Tag: queens news

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By Gina Martinez

TimesLedger Newspapers

After visiting Puerto Rico a week ago to asses the damage and what work needs to be done, Congresswoman Grace Meng (D-Flushing) brought a displaced Puerto Rican resident currently living in Queens to last weeks State of the Union address.

Meng, who has called for additional funding to the people of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands for hurricane relief, brought 33-year old Omar Miguel Nieves Delgado to President Trump’s address. Delgado was living in San Juan when Hurricane Maria struck and severely damaged his home. Delgado, a trained dancer, also lost his source of income after the island was devastated by the storm. He and his partner were forced to relocate Queens and live with a close friend.

Meng said it was an honor to bring Omar after everything he had gone through. She said it was important not to forget that fellow Americans in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands are still suffering from the damage caused by Hurricanes Maria and Irma.

“I am proud to amplify Omar’s story of resilience, and I hope his attendance at the State of the Union will remind the President, and my congressional colleagues, of our obligation to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands,” she said. Delgado called it an “incredible honor” to be Congresswoman Meng’s guest for the State of the Union and being part of her effort to make sure that American citizens living in Puerto Rico are not forgotten.

He said there is still tremendous suffering in Puerto Rico that has led to no power, closed businesses, and the consequences of losing any opportunity for a bright future.

“For me, as an artist, I had the chance of leaving on a ship with a carry-on ten days after the hurricane hit in order to begin a new life in Queens,” he said. “But there many people who don’t have the same choice. The job is still not done and we feel as if we have been forgotten. The struggles of Puerto Rico must continue to be addressed and I thank leaders like Congresswoman Meng for working to make a difference.”

Meng spent two days in Puerto Rico last week assessing recovery efforts from damage caused by Hurricane Maria.

Meng received briefings on rebuilding, toured damaged and impacted facilities, spoke with local residents and met with officials from Puerto Rico and the U.S. government. Meng visited the island as a member of the House Appropriations Committee, which is responsible for funding all federal agencies, programs, and projects within the United States.

During her visit she met with San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz at a relief supplies site where many of the donations were sent in by New Yorkers. Meng also toured Hospital Centro Medico, the largest public hospital on the island and received an update on the island’s health care needs from Dr. Rafael Rodríguez-Mercado, Puerto Rico’s Secretary of Health, as well as a tour of the San Agustín Elementary School where Meng spoke with students and teachers and heard about local education needs.

Reach Gina Martinez by e-mail at gmartinez@cnglocal.com or by phone at (718) 260–4566.

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Source: Times Ledger

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By Leroy Gadsden

TimesLedger Newspapers

President Trump’s State of the Union speech was disappointing, and held very little hope or promise for African Americans and other minorities.

Trump focused on only some issues, while basically ignoring those that continue to plague the black community. The only thing he said in regard to our issues was to take credit for a low black unemployment rate. This was basically started by Barack Obama, the first African-American President, before he departed the White House more than a year ago.

While the President spent a great deal of time focusing on immigration and foreign issues and building the wall, he failed to address any of the primary issues that continue to plague African Americans.

During his short time in office, America has experienced an increase in racial hatred and violence, which came to an explosive boiling point in Charlottesville, Va., where a brave and conscientious young woman with a bright future ahead of her — Heather Heyer — was killed for merely exercising her rights.

Here in New York, we experienced the bitter taste of racial hatred and bigotry when a white supremacist traveled from Baltimore to New York for the sole purpose of killing an innocent black man —Timothy Caughman — simply because of the color of his skin. During his short time in office, President Trump has said some mean and racially divisive things. This has led to an increase in racial violence across the country.

President Trump had an opportunity to speak to the unification of this great nation but failed to do so. The State of the Union was the perfect national platform to call for unity in the nation and condemn racism and discrimination. Discrimination is still a major issue in our country and the President failed to address this issue.

