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News 12 Staff

0212askyouradvocatebblock_2024-02-12-19-37-55

Welcome back to ask your advocate right here on news. 12 Public Advocate, Jaani Williams here with us to take all of your questions and public advocate. Well, let's head to the phone. Shall we? Let's do it? All right, let's go to the phones. We've got Joseph joining us tonight from Brownsville, Joseph. Thanks for calling in. It's your turn to ask your advocate. What's your question? Yes. Good evening. Uh Mr Williams, it's a pleasure to meet you. Um This, this is my thing, Mr Williams. Um I have a voucher. Um, you know, in the shelter system, I qualified for the voucher. I did the necessary things to get the voucher. I went to find apartments for myself. But what the landlords are doing is they're running a credit check on me and when they, when and they, and they're sending me a piece of paper saying, well, your credit was low. Now, if I've been in the shelter system all these years, I have not been able to develop no credit because I have, I have welfare paying, you know, for my house and where I'm at. So I don't get a chance to develop credit but at the same time I have a voucher. So it's like the landlords are not arming the voucher, the voucher system, they're using my name as a credit, but I, I'm trying to figure out shouldn't they run the city credit before they run mine because that's where the money is coming from. I'm just an occupant of that apartment and they have, they have all these apartments that are still available for those that have that come out the shelter, but they're not, they're not honoring the voucher system. So therefore the extra money, not my, my voucher pays up almost to almost to 26. So that covers the apartment. It also covers the broker. But then if they don't want you there, they, they'll send you a letter to tell you, listen, uh your credit score was low and I asked him, well, why are you running my credit? You should run the credit of the city because that's where your money coming from. So I don't know if you're aware of that because that, that's a big loophole right there. Then there's units that are not being filled or so they'll go up on the rent of the people that are there so that they can pay for those units because those units have to be paid for as well because they do, you know that, that, that, that whole, that whole building is counting on that fullness of that tho those apartments being paid So the rent for everyone else goes up to cover those apartments that are not, that are still empty and they pick and choose. So I'm just wondering where you of some of the loopholes, but there's an incentive for these vouchers for these landlords that they're not aware of. They get a little bit of extra every month. So let's just say you got 10 units and you take 10 vouchers, the money that these, these, these, these landlords are applying for a loan actually is already in the voucher because if you took 10 of my, if you took 10 of the clients from out of the shelters and use a voucher system that loan money that you apply for is already in those vouchers. So you don't even have to do that. So that whole system that was supposed to work is not conducive to being done. I don't wanna waste your time and take too much time. Joseph. Thank you. You gave, you gave us a lot there, but I want to give the public advocate a chance to answer some of the questions you gave us there. Yeah, thank you so much for that. It's um uh extremely. It's a really big problem in the city, particularly with people who have vouchers. Um We do have been trying to do a lot of work. Uh So that Leo's wouldn't lean so heavily on, on credit and credit history. There is a possibility that in Joseph's case. Um They are violating the law in terms of the source of income. Uh And often times, uh, landlords do do that and find other reasons not to honor a voucher. So there's a source of income discrimination law that was passed. And if we can get Joseph information, we can um connect him with the appropriate agencies to investigate that and my office because it could be a real big problem. I'm not sure that that landlord should be doing what Joseph is saying. Uh and he may be trying to get around that source of income discrimination law. It's a huge problem. Many people don't know that they can have some recourse um with uh the human resources in the uh in this uh in the city. And so we would love to get in touch with you, Joseph. I'm sorry, you're having that problem. Sadly, you're not alone. We are trying to do some other things to fix that problem. Uh But, you know, once there's a fix, the landlord has to honor the law. And if that's not happening, the only way we can fix that is people bringing that to our attention. So really, uh if we can get his information and, and try to help him out. Absolutely public. A we have Joseph's information. We'll pass that along to your office and Joseph thank you for calling in with that question tonight and you, we talk, he's talking about housing vouchers. It's reminding me immediately of what's going on with night as of right now. They are, you're no stranger to naa. They, they constantly are at top your worst landlord list and now 70 current and former employees under arrest, uh bribery extortion charges and more the largest bribery bust by the DOJ. What was your reaction when you found out about this? I wish it was uh surprising. Um It's still hard to hear. Uh, but it's not surprising to hear that there's a lot of corruption going on in nature and the people that pay for that is, are the residents. Now, there was a very good attempt to try to decentralize how some of these repairs are being made and I think this is comes, is born out of that, but you can do that and still provide the appropriate oversight, which is, I think what did not happen. We put out a report about this in my, off from my office maybe a year or two ago, recommending a few changes that didn't happen. One of them had to do with transparency and one of them had to do with the system. That's similar to what HPD has with uh making repairs outside of nature. Unfortunately, we can't force them to set those systems up. And what you sometimes have is something like this. My hope is that there will be still a way to decentralize some of these repairs so they can get them faster. But to put into effect some oversight. It's really not that difficult to see that something like this will happen if you don't have the appropriate channels of oversight, uh, who people who are overseeing this money. Um, but it was really sad to see because people really need these repairs, they need the attention and they shouldn't be abused, uh, while they're asking to get it. I was gonna say that it's not too much of a stretch to connect the conditions that we see in so many night shift units to this kind of a scandal here when we're talking about contractors and work. Right. That's correct. And what happened is they loosened up, uh, some of the, uh, hurdles that were needed for small, small type types of, uh, uh, construction, uh, which is needed, but the oversight was lacking and we should have seen this come. All right. Well, public advocate, we got a couple more callers that wanna talk to you. We're gonna get to them in just a couple of minutes here. We've got more. Ask your advocate here on news, 12 in a couple of minutes. So stay with us. Your calls when we come back.

