Kathryn Garcia (D)

Women’s Leadership
How will you ensure that women’s participation and leadership are fully integrated across New York City government and that every decision made is considered through an anti-racist, gender-focused lens?

In order to ensure the perspectives of women and New Yorkers of color are fully represented, we need to have more traditionally underrepresented New Yorkers in leadership and decision-making roles. I view equity as opportunities for success being available and accessible for all- no matter your race, economic status, or zip code. As Mayor, I commit that my administration will reflect the diversity of New York City. But it’s not just about recruiting–it’s about listening to and valuing the experiences of everyone at the table–and reflecting a commitment to racial equity in our budget.

As an adopted woman growing up in a multi-racial household, I didn’t have to look farther than the dinner table to understand that diversity makes us stronger. I also knew that I was treated differently from my Black siblings when walking down the street or entering a store. I took that experience with me throughout my public service career. As Commissioner of Sanitation, I used my position to level the playing field and make it easier for others. In an agency that is 98% male, I was proud to change the promotion process and promote the first woman to a 3 star chief position and the first Latino to the highest ranking role in the Department. In my administration, not only will I have diversity at the highest ranks of city government- I’m also going to listen to them.

Affordable and Safe Housing
Some women and families live in New York City’s homeless shelters for over a year because they cannot find safe, affordable places to live with the current rate of NYC rental subsidy. As mayor, how will you address this reality and help families build their lives outside of the shelter system?

First and foremost, we need housing that heals. Health and housing are linked. Residents who do not have stable or quality housing are less healthy. Safe, secure, affordable housing is a basic human right. That means moving away from shelter strategy and to a housing strategy. We spend ~$3 billion annually on homeless shelters and services that fail to adequately serve NYC neighborhoods and families.

My administration will build 10,000 units of supportive housing to provide permanent shelter, services and support for people experiencing street homelessness and those most at risk — including buying empty or underused private properties for conversion. For families, women and children, we will ensure wraparound services in shelters, including education, health, and job readiness. We will open 10 drop-in centers in key neighborhoods to provide bathrooms and critical services 24 hours a day and begin the engagement process to get homeless New Yorkers into shelter.

As a manager, I am going to focus on the right metrics for housing to prevent homelessness rather than putting “affordable” units up on a scoreboard. For housing, those metrics are how many New Yorkers are rent-burdened, how many are living in homeless shelters, and how many are sleeping in the streets. In order to make a meaningful dent in the number of homeless New Yorkers and reduce the rent burden across the City, I will focus City investment where it’s needed most and create 50,000 units of deeply affordable housing (<30% AMI). We will also make it easier, faster, and legal for private partners to build more housing. We have added 500k New Yorkers over the last decade, but only 100k units of new housing—we cannot reduce the housing prices without increasing supply. We will end apartment bans and discriminatory zoning, and allow duplexes and triplexes to create more options for families. We will legalize basement apartments, accessory dwelling units, and single-room occupancy (SRO) apartments as a safe, sustainable and efficient means of providing housing to single-adult households–approximately one-third of households in New York City. We will also accelerate approvals for new housing construction, streamline the ULURP and environmental review process as well as permit applications and inspections at the Buildings Department and sister agencies.

Fair Wages
While all women continue to earn less on average than men in New York City, women of color and immigrants, who are more likely to work in low-paid jobs in the public and private sectors, face significantly larger gaps and higher poverty rates. What are your plans for eliminating these disparities in New York City?

Wage inequalities must be addressed with urgency and focus, and doing so will be a focus of my administration. In my career, I have never shied away from roles in which I was perceived as an outsider because I am a woman. My Administration will prioritize supplying the most vulnerable New Yorkers with economic relief and pathways for economic mobility. First, we’ll provide free childcare for working families, allowing guardians, especially women, to get back to work. Second, we will unlock barriers for small businesses by increasing access to credit, streamlining all laws and regulations governing restaurants and nightlife establishments, and cutting red tape for all permit and licensing processes. Starting a business is already hard–but for entrepreneurs of color and specifically for black women, limited resources and biases that make it harder to secure investor support. To address the lack of access to banking, we’ll work with Albany to increase access to credit and non-dilutive capital for the City’s vital and at risk enterprises at amounts less than $100K and support innovative financial mechanisms that serve small businesses. We will also provide an increase in financial assistance and financial literacy workshops for vendors.

Finally, we’ll create job pipelines into both the public and private sector for justice-involved youth, CUNY colleges, and trade schools. We’ll guarantee graduates of our trade schools City employment, work with the private sector to offer 10,000 paid internships to high school students, and subsidize wages for youth who face barriers to employment.

