New York’s Center for Independence of the Disabled (CIDNY) hosted nearly 200 disabled voters both in person and on Zoom for a heated mayoral debate at the end of April. The pressure was on the candidates to keep the crowd engaged as only two of them showed up in-person—former NYS Assemblyman Michael Blake, and attorney Jim Walden. NYC Comptroller Brad Lander and NYS Senator Jessica Ramos joined virtually.
Taking questions on healthcare, education, employment, housing, voting, and transportation, the candidates offered their responses on key issues impacting the NYC disabled community—a powerful voting bloc.
Running on plans to expand access to quality education and provide more affordable living options for the middle-class, Blake, a former state Assembly member from the Bronx, is pushing for vacant apartment taxes, a local median income, an increase in the income thresholds on housing applications, and holding landlords accountable for not accepting housing vouchers. “We have to rescind the incentives for these landlords who are not ensuring that they are taking the support and the vouchers and the funding for someone that has disability concerns as well as for the developer,” Blake said. “A developer needs to be building out buildings and homes where you truly have the access points around accessibility.”
Walden also shared his housing goals, noting that he would create modular housing that’s compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, an idea that he said works in other countries and that Mayor Adams’ administration explored but did not follow through with.
“We have this crazy thing that other countries like Finland and Uganda use for displaced populations called modular housing that is transportable, that is clean, that can be sanitized,” Walden said. “I’m going to keep people off the street and out of shelters. Where we don’t have housing, I’m going to put it with modular housing units and let families especially have a private area where they’re not in shelters and I’m going to build new housing that is accessible fully to the disabled.”
Later, during discussions of education, Senator Ramos was applauded when she criticized the New York City Department of Education’s website for limiting resources to special education students in the District 75 schools, which provide highly specialized instructional support for students with significant challenges. “I think that’s a travesty and that’s going to end with my administration, making sure that our children with disabilities have opportunities to integrate and making sure that we are carrying those opportunities for higher education and even GED access and further digital literacy is something I want to make available to every New Yorker,” she said.
Senator Ramos also mentioned a bill she is sponsoring that will require the MTA to disclose certain capital project data, as well as a bill she is co-sponsoring to eliminate the subminimum wage for people with disabilities in New York. “This was her best performance,” Zachary Borodkin, an Education & Outreach Training and Coaching Specialist at Open Doors who was in attendance, said about Senator Ramos.
Lander shared much about his efforts to run an inclusive, accessible campaign. He hired a Community Liaison for People with Disabilities, has convened disability justice roundtables, and built an accessible campaign website. As NYC Comptroller, he put out a comprehensive five-year accessibility plan and co-hosted the 2024 Disability Pride Parade. “I was impressed when I attended his disability roundtable,” said Robert Acevedo of Disabled In Action.
Perspectives missing from CIDNY’s mayoral forum included former New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo, NYS Representative Zohran Mamdani, NYS Senator Zellnor Myrie, and former NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer. Given this knowledge, Able News also attended the Black Agenda Democratic Mayoral Forum in Brooklyn in April to gain further insight.
At that event, former Governor Cuomo was heckled with “liar” chants based on evidence that he falsified the accurate number of nursing home deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic. Also, although Cuomo proposed Medicaid cuts and changes to the eligibility criteria for home care programs during his last year in office, as looming budget cuts have taken these threats further, the hopeful mayoral candidate is changing his narrative. Cuomo told Able News that Governor Kathy Hochul is “doing the best she can, but it’s tough,” also noting that “she wants those Medicaid cuts [and] I’m very afraid of the Medicaid cuts. We’re going to have to fight them on those.”
Also responding to the proposed federal budget cuts, Stringer put forth that he would enact a “rainy day fund” of $500 million dollars for both the City and State to combat them. Specifically pertaining to disability, Stringer noted that during his time as a NYS Assemblyman, he enforced accessibility at all publicly owned buildings in the city and would continue that work if elected.
Assemblymember Mamdani, who is popular amongst the younger generation of NYC voters, has been known for outraising all of his opponents combined in donor campaign funds during his first cycle. However, Marc Safman, CEO of Safman Consulting and a frustrated DeafBlind New York resident, says that none of this funding has been used “to run an accessible campaign for all.” Safman has refrained from going to Mamdani’s campaign events due to a lack of “reliable and culturally appropriate ASL facilitators or real-time captioning” and his struggle to understand.
During the forum, Mamdani did not articulate a specific plan to address disabled New Yorkers, but he did tell Able News that current New York City Mayor Eric Adams “had promised a specific amount of funding to be allocated for [employment] and then combined it into a larger pot. And when you put it in a larger pot, it doesn’t have specificity. It starts to get absorbed elsewhere.” Mamdani went on to share: “So what I made a commitment to do, is make a dedicated funding stream for these kinds of opportunities so that we can actually ensure that it meets disabled New Yorkers where they need it the most and doesn’t get used for the purposes of a press release and then shift it over elsewhere.”
Also without a set disability-focused plan is Senator Myrie. Part of his campaign’s “opportunity agenda” is improving the NYC workforce pipeline, but he was seemingly puzzled to find out about the inaccessibility of the job application process for people with disabilities when asked about it. Myrie told Able News he would find a way to “standardize the application process, that if you were putting a job up, both public private sector, that it’d be accessible. I got you.”
Reflecting on the importance of “show[ing] that the disabled vote should be important to these candidates,” Acevedo encourages others to get out there and make their perspective known in the mayoral election.
Opinions expressed are solely those of the writer(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Able News at The Viscardi Center and/or The Viscardi Center.