Contributing Writers: Azad Ali, Tangerine Clarke,
Nelson King, Vinette K. Pryce, Bert Wilkinson
GENERAL INFORMATION (718) 260-2500
Caribbean L 10 ife, APR. 30-MAY 6, 2021
By Josue Pierre
Throughout the COVID-
19 crisis, Brooklyn’s local
community members, businesses,
and neighborhoods
made heroic efforts to
achieve public health, economic,
and psychological
recovery.
Beyond the devastating
loss of life, New York City
lost more than 560,000
jobs since the pandemic
began, and thousands of
businesses have been shuttered.
This economic pain
has been especially acute in
Brooklyn, where over half
of all businesses are immigrant
owned and nearly a
third are minority-owned
— including more Blackowned
businesses than anywhere
else in the city.
These businesses are
the backbone of Brooklyn’s
communities, offering economic
opportunities for
their owners and locallybased
employees, as well as
sustaining the vibrant commercial
corridors that make
Brooklyn such a wonderful
place to live.
Ensuring that Brooklyn’s
small businesses survive
and thrive beyond this pandemic
means offering sustainable
support to Brooklyn’s
locally-owned stores
and retail corridors like
Nostrand Avenue and Cortelyou
Road — and Business
Improvement Districts are
one way to do it.
Business Improvement
Districts (“BIDs” for short),
are nonprofits that provide
commercial corridors with
services like sweeping sidewalks,
power washing, graffiti
removal, extra trash collection,
and snow removal,
all tasks that would otherwise
be the sole responsibility
of retailers and property
owners. Additionally,
they offer marketing services
to businesses, organize
community events, and
advocate on behalf of their
neighborhoods. BIDs are
primarily funded by voluntarily
established small
taxes on district properties,
and they are governed by
local property owners, commercial
tenants, residents,
and elected officials.
The city’s 76 existing
BIDs — which collectively
support 93,000 businesses
across all five boroughs —
have been crucial partners
in carrying out the City’s
Open Streets and Open
Restaurants programs,
in adapting existing open
spaces to make them safe,
and in advocating for policies
that will help struggling
small businesses survive
. We have seen the successes
of BIDs here. The
40th Council District has
two: the Church Avenue BID
and the Flatbush Ave BID,
which are run jointly by
Lauren Elvers Collins and
have been instrumental in
making sure local businesses
have access to COVID-19
loan and grant programs.
Unfortunately, they only
cover a limited section of
the district’s main commercial
corridors.
We must do more –that’s
why, as Councilmember, I
will work with local businesses
and communities to
organize BIDs in all our key
commercial corridors.
These commercial streets
are well-positioned to benefit
from BIDs: they are dense,
diverse, and have a long history
of local partnerships
and collaborations.
Traditionally financed
through local taxes, in this
uniquely challenging economic
crisis I believe the
city should create a subsidy
for BIDs in working class
communities, giving out
small annual grants for up
to five years. After the fiveyear
period, the BID will
need to secure their own
operating funds, but the
initial seed money would
get them started and help
them become successful.
We need to be sure BIDs
are deployed equitably and
intelligently. In addition to
the existing oversight role
performed by the Department
of Small Business
Services, the city should
consider scoring BIDs on
their M/WBE contracting
and spending practices,
and publishing data on BID
board and staff demographics
to ensure BIDs are playing
their part in fighting
racial inequities. The city
should also explore strategies
to reduce the gap
in resources and funding
that exists between large
Manhattan BIDs and their
smaller, outer-borough
counterparts. Finally, the
city needs to ensure that
residents and other community
stakeholders —
beyond business and property
owners — have a say in
the way the BID serves their
community.
BIDs represent an opportunity
to get our commercial
districts and our communities
back on their feet,
even in an era of shrinking
city and state budgets. We
owe it to ourselves to make
the most of this opportunity.
Josue Pierre is a candidate
for City Council.
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Supporting Flatbush Area
Businesses Through BIDs
City policy threatens
vulnerable families
By David Woodlock
It’s widely accepted that families
in East New York, Brownsville
and other poor neighborhoods
have borne the brunt of
the COVID’s impact in lost lives,
jobs and educational opportunities
for their kids. The emotional
toll of all this trauma will be felt
for years.
So why is the health department
making it harder for these
families to get mental health
and other services by de-funding
programs that provide everything
from counseling to afterschool
programs to help making
doctor’s appointments?
The city’s 13 Family Resources
Centers have been helping
anyone who walks through
their doors for more than 10
years, regardless of whether
they have insurance or a formal
mental health diagnosis. But
they will lose all of their health
department funding on June
30, under a well-intentioned
but flawed decision to ask nonprofits
to seek state funding to
provide these services. It won’t
work, and thousands of vulnerable
families will be left with
nowhere to turn in the midst of
a once-in-a-generation mental
health crisis.
Family Resource Centers
provide comprehensive help
to any family whose members
have emotional or mental
health challenges, or are at
risk of them developing them.
Services are provided by peers
– usually moms – who have
themselves raised children with
such needs. Not requiring a
diagnosis is critical to overcoming
the stigma, still prevalent in
communities of color, around a
mental diagnosis. And offering
a range of services – really, anything
these families need – is
also critical, because these families
often have complex problems
that don’t fit neatly into
one bureaucratic program.
Over the course of the pandemic,
Family Resource Centers
have been a lifeline to thousands
of families. At the center
run by the Institute for Community
Living in East New
York, we provided 3,844 discrete
services in 2020—more
than three times the 1,155 we
had in 2019. This is a testament
to how much the community
relies on this program and how
successful the model is. We
also offer easy access to clinical
and other services under the
same roof at our East New York
Health Hub, allowing families
to avoid having to waste time
and energy navigating the fragmented
health care system.
Unless the health department’s
current plan is not
changed by June 30, it will
become much harder for our
clients to get help.
Families that do not have a
mental health diagnosis will
be left in the cold, and even
those that do will not receive
the level of care they need.
Disrupting a model of care that
so many families rely on, as we
are going through an unprecedented
mental health crisis,
is irresponsible. The city needs
to support our most vulnerable
families by continuing to fund
Family Resource Centers.
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