More Art
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More Art

More Art

Feb 7, 2022

8 min read
LINK TO SIGN BELOW THE LETTER

An Open Letter to the Mayor of New York City

Dear Mayor Adams,

This letter is written by More Art, a New York City non-profit organization that, for more than 15 years, has supported collaborations between artists and communities to create public art projects and educational programs that stimulate creative engagement with social and cultural issues. We are writing today after many conversations over many months with our community of artists, activists, educators, community organizers, immigrants, new New Yorkers and lifetimers to address the crucial, intersecting issues of guaranteed access to food, health and housing for all New Yorkers. Inspired by the grassroots efforts of organizers, activists and artists to provide much-needed care for their communities during the pandemic, we are determined to continue advocating for the City’s underserved populations and demand your new administration prioritize their well-being with a series of policy reforms.

On Housing

New York City is in a housing crisis and has been for a long time. This basic right has reached a new critical point after the detrimental impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, 2021, and now into 2022. Housing insecurity is one of the most widely felt issues across New York City — people are experiencing homelessness, gentrification, shortages of affordable housing, rent hikes and evictions across the city’s boroughs. The new administration must make New York livable for all, not just the wealthy.

We are calling on the mayor to:

  • Put an end to tax breaks for foreign investors that leave units vacant and deter landlords from renting to locals. Put an end to “warehousing” and issue penalties for leaving vacant storefronts and buildings unoccupied when they can be rented to the neighborhood.
  • Restructure affordable housing requirements in new developments to reflect the actual income of neighbors vulnerable to displacement.
  • Prevent the privatization of the New York City Housing Authority. NYCHA residents are just as much a part of the community as homeowners; they have a right to stable and livable conditions.
  • Invest in collective land trusts, nonprofits and community-based organizations that are designed to ensure community stewardship of land. The trust acquires land and maintains ownership of it permanently. With prospective homeowners, it enters into a long-term, renewable lease instead of a traditional sale, increasing access to non-traditional homeownership and combating the ongoing effects and realities of redlining.​​
  • Implement tangible and immediate accountability for landlords to ensure ALL tenants across NYC have access to appropriate, vital resources/utilities that are seasonally appropriate; crucial and timely repairs; and to ensure all residential spaces are safe and up to code on a regular, ongoing basis. Ensure landlords are regularly held responsible for violations to the fullest extent.
  • Sustained support against evictions (including prolonged moratoriums) along with necessary resources to ensure no one is left without necessary shelter especially during the ongoing pandemic.

On Food

Food is often the center of a community or neighborhood, yet New Yorkers already living precariously prior to the pandemic were hit particularly hard. In response, mutual aid efforts worked to provide groceries and meals to communities most impacted by food deserts, financial loss and closures resulting from COVID-19. Longstanding food deserts in places such as Bedford-Stuyvesant and Brownsville, Brooklyn, saw the rise of Bed-Stuy Strong and Collective Fare, while community fridges popped up from Chinatown through the Bronx. The new mayoral administration must learn from these grassroots collectives. For a mayor who has touted the benefits of a “healthy lifestyle,” the first priority should be securing healthy, local food systems for all.

We are calling on the mayor to:

  • Subsidize community gardens, especially in public housing. Funds for education and management of the gardens must be included in the budget to ensure the sustainability of these public, nourishing, regenerative spaces.
  • Implement a long-term commitment to composting. Composting must become an integral part of the city’s waste management system. Composting removes organics from the waste stream (thereby reducing methane off-gassing in landfills), can be utilized in growing more food, and, when appropriately applied to rangelands, can actively remove CO2 from the atmosphere, returning it to the soil (see: regenerative agriculture). The city should require restaurants to compost (and/or donate unused food to cut down on waste). Eventually, residents should also be required to compost and should be provided with brown bins for curbside compost pick-up as well as increased drop-off sites.
  • Decriminalize and actively encourage urban foraging. Anti-foraging policies are rooted in racist and colonial paradigms vis-a-vis land “ownership.” These policies prevent communities from providing for themselves and passing on valuable, culturally-important knowledge to future generations. The city should encourage stewardship of the land and train others to join in taking responsibility for it.

On Health

New York City was the country’s center of the COVID-19 pandemic during the early height of the virus in 2020. The impact of the pandemic will be felt across the City for years to come, with new health issues arising in its wake. With many New Yorkers already living without access to healthcare, these additional consequences have proven to be catastrophic to the City’s overall health. The physical, mental and emotional health of all citizens of New York City will have to be prioritized in new ways by this incoming administration.

We are calling on the mayor to:

  • Implement clearer, targeted communication regarding health-care resources, as it is the number-one barrier when it comes to receiving appropriate care, particularly for low-income citizens and people of color. Outreach must remain sustained and community specific, supported and funded at top levels but built from the ground up.
  • Expand and make permanent mobile-testing vans, easy-to-use texting/mobile apps for information and appointments and telehealth options. Build off of the grassroots work done out of necessity during the pandemic, learning from community care, pop-up medical services and pro-bono support.
  • Initiate mental health services at the preventative stage, before a crisis hits. The challenges of pandemic fatigue, compounded with the decline of daily quality of life, healthcare inequity and a need for greater access to mental healthcare must be addressed immediately. The administration must ensure quality, culturally competent care for all classes, communities and citizens of the city.
  • Create a city or community care corps employing people to maintain and build connections between various health and social services networks; this is a major step in creating a more equitable healthcare system while also providing new jobs. The long-term version of this restructuring and community emphasis would be a publicly controlled insurance model.

Eric Adams has called attention to the racial disparities in medicine and the city recently declared racism a public-health crisis. You have pledged to build clinics in low-income neighborhoods that lack access to top-tier hospitals, and, correctly reasoning that poverty exacerbates health problems, want public hospitals to double as hubs for social services. We support this line of intersectional policy reform and call on you to concretize this promise and provide legitimate structural support for such initiatives.

In our 15 plus years of work with artists and social-justice activists, we have made a point of dedicating our small team and resources to seeking out and elevating the voices of everyday citizens, those who have traditionally been underrepresented in the art world, but also in politics and — more importantly — in policymaking. The imperatives called for in this letter are a reflection of the immense wealth of knowledge and innovation possessed within those communities — communities who know what it is they need and clearly have the vision to make it so. We implore you, the new mayor of New York City and your administration, to align your tenure and agenda with the needs and aims of the real stakeholders of this city — those too often left out of the decision-making process, too regularly sidelined, if not actually displaced by more moneyed interests. The demands outlined above are necessary to build a more equitable, sustainable and livable New York, for all.

If you would like to sign, please follow the link here.

Signed,

If you would like to sign, please follow the link here.

New York City
Mayor Eric Adams
Open Letter
Socially Engaged Art
Community

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More Art is a nonprofit organization that supports collaborations between professional artists and communities to create public art and educational programs that inspire social justice.

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