City Rolls Out New Gun Violence Prevention Plan

A woman in a light blue suit sits at a large wooden round table, between a man in a dark gray suit and anothe man in a whte polo shirt. Behind her, the New York State flag and the bottom of a large painting in a gold-plated frame are visible, along with a fireplace.

First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright and “Man Up!” co-founder A.T. Mitchell explaining the blueprint.

By Anna Di Iorio-Reyes and Carmo Moniz | news@queensledger.com

The city’s most recent investment in gun violence prevention, totalling $485 million, will go toward youth programs, employment opportunities, housing and mental health care in its most vulnerable communities.

Mayor Eric Adams’ administration announced the new plan, called “A Blueprint for Community Safety,” on July 31. It is an extension of Adams’ previous “Blueprint to End Gun Violence,” which was released in early 2022.

The blueprint designates six precincts, four in the Bronx and two in Brooklyn, as priority areas for funding. These areas are responsible for 39% of recorded shots fired in the city, and were chosen based on factors like childhood poverty rates, rent burden, unemployment, income and school absenteeism, according to the blueprint. 

While the blueprint boasts an impressive budget, most of its funding is not new. Of the $485 million included in the plan, $443 million had already been planned for use, according to Gothamist.

At a roundtable event, First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright and “Man Up!” co-founder A.T. Mitchell, who co-chairs the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force that created the blueprint, said that every city agency was asked to contribute to the plan.

“It will mean nothing if we don’t apply these and make sure that these things are real,” Mitchell said. “Those communities out there are waiting for us, they are counting on us for this administration to get it right.” 

The plan has seven focus areas: navigation and benefits, housing, employment and entrepreneurship, trauma-informed care, early intervention, community and police relations and community vitality. Of the seven, early intervention and employment programs take up the most funding, at $118.3 million and $118.5 million, respectively. Community-police relations received the least funding of all the focus areas, at $2.6 million.

Funding for early intervention, designed for young people at risk of becoming involved in gun violence, will go toward support for parents, gun violence education, mentorship initiatives and other programming. The blueprint also includes programs to help young people and formerly incarcerated people access job training and employment. 

The plan’s housing budget will go toward improving the quality and security of public housing and developing 3,000 affordable homes by 2025. While housing takes up a significant amount of the funding in the blueprint, those $57.5 million are only a fraction of the over $78 billion the New York City Housing Authority, which runs the city’s public housing, has said it needs to renovate its buildings.

Throughout February and March, the task force took input from Brooklyn and Bronx residents to inform the blueprint.

Wright said that the task force will monitor the number of housing units being built, employment rates, shooting deaths and other factors in each of the six most affected precincts to determine the success of different programs over the next several years.

“We’re going to be working on the ground with the community, making sure that we’re accountable for results,” Wright said. “We’re gonna evolve and get better and better.”

In addition to more extensive monitoring, the blueprint also proposes meetings where local residents in the six prioritized precincts can review collected data and engage with the results directly.

“This is a living document, and no two plans for those neighborhoods will look alike, because they will be tailored specifically for those neighborhoods in those communities,” Mitchell said. “Rome wasn’t built in a day. These communities have suffered decades of disinvestment and we can’t expect miracles to happen overnight.”

Migrants Being Housed in Brooklyn Rec. Centers Amid Crisis

A red brick building with columns at the entrance stands in front of a blue sky. The U.S., NYC Parks and New York State flags hang off the building. The words "Sunset Play Center" are written on the building's facade, and people can be seen walking up the steps to the entrance.

The Sunset Park Recreation Center.

By Carmo Moniz | news@queensledger.com

As New York City’s migrant crisis continues, the city has taken to housing the influx of asylum seekers in unconventional locations, most recently in the recreation centers of Brooklyn’s McCarren and Sunset parks. 

Over a hundred asylum-seekers are being temporarily housed in the centers as shelters and emergency hotel space in New York City have exceeded capacity. In a statement, a City Hall spokesperson said the number of asylum-seekers coming through the city’s intake system has left it to deal with a national crisis on its own. The spokesperson also said almost 100,000 asylum seekers have passed through the city’s system since last spring.

“We are constantly searching for new places to give asylum seekers a place to rest their heads, and recently located a wing of the McCarren Recreation Center and the Sunset Park Recreation Center in Brooklyn to house adult asylum seekers,” the spokesperson said in the statement.

The new shelter spaces, which have been met with mixed reactions from local residents, will house around 80 and 100 migrants, respectively. Those housed in the centers receive three meals per day and have access to onsite shower and bathroom facilities.

When a group of 60 or so migrants moved into the Sunset Park center last week, around 100 local residents protested their arrival, while others offered them food and other resources, according to Gothamist.

Councilmember Alexa Avilés, who represents Sunset Park, said she asked those planning the protests to instead focus their efforts on community funding and problems with the immigration system in a statement.

“Everyone deserves to be treated with dignity,” Avilés said in the statement. “I recognize community frustrations and share them over a lack of communication from the Mayor’s Office and a temporary disruption of services, but we must not fear monger. Whether you’re the Governor of Florida or a local, I will not stand for the use of human beings for political gain.”

A group of six city, state and federal Brooklyn politicians, including assemblymember Emily Gallagher, councilmember Lincoln Restler and councilmember Jennifer Gutiérrez, said they were notified that the McCarren Park center would be used to house asylum seekers ahead of time and that access to pool and fitness facilities would remain open in a joint statement.

“We will continue pushing to secure more appropriate facilities to house people in need and expedite moving New Yorkers from our shelter system into vacant permanent housing,” the statement reads. “In the interim, we will do whatever we can to galvanize compassion and support for our new temporary neighbors.”

Benjamin Rodriguez, an asylum-seeker staying in the Sunset Park center, said that he came to New York from Peru seven months ago, and that he was previously being housed in a hotel. He said that while he has been able to find employment in the city, many others have not and would benefit from more government assistance with employment, such as work permits.

“We have a roof to live under, and for that I give thanks,” Rodriguez said in Spanish. “We know we are going through a very difficult situation, but it will pass one day.”

Mohammed Yamdi, who traveled to the city from Mauritania and is also staying in the Sunset Park center, said that there is little work available for migrants. He also said he has been told his request for asylum could take six months to a year to be processed.

“I want to bring my family here,” Yamdi said in French. “My children would learn to write and go to school and be alright, not like in Mauritania.”

Currently, there is a backlog of over two million cases in U.S. immigration courts, according to a 2023 Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse report. The average wait time for a hearing is more than four years, and receiving a final decision can take even longer.

Luke Petrinovic, a city employee who lives near Sunset Park, said he had worked in a migrant shelter in El Paso, Texas last summer, and he thinks it is important to be welcoming of asylum seekers.

“It’s talked about like it’s a crisis, but migration is a fact of human civilization,” Petrinovic said. “People oftentimes get very discouraged because it’s an unsolvable problem, but that means it’s the sort of thing that you have to accept and learn to be a good person in that circumstance.”

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