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New York Citys new $107 billion budget will include $4 billion in funding for affordable housing in the next fiscal year a cash infusion Mayor Adams promised two years ago and which Council Speaker Adrienne Adams has pressed for in recent months.

The mayor and Council Speaker announced the new spending plan with a handshake agreement Thursday at City Hall a deal the Council is expected to formally approve Friday. The new budget tops last years spending plan which eventually grew to $104 billion by approximately $3 billion.

The agreement we reached today comes in the midst of a budget cycle dominated by great challenges and unexpected crises, but Im proud to say that we have successfully navigated through these many crosscurrents to arrive at a strong and fiscally responsible budget, Mayor Adams said. Early in this administration I made it clear that government must be more efficient and use our limited resources wisely. Our mission is not simply to save money, it is to set priorities.

Mayor Eric Adams and New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams shake hands as they announce an agreement for a budget for Fiscal Year 2024 (FY24) at City Hall on Thursday, June 29, 2023. (ED REED/Mayoral Photography Office)

Council Speaker Adams, who isnt related to the mayor, has made securing more funding for housing a priority for months to address both the affordable housing crisis the city is facing and the huge influx of migrants whove streamed into the five boroughs since last year, causing its homeless shelters to surpass capacity.

On Thursday, she took a victory lap for locking down that additional funding, saying it would help address record-high levels of evictions and homelessness.

This year, the city will reach the target of a $4 billion capital commitment for housing that this moment demands, she said.

Of that $4 billion annual allotment, $2.5 billion will go to the citys Department of Housing Preservation and Development and $1.5 billion will go to the New York City Housing Authority in the 2024 fiscal year. The $4 billion in spending next year relies, in part, on reallocating money initially budgeted further down the road. Over the next ten years, the city has budgeted $23.9 billion for affordable housing.

The general funding level at HPD will extend into the following years, with the agency set to get approximately $2 billion for affordable housing in both 2025 and 2026.

The budget deal will also include a restoration of $32.9 million in NYCHA funding that would have been removed under the mayors latest executive budget.

That money will be put toward the housing authoritys vacant-unit readiness program, which is aimed at bringing empty apartments into use more quickly.

Mayor Adams and City Council members have been engaged in a contentious back-and-forth over the budget in recent weeks, with the mayor contending that deep cuts are necessary to maintain the citys long-term fiscal health and Council members arguing that many of those cuts would be to the citys overall detriment.

For Speaker Adams, money for affordable housing has been a particularly pressing concern. Shes made the case repeatedly that more cash for permanent affordable housing is needed to help alleviate the pressure migrants have placed on the shelter system.

MANHATTAN, NY - MAY 17, 2023 - Migrants arriving from Mission and McAllen, TX, are greeted by volunteers at the Port Authority Bus Terminal early Wednesday. Five buses each carrying around 45 people has arrived at the bus terminal today. The steady flow of Migrants hasnt stopped and some are arriving at the three airports in the area. (Luiz C. Ribeiro for New York Daily News) (Luiz C. Ribeiro/for New York Daily News)

During his 2021 campaign for mayor, Mayor Adams vowed to put $4 billion a year towards affordable housing. But in the last budget, both he and the Council fell short of that goal, allocating about $2.5 billion for affordable housing in the last fiscal year.

Under his most recent executive budget plan, Mayor Adams had proposed cuts across almost all city agencies to help defray the costs of the migrant crisis, which his budget team estimates will cost more than $4 billion to address by next year.

Those austerity measures which included cuts to public libraries, CUNY and the citys Department of Social Services, among other agencies sparked a loud and sustained backlash from City Council members and advocates, who contended that including them in the final, adopted budget would ultimately harm the citys long-term health.

The mayors proposed $36.2 million cut to libraries has been particularly contentious, but that reduction will be reversed as part of the final agreement announced Thursday. According to sources involved in the negotiations, the mayors team only relented on the library cuts after Council negotiators threatened to walk away and force talks to extend beyond Saturdays budget deadline.

The front of the Main Branch of the New York Public Library on Fifth Ave. in Manhattan is pictured on Thursday, September 22, 2022. (Ted Shaffrey/AP)

Both the mayor and speaker alluded to the tensions that pervaded the budget negotiations during their press conference in the City Hall Rotunda on Thursday afternoon. In a reference to the New York Yankees stellar pitching performance the night before, Mayor Adams said the process was not a perfect game.

