lit intersections with extended cross times
- Installing additional public water fountains and restrooms

In addition to the above public infrastructure changes, I support the following measures to make District 35 and NYC more age-friendly:

- Continuing to fight against the eviction of Associated Supermarket, the only major grocery store within walking distance for much of southern Crown Heights that is accessible to and affordable for older adults
- Increasing capacity for Senior Centers in my district (Grace Agard Harewood Neighborhood Senior Center—Fort Greene Council, Inc.; Crown Heights JCC; and Willoughby Neighborhood Senior Center; CCNS St Louis Neighborhood Senior Center; and Farragut Senior Center) and ensuring that they are able to provide universal free lunch everyday
- Supporting the SuCasa program, Support our Seniors, NORCs, Healthy Aging and others with a full restoration of Schedule C programs
- Using my office to coordinate a public awareness campaign such that older adults in my district know about the services available to them
- Bringing back the “On-Demand” Access-A-Ride program (AAR) piloted in 2017 so that AAR users can book shortly before using the service rather than a day in advance, allowing them greater spontaneity, and returning the “Advanced Reservation” service that allowed the city to dispatch cabs to pick up AAR users, lowering the city’s costs, until it was cancelled in 2019
- Passing legislation to mandate that all private transportation—taxis, livery service, airport shuttles, ferries, and app-based ride services—offers accessible options in at least 50 percent of each private service's active vehicle fleet
- Municipalizing the Brooklyn Botanic Garden to ensure equitable access for the public
- Making business licenses contingent upon a set of accessibility requirements to be developed in conversation with older adults and people with disabilities
- Instituting truly inclusive emergency evacuation procedures and training city workers and non-profits in those procedures to improve the survival rates of older people and people with disabilities in the event of fire, attack, blackout, or other emergency situation
- Passing a citywide moratorium on hospital closures
- Prioritizing funding for public hospitals
- Establishing a decision-making body that will advise the City on critical healthcare decisions (like hospital closures) via a co-governance council with representation from healthcare providers, healthcare workers, and community members, including older adults and people with disabilities.
- Improving access to cultural and arts programming and ensuring cultural institutions are age-friendly.
- Increasing funding for non-profits in the District to hold fitness classes, outdoor recreation, and cultural activities for older adults.
- Creating and hosting volunteer and civic engagement opportunities for older adults

Curtis Harris

To make a more age-friendly district we must think like seniors. We must have adequate seating at bus stops, adequate lighting, and our sidewalk must not have cracks that can add to a seniors slip and fall. Our public transportation must have adequate access to seniors.

9. In the event of a budget shortfall, how would you push for the City to close the gap? Are there agencies or programs you feel should or should not absorb cuts? Please be specific.

Renee Collymore

The City just played smoke and mirrors in terms of shifting (wasn't it $1billion) from the NYPD to school safety-they didn't make any real cuts in our bloated public safety budget. The breathtaking expansion of funding for the "security state" was fueled by the events of 9/11. We know that today the threats posed from foreign terrorists no longer calls for the sprawling security apparatus that employs more people than the FBI. With the foreign terrorism threat having waned (to wit, Biden has acknowledged this by ending America's 20 year war in Afghanistan-NY needs to follow suit), decriminalization of many petty crimes, advances in technology and the ongoing resizing and reimagining of public safety in NYC. There are billions to be saved as we move away from a security state to an emphasis on community public safety. Next, I do appreciate many programs that have served our communities and are vital to our district residents such as Save Our Streets, Jazz 966, Friends and Family of the Wrongfully Incarcerated, SNAP, P.S 20 The Clinton Hill School, Green Earth Poets Cafe, Brooklyn Children's Museum. These programs should NOT absorb cuts.

