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By Mary Jobaida
(Editor's note: Mary Jobaida is running for State Assembly in New York City. She is a former Niagara Fals resident.)
There is another New York many of you don’t know. As I go out in the community I often see my students collecting bottles with their moms or dads. You read it right. They collect bottles. As children are home in the summer, many parents cannot work. Baby sitting in Long Island City and Astoria costs more than what their parents’ income can afford. Collecting bottles is one of the ways they survive the summer break while many others go abroad to enjoy luxury vacations.
Many of my students (over 90%) came from families with housing insecurity. Many people I know who live in overcrowded households, not because they don’t like their own space, because their income does not allow them to rent an apartment or even qualify them to apply for an affordable housing. As a result they end up in a very low quality of living, indignity- two three families sharing one apartment with beds in bedrooms, beds in living rooms even beds in kitchens! The other day I met a mom who was so sad and asked me to find a help to mive in to atleast two bedrooms apartment. She shares one bedroom with her husband, children and in-laws. Many of you probably can relate to this while many of you probably cannot believe this can happen!
This is shameful, but real.
I have seen families leaving Astoria, Broadway and 30th Ave- heart broken. They tried their best to stay here. Many of them cried with me. One time a mother of four was so desperate, she asked each and everyone she knew to find an apartment. Her husband was driving taxi. But his income didn’t qualify to apply to any available apartments in NYC because of income limit vs. household number requirements. Her family later left the city and stetted in Buffalo.
There was another family in Long Island City. They tried too, to stay here. The wife grew up in Long Island City. She went to schools here, and graduated from CUNY. Her husband had a good paying job, but not good enouh for the already gentrified Long Island City that seemed to be in auction for anyone from anywhere who could afford more. I saw her on prayer mat, crying with her hands raised, completely silent while tear rolled through her checks and fell on her hands. She too had to leave Long Island City, and later settled in Virginia. These were good people who loved their neighborhoods. They loved their neighbors. They wanted to raise their children here, but the crazy raise in living cost, specially in housing displaced all of them.
Any sane city should be able to house the people who live and serve in that area. Housing is a fundamental human right. Anyone working full time deserves to live in a dignified housing with family. If a system fails to guarantee that, that’s when people need to evaluate the dysfunctionality of that system and adapt a new one that will guarantee the minimum fundamental right to the people of that area.
With a heart filled with pain for seeing so many working families silently self-deported from their neighborhoods for overpricing issue, working to find a housing solution is a personal issue for me. First we need to freeze the rent and mortgage raise. Then, we need to immediately build more deeply affordable housing- “only affordable housing” for the working people who don’t qualify to rent apartment because of the income requirement while they work full time. Until this problem is solved, no new permit should be allowed to worsen this crisis.