He also failed to address such issues as voter suppression and criminal justice reform. Police brutality and police killings of unarmed citizens of color remains a major concern for African Americans, but this was ignored by the President. Our response must be demonstrated in the voting booth on Election Day. Starting today, we must register everyone around us, and on Election Day we must show up at the polls and let our discontent be known. In addition, we cannot support any elected person or party that refuses to uphold the standards and creeds of America, nor can we support any elected official or party who refuses to denounce and root out racism wherever it rears its ugly head.

It is up to us to determine whether or not there will be a day of reckoning for those who refuse to condemn racial hatred and bigotry. We must ensure that America lives up to the creed of the Constitution: that all men and women are created equal.

This guest editorial was written by Leroy Gadsden, president of the Jamaica Branch of the NAACP

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By Naeisha Rose

TimesLedger Newspapers

Two mayoral agencies have joined forces with a Latino advocacy coalition to discuss impending federal action that will have a major impact on immigrant communities in New York and beyond.

The Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs and the Mayor’s Office of International Affairs joined forces with the Coalition of Latin American Consulates on New York, which comprises of 17 Latin American nations at City Hall to discuss Thursday’s deadline for Congressional action for Dreamers and for the renewal of Temporary Protected Status for immigrants on Jan. 24.

Together Acting Immigrant Affairs Commissioner Bitta Mostofi and International Affairs Commissioner Penny Abeywardena discussed federal immigration policies and emphasized its continued support of the Latin American immigrant community.

Throughout the meeting the importance of DACA renewals for eligible recipients and re-registering for TPS ahead of a respective country’s deadline was reiterated.

“We need Congress to act or more Dreamers will suffer,” said Mostofi.

According to a MOIA analysis there was an increase in non-criminal arrests by ICE officers by 421 percent from Feb. 2017 to Sept. 2017, compared to the period before his inauguration, Oct. 2016 to Jan. 2017.

There are currently 30,000 DACA recipients and 15,000 people on TPS who call New York City home, according to Mostofi.

Queens has 55,000 Dreamers across the city, the most of any borough. Brooklyn has 46,000 Dreamers, the Bronx has 29,000, Manhattan has 18,000 and Staten Island has 4,000.

Dreamers contributed $4.7 billion in towards the city’s Gross Domestic Product in 2017 and they account for $2 billion in total earnings in occupations ranging from service workers to managers and professionals.

More than 20,000 Dreamers are homeowners or contribute to their families’ mortgage, and nearly one-third are attending college, have graduated or attended some college, according to MOIA.

The DREAM Act, a longstanding bill from which the Dreamers name is taken, would grant lawful status to immigrants brought here as children without documentation. If Congress were to pass it, 150,000 residents in the city would benefit from it, including the 96,000 Dreamers people who would be eligible for status. An additional 16,000 Dreamers would be eligible for protection from deportation, according to MOIA.

More than 16,000 elementary school students and middle-schoolers are among the 150,000.

The vast majority of TPS recipients in New York are from Haiti, El Salvador and Honduras, according to MOIA.

Over 8,000 children born in the U.S. live with family members on TPS.

TPS recipients generated $591.1 million in Gross City Product and they account for $260 million in income.

Recipients under TPS are in the United States because they were displaced from their countries due to natural disasters, war and political strife, according to the USCIS.

Reach reporter Naeisha Rose by e-mail at nrose@cnglocal.com or by phone at (718) 260–4573.

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By Naeisha Rose

TimesLedger Newspapers

As January came to a close, the Department of Homeland Security announced an extension to the Temporary Protected Status for nearly 7,000 Syrians that came to the United States before Aug. 1, 2016, but the remaining 2,000 recipients will have to find immigration relief through other channels and no new Syrian applicants will be accepted into the program.

Recipients under TPS are in the United States because they were displaced from their countries due to natural disasters, war and political strife, according U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Syria was granted the status because of a political uprising there in 2011, which erupted into a violent civil war that displaced 6 million people by 2014, according to the Federation of American Scientists, an organization that analyzes national and international security.