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Welcome back to ask your Advocate here on News 12 as we're here with public Advocate Jumani Williams and we've got time for one more caller tonight. So I wanna go to Karsi Miranda is joining us, Miranda. Thanks for calling in tonight. What's your question for public advocate Williams? Um My question, hello, Mr Williams. Um I met you at Chris Banks uh inauguration. But however, I'm calling because um I'm a parent of a son that he did uh six months recently in Rock Island. Every day, I wake up to news 12 and I would hear not every day, but every other day I would hear someone who died in Rikers Island. So as a parent and my son is there, you might understand what I was going through. So as it is the case, he has to go back in, in March. I wanna know what is it that I can do uh to help this bill for R Island because as I said, my son, I'm, I'm in the community of a lot of black and brown um men that had experienced these. Uh I don't even know what to call it, but having experienced these, uh, things that's going on in Rock Island, Miranda. Thank you for the question there. And, uh, public advocate, I'll let you go. Uh, Miranda, thank you for that call. And I'm so sorry that your son has had to deal with those things and that you've had to deal with those. Um, the bill is passed and we're hoping that the city will enforce it. It's really trying to change the way isolation is used as a form of changing behavior because it, it doesn't work to change behavior. Um And what we do is not people like Miranda's son uh in Rikers Island and people from that same community, black and brown folks who work on Rikers Island are not safe. Um We have detainees dying and we have corrections officers and staff members being hurt, broken arms. We have uh women or corrections officers being sexually assaulted on a regular basis uh with no sort of accountability and that's happening right now. And that's why those of us who were trying to pass this bill kept saying this is happening now without this bill. So the tools that we're using just aren't working. So we have to do some new tools. And so we just said, the one thing we should probably stop doing is the use of isolation in the way that we've been doing it uh because it is more harmful to the person and the behavior doesn't change and they're actually more likely to be recidivists to commit crimes when they leave, uh, even commit suicide. And so that's what we're trying to change and change the atmosphere of that exists right now in Rikers. Absolutely Miranda, thank you for the call right there. Hopefully everything will work out for you and for your son there tonight. And I wanna thank our callers tonight for some great questions. We had a great conversation here in public advocate, Williams before I let you go. Public advocate as always the last time we spoke, they were doing well and now not so well. Our Knicks, give me your thoughts on where we are right now here as we're getting closer to the All Star break. Uh, you know, you know, we're Knicks fans, so we're, we're kind of used to a lot of this. Um, but I will say I am excited to see what happens when they get all staffed up. Uh My chief of staff is a avid Lakers fan. I'm, I'm happy I missed that game. I told him check with me when we're all staffed up. I'm a little sore about grimes, but I wanna see how, uh, Burke steps up seems to be doing well, uh, as well, but we, we keep training some, some fan favorites. So at some point, uh, we're gonna have to chill out on that. You love Grimes and Quigley. But I think they're gonna be all right. All right, public advocate. Thanks for being here with us and thank you all for watching. We'll see you next month and thanks again here on news. 12.

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News 12's Kurt Semder sits down with public advocate Jumaane Williams to answer YOUR questions for this month's edition of Ask Your Advocate.

Ask Your Advocate: February 2024 Edition

News 12's Kurt Semder sits down with public advocate Jumaane Williams to answer YOUR questions for this month's edition of Ask Your Advocate.

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