The Council speaker made clear repeatedly it is not an ideal budget from her members point of view, either. At one point during Thursdays announcement, she went so far as to say that the city couldnt afford the type of counterproductive budgeting approach employed by the mayors administration during this years talks.

We could talk for hours about the things that were not accomplished in this budget, she said, standing next to the mayor. The budget is passing right now, but this is a bittersweet moment for this Council.

After that comment, the mayor stepped in to say the cuts are painful for him, too, but blamed the need for them on the citys costly migrant crisis.

It hurts us to know that we lost $1.4 billion that we could have put into some of these problems that we are talking about, he said, referencing the the migrant-related cost incurred by the city over the past year.

Mayor Eric Adams listens as New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams speaks at City Hall on Thursday. (ED REED/Mayoral Photography Office)

According to Adams budget director, Jacques Jiha, the outyear deficits for the city continue to balloon amid the migrant crisis. The projected deficit for fiscal year 2027 is now at $7.9 billion $900 million more than what was estimated just a few months ago, according to Jiha.

Andrew Rein, president of the fiscally hawkish Citizens Budget Commission, said Thursdays budget agreement could be dangerous, given the dark fiscal horizon described by Jiha.

It is essentially a one-year budget that again unfortunately delays the wise but hard choices needed to stabilize the citys fiscal future, Rein said.

Advocates have pressed the mayor to invest more money to fund legal services, specifically for so-called right-to-counsel lawyers representing tenants in eviction cases and immigrants attempting to navigate the complicated asylum application process.

Councilman Shaun Abreu (D-Manhattan) said under the new budget an additional $20 million will be baselined toward right-to-counsel lawyers and another $10 million would go to public defenders annually and that the total allotment in the next fiscal year will grow by $46 million.

In addition to reversing the library cuts, the budget agreement peels back the mayors proposed $40 million city funding reduction for cultural institutions like museums, and it will also partially restore a cut the mayor sought to a Department of the Aging program providing meals for older adults.

Mayor Adams had pushed for a $12 million cut in the 2024 fiscal year for the senior meals program. That cut has been reduced to $5 million.

Mayor Eric Adams, New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, Council Finance Chair Justin Brannan, and members of the New York City Council announce an agreement for a budget for Fiscal Year 2024 (FY24) at City Hall on Thursday, June 29, 2023. (ED REED/Mayoral Photography Office)

On the education front, the mayors team advocated for a $41 million funding shave for the City University of New York for the next fiscal year. The budget deal undoes $32.4 million of that cut.

Adams proposed $17 million cut to social services forr Rikers Island inmates will not be restored in next years budget, though. The citys Department of Correction, which the mayor ultimately oversees, has said it can provide the same services in-house but Council members and nonprofit providers have strongly pushed back, arguing that inmates would suffer under the cut.

The program being cut helps recently-released inmates with finding jobs and housing, as well as accessing social services. Asked why he thinks that funding should be scrapped, Mayor Adams said its because all of those services we can do internally.

Its the wrong thing to do to have city employees and then have a whole host of consultants, Adams said. Its an insult to city employees.

Jacques Jiha, Director of the New York City Mayor's Office of Management (left) and Mayor Eric Adams are pictured at City Hall on Thursday. (ED REED/Mayoral Photography Office)

Two Council sources noted that the lawmaking body intends to pursue legislation in the coming weeks that would help restore such funding on a more permanent basis.

A cost of living adjustment, or COLA, for nonprofit workers providing social services support to the city is baked into the budget framework as well.

The COLA is a $40 million increase over current levels for the next fiscal year, bringing the total baselined funding to $100 million. That baseline will be brought up to $150 million in the 2025 fiscal year, according to the budget deal.

The COLA is smaller than some stakeholders had hoped for, though.

Democratic Council members and social services nonprofits had advocated for at least a $100 million increase in this fiscal year, arguing that anything less wouldnt be enough to make workers whole at a time of surging costs of living in the city.

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NYC's new $107B budget deal will include $4 billion annually for ... - New York Daily News

It doesnt make sense to weigh tragedies on a scale. How do you measure them? Leo Tolstoy got it right in Anna Karenina when he said whereas all happy families are alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

And so indeed it was on June 14 when it was reported that a boat carrying 750 migrants had capsized near Greece in the Mediterranean killing over 500 with dozens missing.