“After carefully considering conditions on the ground, I have determined that it is necessary to extend the Temporary Protected Status designation for Syria,” said Dept. of Homeland Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

“It is clear that the conditions upon which Syria’s designation was based continue to exist, therefore an extension is warranted under the statute.”

The Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs was pleased with the extension.

“New Yorkers welcome the Trump Administration’s decision to provide a common sense extension of Temporary Protected Status for nearly 7,000 Syrians living in the United States today,” said Bitta Mostofi, the Acting Commissioner of MOIA.

However, the lack of support for the newer Syrian TPS recipients by the Trump Administration was deemed inexcusable.

“The Administration is talking out of both sides of its mouth and putting people in danger as a result,” Mostofi said.

Oxfam, an international organization dedicated to combatting poverty, issued a press release on Feb. 5 stating that in the Afrin district of Syria, 140 people have died and 310 were injured by warring parties in the country. Homes were destroyed and more than 5,000 people and have a lack of food, water and medicine.

Babies, young children, pregnant women and the elderly are trapped in the midst of the violence, according to the Oxfam Country Director in Syria, Moutaz Adham.

“By recognizing that Syria is not able to safely absorb current TPS recipients, there is no justification for refusing their fellow nationals currently in the United States the same humanitarian relief,” said Mostofi. “Syria is still an active war zone.”

There is no current count of Syrian TPS recipients in Queens or throughout New York City, according to MOIA.

Reach reporter Naeisha Rose by e-mail at nrose@cnglocal.com or by phone at (718) 260–4573.

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By Gina Martinez

TimesLedger Newspapers

Queens rent prices dropped in 2017, according to a new StreetEasy report.

The real-estate website reported that 28 percent of Queens rentals received price cuts in the fourth quarter of 2017, following a citywide trend that showed 34 percent of Manhattan rentals seeing a price cut, as well as 28 percent of rentals in Brooklyn.

Median rent in Queens dropped to $2,066 — a 1.3 percent year-over-year decrease — in the final quarter of 2017, according to the report, which said northwest Queens saw the biggest median decline in rent, with a 2.5-percent decrease to $2,129.

Rent cuts were most prevalent in Corona, where they declined by 44 percent, followed by College Point, where they dropped by 36 percent, and Long Island City, where they fell by 33 percent.

StreetEasy Senior Economist Grant Long attributed the rent cuts to the winter’s usual market slowdown, and to new construction. He said a flood of new builds primarily propelled the rental market’s slowdown over the last year, and that the fourth quarter’s rent cuts are more far-reaching than in previous years.

“The cooling in the market is no longer limited to new, high-end buildings in select pockets of the city, there’s a broader trend of rents topping out across all price points,” Long said. “The slowdown is forcing landlords across the city to cut deals, and renters now have the most negotiating leverage in years.”

StreetEasy reported that all sub-market rents grew less than two percent year-over-year citywide.

While rents have dropped, the new report said that Queens resale prices rose twice as fast as they did in 2016. The median resale price for condos, townhouses, and co-ops in the borough rose 6.1 percent year-over-year to $509,217.

Properties in Central and Northeast Queens, where resale prices went up more than 8 percent, led the borough’s price growth, the StreetEasy report said.

And Northeast Queens’ resale price, which grew by 8.2 percent to a median of $588,052, was the highest the real-estate site ever recorded in the area, according to its report.

Reach Gina Martinez by e-mail at gmartinez@cnglocal.com or by phone at (718) 260–4566.

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Source: Times Ledger

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By Bob Capano

TimesLedger Newspapers

The opioid crisis is inflicting all of our communities at an alarming rate.

More families than ever are impacted by drug addiction. There were almost 64,000 drug overdose deaths in 2016, with two-thirds of them related to opioids such as heroin, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This was the most lethal year yet in the drug epidemic and it is getting worse.

There is no greater feeling of helplessness than watching a family member suffer because you know there is nothing that can be done until they are ready to seek treatment. The last thing we need is a legal facility that encourages continued drug use. Unfortunately, this is the path New York City is on.

Recently, the New York City Police Department and the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene met to discuss opening “supervised injection facilities” in local neighborhoods.