Accessible Caregiving
This pandemic has exacerbated the big holes in our caregiving systems, including childcare and long-term care. How do you propose addressing these issues and creating a fair and equitable system both for families and the caregiving workforce?

Quality childcare and long-term care are critical for so many of our families. When I’m Mayor, reliable childcare will be available to all families making under $70K, as a first step toward universal free childcare. The burden of caretaking almost always falls on the shoulders of women, and far too frequently serves as a barrier to women being able to participate in the workforce.

New Yorkers who are performing this critical caregiving work for our children and our elderly must be entitled to strong protections and benefits. They are essential workers.

Ending Gender-Based Violence
There has been a significant uptick in reports of sexual harassment and violence against women and gender expansive people during the pandemic. What is your plan to address gender-based violence in New York City in both the private and public sectors?

We need to continue to dismantle the culture that allows these crimes to occur unpunished, and frequently at the expense of the victim. Sexual assault and rape pervade so many of our spaces — from food service, to academia, to entertainment, to government. We need to send the message to potential perpetrators that these crimes have consequences. We must encourage reporting of crimes, and in order to do so, we need to ensure victims know their allegations will be taken seriously, and offer meaningful protection from retaliation and other threats. A Garcia administration would ensure that those who are vulnerable to gender-based violence or who may be victims of such crimes have access to the benefits, shelter, counseling, and/or legal support that they need.

Education
Cities across the country, including several in New York, have begun to take steps to remove police from schools. As mayor, would you remove police from schools in New York City, and if so, would you reinvest the money toward educational programs and support resources?

Making necessary investments into our schools and students should not be tied to police. We need to have enough teachers, guidance counselors, and social workers in our schools to serve the many needs our students have. When it comes to school safety, Black children have experienced school as a hostile environment – an institution that is about control and regulation. We need to end the school-to-prison pipeline by reforming school safety and discipline policies, so that students are not arrested for behavior that is best addressed by school officials. We also need to develop direct pathways to colleges and careers for these students, including leveraging New York City’s private sector. Lastly, we must do a better job of making sure teachers and school employees better reflect their school communities- that means being intentional about creating pipelines out of CUNY for teachers of color. We know that students of color perform better and are more likely to succeed when their teachers are of color.

Maternal Health
How will you use city agencies, the budget, and your role as a public figure to address the crisis of maternal mortality and specifically the disproportionate impact on Black women in NYC?

As Mayor I pledge to close the maternal mortality gap through the following efforts:

Urgently expand pre-and-post natal community health worker and outreach programs to specifically focus on Black mothers. 
Expand doula and midwife programs. Mothers and people who give birth need a dedicated advocate to look out for their needs and concerns and coordinate with healthcare staff to make sure those needs are met. Expand education efforts to ensure families understand the role of a doula and feel empowered to advocate for themselves. 
Focus expansion of home visiting programs to communities with the highest rates of maternal mortality and morbidity, promote best practices and safety standards across public and private systems. 
Work with medical care providers to aggressively combat implicit bias. 
Implement innovative payment models to support women and children in early years of life, in alignment with State and Federal policy reform.  
Require comprehensive sexuality education in grades K-12 and provide teens with access to confidential reproductive health care services, including contraception.
More broadly, our health policy must address long-standing, systemic health inequities by improving the conditions in which people live, work, and learn. That means affordable housing, quality education, and clean air — but also meeting people where they are to provide regular, affordable care. We will prioritize: increasing insurance rates through outreach and navigation programs, and expanding NYC Care to those in a coverage gap; making it easier to get quality care at or close to home – through virtual care, expanded service hours at community health centers, reducing wait times for appointments, and partnering with communities to provide a trusted source of health information, resources, and coordinated services; improving care delivery at H+H and shoring up the public healthcare system; and targeted investments to close disparities in maternal and mental health, through proven community-based approaches.

Legal Justice
Low income New York City families, many headed by single mothers, continue to be impacted negatively by the lack of early civil legal representation in their interaction with City entities, such as the Administration for Children’s Services and Family Court. How would you reform the NYC civil justice system so that all NYC families have access to timely, competent legal assistance to protect their families, homes and livelihoods?

Access to high quality legal assistance can mean the difference between a family separated or together — homeless or housed. The success of Right to Counsel has shown that we need to make sure nonprofit legal assistance groups are funded to do this work, and that New Yorkers know they are entitled to these services at the very first touchpoint with City entities like ACS and family court. We also need to continue expanding eligibility for this assistance so New Yorkers don’t miss out on services due to arbitrary requirements or thresholds.

