City Council Candidate Responses
District 38
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.
Jacqui Painter
For the past five years I have worked as the director of a Medicare Medicaid expansion organizing project in the city. Through this work I worked closely with many of our city’s senior centers, ensuring that they get the proper healthcare they need and finding ways to educate and improve upon our healthcare system. I got to work very closely with NYCHA Senior advocates across the city, and help advocate for their needs. When we talk about the need to revitalize healthcare, education, transportation, and other critical needs in our city; accessibility must be central.
Alexa Avilés
I served as Program Director at the Scherman Foundation where I manage several grantmaking portfolios that distributes over $4 million in grants to nonprofits working in the areas of Reproductive Rights and Justice, Governmental Transparency and Accountability, Human Rights and Liberties and co-manage Strengthening New York Communities (supporting organizing and advocacy initiatives on critical issues facing New Yorkers) and Arts. One of the campaigns I have been most proud to support has been the NY Caring Majority campaign, fighting for fair pay for home care gives for the elderly and disabled. As someone who lost four older family members -two in nursing homes- to COVID-19, I am deeply committed to the fight for home care workers and for justice for all New York City seniors.
2. As we live longer and healthier lives, what are your priorities with respect to promoting equity across all ages in our City?
Jacqui Painter
For years, aging adults have poured an immense amount of time, energy, work, and love into our city- and it’s up to the city to now take care of them just as they cared for all of us. Aging adult needs are frequently overlooked by our city in every department, but especially when it comes to accessibility, healthcare, and housing.
In city council I will be a strong advocate for aging adults. After working for years with NY Medicaid, medicare, and insurance companies I am a big supporter of the New York Health Act. Medicare recipients currently spend an average of $6,100 – or 22% of their income – on health care. This makes paying rent and buying groceries and other essential items extremely hard to afford. Our city needs to ensure that aging adults get the most comprehensive and free healthcare.
Alexa Avilés
Currently our campaign is working for healthcare for all, we believe the Council must fight for increased funding to strengthen the capacity of community-based organizations that work on health and resiliency directly with residents. I will also demand the passage of the New York Health Act at the state level. This act will create a single-payer system for New York State, providing quality healthcare for all.
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.
Jacqui Painter
Senior centers and programming are essential. We saw this more than ever once the pandemic broke out and left thousands of seniors without anywhere to go, any way to socialize, and in many cases unable to get healthy meals. My work at the NYCHA Red Hook Senior Center allowed me to understand and respond to the pandemic, prompting me to start Red Hook Relief, the mutual aid organization for the neighborhood. Red Hook Relief was able to step in when our city’s systems began to fail, and provide meals, groceries, and PPE for seniors. We saw just how lacking DFTA was in funding when they couldn’t keep up with the new quarantine demand of home meal deliveries. I am fully for investing more in DFTA so that we can better accommodate seniors across the city.
Alexa Avilés
Yes. One of the main focuses of my campaign is the importance of a people’s budget. District 38 has suffered from years of disinvestment and neglect. We’re funding cops, while draining money from public education and healthcare. I will fight to cut the NYPD's budget in half, and to redirect those funds to community care. Being one of the budget reallocations, an increase for the Department for the Aging (DFTA). My campaign is centered in making sure our finances are centered in serving the working people who power the city.
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.
Jacqui Painter
Yes I support that every worker should be given a fair living wage and any incentives that can help nonprofits ensure that they can pay their workers a just wage. Our city is very expensive, and the cost of living should be adjusted every single year.
Alexa Avilés
I have been a longtime supporter of worker justice campaigns, especially in sectors not yet organized that are predominantly immigrants and women of color. We must implement COLA increases for city-contracted human service workers, and we must fully implement the Indirect Cost Rate (ICR) initiative for Human Services organizations so that they can control costs and maintain predictable levels of funding.
To speak to my support for these measures, I have also been supportive of the early work to get domestic workers recognized and have long admired the work of DWU, Adhikar, and Damayan. I tried to get the Hand in Hand campaign funded through the Scherman Foundation, but was ultimately not successful, as the Board chose to focus its funding on other campaigns. Most recently, I became more actively involved in NY Caring Majority’s campaign through advocacy related to nursing homes and homecare workers related to Covid-19. I have talked publicly about our family’s losses due to Covid-19 (both in and out of nursing homes), as well as, our family’s care story of my mother-in-law who was a severely underpaid care worker.
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?
Jacqui Painter
Throughout our district and city, senior housing is severely lacking. Housing that is accessible and affordable for aging adults is necessary to aging with dignity and convenience. Red Hook is home to Brooklyn’s largest NYCHA development, the Red Hook Houses, which are missing a senior building. Our community has organized for years around this issue, because several seniors are placed in non-accessible buildings without ramps- and then tenants are barely able to leave their house. On city council I will fight to ensure every community has access to affordable senior housing.
I will ensure that senior housing is included in the creation of any new affordable housing units.
Alexa Avilés
Our campaign is focused on the fight for safe, affordable and dignified housing. New York City’s luxury real estate market is world-famous, but we’re building more and more towers for the ultra-rich while New Yorkers are experiencing record rates of homelessness. We must take on the developers, give the people control of their land, and fully fund public housing. New senior housing, and creating permanently affordable housing is critical to ensure that our older adults can age in place in the communities they love. I believe that we must go beyond ULURP and implement a citywide comprehensive planning process that takes an equity lens, prioritizing racial and environmental justice. We can no longer accept ULURP requests that deliver anything less than 100% permanently affordable housing in my district if we are to ensure that.