These facilities allow addicts to inject heroin and other drugs under medical supervision with sterile syringes, with taxpayers footing the bill. Currently, there are only about 100 of these centers in the world, mainly in Europe and Canada. Today, New York City is racing with Philadelphia and Seattle to become the first city in the United States to open one.

This would be a victory for Mayor Bill de Blasio in his goal to raise his national progressive bona fides, but opening these facilities would be bad for communities, law enforcement, taxpayers, and even worse, addicts.

Any funds spent on this issue should be used to break the cycle of the addict’s dependency on drugs, not by taking an action that condones heroin use. These sons, daughters, sisters, brothers and friends need help, hope and rehab. Condoning drug use as long as you shoot up at a supervised injection facility is sentencing them to a life of addiction.

We also must think of the problem these facilities would cause for law enforcement. How can we to prosecute drug crimes if City Hall provides places for drug users to legally shoot up?

In response to Vermont also exploring opening these facilities, the U.S. Department of Justice released a statement making clear: “It is a crime not only to use illicit narcotics, but to manage and maintain sites on which drugs are used and distributed… such facilities would also threaten to undercut existing and future prevention initiatives by sending exactly the wrong message to children in Vermont: the government will help you use heroin.” Supervised injection facilities would send mixed messages to law enforcement and citizens about heroin use.

Local neighborhoods would also suffer. Can you imagine the uproar if a facility were proposed in your community? Let’s face it, drug dealers are true entrepreneurs. They’ll relocate close to one of these facilities to better serve their customer: the addict. If one were to open in your area, common sense tells you that there will be dealers setting up shop next to the closest subway station, because these facilities do not provide the drugs. The addict will do anything to get the cash to pay the dealers.

Cities like Vancouver found out what happens when injection facilities are located there; quality of life complaints rise and the area around them becomes a magnet for addicts and drug dealers. Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa told me that in the 1990s, when his team patrolled the East End of Vancouver where one of these facilities had recently opened, there was an increase in addicts coming from other parts of Canada. This brought more dealers because users had to first buy their heroin to get their fix.

Since the first supervised injection facility opened in Switzerland in 1986, there have been many studies offering contradictory information about their effectiveness. These are worthy discussions to have, because both opponents and supporters of these facilities share the same goal of saving lives. However, no debate has occurred in New York City worthy of making us the first place in the United States to open these controversial facilities.

In 2016, the council announced a $100,000 taxpayer-funded six month study to be conducted by the Department of Health on the feasibility of opening these facilities. The results of the study have not been released, and there has not been any comment on these facilities by the mayor or any public hearings on this issue. Yet, last week two city agencies met about opening these facilities.

New Yorkers, especially those suffering from addiction, deserve better.

Bob Capano has been an adjunct political science professor at the City University of New York.

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By Mark Hallum

TimesLedger Newspapers

The Monday death of an 8-year-old Corona girl from the flu spurred a reaction from the city Dept. of Health on Tuesday to inform the public on the disease as it is the second pediatric fatality in the city thus far.

Physicians visited the girl’s LeFrak City home because she was having trouble breathing, according the city’s Health Department. She was taken to Elmhurst Hospital, where she died at around 6:30 a.m., CBS reported. The medical examiner’s office conducted an autopsy. AN ABC 7 report says that “death indicates the circumstances and cause were natural.”

City Dept. of Health Commissioner Mary Bassett held a Long Island City press conference Feb. 5 following the incident, in which she warned people that if their condition escalates to shaking chills and high fever with body aches, they should seek immediate medical attention, where they would likely receive antiviral treatment, which is in good supply in the City.

“It’s very important to remind New Yorkers that the flu is not the sniffles and a cough, that there are many people who die of influenza related illness,” Bassett said. “We lose more people to influenza and pneumonia every year than any other infection… I’m sure the tragic loss of a schoolmate and the tragic loss of a child will reverberate throughout the community, including the schools, but we are not treating this as something that needs an environmental intervention.”