But it’s not just about supporting families with legal services. We must address the structural issues that result in family separation — because poverty does not equal neglect. This is personal to me. I’m one of three adopted siblings in my family, and one of my sisters spent 7 years in the foster care system. The Garcia Administration will conduct proactive outreach to families to assist them in enrolling in SNAP and Medicaid, and provide similar assistance and educational awareness so families know about and can claim the new expanded Child Tax Credit under the American Rescue Plan. We will help NYC families access benefits to overcome poverty so their children have a safe and healthy living environment; expand NYC Free Tax Prep and trainings/navigator assistance through NYC libraries; ensure each child in foster care has access to a socio-therapist and other mental healthcare supports to help cope with trauma; and expand use of the “Mockingbird Model” to provide foster families with a network of support.

These questions and the responses from this candidate belong to PowHer and are being shared with their permission. This content in its original format can be found at: https://amayorfornycwomen.org/kathryn-garcia/

Replies

Emily VanVleck June 10, 2021 at 3:08pm

Women’s Leadership
How will you ensure that women’s participation and leadership are fully integrated across New York City government and that every decision made is considered through an anti-racist, gender-focused lens?

In order to ensure the perspectives of women and New Yorkers of color are fully represented, we need to have more traditionally underrepresented New Yorkers in leadership and decision-making roles. I view equity as opportunities for success being available and accessible for all- no matter your race, economic status, or zip code. As Mayor, I commit that my administration will reflect the diversity of New York City. But it’s not just about recruiting–it’s about listening to and valuing the experiences of everyone at the table–and reflecting a commitment to racial equity in our budget.

As an adopted woman growing up in a multi-racial household, I didn’t have to look farther than the dinner table to understand that diversity makes us stronger. I also knew that I was treated differently from my Black siblings when walking down the street or entering a store. I took that experience with me throughout my public service career. As Commissioner of Sanitation, I used my position to level the playing field and make it easier for others. In an agency that is 98% male, I was proud to change the promotion process and promote the first woman to a 3 star chief position and the first Latino to the highest ranking role in the Department. In my administration, not only will I have diversity at the highest ranks of city government- I’m also going to listen to them.

Affordable and Safe Housing
Some women and families live in New York City’s homeless shelters for over a year because they cannot find safe, affordable places to live with the current rate of NYC rental subsidy. As mayor, how will you address this reality and help families build their lives outside of the shelter system?

First and foremost, we need housing that heals. Health and housing are linked. Residents who do not have stable or quality housing are less healthy. Safe, secure, affordable housing is a basic human right. That means moving away from shelter strategy and to a housing strategy. We spend ~$3 billion annually on homeless shelters and services that fail to adequately serve NYC neighborhoods and families.

My administration will build 10,000 units of supportive housing to provide permanent shelter, services and support for people experiencing street homelessness and those most at risk — including buying empty or underused private properties for conversion. For families, women and children, we will ensure wraparound services in shelters, including education, health, and job readiness. We will open 10 drop-in centers in key neighborhoods to provide bathrooms and critical services 24 hours a day and begin the engagement process to get homeless New Yorkers into shelter.

As a manager, I am going to focus on the right metrics for housing to prevent homelessness rather than putting “affordable” units up on a scoreboard. For housing, those metrics are how many New Yorkers are rent-burdened, how many are living in homeless shelters, and how many are sleeping in the streets. In order to make a meaningful dent in the number of homeless New Yorkers and reduce the rent burden across the City, I will focus City investment where it’s needed most and create 50,000 units of deeply affordable housing (<30% AMI). We will also make it easier, faster, and legal for private partners to build more housing. We have added 500k New Yorkers over the last decade, but only 100k units of new housing—we cannot reduce the housing prices without increasing supply. We will end apartment bans and discriminatory zoning, and allow duplexes and triplexes to create more options for families. We will legalize basement apartments, accessory dwelling units, and single-room occupancy (SRO) apartments as a safe, sustainable and efficient means of providing housing to single-adult households–approximately one-third of households in New York City. We will also accelerate approvals for new housing construction, streamline the ULURP and environmental review process as well as permit applications and inspections at the Buildings Department and sister agencies.

Fair Wages
While all women continue to earn less on average than men in New York City, women of color and immigrants, who are more likely to work in low-paid jobs in the public and private sectors, face significantly larger gaps and higher poverty rates. What are your plans for eliminating these disparities in New York City?