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?
Jacqui Painter
This is why increased funding to DFTA and non-profits are so important. Free programs like those offered to senior centers such that have technology training are essential. A program that comes to mind is one like Senior Planet, who train seniors on technology and even train center leaders on how to train their friends and neighbors. One of our Red Hook Senior Center leaders, Juana, led her own classes every week to her friends on how to use technology and social media. Throughout the pandemic, Juana has been helping teach her friends how to use Zoom. With increased funding, we can ensure aging adults have access to both the training and the technology tools needed, like iPads, to live in a digital world.
Alexa Avilés
We need affordable, high-speed internet for all New Yorkers. The pandemic has made it clear that this is a crucial accessibility issue for all, from seniors to youth. The City Council should take aggressive action to make the big telecomms companies to either start serving low-income and fixed income seniors with high speed internet or demand their charter to serve the public as a utility be suspended. If they can’t do it, we must consider fighting back with a public-owned broadband provider or mesh networks of our own to ensure every New Yorker can get connected to their neighbors and the world.
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?
Jacqui Painter
Working in senior centers across the city for the past several years I know first hand how important these services are. The pandemic has hurt these programs so much and struggled with the remote technology. Furthermore, the city has not properly used community based organizations to help provide services and meals. Because of the lack of proper food delivery to seniors I started the Red Hook Relief mutual aid organization and with our volunteers fed hundreds of seniors. As councilmember I would invest funds into nonprofits to do work with our seniors and in a safe way start to open up some in person services as well.
Alexa Avilés
Like with school reopenings, the City simply has not had a plan for how to bring back needed services for older adults. Community-based organizations and seniors have been an afterthought in reopening plans. Community level groups should be the first partners the City turns to in a disaster or other urgent situation. They are the ones with the closest direct contact with their neighbors, and they will be best positioned to help distribute food, needed materials supplies, etc.
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.
Jacqui Painter
Our district is currently not physically accessible to aging adults or those differently abled. Red Hook and Sunset Park are transportation deserts to begin with, and the small amount of public transportation that we have is not accessible. First, our unprotected bus lanes throughout the district are extremely dangerous and always blocked by delivery trucks, cars, or construction, leaving no safe place for them to pull over to load and unload passengers. We need to ensure our city has safe busways and separate concrete pads or “bus bulbs” for residents to safely get on and off. Our district also has several lethal outdated streets to pedestrians- especially those with mobility issues. Too many of our neighbors are losts to motorists every year along dangerous streets like 3rd Avenue and Hamilton Avenue, and the number is only increasing.Both of these streets are without any type of safety lighting, almost no car regulation, and no protected bike lanes. These streets also act as a barrier between residential community zones and the waterfront. As city councilor I will advocate to prioritize these streets that have been historically forgotten about with accessibility upgrades to crosswalks and bus stops.
Our district is also lacking in senior hubs, like senior centers or healthcare facilities. I will also advocate for more of these essential locations where aging adults can both socialize and get the in-person support they need from specialists in healthcare or social services.
Alexa Avilés
There are a variety of solutions we should bring to Council District 38 to make our community more senior-friendly. Our district already includes many senior centers and housing for seniors, but we are still lacking accessible train stations, and our streets are still dangerous for seniors who walk or take the bus to get around. Bus infrastructure is often the fastest and most cost-effective to put in place, and we should be extending curbs to create easy-to-board bus stops along our major avenues like 3rd, 4th, and 5th, and we need that infrastructure and increased service to come to Red Hook as well. I believe we should set ambitious goals to make all our subway platforms in District 38 and all City Council Districts accessible by 2030. These are important investments in our physical infrastructure that we must make it our goal to build.
Beyond physical infrastructure, we need community land trusts and other solutions to create permanently affordable housing to ensure seniors can age in place and so that they can always call Brooklyn their home.
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.
Jacqui Painter
The pandemic has certainly devastated some sectors of our economy and contributed to a budget shortfall, however there were many funds that are available that can be used to prevent any essential social service cuts. The NYPD’s 6 billion budget is bloated and I propose shifting a part of those funds to social services to cover a budget deficit. Furthermore, I would be a proponent of using the city’s capital budget and excellent credit line to ensure we absorb the budget cuts. Working people and our seniors should not feel the brunt of cuts and I will fight any attempt at imposing austerity on the most vulnerable.
Alexa Avilés
A central message of our campaign is that we are fighting for a People’s Budget, which means no cuts to healthcare, education or housing resources. Schools are still likely to face budget cuts in the 2022-2023 city budget, and that is unconscionable, as are further cuts to Department for the Aging, our public hospitals and to the Department of Youth and Community Development, which funds a wide variety of community programs in addition to programming for seniors. We must fund the programs that help our communities thrive and invest in these policies, not more policing and incarceration.
10. How should your constituents look to measure your success in achieving your responses outlined above?
Jacqui Painter
My constituents should look at my advocacy in fighting for these laws and funding, my plans and results. I have years of experience building coalitions to get things done and achieved tangible solutions. Real results that help improve lives is the best measurement that my constituents should look at, and should be the measurement for any elected official.
Alexa Avilés
This City Council term will be for only two years. Many of the most important fights will be around the city budget and the next state budget, which gets finalized in April, before the city budget in June-July. If I am successful in office, we will organize our district and with like minded councilmembers and other elected officials to fight for a Peoples’ Budget that invests in our communities and invests in the needs of poor and working class New Yorkers.