for breaking news visit www.qns.com JANUARY 7, 2016 • times 13 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT www.qns.com JANUARY 7, 2016 • THE COURIER SUN 9 oped oped A LOOK BACK The Diocese of Brooklyn and Queens will hold its annual Catholic Schools Week at the end of this month. The event recognizes the impact of Catholic education on students across the boroughs and the generations alike. With Catholic Schools Week approaching, we thought it would be appropriate to share with our readers this picture of the graduating class of 1942 from St. Matthias School in Ridgewood. The school continues to educate hundreds of students in the Ridgewood area every year. We want your historic pictures of Queens! Email them to editorial@queenscourier.com, or send them by mail to The Queens Courier, 38-15 Bell Blvd., Bayside, NY 11361. All mailed pictures will be carefully returned to you! letters & comments TIME TO CLOSE PAN AMERICAN HOMELESS SHELTER Editor’s note: The following is an open letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio. With the departure of Gilbert Taylor as commissioner of the Department of Homeless Services (DHS), we hope you will utilize this opportunity to address the faulty decisions made by Commissioner Taylor during his brief tenure, in particular, the approval to open a 216-room shelter in the ill-suited Pan American hotel. Since the shelter opened in the congested neighborhood of Elmhurst in June 2014, without any notifi cation or community input, the area residents, including local elected offi cials, have raised numerous concerns about the suitability of the facility to properly house homeless families with children. The old Pan American hotel fails to meet city and state laws as well as DHS’ own Request for Proposal requirements to shelter homeless families with children. The building is not equipped with cooking facilities in each unit, as required under Section 21-124 of the NYC Administrative Code, nor does the shelter provide childcare services, as required by NYS Regulation 18 NYCRR Part 900. These regulations were enacted to help homeless families get back on their feet. Why create a shelter that does not meet or comply with these regulations and criteria? Whether you agree with these regulations or not, why does the city continue to pay an exorbitant $4,000 every month to inhumanely house a family of four in one small hotel room, when apartments in the area rent for much less? DHS, under former Commissioner Gilbert Taylor, made an ill-considered decision to place a homeless shelter in the old Pan American hotel. We are calling for you to rectify this matter by not awarding a long-term, permanent contract to the shelter operator Samaritan Village and by ceasing operations of the Pan Am hotel as a shelter. We ask that you begin to search for smaller, more manageable sites in which homeless residents can easily assimilate into the neighborhood, ensure that families are sheltered in a residential unit with a kitchen, and fully engage the Elmhurst community when siting a shelter. Jennifer Chu, president, Elmhurst United TENANTS AREN’T BLAMELESS FOR ILLEGAL CONVERSIONS I’m referring to your Dec. 24 article explaining to tenants how to avoid renting illegal apartments. It was more of a how-to guide. These people are well aware of what they are renting. All they have to do look is look at the price of the rent. These are the same people who register their cars out of state to beat the system. In Ridgewood and Glendale, they slither out of the basements early in the morning on the way to the trains and buses and they dump their garbage on Myrtle Avenue and Fresh Pond Road. They have jobs, but just look to get over. They have ruined the quality of life in Ridgewood and Glendale. Nothing will change until the landlords are held responsible. Larry Kunkel, Glendale DEFENDING 104TH PRECINCT’S PARLOR CRACKDOWN In his condemnation of the work Capt. Mark Wachter of the 104th Precinct is doing closing massage parlors, I believe that Jojo has made the mistake of taking the term literally. The employees are not actually massage therapists; they are prostitutes engaging in sexual activity with their ‘clients.’ Obviously, this is illegal and should be stopped. But even if these were actual message parlors, Jojo should be aware that medicinal message therapy is much different than having your spouse rub your back while you sit on the couch watching television. Masseuses are highly trained medical specialists (like physical therapists and chiropractors) that are licensed and/or certifi ed after going to school where they learn different techniques, including Swedish and deep tissue. If done wrong, they can cause pain and possible permanent damage. This is why they are well-regulated, and also should be closed it they do not have the necessary permits and qualifi ed staff working there. Lee Rottenberg, Middle Village WAGE HIKES NEEDED TO RESTORE THE AMERICAN DREAM BY JOEL BERG What’s happened to the American dream? When my grandparents Wage hikes needed to restore the American Dream arrived in New York as immigrants early in the 20th century, the American dream offered a beacon of hope to the world. Today that dream is fading fast. Citywide, 1.4 million children, seniors, people with disabilities, veterans and other adults suffer from food insecurity, unable to afford suffi cient food. In Queens, 11 percent of children and 8 percent of seniors struggle against hunger.When even Queens, a formerly bedrock middle-class borough, is in trouble, the whole nation is in trouble. The top cause of hunger is low wages. Nearly half a million working age adults in the city live in households that are food insecure but include at least one person working. We are now facing an epidemic of the “working hungry.” No one should ever go hungry, but especially not those who are “working hard and playing the by rules,” as my old boss Bill Clinton used to say. Thanks to Governor Andrew Cuomo, low-income workers received a bit of relief on Dec. 31, 2015, when the hourly minimum wage in the city increased to $7.50 for tipped workers, $10.50 for fast food workers, and to $9 for all other workers. But even those who earn $10.50 per hour are still likely impoverished, and may face hunger and the threat of homelessness. If they work full time (35 hours per week), and never take off for vacation, they would earn only $19,100 in a year. Yet the average Queens rent is now $2,119 per month, equaling $25,000 per year. When so many people pay more in rent than they earn in salary, it’s no wonder they don’t have money left over for food. That’s why we so strongly support Governor Cuomo’s push to raise wages for all workers to $15 per hour, and why we believe future hikes should be automatically indexed to infl ation. Some big business groups will howl that wage hikes will signifi cantly reduce jobs and raise prices, but they have been using such scare tactics since the fi rst minimum wages were implemented in the 1930s, and they have been proven wrong time and time again. The reality is that wage hikes give workers more money to purchase goods and services, thus aiding the overall economy. To end hunger, we also need to dramatically increase federal funding for the SNAP (formerly food stamp) program. Most adults who receive such aid work, so SNAP rewards work and helps boost long-term self-suffi ciency. SNAP now has the lowest fraud level in modern history, only 1.3 percent, and further creates jobs in the food industry. Besides, most SNAP recipients are children, seniors, people with disabilities and veterans. But if you are a conservative who rejects all the facts that support the expansion of SNAP, then I challenge you to support minimum wage hikes. If you truly want to reduce dependency and reward work, there is no better way of doing so than lifting wages to ensure that all full-time workers can afford to pay for both food and rent. Joel Berg is the executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger. TIME TO CLOSE THE PAN AMERICAN HOMELESS SHELTER AREN’T BLAMELESS FOR ILLEGAL CONVERSIONS DEFENDING 104TH PRECINCT’S MASSAGE PARLOR CRACKDOWN
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