Assemblyman Khaleel Anderson is among the southeast Queens
elected officials seeking COVID-19 vaccine equity.
TIMESLEDGER | Q 2 NS.COM | FEB. 26-MARCH 4, 2021
BY BILL PARRY
Southeast Queens homeowners
will have increased
protections from deed fraud
and scams targeting the elderly,
immigrants and New Yorkers
facing economic hardship.
Attorney General Letitia
James announced her office
would increase funding to expand
its “Protect Our Homes”
initiative that works to preserve
community stabilization
and allows residents to remain
in their homes.
“COVID-19 has exposed and
expanded the economic pressures
New Yorkers were already
under, and homeowners
in gentrified areas throughout
New York City continue to be
targeted in schemes designed
to steal their homes,” James
said. “Deed theft is a crime
that threatens to rip away homeownership
and perpetuates
a terrible cycle of displacement.
This initiative is critical
to helping New Yorkers stay in
their homes, and my office will
continue to work alongside our
government and community
partners to combat these predatory
and heartless crimes.”
Funding for the program
will be increased with an
$800,000 grant that will identify
homeowners vulnerable
to scams and provide targeted
support in southeast Queens
and parts of Brooklyn and the
Bronx. Deed theft has become
a common tool of career criminals
and unscrupulous developers
to illegally obtain real
estate so they can sell it at a
huge profit.
“In middle-class communities
like those I represent, folks’
homes are their nest eggs,”
state Senator Leroy Comrie
said. “House speculation, deed
theft and other types of fraud
are an imminent threat to the
financial security of many atrisk,
middle- and fixed-income
homeowners.”
Deed theft occurs when
scammers forge deeds to look
like they purchased a home, or
when homeowners are tricked
into signing their homes over
to a scammer without knowing
what they are doing. Scammers
then seek to evict the homeowners
and sell the house
to a third party at a significant
profit.
“All too often, predatory
bad actors attempt to manipulate
and deceive homeowners
during their time of crisis,
worsening an already difficult
situation,” Councilman I.
Daneek Miller said. “With the
expansion of this initiative and
its tailored, proactive outreach
to vulnerable homeowners, we
have another powerful tool in
our toolbox to protect and preserve
the livelihoods of southeast
Queens residents.”
The increased funding will
go towards increasing an information
campaign and expanding
the Homeowner Help desk,
a program staffed by nonprofit
housing experts. Those who
believe they have experienced
deed theft are encouraged to
contact the OAG by calling
the helpline at 800-771-7755 or
emailing deedtheft@ag.ny.gov.
BY BILL PARRY
After watching as too many
of his constituents in southeast
Queens struggled with the city’s
beleaguered COVID-19 vaccination
rollout, Councilman I.
Daneek Miller sponsored legislation
to create vaccine equity
and an improved distribution
system.
Resolution 1535 calls on the
state Legislature to pass, and
Governor Andrew Cuomo to
sign, legislation that would allow
local health departments to
implement changes to improve
the vaccination program so
that it meets the needs of the
city’s vulnerable and hardest
hit communities of color.
“Before the first vaccine
was ever distributed in New
York City, my colleagues and
I called for the prioritization
of vaccine distribution to communities
hardest hit by this
deadly pandemic,” Miller said.
“We called for a real-time, datadriven
dashboard that would
identify, where, when, and how
the vaccine is distributed after
witnessing the disproportionate
impact of COVID-19 on communities
of color. Months later,
we are seeing the same disparity
in vaccine access, complicated
by the discontinuity between
the City and State. With
this resolution, we are quantifying
our months-long fight for
vaccine equity, and taking the
necessary steps to ensure that
communities of color, essential
workers, and our most vulnerable
receive priority access to
the vaccine.”
Despite being the “epicenter
of the epicenter,” outer borough
Black, Latino and Asian
communities that endured the
worst of the pandemic have
been inoculated at far lower
rates than their white counterparts.
New York City residents
lack easy access to vaccination
appointments and according to
city data they have been forced
to wait weeks, if not months, before
they are able to schedule a
vaccination appointment.
“Vaccines have yet to be in
abundance, but vaccinations
from the city’s existing stock
continue to lag in our hardest
hit Black, Brown and Asian
communities,” said Councilwoman
Adrienne Adams, who
is co-chair of the Black, Latino
and Asian Caucus. “Despite
having the highest COVID-19
positivity rates, my district’s
Richmond Hill, South Ozone
Park and South Jamaica communities
are among those with
the lowest number of COVID-19
vaccinations. If these disparities
are not swiftly addressed in
the manner proposed by Resolution
1535, these neighborhoods
will soon find themselves at the
mercy of the rapidly spreading
vaccine resistant coronavirus
variants that have the potential
to cause a level of devastation
greater than what they have already
suffered.”
Since the recent expansion
of eligibility, the need for immediate
reform to the city’s vaccination
efforts is even more
necessary as New Yorkers with
underlying health conditions
seek out vaccination appointments
to protect themselves
and their loved ones. Miller’s
resolution includes language
calling on the immediate
implementation of a vaccine
appointment stand-by list, a
vaccination hotline to make appointments
in real-time, and a
map of currently operating vaccine
distribution sites to create
a more seamless and accessible
vaccination network.
“Now that we have the data,
what we’ve known has been
confirmed, there’s an equity
and access issue,” Councilman
Francisco Moya said. “The
neighborhoods and communities
hardest hit by COVID-19
should not have the lowest vaccination
rate. These are Latino,
Courtesy of Anderson’s offi ce
Black, and immigrant communities,
essential workers,
and seniors in my district and
across New York City. Instead of
fighting this pandemic, we are
fighting for equitable vaccine
distribution. This resolution
will help change the course of
action of how the most vulnerable
are prioritized.”
Newly elected Assemblyman
Khaleel Anderson represents
Rockaway, where the
racial disparity in vaccine distribution
was revealed in city
data. Twenty-seven percent
of the residents of the mostly
white enclave of Breezy Point
have received their first inoculations
of CODID-19 vaccine
while just 4 percent of residents
of the mostly minority neighborhoods
of Far Rockaway,
Arverne and Edgemere have
received a shot.
“The creation of a vaccination
hotline to make appointments
in real-time is a
particularly pertinent part
of this resolution because it
may benefit members of our
communities with less access
to the internet to make
vaccination appointments,”
Anderson said. “We have recently
seen industrious New
Yorkers build independent
websites and use social media
to bring clarity to vaccination
availability; while we
appreciate these efforts, innovations
like these, via phone
or online, must ultimately
be the responsibility of the
government.”
Attorney General Letitia James is expanding an antidisplacement
program that will help protect southeast Queens
homeowners from deed theft. QNS fi le photo
AG expands program
to combat deed theft
in southeast Queens
Local leaders call for improved
COVID-19 vaccine distribution
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