Portside

The study is the latest piece of evidence to demonstrate the depth of New York City’s affordability crisis, which is reshaping local demographics and culture.

New York City’s Municipal Labor Committee voted March 9 to scrap some of the best retiree health care coverage in the country. The change would put 250,000 city retirees into a for-profit Medicare Advantage plan run by Aetna.

After surviving the worst of the pandemic, the city now faces budget cuts that seem to promise even more disruption. The average rent of a Manhattan apartment is now reaching $5,249 a month, an increase of nearly 20 percent over the previous year.

The protest was during the uprisings right after George Floyd’s murder. And simply, we were exercising our human rights, our civil rights, and we were demonstrating and standing up against all of the racial injustice that happens day in and day out in this country.

New York City has kept a covenant with its workers: your wages will be modest — lower than those of your counterparts in the suburbs or the private sector — but as a full-time employee you will be entitled to health care coverage without premiums.

“Demonizing the homeless is not new. There is no more manifest example of the failure of the system than bullying the vulnerable and criminalizing mental illness.”

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“The buses are not letting up. They are coming with more vigor. Initially it was a bus or two, then it rose to three, and now NYC receives six or nine buses a day coming directly from Texas.”