It was one of the most horrific tragedies in recent times, claiming the lives of hundreds of migrants mostly from Pakistan, Syria, Egypt, Afghanistan and Palestine who put their lives in great danger in pursuit of the basic human instinct of looking for a better life.

A world becoming tragically familiar with migrant misery barely had time to shake its head in pity once again when news broke that a submarine, The Titan, operated by a US-based company, OceanGate, had imploded in the depths killing all five tourists on an expedition to the debris of the Titanic.

Two heart-wrenching tragedies in a space of days and yet the major global news networks could not resist reporting the tragedies on a scale of prejudice that barely disguised where their sympathy lies.

The concerned world also rallied a multinational rescue mission for The Titan sparing neither expense nor expertise. The press provided minute-by-minute accounts of the efforts, looking for experts from around the world who had made similar missions in the past. Others got families of some of those on board to share their fears and hopes.

How, for example, could anyone not be touched by the story of Suleman Dawood, the 19-year-old student who followed his millionaire father, Shazada, on that expedition to honour his Fathers Day wish? We were touched because the press shined a light on the human angle.

Who knows how many such stories among the hundreds of the families of the dead migrants have now gone untold? Interestingly, the Dawoods whose tragic story is still travelling the world, shared a similar Pakistani heritage with some migrants whose own stories will never be heard.

As the search went on, the horrific deaths of the migrants in the Mediterranean fizzled from news flashes to scrolls of ticker tape and soon disappeared altogether.

From the way the networks covered the two accidents, you would be forgiven to think that they had weighed both and concluded that the lives of the 750 migrants mattered less, if they mattered at all. It was not an issue that the number of migrants who died in the Mediterranean on June 14 was over one-third of the fatality when RMS Titanic struck an iceberg on its maiden voyage in 1912.

Somehow, the unspoken message was that the migrants deserved their fate. What else did they want from Europe or the rest of the world? After all, in the last eight years or so, and long before the Russia-Ukraine war complicated things, Europe had opened its borders to an estimated 1.5 million migrant refugees. Yet, in spite of tighter border controls, controversial repatriations and deportations, the wave of migrants has been unrelenting.

Governments in Europe, especially in Italy and Greece, that spent years sleepwalking over a comprehensive plan to manage the migrant crisis have used rising domestic economic difficulties and the upsurge in right-wing groups in their countries as excuses for cracking down on migrants, sometimes, with the most cynical sea-border policing.

Since no deterrent appears to have worked so far (not unsanitary conditions, severe overcrowding, poor food and water quality, torture by guards or even reinforced barbed wires), the networks may well have deployed their own a new set of filtering tools to cover the Mediterranean tragedy: downgrade the story if you cant help it, otherwise turn a blind eye.

Of course, its not the fault of the five victims who died in The Titan; its the fault of a system that treats people less than who they are because of where they are from, their skin colour or lets be honest because of their economic conditions.

Its improbable that if the migrant boat were some ocean liner on a summer cruise of the Mediterranean an accident involving 750 passengers out of which 500 have been confirmed dead would be given the same shorthand coverage.

The double-standard between the wall-to-wall coverage of the implosion of The Titan and the short shrift that the deaths of over 500 migrants received at the hands of the global networks reecho the Shakespearean line about beggars, comets and the deaths of princes. Only that Shakespeare could not have seen that modern networks could sometimes make comets for their own princes.

The hypocritical coverage of both tragic incidents barely hides the fact that even though the deaths touched each affected family in a different way, the material condition of the dead was also a factor in how the tragedies were reported.

Former US President Barack Obama, perhaps one of the worlds most famous modern victims of right-wing calumny, called out the stark contrast, describing it as obscene and untenable. Its an obscenity with a long history, one which in 1977 compelled UNESCO to set up the Sean MacBride Commission on North-South communication lopsidedness.

On September 26, 2002, for example, an overcrowded Gambia-bound Senegalese ferry, Le Joola, hit a serious storm at night, killing 1,800 passengers, including the sister and 10 other relatives of the current coach of the Senegalese national football team, Aliou Cisse. Only 64 passengers survived. Cisse was saved on that day by a match for Birmingham City. It was a monumental tragedy, claiming more lives than were lost in RMS Titanic.

