With the explosive good times in Harlem over Juneteenth weekend, it is no surprise that early voting for city council elections is off to a bit of a slow start this year. 

Early voting started on Sat, June 17 and runs through Sun, June 25. Find pollsites and hours at nycvotes.org.

As of this Tuesday, the Board of Elections (BOE) has completed four days of early voting. So far the unofficial and cumulative number of votes is up to 18,293 across four boroughs. Queens  (5,616) comes in with the highest number of voters, then Brooklyn (4,987) and Manhattan (4,558), and lastly, the Bronx (3,132).

Candidates in the city’s city council, District Attorney, and judgeship races were out beating the pavement and handing out their logos to encourage voters to show up at the polls this weekend. Some, like candidate for District 9 in Harlem Yusef Salaam, voted on the Junteenth holiday. 

“People are still getting used to early voting here in New York. We are doing our part to help educate residents on where to vote. We hope that this process will eventually turn into an increase in voter turnout,” said Assemblymember Inez Dickens, who is also running for city council District 9 in Harlem. “At the end of the day, it is important for Harlemites to exercise their right to choose the best candidate.”

The use of rank choice voting in this year’s 51 city council elections, 21 of which are competitive, makes for an interesting experience. Rank choice voting means that voters can choose up to five candidates for a race in order of preference.

CLICK HER TO FIND YOUR POLLING LOCATION

Dickens nailed an endorsement from long-time supporter Mayor Eric Adams while Salaam teamed up with fellow candidate Assemblymember Al Taylor to entice one another’s voters to rank them.

“I am pumped and energized! Everywhere I go, voters are coming up to us excited and determined to vote for Team Taylor,” said Taylor in a statement. “The people of Harlem are hungry for change – they want a champion who will fight for affordable homes, safe streets, and good schools. And that’s exactly what I intend to do for our community.”

The race has not been without the usual scandals. Both Dickens and Salaam have come under fire from the media about their education. 

Salaam, who does not have a doctorate but an honorary doctorate he received from Anointed by God Ministries Alliance & Seminary in 2014, has received some criticism for going by ‘Dr. Salaam’ at times. Dickens “studied real estate and land economics at New York University and later attended her studies at Howard University,” but didn’t graduate instead receiving certificates, she told to news outlets.

Election Day for the primary is on Tues, June 27. Polls are open 6am-9pm. The last day to request absentee ballots in-person is Mon, June 26. 

Absentee ballots have to be postmarked by June 27 to be valid.

Ariama C. Long is a Report for America corps member and writes about politics for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.

The post Early Voting kicks off Juneteenth weekend appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.

* This article was originally published here

With his son planning to plead guilty to federal tax crimes, an impending forced House vote to impeach him, his poll numbers plummeting, and now news that he’s called Chinese leader Xi Jinping a dictator—President Biden has more than a toxic mix of problems on his agenda.

Then again, Hunter Biden, his youngest son (Beau died in 2015) has cut a deal to avoid prison; the impeachment charge is practically dead on arrival in the House; and Biden’s poll numbers are—like most poll numbers—uncertain at this time. Of most immediate concern is his charge that Jinping is a dictator, particularly while Secretary of State Antony Blinden has made overtures to bring about calm between the two nations.

Biden asserted in remarks Tuesday evening in California, in connection with the supposed spy balloon that the U.S. shot down, “The reason why Xi Jinping got very upset in terms of when [we] shot that balloon down with two boxcars full of spy equipment is he didn’t know it was there. That was a great embarrassment for dictators—when they didn’t know what happened.”

The balloon was flying across the U.S. and was shot down off the coast of the Carolinas. “It was blown off course, up through Alaska and then down through the United States, and [Jinping] didn’t know about it,” Biden said.

The president’s comments, as expected, have ruffled the Chinese government and they responded quickly. Mao Ning, a spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry, called the remarks “extremely absurd and irresponsible. They’re an open political provocation.” Moreover, she said, the balloon was unintended and caused by circumstances beyond China’s control.

Wu Xinbo, director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, had a stronger reaction. “Biden’s big mouth is a loose cannon,” he said. “Mutual trust is what China has been stressing, so Biden’s comments are very destructive and damaging.”

The comments also contradict Blinken’s recent mission. How they will add to the brewing tumult during the 2024 presidential elections is left for debate.