Wage inequalities must be addressed with urgency and focus, and doing so will be a focus of my administration. In my career, I have never shied away from roles in which I was perceived as an outsider because I am a woman. My Administration will prioritize supplying the most vulnerable New Yorkers with economic relief and pathways for economic mobility. First, we’ll provide free childcare for working families, allowing guardians, especially women, to get back to work. Second, we will unlock barriers for small businesses by increasing access to credit, streamlining all laws and regulations governing restaurants and nightlife establishments, and cutting red tape for all permit and licensing processes. Starting a business is already hard–but for entrepreneurs of color and specifically for black women, limited resources and biases that make it harder to secure investor support. To address the lack of access to banking, we’ll work with Albany to increase access to credit and non-dilutive capital for the City’s vital and at risk enterprises at amounts less than $100K and support innovative financial mechanisms that serve small businesses. We will also provide an increase in financial assistance and financial literacy workshops for vendors.

Finally, we’ll create job pipelines into both the public and private sector for justice-involved youth, CUNY colleges, and trade schools. We’ll guarantee graduates of our trade schools City employment, work with the private sector to offer 10,000 paid internships to high school students, and subsidize wages for youth who face barriers to employment.

Accessible Caregiving
This pandemic has exacerbated the big holes in our caregiving systems, including childcare and long-term care. How do you propose addressing these issues and creating a fair and equitable system both for families and the caregiving workforce?

Quality childcare and long-term care are critical for so many of our families. When I’m Mayor, reliable childcare will be available to all families making under $70K, as a first step toward universal free childcare. The burden of caretaking almost always falls on the shoulders of women, and far too frequently serves as a barrier to women being able to participate in the workforce.

New Yorkers who are performing this critical caregiving work for our children and our elderly must be entitled to strong protections and benefits. They are essential workers.

Ending Gender-Based Violence
There has been a significant uptick in reports of sexual harassment and violence against women and gender expansive people during the pandemic. What is your plan to address gender-based violence in New York City in both the private and public sectors?

We need to continue to dismantle the culture that allows these crimes to occur unpunished, and frequently at the expense of the victim. Sexual assault and rape pervade so many of our spaces — from food service, to academia, to entertainment, to government. We need to send the message to potential perpetrators that these crimes have consequences. We must encourage reporting of crimes, and in order to do so, we need to ensure victims know their allegations will be taken seriously, and offer meaningful protection from retaliation and other threats. A Garcia administration would ensure that those who are vulnerable to gender-based violence or who may be victims of such crimes have access to the benefits, shelter, counseling, and/or legal support that they need.

Education
Cities across the country, including several in New York, have begun to take steps to remove police from schools. As mayor, would you remove police from schools in New York City, and if so, would you reinvest the money toward educational programs and support resources?

Making necessary investments into our schools and students should not be tied to police. We need to have enough teachers, guidance counselors, and social workers in our schools to serve the many needs our students have. When it comes to school safety, Black children have experienced school as a hostile environment – an institution that is about control and regulation. We need to end the school-to-prison pipeline by reforming school safety and discipline policies, so that students are not arrested for behavior that is best addressed by school officials. We also need to develop direct pathways to colleges and careers for these students, including leveraging New York City’s private sector. Lastly, we must do a better job of making sure teachers and school employees better reflect their school communities- that means being intentional about creating pipelines out of CUNY for teachers of color. We know that students of color perform better and are more likely to succeed when their teachers are of color.

Maternal Health
How will you use city agencies, the budget, and your role as a public figure to address the crisis of maternal mortality and specifically the disproportionate impact on Black women in NYC?

As Mayor I pledge to close the maternal mortality gap through the following efforts:

Urgently expand pre-and-post natal community health worker and outreach programs to specifically focus on Black mothers. 
Expand doula and midwife programs. Mothers and people who give birth need a dedicated advocate to look out for their needs and concerns and coordinate with healthcare staff to make sure those needs are met. Expand education efforts to ensure families understand the role of a doula and feel empowered to advocate for themselves. 
Focus expansion of home visiting programs to communities with the highest rates of maternal mortality and morbidity, promote best practices and safety standards across public and private systems. 
Work with medical care providers to aggressively combat implicit bias. 
Implement innovative payment models to support women and children in early years of life, in alignment with State and Federal policy reform.  
Require comprehensive sexuality education in grades K-12 and provide teens with access to confidential reproductive health care services, including contraception.
More broadly, our health policy must address long-standing, systemic health inequities by improving the conditions in which people live, work, and learn. That means affordable housing, quality education, and clean air — but also meeting people where they are to provide regular, affordable care. We will prioritize: increasing insurance rates through outreach and navigation programs, and expanding NYC Care to those in a coverage gap; making it easier to get quality care at or close to home – through virtual care, expanded service hours at community health centers, reducing wait times for appointments, and partnering with communities to provide a trusted source of health information, resources, and coordinated services; improving care delivery at H+H and shoring up the public healthcare system; and targeted investments to close disparities in maternal and mental health, through proven community-based approaches.