But that catastrophic event remained largely unreported then and remains, to date, one of the worlds most famous unlisted calamities on the global calendar. Only a BBC Africa documentary produced last year, on the 20th anniversary of the disaster and the pillars of the victims empty graves, remind us there was such a human tragedy!

This double-standard sometimes plays out in how help is deployed, after a humanitarian disaster. When the US sent help to Nigeria after catastrophic floods claimed over 600 lives last year, for example, it sent money $1 million. When a devastating wildfire impacted New South Wales in Australia in late 2019, on the other hand, the US sent hundreds of firefighters. Sadly, three of them died helping.

To be fair, we cant blame foreign countries or the major networks forever. If these countries and their networks are hostages to blinkered lenses in understanding and telling our story, journalists in the global south, including Africa, must also invest in telling their own stories themselves.

And that does not have to be only when tragedies happen. Otherwise, neither tragedies nor heart-warming stories would have the touch, which as Tolstoy said, connects to us as humans in their own different, intimate ways.

Ishiekwene is Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP

Views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of TheCable.

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Titan and migrants: Two tragedies, different stories - TheCable

Senator heard from non-governmental organizations about how theyre using funding she secured to prepare for the end of Title 42

WASHINGTON Arizona senior Senator Kyrsten Sinema held meetings with Arizona nonprofits including International Rescue Committee, Casa Alitas, and the Regional Center for Border Health to discuss how theyre preparing for the end of Title 42 on May 11.Arizona non-profits make Arizona communities safer and more secure and help ensure migrants are treated fairly and humanely. Were working together to ensure Arizona non-profits on the front lines of the migration crisis have the resources they need ahead of Title 42s end, said Sinema, Chair of the Senate Border Management Subcommittee.In order to prevent street releases in Arizona and across the Southwest border, non-profits and local governments need consistent, dependable funding streams. Since 2019, Sinema has secured over $1 billion for migrant services through the Emergency Food and Shelter Program (EFSP) and the new Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Shelter and Services Grant Program (SSP).The Administration will end COVID-19-related emergency declarations on May 11, which will also remove the basis for Title 42. Sinema recently questioned Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas about the Administrations plans to manage increased levels of migration following Title 42s permanent suspension. Following her questioning, the Senator remains concerned that the Administration is not prepared to handle the anticipated surge of encounters.For more than a year, Sinema has urged the Administration to implement a comprehensive plan to prepare for the anticipated surge of encounters when Title 42 ends.

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Ahead of Administration's Title 42 Suspension, Sinema Meets with ... - Kyrsten Sinema

This post first appeared in the May 4 Morning Report. Subscribe to the newsletter here.

With the looming expiration of the federal governments order under Title 42, San Diego is bracing for what could be a significant influx of migrants seeking asylum who were turned away during the pandemic. But its still unclear what the actual plan is.

Nearly three months ago, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors directed Chief Administrative Officer Helen Robbins-Meyer to prepare for the arrival of asylum seekers entering the U.S. to lessen the impact on the regions growing homelessness crisis.

On Wednesday, Michael Workman, the countys director of communications, said a comprehensive long range plan is headed to the board soon.

In the meantime, county officials have been meeting with other agencies and service providers and prepared a list of unused and underused properties that may be used to build out shelter infrastructure. Theyve also petitioned federal representatives for help.

Vargas asked the regions congressional delegation for immigration reform legislation and funding. Supervisor Joel Anderson also pointed out that Congress made $800 million available last year for shelter and other migrant services, but the administration has yet to release the money to local governments and organizations.

Those seeking safety and asylum in our country have a right to humane treatment and local entities cannot bear the brunt of this need created by federal policies, Vargas wrote.

How we got here: The Trump administration put Title 42 to use on the rationale that it would limit the spread of Covid-19, and the U.S. Supreme Court kept the restrictions in place longer than planned. So when the shelters reached capacity, federal authorities just dropped hundreds of people onto the streets.

Lisa Halverstadt reported last fall that dozens of migrants were staying in city-funded homeless shelters amid a spike in border arrivals. Shelter providers struggled to connect migrants to resources they typically tap into to aid homeless San Diegans.

