March
2019
29
CBS News — David Evans, a 59-year-old New Yorker, was making a modest living working as a messenger and enjoying a state tax refund of $150 or $200. But in the last four years, his refund hasn’t been coming through, Evans told CBS News.
March
2019
28
City Limits, Op-ed by Yuh-Line Niou and Maureen Genna — A Bloomberg report this month showed that the largest banks in the U.S., led by JPMorgan Chase, are closing branches rapidly in poor neighborhoods, even as they open new ones in affluent communities. In other news: water is wet.
March
2019
19
Brooklyn Daily News — As real estate values in Brooklyn have gone through the roof, homeowners in gentrifying black and brown communities in the borough are increasingly being targeted by housing predators, legislators were told on Friday at Brooklyn Borough Hall.
February
2019
28
Gothamist — In its original conception, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) exists to impose oversight on our market such that you, the consumer, don’t get grifted by investors and lenders. Like so many other government institutions, however, the Trump Administration has turned that concept on its head. On Thursday, ahead of a scheduled meeting with the CFBP director, a collection of economic justice groups announced in an open letter that they would not take a seat at the table.
February
2019
25
Patch — A few years ago, Brooklyn veteran David Evans got something strange in the mail — a notice that the MTA would be taking hundreds of dollars from his tax returns to pay for tickets from nearly 20 years ago.
February
2019
20
Gothamist — While not particularly good at executing major capital projects or managing a budget or even running trains much of the time, the MTA is apparently very adept at squeezing money out of low-income riders.
February
2019
19
The Laura Flanders Show — Our Juleon Robinson joins Maritza Silva-Farrell from ALIGN NY and Sasha Wijeyeratne from CAAAV to discuss a cooperative, community-led vision for economic development in New York.
February
2019
19
Daily News — It turns out that the same MTA that fails, frustrates and delays New Yorkers daily shows astounding, relentless energy when it comes to seizing the tax refunds and slapping liens on the wages of subway customers accused of breaking low-level rules like smoking on a platform or riding between cars.
February
2019
15
Inside City Hall — Our Legal Director Susan Shin joins plaintiff David Evans and Katherine Deabler-Meadows from the National Center for Law and Economic Justice to discuss a lawsuit filed against the New York City Transit Authority, alleging the agency is enforcing judgments against riders for decades-old infractions and then seizing their tax refunds without their knowledge.
February
2019
14
The Nation — Amazon has ended its plan, less than three months after it was announced, to locate one of its two new headquarters in Long Island City—a deal had triggered fierce if entirely predictable opposition to throwing billions in public subsidies at the world’s richest man, bypassing public review processes, securing few promises for low-income job seekers, and rewarding a company with a lousy labor record, a creepy role in Big Data, and some objectionable dealings with federal law-enforcement agencies.