Issues in our Community

Land Use & Development

Land Use policy has a history of outright racism and exclusion. We can change this culture of weaponizing Zoning against working class communities.

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I am an architect and I love the Victorian designs on both sides of Flatbush Avenue. But if our neighborhood does not offer more housing options that are affordable to people of many incomes, our neighborhoods will become gentrified, and long term residents will be pushed out.

We must diversify our housing offerings, and create more opportunities for homeownership.

Our plan is to keep our current residents, and make them stakeholders in our community's development.

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Flatbush Deserves Better!

Health Care & Child Care

Health Care and Child Care Coverage options should be centered around family needs. We now have the Child Tax Credit, part of the American Rescue Plan. This is significant relief for families, however the quality of the services in our community are lacking. We need to create more support networks and services within our community, as well as broaden e-health.

Young families are facing rising costs in healthcare. In our COVID crisis, unemployment has hit families without coverage particularly hard. In these economic times we need a more resilient safety net, particularly for our aging residents. 

Access to affordable healthcare is a human right. Quality Childcare is an integral part of family health.  We have to find ways to keep our families healthy, supported, and safe. Creating access to affordable heathcare and quality health services is one of my primary goals.

Flatbush Deserves Better!

Education Alternatives

New York City Public Schools are among the most segregated school districts in the country. We as a community and as parents must demand self-determination in our schools, and we must wrest control of our children’s education from an institutional structure that does not proportionally fund our schools and is bankrupting our community. Parents must have greater control over the types of schools, the programming schools offer; its teachers and accessibility.

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Flatbush Deserves Better! 

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Commerce & Entrepreneurship

Current land-use policy and commerce investment is completely in the hands of Landlords. Regressive property taxes imposed by the city, and the abandon of property owners to put profit over community, have the cumulative effect of decreasing employment opportunities in our community, creating a “brain drain” of skilled labor in critical sectors like hospitality, banking, construction, education, and healthcare. The result; blight, gang-violence, informal commerce, and deteriorating quality of our businesses and user services. My focus will be to redirect investment and support to entrepreneurs, particularly black and Caribbean owned business which have been neglected by our leaders.

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Flatbush Deserves Better!

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Trash & Sanitation

Trash and Sanitation are among the biggest challenges in our district. Trash management on our commercial and residential corridors is an ongoing problem which absorbs precious time and effort from our residents. It also is a leading cause of back up flooding on our streets from clogged drains. Trash is everywhere with seemingly no end to the ever-increasing quantity, especially around vacant lots and industrial streets where illegal dumping is rampant.

Relying on the Department of Sanitation alone will not get the job done. I plan on implementing a sustainable and permanent solution to trash and garbage collection and management in our district by creating opportunities for business and employment.

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Flatbush Deserves Better!

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Remote Work & Unemployment

The future of work must learn from our year during the COVID 19 pandemic. It is incredible that the most impacted demographic of job loss was Black and Lantinx women, many single parents with children and caring for elderly parents lost their jobs. Additionally, many Black and Brown persons in the labor force were “essential workers” that risked their lives daily to provide New Yorkers with essential services such as transit, EMT, nurses, daycare, teachers, supermarket workers, delivery workers, and many others. We have failed those workers.

To remediate the loss, we have to consider what the future of work is, and how to prepare our people for the employment opportunities of the future. We also have to consider that across the spectrum of labor, we must take advantage of the opportunity that remote work presents.

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Flatbush Deserves Better!

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Accessible (Not Affordable) Housing

The housing crisis in our city is the proverbial “self fulfilling prophecy". We made SRO’s illegal, we deregulated rent control, we allow discrimination against rental voucher users, and we pay more than $4000 per month to house each homeless person in the shelter system.

The housing crisis, is an industry!

As we continue to beg for affordable housing, it’s important to understand that this term is a fiction. It cost the same to produce a market rate or “affordable” unit. The difference is we subsidize development with our property tax dollars in exchange for affordable housing that never comes. Meanwhile, tax breaks given to developers over 20-30 year periods, create surplus wealth that is never reinvested into the public.

THIS MUST CHANGE!

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Flatbush Deserves Better!

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Policing and Criminal Justice Reform #disarmthepolice

Our community does not want “to defund the police”.  However, use of force particularly in black and brown communities is proportionally high compared to white affluent communities.

In our district, the 67th Precinct has among the highest number of false arrests and has been involved in multiple shooting of black men, one of them suffering from mental illness. There is a culture of “shoot first ask questions later” in our police departments. The people we are asking “community policing” of do not care and do not understand our community. The reason why is very clear.

They ARE NOT from our community.

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Flatbush Deserves Better!

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Transportation Alternatives

I believe we need a new transportation regime and urban planning strategy that incorporates new private transportation alternatives. This includes electric powered bikes, uni-wheels, scooters and other similar hover devices such as electric skateboards and hover boards.

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Covid and Remote Work has forced us to think about hyper local transportation. Cars cannot be the only solution to private short distance commuting. In East Flatbush towards Canarsie, we have a transportation desert, and we need new solutions that pair mainstream public transportation options with private transportation.

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We need intelligent solutions that will enable families and workers to have greater mobility, and safety. we need to achieve "road equity" in our community. 

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Flatbush Deserves Better!

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