Deadline looms: CBS 8 reports that the Biden administration is sending 1,500 more troops to the southwest border to help when Title 42 expires on May 11. Exhausted migrants, some of whom said they hadnt eaten in days, are already lining up. Some are being transported to Border Patrol stations to get the process of asylum started. Other border communities, like El Paso, have already declared a state of emergency.

San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria has also met with federal officials. Ultimately, the only real solution is for Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform that constructively addresses this issue and ends this cycle of crises that have a profound impact on American cities, he said in a statement.

Clarification: This post was updated to clarify how Title 42 is used.

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With Another Migrant Crisis Around Corner, San Diego Begs Feds ... - Voice of San Diego

In September 2022, a record-high number of migrants were bused into New York City, with at least nine buses reaching the city on a single Sunday. The Republican governors in Texas, Arizona and Florida claimed their operation to transport migrants to so-called sanctuary jurisdictions like NYC is designed to pressure Democratic politicians and the Biden administration to enact tougher border measures that will deter illegal crossings.

For Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis who continues to callously ship and demonize migrants, seeing them as mere political pawns they have provided an issue for his likely run for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. He has chosen charged cultural issues as his political signature, trying to top Donald Trump at his own game while projecting an image that he is free of all of Trumps baggage. He has attacked migrants, transgender people and gays while supporting gun rights, making the death penalty easier to impose as well as tightening abortion as a way of endearing himself with the Floridian and national right-wing base.

Florida might be the place that DeSantis complacently informs us is where woke goes to die, but its also where teachers salaries are among the lowest in the nation, unemployment benefits are extremely low and DeSantis campaigned against a successful ballot initiative to raise the states minimum wage from $8.65 an hour.

Its one more reason for DeSantis to promote the culture wars so the electorate is diverted from the prime aims of his rule: starving programs committed toward bettering the lives of ordinary people so he can maintain low taxes on the wealthy and corporations. Florida also has no income tax for individuals, and its corporate tax rate of 5.5 percent is among the lowest in the nation. One can only hope that DeSantis has overreached politically by promoting an extremely hard-right-wing line on a raft of issues in a state that is not, for the most part, linked to the deep South culturally and socially. DeSantis continues to reach out to the center-right and Orthodox Floridian Jews by signing legislation that will expand Floridas school choice program and visiting Israel to deliver the keynote address at a high-profile event hosted by The Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem.

DeSantis and other governors cynical and repellent actions have had painful consequences for New York City. There are projections that the city alone could spend up to $1 billion this year to adequately support the migrants with food, housing education and employment. Some 200 asylum-seekers arrive in the city every day, and it costs $380 per day per household to provide them with food and shelter, according to City Hall. Most of the migrants, about 34,600 of them, are being put up in taxpayer-funded emergency shelters mostly hotels with thousands more dropped off at eight Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers. Sleeping in the shelters often results in many complaints, especially about children having no access to health care and sometimes coming to school with diarrhea or families experiencing chickenpox outbreaks.

Camille Mackler, executive director of the Immigrant Advocates Response Collaborative, one of the many NYC nonprofits that offer legal support, says they are overwhelmed:

Ive been an immigration lawyer for 20 years and Ive never ever gone through what Ive experienced in the last six months or year, Mackler says. Absolutely no one can take cases.

There is no way of avoiding dealing with the oppressiveness of the conditions that the migrants face.

Mayor Eric Adams and others have called the cost for temporary housing, medical care and other support impossible to sustain. In Adams words: While our city may be the face of the asylum seeker crisis, it is not a crisis we can solve on our own. A comprehensive response from all levels of government especially from our state and federal partners is needed. Adams has directly criticized President Joe Biden for failing New York City in dealing with the migrant crisis. He indicated he wants the federal government to grant temporary protected status to asylum-seekers so they can receive work permits because many of the migrants are being exploited and mistreated. Hopefully, the president will want to avoid having a Black Democratic mayor of the countrys largest city be angry with him. In fact, following Adams remarks, a spokesperson for the White House said the federal government would announce additional migrant funding in the coming weeks.

There are no easy answers to the deluge of migrants. No city can carry the burden without an immense amount of aid. At the same time, NYC cannot morally emulate DeSantis and heartlessly pass the problem on to other localities. Its a painful quandary that must be resolved.

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Leonard Quart: In NYC, practical costs and moral stakes of a migrant ... - Berkshire Eagle