Forget Luck — What New Yorkers Need Right Now Is a Comeback

I feel lucky to be a New Yorker. I have every day since I got here. Like many, my New York success story has involved a decent amount of luck.

As we enter Year Two of COVID-19, New Yorkers know all too well that luck — like the brunt of the crisis itself — is doled out unequally. Millions of our neighbors are struggling. They are hungry. Their need is immediate. And recently, we learned that the city’s Independent Budget Office (IBO) estimates New York won’t return to pre-Covid employment levels until 2024.

Can you hold your breath that long?

Our leaders must immediately accelerate the timeline for New York’s recovery. Every day we beat the IBO forecast is a day of growth and opportunity. Every day we stand pat is a missed chance.

My 36 years in business tells me that we need a plan to uplift everyone. But I came to this city a Black man with no money and no connections, and I’d be lying if I didn’t make plain who among us is suffering the most: our Black and Brown communities.

So many New Yorkers — particularly people of color — are the very definition of essential workers. But they need a lifeline.

So I’ve developed a 100-day plan to start bringing back 500,000 jobs, called “Go Big, Go Small, Go Forward,” that can work for everyone while also zeroing in on the glaring challenges facing people and communities of color. Together, we can lead the biggest and most inclusive comeback in our city’s history:

1. End the Cash Crunch with the Comeback Job Accelerator. Look around your neighborhood. These are dark days for the New York City storefront. We can immediately subsidize 50% of small business payrolls for the next year, capped at 50% of their January 2020 headcount. We can also work with the State to allow them to keep their City sales tax revenues, and use that money to rehire employees and pay outstanding utility bills. Together with relief from City permit and licensing fees and eviction forbearance, these subsidies can deliver the cash on hand that small businesses need right now to pull back from the brink.
2. Bring Capital and Contracts Closer to the Community. Businesses owned by People of Color can have a difficult time accessing credit. They may have low or no credit scores, and lack the years of financial statements many banks require. Enter the Comeback Bank, which will supplement city support with private and philanthropic capital to provide both short-term and long-term loans to small businesses through community banks. City agencies have also consistently failed to meet their own targets for awarding contracts to minority- and women-owned businesses (MWBEs). I’ll appoint a Deputy Mayor for Small, Minority- and Women-Owned businesses to ensure they receive the attention they deserve from City Hall, and launch a $50 million dollar loan fund to help smaller ones grow so they can compete for contracts.
3. Infrastructure, Infrastructure, Infrastructure. There’s nothing glamorous about this. I’m talking bridge fractures, water main breaks, and crumbling subway stations. There’s a good-paying job behind each of those, and we can immediately put people to work to fix them. We can get creative and ensure public and private sector unions all have a seat at the table for new projects. While we’re at it, 46 percent of New Yorkers living in poverty do not have broadband access at home, and our infrastructure investments must deliver broadband to every home and small business in New York City. Closing the digital divide can be the centerpiece of the biggest infrastructure plan we’ve seen in decades.
4. Summer Jobs Are the New Universal Pre-K. In high school, I spent my summers laying tile. One year I was an orderly at the local hospital. Those jobs helped me prepare for the internships I would eventually be offered and the fact is, every single high school student should have a job if they want one. We have about 170,000 disconnected youth citywide, and just as we now grant all families access to pre-Kindergarten education, it’s high time we recognize the same right to summer employment.
5. Affordable childcare for all New Yorkers. No family should have to choose between a job and taking care of children — that’s why affordable childcare is central to my economic agenda. My mother raised me and my brothers on a social worker’s salary. I know how difficult it is to balance the needs and pressures of family and work. On my watch, we will provide operating funds and capacity building to existing programs, as well as an urgent grant program to help providers launch new programs in underserved “childcare deserts.” We will also partner with CUNY to provide professional development to providers, working with the QUALITYstarsNY program to ensure that every child in New York City has access to a high quality early childhood development experience.
6. Save the Date for the Biggest Block Party in Our History. Let’s not forget that despite all we’ve been through, this is New York — nobody throws a party like us. So let’s save the date for the New York City Comeback Festival, a yearlong, World’s Fair-style celebration beginning in 2022 where every venue, gallery, stage, bar, restaurant, and park across the city will show the world that New York is open for business. The festival will also extend grants to up to 1,000 artists to create installations in vacant storefront or public spaces, recognizing the critical role of the arts in making us the world’s greatest destination.

I won’t pretend this will be simple. Too many have waited too long for their luck to change.

What we need — what we are long overdue for — is a comeback plan. New Yorkers have been without one for far too long.

Read my plan here: https://www.rayformayor.com/comeback