V.I.D. backs local favorite Yee for advocate
BY SYDNEY PEREIRA
The Village Independent Democrats
endorsed Ben Yee for public
advocate on Sunday.
The special election for public advocate,
set for Tues., Feb. 26, is jampacked
with nearly two-dozen candidates who
have tossed their names in the hat after
former Public Advocate Letitia James
was elected New York State attorney
general. Not all will likely make it onto
the ballot, though.
Yee — the secretary of the Manhattan
Democrats and Democratic state
committeeman for the 66th Assembly
District — comes to the race as an activist,
educator and entrepreneur. Though
Yee nabbed support from V.I.D., he
faces a tough race against several current
and former politicians. Prominent
among them are Councilmember Jumaane
Williams, who ran for lieutenant
governor on a ticket with Cynthia
Nixon last year, and former Council
Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito.
At a forum this past Sunday sponsored
by several Downtown Manhattan
Democratic clubs, 17 candidates made
their case for the clubs’ endorsements.
Twenty-two V.I.D. members supported
Yee, another 16 went for Williams
and four voted for no endorsement.
“Ben is the reason I’m president of
the club and the reason I’m even a member
of this club,” said David Siffert, the
club’s recently elected president. Siffert,
among others at V.I.D., was inspired by
Yee’s civics workshops that have rallied
PHOTO BY TEQUILA MINSKY
Ben Yee making his pitch for endorsements
at Sunday’s forum
for public advocate candidates.
newly involved politicos to join Democratic
clubs and activist groups.
The 34-year-old East Villager has
developed a platform inspired, in part,
by those workshops. If elected, Yee has
proposed creating a citywide civicseducation
program, as well as a “311
Hotline” for the public to ask questions
about government processes. He also
advocates for helping forge community
“grassroots coalitions,” starting
with coordinating community boards,
school committees and precinct councils
to develop a citywide perspective.
“It came down to Ben and Jumaane,
who are very, very different candidates,”
Siffert said. “There’s defi nitely something
to be said for someone who has
been in legislation and been involved in
actively shaping policy,” he said of Williams.
“But there’s defi nitely something
to be said for someone who’s been involved
in education and been involved
in getting people involved.”
More than a dozen other candidates
showed up Sunday. Among them was
Williams, who railed against the mandatory
inclusionary-housing program
— the city’s program to increase affordable
units in new developments. He
said the program must be re-evaluated.
He leaned on his past experience as a
councilmember and tenant organizer.
“There are landlords who need to
be in jail and their buildings should be
taken from them,” Williams said.
Other prominent candidates included
former Council Speaker Mark-Viverito,
Councilmembers Rafael Espinal and
Ydanis Rodriguez and Assemblymembers
Latrice Walker, Michael Blake,
Ron Kim and Danny O’Donnell.
Some Villagers slammed Rodriguez
for his support of the hotly disputed Inwood
rezoning, plus his campaigning
for former state Senator Marisol Alcantara.
Alcantara formerly aligned herself
with the Independent Democratic
Conference, which was partly why former
Councilmember Robert Jackson
was able to defeat her in last September’s
primary and win her seat.
Others pushed former and current
councilmembers on why the Small Business
Jobs Survival Act has been denied
a vote for years in the Council. Mark-
Viverito cited constitutional issues the
bill may face. Rodriguez emphasized he
was a co-sponsor of the bill, while Espinal
voiced support for the bill, too.
High-profi le activist Nomiki Konst
also made her pitch. Saying her background
as an investigative journalist
gives her skill in tracking money, Konst
proposed creating a “confl icts-of-interest
grid” to show which corporations
are contributing funds to lawmakers.
Other contenders included attorneys
Jared Rich and Dawn Smalls; David
Eisenbach, a Columbia professor and
advocate for the Small Business Jobs
Survival Act; John Jay College adjunct
Sami Disu; Theo Chino, an activist
and bitcoin entrepreneur who was
detained after protesting the mayor’s
Fair Fares press conference last week;
and Daniel Christmann, a charismatic
plumber who blasted the governor on
his handling of the L-train shutdown
and Amazon deal. Ifeoma Ike, another
activist candidate and attorney, touted
her work with the Innocence Project,
which, through DNA testing, exonerates
people wrongfully convicted.