The post Biden has ‘Big mouth,’ China charges appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.

* This article was originally published here

2023 was supposed to be the year of housing in New York State. While the Senate and Assembly leaders finally put together a last-minute housing deal before the end of the legislative session in June, it never even came up for a vote. Albany failed to deliver even the most basic protections for New Yorkers, with plenty of blame to go around.

One bill included in the failed housing package was the Housing Access Voucher Program (HAVP), which would have created a state version of the Section 8 voucher program. It would have generated about 20,000 new vouchers for housing-insecure New Yorkers. By providing immediate relief to people who are homeless or facing eviction, HAVP could have been a  crucial tool for housing the city’s nearly 70,000 homeless people. 

Unfortunately, for the fourth year in a row, the state government has abdicated responsibility for addressing New York’s spiraling homelessness and housing crises. With no hope left for support from Washington, D.C., city leaders are left in an unenviable position: having to deal with all the complexities and externalities of a failing housing system with limited jurisdictional authority to fix it.

One powerful tool the city has in its toolbox is CityFHEPS, New York City’s own voucher program. It is a crucial lifeline for many New Yorkers, putting them on a path to safe and stable housing. About 4,000 households were able leave the shelter system with CityFHEPS vouchers in 2021. 

But the program also has serious problems: it forces applicants to meet complex criteria that are punitive and often at odds with each other; it requires people to wait months before beginning their housing search; and, it excludes some people who need it most, including undocumented immigrants and homeless workers whose wages are considered “too high.” As a result, it can take a very long time for households to leave the shelter, with average stays spanning from 509 to 855 days.

In late May, the New York City Council took a bold step to improve this crucial program, by passing four bills that would move individuals and families out of the shelters quicker, while also helping many other families avoid entering the shelter system in the first place.  The bills:

• Ended the “90-day rule”, which forced people to go into the shelter system and stay there for three months before becoming eligible for rental assistance and being able to begin their search for permanent housing. 

• Revised the “utility allowance” rule, which reduced rental support for voucher holders whose landlords do not include utility costs in their rent.  

• Ended punitive work requirements and income-eligibility at 50 percent of Area Median Income (AMI), making the voucher available to a broader share of low-income New Yorkers in need of housing support.  

• Expanded CityFHEPS eligibility, making it accessible to a broader range of income-eligible households facing eviction. 

Bucking the trend of complete inaction on housing justice at all levels of government, the City Council took the kind of bold action that we need to finally confront homelessness the best way possible: by housing people. The Mayor has, thus far, supported one aspect of the City Council’s plan: ending the 90-day rule. 

But, he has pushed back on other aspects of the plan, claiming that the CityFHEPS expansion create more competition for current voucher holders seeking to exit shelter and would cost the city $17 billion over the next five years.

First, by preventing evictions, an expanded CityFHEPS program will reduce the number of households entering the shelter system long-term, creating less competition for those trying to use vouchers. And, the expanded CityFHEPS program makes many more homes available to voucher holders seeking to move out of shelter.

Second, while ongoing rental assistance undoubtedly costs money, our calculations show that the net cost of expanding CityFHEPS is $3 billion over five years. While this is a big price tag, we will be preventing almost 200,000 families from enduring the trauma of eviction and the instability of homelessness. 

The social costs of expanding access to vouchers, while momentous, are hard to quantify and are often obscured in budget negotiations focusing exclusively on immediate costs and benefits. Numerous studies show that people’s incomes increase when they access permanent housing, while their healthcare costs – including those covering emergency hospitalizations and mental health services – decrease. The prospects of their children’s educational and employment success rise and their long-term healthcare costs decline.

This is not time to be playing politics with the lives of the city’s most vulnerable New Yorkers. In the wake of state inaction on our failing housing system, the Council’s bills over the best hope of turning New York’s homeless crisis around. We urge the mayor to reconsider his veto threat, and work with the Council to put the city on a path toward housing for all. That should be a moral imperative.

David R. Jones, Esq., is President and CEO of the Community Service Society of New York (CSS), the leading voice on behalf of low-income New Yorkers for more than 175 years. The views expressed in this column are solely those of the writer.  The Urban Agenda is available on CSS’s website: www.cssny.org.

The post URBAN AGENDA: Expansion of CityFHEPs Voucher Program is a Moral Imperative appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.

* This article was originally published here