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'It’s not being racist' — How Inez Dickens is bringing NYC migrants into a competitive Council race
By
Michelle Bocanegra
and
David Brand
Published Jun 23, 2023
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Michelle Bocanegra/Gothamist
By
Michelle Bocanegra
and
David Brand
Published Jun 23, 2023
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Assemblymember Inez Dickens told voters at a recent candidate forum that a problem was emerging at a nearby homeless shelter.
“There’s now becoming an adversarial situation between the asylum-seekers and the Blacks that are there,” Dickens said, citing a cousin who works at the facility.
An attendee at the curbside forum asked her if there would be a “cap on the migration of immigrants” entering the community, and voiced concerns that the tens of thousands of migrants coming to New York City from the southern U.S. border were taxing a social safety net already straining to serve longtime residents.
“Many of your electeds may feel very similar to what you're saying, but for fear of being called racist, they're not speaking out about it,” Dickens said.
“It's survival. It's not being racist,” the attendee responded.
Among the candidates in the 9th District City Council race, Dickens has emerged as the most vocal about the city's migrant crisis — a political quagmire for Mayor Eric Adams, who endorsed Dickens last week, though she has criticized his handling of the situation.
Other candidates have been more tepid on the influx of migrants, reaffirming the city’s historical role as a sanctuary for persecuted minorities while advocating for resources for homeless people. But neither Yusef Salaam nor Assemblymember Al Taylor, who have cross-endorsed each other for the ranked-choice primary, have articulated specific positions or proposals.
Dickens, who has represented Harlem in some capacity for the better part of the last half-century, is echoing a long-standing complaint from her constituents: Harlem is housing an unfair share of substance abuse treatment facilities and homeless shelters compared to other parts of the city, and shouldn’t be burdened with a migrant facility.
Historically redlined neighborhoods have often borne the brunt of addiction and shelter sites, and Dickens has been vocal in her objections to making Harlem yet another “dumping ground” for new arrivals.
“Our classrooms are already crowded,” Dickens said at the curbside forum this spring, claiming that the city’s sanctuary status would overburden Harlem’s public schools while wealthier neighborhoods would not share the burden equally. “It’s like sanitation — they get their garbage picked up and we don't.”
Though Taylor and Salaam have also criticized the concentration of drug-related facilities in Harlem, Dickens says housing migrants in need is part of a long history of piling onto already overburdened areas.
"The fact is that Harlem has been hit with an abundance, a saturation of not just shelters, but all types of institutions, such as the drug centers," she said at a recent candidate forum on NY1. "Harlem is tired of it."
The complaint has echoed throughout Harlem for decades.
“Time and time again, every single group has issues with newcomers,” said Dr. Christina Greer, an associate political science professor at Fordham University and the author of "Black Ethnics: Race, Immigration, and the Pursuit of the American Dream." “It goes back to the idea that, ‘We don’t have resources for anyone else because we’re barely getting by ourselves.’”
As a councilmember, now-city Comptroller Brad Lander released a report in 2017 showing that low-income communities and areas where people of color make up the majority of residents are still bearing the brunt of public service sites, despite fairness rules in the City Charter, but reliable numbers are hard to come by.
“Data on the location and concentration of existing facilities is too difficult to access,” Lander’s 2017 report reads. “As a result, there is no way to tell a genuine Fair Share claim from a simple effort to justify NIMBYism [‘Not in My Back Yard’].”
Dickens has focused her opposition to one of the newest migrant relief centers in the city: Harlem’s Lincoln Correctional Center, a former jail near the northern stretch of Central Park that currently houses single adult men. She planned a protest rally earlier this month, but it was ultimately canceled.
“From the beginning, I said we needed to rally at Lincoln prior to families being moved in. Reason — I did not want media nor other community organizations to turn what our fight is about, the dumping and oversaturation of Harlem — into a racist fight pitting Black against Hispanics,” read a statement from Dickens, posted on one community group’s Facebook page.
'Harlem is sick and tired'
The Adams administration has put up migrant relief centers around the city, from Midtown to a cruise terminal in Brooklyn. Criticism around the facilities has run the political gamut, largely from Democrats decrying poor conditions faced by migrants.
Gothamist contacted Dickens’ campaign about her recent comments on the arrival of migrants. In a statement through her campaign, the assemblymember said that Harlem was “sick and tired of being sick and tired.”
“We are currently oversaturated with pop-up shelters and drug treatment facilities,” she said. “Reassurances that these accommodations are temporary ring hollow. Already on that proposed block is a shelter and there are multiple social service facilities within a five-block radius.”
As of June 30, 2022, just under 2,000 people living in Department of Homeless Services-run shelters at the time said they lived within the two community districts that correspond with Central and East Harlem, city data shows. The East Harlem district also includes Randall's and Wards Islands, which are home to a high concentration of DHS shelters.
On the same day, the city’s shelter census showed that roughly 2,900 people were staying in shelters located within the two districts.