After three hours of candidates’
pitches, V.I.D.’ers debated among themselves
nearly an hour before voting.
Tiffany Hodges, a V.I.D. member
who has taken Yee’s civics workshops,
said, “He knows how to use the offi ce
for what it was created to do — to really
create transparency between what
the public knows and what government
doesn’t want the public to know.”
Push for nursing-home beds at Rivington House
BY SYDNEY PEREIRA
After Mt. Sinai Health System recently
signed a letter of intent
to lease Rivington House from
Slate Property Group to relocate its behavioral
health center there, some Lower
East Siders demanded more collaboration
and input with the mammoth health
provider on the project.
Mt. Sinai is in the midst of expanding
its Downtown services, and locals want
them to collaborate on ways to add nursing
home beds to the neighborhood.
Last Thurs., Jan. 3, hospital bigwigs
explained the planned services for Rivington
House at a Community Board 3
Health, Seniors & Human Services Committee
meeting.
Mt. Sinai plans to relocate its current
behavioral-health center, Bernstein
Pavilion, located on the eastern edge of
Stuyvesant Square park, into Rivington
House on Rivington St. between Eldridge
and Forsyth Sts.
Bernstein’s current services include
inpatient psychiatric beds, detox and
rehabilitation beds, outpatient mental
health and addiction clinics, ambulatory
detoxifi cation, and “Assertive Community
Treatment,” or ACT, which is a specifi
c health practice with myriad services
for people diagnosed with severe mental
health issues.
Mt. Sinai plans to relocate those existing
services to Rivington House, while
adding about 10 intensive-crisis and respite
beds, a partial hospitalization program
and intensive outpatient program,
mobile and in-home services, behavioral
healthcare engagement teams and a primary
care unit, too.
“This model of care will be a national
model of care,” said Jeremy Boal, chief
medical offi cer at Mt. Sinai. “I guarantee
it.”
The intensive-crisis and respite beds
will be what Sabina Lim, Mt. Sinai’s chief
of strategy for behavioral health, called a
“therapeutic bed-and-breakfast” for patients
dealing with drastic, acute life crises
who need a short-term place to stay
and recover.
Boal estimated the facility could have
60 behavioral-health beds, 60 detox beds
and another 10 crisis and respite beds
— a rough and preliminary estimate, he
stressed.
A critical point of the center’s healthcare
model is to integrate various services
into one place, particularly for people
with addictions and mental health issues.
Often, Lim said, people struggling
with both addiction and mental health
issues have to fi nd specifi c treatment at
two different facilities. Under Mt. Sinai’s
proposed model, different needs would
be met under one roof.
Interior renovations at Rivington could
begin early next year and be complete by
2021.
It is too soon to know exactly what
would happen to the Bernstein facility
after it is sold, but the profi ts would be
reinvested in Downtown health efforts,
according to the hospital.
After a scare that the Rivington House
would be demolished for luxury condos
in a scandal that rocked the de Blasio
administration, many in the community
have been fi ghting for the building to be
returned to a 24/7 care facility for locals
with Alzheimer’s disease or other disabilities.
“Everybody has those stories where
there is someone close to you that is going
to need that level of care, and to have that
proximity is key,” said Debra Jeffreys-
Glass, vice chairperson of C.B. 3’s Health
Committee and a member of Neighbors
to Save Rivington.
However, others at the meeting felt as
if two serious health-service needs —
mental health/addiction treatment and
nursing-home beds for the elderly — were
being pitted against each other.
Board 3 District Manager Susan
Stetzer expressed skepticism about Slate,
above all, charging its actions have always
been “anti-community.”
When Rivington House shuttered,
more than 200 beds for 24/7 nursinghome
care were lost.
“This could be a win-win” if Mt. Sinai
would pony up resources and collaborate
on ways to add nursing-home beds for
the Lower East Side neighborhood, said
Jeffreys-Glass, stressing she was speaking
for herself, not C.B. 3.
“We’ve already made it clear that we’ve
lost something that we’re trying to get
back,” she said.
6 January 10, 2019 TVG Schneps Media