Legal Justice
Low income New York City families, many headed by single mothers, continue to be impacted negatively by the lack of early civil legal representation in their interaction with City entities, such as the Administration for Children’s Services and Family Court. How would you reform the NYC civil justice system so that all NYC families have access to timely, competent legal assistance to protect their families, homes and livelihoods?

Access to high quality legal assistance can mean the difference between a family separated or together — homeless or housed. The success of Right to Counsel has shown that we need to make sure nonprofit legal assistance groups are funded to do this work, and that New Yorkers know they are entitled to these services at the very first touchpoint with City entities like ACS and family court. We also need to continue expanding eligibility for this assistance so New Yorkers don’t miss out on services due to arbitrary requirements or thresholds.

But it’s not just about supporting families with legal services. We must address the structural issues that result in family separation — because poverty does not equal neglect. This is personal to me. I’m one of three adopted siblings in my family, and one of my sisters spent 7 years in the foster care system. The Garcia Administration will conduct proactive outreach to families to assist them in enrolling in SNAP and Medicaid, and provide similar assistance and educational awareness so families know about and can claim the new expanded Child Tax Credit under the American Rescue Plan. We will help NYC families access benefits to overcome poverty so their children have a safe and healthy living environment; expand NYC Free Tax Prep and trainings/navigator assistance through NYC libraries; ensure each child in foster care has access to a socio-therapist and other mental healthcare supports to help cope with trauma; and expand use of the “Mockingbird Model” to provide foster families with a network of support.

These questions and the responses from this candidate belong to PowHer and are being shared with their permission. This content in its original format can be found at: https://amayorfornycwomen.org/kathryn-garcia/
Voyka Soto June 2, 2021 at 12:22pm

It is disappointing to read this article on the state of equal pay under Garcia's tenure at the Sanitation Dept. It highlights how not just gender but bias as well may play a part in equal pay.
https://nypost.com/2021/06/02/minority-women-paid-half-as-much-as-w...

Minorities and women paid half as much as white men under NYC mayoral candidate Kathryn Garcia

Department of Sanitation employees have claimed that women and minorities were underpaid while Kathryn Garcia was commissioner of the agency.
Nermin Ahmad May 5, 2021 at 11:23am

From Kathrine Garcia's Press Team:
Kathryn on NYC's recovery:
"The key to our recovery is to provide the necessary support and day to day quality of life investments—clean parks, safe transit, reliable childcare, access to fresh healthy foods—that allow all New Yorkers to thrive. My administration will prioritize supplying the most vulnerable New Yorkers with meaningful economic relief and pathways for economic mobility. First, we will provide free childcare for working families, allowing guardians, especially women, to get back to work.

"Second, we will unlock barriers for small businesses by increasing access to credit, streamlining all laws and regulations governing restaurants and nightlife establishments, and cutting red tape for all permit and licensing processes.

"Third, we will create job pipelines into both the public and private sector for justice-involved youth, CUNY colleges, and trade schools. We will guarantee graduates of our trade schools City employment, work with the private sector to offer 10,000 paid internships to high school students, and subsidize wages for youth who face barriers to employment. Lastly, for housing we will focus City investment where it’s needed most and create 50,000 units of deeply affordable housing (<30% AMI).

"While it has been a dark year for New York City, that thing that makes us New York hasn’t gone away. The people who started those restaurants, theaters, salons, bodegas, dance clubs, gyms, and museums – all their creative talent is still here. They just need help. That’s why the core of our recovery plan is meaningful economic relief and job pathways for the most vulnerable New Yorkers."

Kathryn on supporting women and mothers post-COVID:
"We are in a childcare crisis. We have 1 in 4 women considering stepping back from their careers today. My proposal is to offer free childcare for ages 0-3 for all families with income less than $70k, allowing guardians, especially women, to get back to work.

"Starting a business is already hard--but for entrepreneurs of color and specifically for black women, limited resources and biases that make it harder to secure investor support make the path to success even more challenging. To address the lack of access to banking, we will need to work with Albany to increase access to credit and non-dilutive capital for the City’s vital and at risk enterprises at amounts less than $100K and support innovative financial mechanisms that serve small businesses. We will also provide an increase in financial assistance (loans, grants) and financial literacy workshops where vendors can learn on how to apply for loans/grants, which loans best suit their needs, and how to calculate loan repayment."

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