Bassett advised residents to take advantage of the City’s paid sick leave law and not to go into work or school if they were experiencing symptoms, and to seek medical attention if their condition deteriorates quickly.

Bassett said the Dept. of Health monitors the flu from October through May and that the city had an early “rapid-rise” of the disease.

In 2015, the earliest year the City agency has data available, 2,094 people died of flu and pneumonia, with over 90 percent being over 65 years old, Bassett said.

Pediatric deaths average between zero and eight per year, she added, with six altogether occurring last year.

“This particular virus that we seeing this year, the H3N2 virus, is a wily virus which has proved difficult to find a highly effective vaccine for,” Bassett said. “That doesn’t mean that it isn’t protective.”

The Health Department cited the incident in a statement released following the girl’s death that urged locals to seek the proper treatment to avoid contracting the potentially fatal virus.

“The tragic death of a child due to the flu is a reminder of the devastating effects this illness can have on people of all ages. Influenza season is far from over, and it is not too late to get the flu shot. We urge parents to protect themselves and their families by getting this potentially life-saving vaccine today,” the agency’s statement read. “In addition to health care settings, flu vaccines are also available at pharmacies for children as young as 2-years-old. People with a compromised immune system, children, pregnant women, and those aged 65 and older who develop influenza-like symptoms should seek medical care as early as possible. For more information about where to get vaccinated, New Yorkers can call 311, visit nyc.gov/flu, or text “flu” to 877877.”

Bassett also advised people go to the emergency room if their symptoms worsen.

Reach reporter Mark Hallum by e-mail at mhallum@cnglocal.com or by phone at (718) 260–4564.

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By Bill Parry

TimesLedger Newspapers

A major construction project on three bridges at the Long Island Expressway and Grand Central Parkway interchange just south of the World’s Fair site at Flushing Meadows Corona Park has been completed nine months earlier than anticipated, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Wednesday.

The traffic pattern was moved into its final configuration this week, allowing nearly 350,000 vehicles to move through the interchange with fewer delays each day.

“These vital improvements will help ease congestion at this busy interchange for motorists, while offering those traveling to LaGuardia or JFK a smoother commute,” Cuomo said. “By modernizing and strengthening Queens’ transportation infrastructure, we help meet the demands of the 21st century traveler while spurring economic growth for the entire Empire State.”

The reconstructed bridges include the LIE mainline over the Grand Central, as well as the eastbound and westbound LIE over the GCP. The decks and steel structures for all three bridges were replaced and the bridges were widened to create shoulders where none existed. In addition, the westbound entrance lane from the Van Wyck Expressway was extended, providing a longer merge distance to help reduce traffic congestion.

“The LIE/GCP interchange is a critical highway artery connecting the four corners of Queens,” City Councilman Peter Koo (D-Flushing) said. “The completion of this $58 million project is exactly the sort of investment our community needs, and I’d like to thank Governor Cuomo and the State DOT for exceeding expectations and coming through nine months ahead of schedule.”

Lighting upgrades were installed on the LIE mainline and service roads between College Point Boulevard and the GCP, as well as beneath the LIE at the GCP. New LED lighting and upgraded cables have increased visibility there and are saving energy.

“Strong and resilient transportation infrastructure is critical to spurring local economies, connecting travelers to their destinations and helping move New York forward,” state Assemblywoman Nily Rozic (D-Flushing) said.

Additional drainage structures were installed and existing ones were cleaned to facilitate storm water run-off. Upgrades to the Intelligent Transportation System, which helps publicize and manage traffic conditions, were also completed.

“Our roads need an urgent injection of investment to ensure they do not continue to deteriorate,” state Sen. Jose Peralta (D-East Elmhurst) said. “We need to accelerate and make the modernization of our infrastructure a priority. The reconstruction of these three bridges at the Long Island Expressway/Grand Central Parkway interchange is a good step toward the goal of modernizing our roads to improve safety.”

Reach reporter Bill Parry by e-mail at bparry@cnglocal.com or by phone at (718) 260–4538.

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