Crystal Hudson

As the City plans for a just economic recovery in response to COVID-19 and the potential budget deficit, we know that an economy that goes “back to normal” is not good enough. It is crucial that in our recovery that we prioritize those who have been hardest hit by the pandemic and have been systematically underinvested. This means not cutting funding from essential agencies or job layoffs, and not balancing our city’s budget on the backs of our children (eg. SYEP) or seniors (eg. DFTA). Instead, we need to reallocate funds from the NYPD budget to make up for these shortfalls. In addition, we raise revenue by investing in our fellow New Yorkers.

Lastly, I would work with my colleagues in Albany to tax the rich in New York State, to overhaul our property tax system so wealthy homeowners pay their fair share, and that with the recent legalization of marijuana, we pour resources back into communities of color that have suffered the brunt of generations of the war on drugs and racist policing.

Michael Hollingsworth

When I was growing up, the NYPD budget was less than $1 billion and the number of uniformed police officers was close to 20,000. I’ve witnessed both the budget and headcount grow over the course of 30 years, yet police and the carceral system have only a marginal effect on certain crime rates and cause immense harm to communities, especially Black and brown communities. Flooding our neighborhoods with more police decade after decade and not dealing with the systemic and structural causes is treating the symptom—crime—while never really showing any interest in curing the disease – poverty.

Whether or not we face a budget shortfall, I support defunding the NYPD by as much as possible every year and reinvesting this money into housing, education, healthcare, transportation, and community anti-violence disruption programs.

Curtis Harris

The NYPD budget would be reduced and this money would be transferred to senior programs and policy.

10. How should your constituents look to measure your success in achieving your responses outlined above?

Renee Collymore

My constituents should should measure my success in achieving my responses by what I have done in the past. As being formerly elected as a Democratic District Leader and State Committee Member, I have established positive partner/relationship with my colleagues in the Council which will help me push things through and be successful in these endeavors. I also have a background in Real Estate development, as I am the product a several small family businesses. Experience and intimate knowledge of senior issues are a priority because my mom is a 80 year old senior and when my dad passed away, he was a senior, which made me understand their needs. As a business owner, I understand the need for public safety with a balance of police accountability. As the head of a non profit, I understand the urgent need to supply funding for much needed local social services in at risk areas to tackle poverty and the affects of poverty. As being my mom's care taker and Power of Attorney, I understand why its so important to handle all of her personal and business affairs because as our parents age, some may get a little forgetful at times, which may need some guidance, love and assistance.

Crystal Hudson

Success will come in many forms, but namely it will look like progress towards each of the goals outlined above. And that may include but is not limited to budget allocations, oversight hearings to address problems in the ways services and programs are being provided, or simply having conversations about difficult topics that weren’t happening previously. The road to success is also paved with transparency and accountability, which I will always lead with.

Michael Hollingsworth

Have community members with needs been provided for? Are our young people and students being nurtured and taught and kept safe at school? Are they able to earn spending money with after-school jobs or chase their interests with extracurriculars? Are guidance counselors and social workers helping them make fulfilling, realistic post-graduation plans? Are tenants and homeowners able to stay in their homes? Are they able to afford their rents and mortgages? Are their buildings in good repair, safe from mold, lead, weather, and pests? Are people thriving—or are developers? Are people able to commute and travel across the City safely and conveniently in modes of transport that keep our air and water clean? Is public transit fully ADA-compliant? Are bike lanes protected and bus lanes efficient? Is Local Law 97 enforced? Is the city’s vehicle fleet electric? Have parking minimums been stricken from city zoning? Do they live in a New York where Rikers Island has closed and no new jails have been built? Are anti-violence organizations fully funded? Do mental-health experts and social workers respond to mental-health crises, or do police? Are guidance counselors advising young people in our schools, or are police profiling them and unjustly penalizing them? Are reentry programs fully funded? Is the Civilian Complaint Review Board elected? Does it have enforcement powers? Are our subway stations free of MTA police officers?

Curtis Harris

My success should be measured by funding provided, quality of life delivered, senior engagement in programs like SuCASA, and the development of housing specifically for seniors with amenities they need.