July
2023
10
Gothamist — New York City is missing out on thousands of new affordable apartments and billions of dollars in local investments without a publicly owned bank to deposit its cash, according to an analysis by the city’s former chief economist and fellow researchers.
July
2023
2
Norwood News — At a public meeting billed as a “Boroughwide Town Hall on Public Banking,” representatives from ten Bronx-based groups joined various elected officials to push for State and City legislators to build upon efforts to promote worker-owned businesses, increase community land trusts, and facilitate access to more local credit unions as an alternative to big commercial banks.
June
2023
28
A federal court granted preliminary approval of a settlement in a class action lawsuit charging the New York City Transit Authority (NYCTA), an arm of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), with aggressively going after thousands of New Yorkers for alleged debts in violation of their constitutional due process rights.
June
2023
22
This year’s legislative session followed an all-too-familiar pattern of monied interests driving the state’s legislative agenda at the expense of working class New Yorkers. Our coalition strongly denounces Albany’s failure to enact the New York Public Banking Act (S1754/A3352), which would create a framework for local public banks that would leverage public deposits toward investments in affordable housing, small and worker-owned businesses, renewable energy, and other urgent needs in low-income communities and historically-redlined Black and brown neighborhoods.
June
2023
22
In the wake of Albany’s failure to address the affordable housing crisis, more than 50 community, housing, and environmental justice groups and elected officials gathered at City Hall Park to call on the City to enact the Community Land Act, a slate of bills to expand community control of land and permanently-affordable housing in low-income Black and brown neighborhoods. The coalition also urged the City Council to fund the Community Land Trust (CLT) Initiative at $3 million in the FY24 budget, to support 20 groups organizing CLTs across the five boroughs.
June
2023
1
City Limits — “Too often we think banking has nothing to do with democracy,” said State Senate Banking Committee Chair James Sanders at last week’s hearing of the New York City Banking Commission.
But banking and democracy were on full, if not always fulsome, display at the hearing as the commission decided which banks would be eligible to receive more than $100 billion in annual city agency deposits over the next two years. For the first time, the commission accepted public testimony before voting on which banks could hold city dollars.
May
2023
25
Dozens of New Yorkers representing community groups across the city testified today at the first-ever public hearing before the NYC Banking Commission on the designation of banks eligible to hold municipal deposits. A familiar refrain at the hearing was the call for a public bank to hold city funds and reinvest in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color that the big banks routinely fail to serve.
May
2023
17
A coalition of 113 community and affordable housing groups delivered a letter to New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and Mayor Eric Adams, urging them to take bold and immediate action to address the city’s affordability crisis. Citing the state’s failure to strengthen tenant protections or pass other housing justice measures in the recent budget, the letter calls on City leaders to enact the Community Land Act – a set of bills to bring land and housing into permanently-affordable community control, through community land trusts (CLTs) and other nonprofit social housing models.
May
2023
17
City Limits — Back in February, before housing policy fizzled out of state budget negotiations, the New York City Council held a hearing on bills aimed at boosting the supply of homes accessible to, and controlled by, low-income New Yorkers.
May
2023
8
Today, 163 organizations from across New York State delivered a letter to Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie urging swift passage of the “New York Public Banking Act” (S1754/A3352) to advance racial and economic justice and ensure that public money works for the public good.