An analysis by the news outlet The City last year showed that shelters are overwhelmingly concentrated in Black and Latino neighborhoods with high rates of poverty.
A Gothamist analysis of Office of Addiction Services and Supports providers showed 19 treatment locations in or near the 9th Council District, which includes all of Central Harlem and parts of neighboring areas like East Harlem.
By comparison, the neighboring 5th Council District, which encompasses much of the Upper East Side and all of Roosevelt Island, had 14 sites.
However, other indicators show higher concentrations of drug-related treatment in East Harlem in particular, compared to other neighborhoods. Gothamist reported on high numbers of patient admissions for opioid addiction programs between 2019 and 2020. The Greater Harlem Coalition, an alliance of block associations, local businesses and other groups, has long been pushing against oversaturation, citing data obtained through public records requests. The group has endorsed Dickens.
The 9th Council District is primarily made up of Community District 10 in Central Harlem, and a small share of Community District 11 to its east that includes parts of East Harlem. Together, those districts have a higher number of homeless people in shelters operated by the Department of Homeless Services than the districts on Manhattan’s Upper East and Upper West Sides, according to the city’s latest shelter population Census from April 30.
The gap is most pronounced by the type of facility: There were about 1,700 people in adult-only shelters in the Harlem community districts by the end of last April compared to 134 people in adult shelters on the eastern and western sides of Central Park. The Upper East and Upper West Side neighborhoods sheltered roughly 1,400 people belonging to families with children in commercial hotels, whereas the total for that facility type in Harlem was zero.
Dickens introduced legislation last year to limit the number of substance abuse treatment facilities within each community board district, but never not got a Senate sponsor to move it forward.
Some residents have objected to a supervised injection site on 126th Street near Lexington Avenue, on the easternmost edge of the 9th District, citing its proximity to schools. The site was celebrated as the first of its kind in the U.S., alongside another facility in Washington Heights.
The 2017 report from Lander accused the city of failing to carry out its fair share promises, partly because it “does not disclose enough data about the current distribution of facilities and comparisons between communities for the public debate to be well-informed.”
Yusef Salaam and Al Taylor endorsing each other in the upcoming ranked choice primary.
Michelle Bocanegra/Gothamist
Others tread lightly
Neither Salaam nor Taylor have been as forceful in their commentary on the migrant crisis, though each has also expressed concerns about a dilution of resources for longtime residents. Taylor said at a recent debate that there should be no “leap-frogging” between migrants and the traditional homeless population, echoing a concern that some residents have expressed over migrants getting preferential treatment.
Asked whether he would support sending more migrants to traditional homeless shelters run by the Department of Homeless Services, where Gothamist reported in May on hundreds of beds that remained unoccupied, Taylor refrained from committing to a proposal.
"I want to advocate for all those that are in New York City that need the same services, and that they don’t get left by the wayside,” he said.
Salaam similarly did not commit. “I think we should do everything that we can do in the space of trying to solve for them being made stable as soon as possible,” he told Gothamist.
“But realizing that as we do that, we could most certainly solve for the issue of homelessness in New York City,” he said.
Dickens has made passionate entreaties on behalf of immigrants previously, through prior legislation and on the Assembly floor.
“We've got to be careful when we throw and banter around monikers and use … words as detrimental to the health and mindset of people today,” she said from the Assembly floor in 2019 in support of the state's DREAM Act. “Because really there is no difference between those who came over at the turn of the last century and those that are coming over today.”
John Chin, a Hunter College professor of urban policy whose work focuses on immigrant communities and relations, said Dickens’ statements reflect familiar concerns in New York City, especially given the “historical importance of Central Harlem for the African American community.”
“I can see being concerned by an increase in immigrants,” he said, “But many of their interests are aligned.”
Census data has shown that while Central Harlem has lost thousands of Black residents over several decades, it has gained thousands of Latino residents in return. Its foreign-born population has also increased.
Rep. Adriano Espaillat, a former rival to Harlem political veteran Charles Rangel, won his congressional seat in 2016 upon Rangel’s decision to retire. Though the boundaries of his congressional district loom larger than the 9th Council district it encompasses, Espaillat’s win was driven in no small part by enthusiasm from Hispanic voters, who suddenly made up the majority of the electorate in Rangel’s former district as a result of redistricting.
Espaillat recently aligned with Rangel to endorse Dickens. Rangel was criticized on Thursday for saying at Dickens’ campaign event that her opponent Salaam, who is also Black, had a “foreign name.”
Chin said immigrants and Black native-born residents are often “pitted against each other,” when larger systemic forces of racism, discrimination and gentrification affect both communities.
“It would be nice to hear more nuance,” he said of Dickens' commentary.
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Asylum Seekers
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Michelle Bocanegra
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David Brand
David is a reporter covering housing for Gothamist and WNYC. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or Signal 908-310-3960.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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