NYC Council District 7 Election: Dan Cohen Seeks Uptown Seat

NEW YORK, NY — Voters in New York City's 7th Council district, which includes West Harlem, Morningside Heights and parts of Washington Heights and the Upper West Side, will see 12 names on their ballots when they vote in the June 22 primary election.

One of those names will be Dan Cohen, vice president of the nonprofit Housing Partnership, which works to create and preserve affordable housing; a member of Community Board 9; and a former affordable housing consultant and a mortgage officer for an affordable housing lender.

Patch reached out to all candidates in the election to create these profiles. Cohen's responses are below.

Age (as of Election Day)

50

Position Sought

City Council, District 7

Party Affiliation

Democrat

Neighborhood of residence (i.e., East Village, Astoria, etc.)

Morningside Heights

Family

Wife, Jill. Son, Caleb age 9, who attends local public school.

Does anyone in your family work in politics or government?

No

Education

BA, Sociology UMass/Amherst; MBA Finance NYU/Stern School of Business

Occupation

VP at Housing Partnership, nonprofit affordable housing organization, 7 years

Previous or Current Elected or Appointed Office

Democratic State Committeeman, 69th AD, elected in 2010 and re-elected 5 times since then.

Campaign website

https://www.cohen2021.com/

Why are you seeking elective office?

I believe in public service and want to be a champion for the district I have always called home. I have deep roots in my community as a lifelong resident: I grew up in rent-regulated housing, attended local public school PS 75, and went to neighborhood parks and libraries as a child. The challenge is to enable all New Yorkers access to the same quality schools, parks, libraries and housing. I am part of progressive change in my work, my political action, and my civic participation. Now I want to be part of that change in the City Council.

The single most pressing issue facing our (board, district, etc.) is _______, and this is what I intend to do about it.

Affordable housing is the single biggest issue in District 7, I would start with legislation to advance building affordable housing on two sites: developing affordable senior housing over the Con Edison substation site at 110th and Amsterdam Avenue, and redeveloping the MTA/NYCT Bus Garage-Antique Bus Storage Depot at 128th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. Con Ed owns their 110th Street building, but the land is owned by the City, along with the 250,000 sf of undeveloped air rights. And the MTA-owned bus depot sits on almost a full city block that is zoned for almost 360,000 sf of undeveloped air rights, and I would want to move those two projects along immediately. Working in affordable housing I have seen the urgency of the issue in the district and across the city. Under this mayor the city has made a mess of affordable housing – in particular by not building in the area of greatest need: permanent low-income housing for people who make less than $40,000 a year. So, as a member of Community Board 9, I have overall proposed 1,000 new affordable units in the district on sites either owned or controlled by New York City. This includes leading the CB9 efforts to create new affordable housing and a community arts center in West Harlem as part of the restoration of the historic West Harlem landmark RKO Hamilton Theater. I would also work to create affordable housing through modifications to the City’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing policy to address lower income residents, and I would utilize all publicly owned land appropriate for residential use for affordable housing.

What are the critical differences between you and the other candidates seeking this post?

I believe my experience, energy and ideas distinguish me from my opponents. I have lived in the district my entire life, 50 years, I have worked in the field of affordable housing for over 20 years and ready to put that experience to work for the residents of District 7. I am a NYC public school graduate and now a NYC public school parent serving on my son's school PTA. Having been born and raised here, I have deep roots in the district, and I have spent much of my adult life trying to make it better. As the Democratic State Committeeman, I have been involved in my community for decades and I believe I have demonstrated my core values having done the work in the district long before I contemplated running for office. With so many new people coming into City government at virtually every level, having some experience and a depth of connections to the people and community organizations in the district will be critical in delivering the services to people who desperately need help, both recovering from the pandemic recession and also the hard work ahead of us in restructuring our city.

If you are a challenger, in what way has the current board or officeholder failed the community (or district or constituency)

Councilmember Mark Levine is term-limited and running for higher office. It is an open seat. Levine has largely done well, and I would build on his achievements, particularly in providing right to counsel for tenants – a landmark law that must be extended to more people with lower incomes, so that everyone in housing court is on a level playing field. One change, is that Levine wanted to expand Hudson River ferry service at 125th Street, but we have learned the ferry subsidy is enormous, so I would refocus our limited transportation dollars to building an Amtrak stop at 125th and 12th Avenue, enabling commuters to get to Penn Station in 8 minutes, taking pressure off the 1 line which runs through the district, and creating a fully ADA-compliant commute.

How do you think local officials performed in responding to the coronavirus? What if anything would you have done differently?

While we may have known there was a healthcare divide, it become starkly clear in the pandemic. I would prioritize access to medical care, by increasing funding to our public hospitals and seek to establish expand and enhance medical clinics in low-income communities that do not have convenient access to medical care. I would fully fund the NYC Care program, now costing about $100 million a year, to provide inform the thousands of New Yorkers without health insurance to learn about Metro Health Plus, the City's health insurance program. While NYC Care itself is not health insurance, it has had a positive impact and I would want to continue it. I would press the Governor to provide universal health care through the New York Health Act, and I would continue to support a national healthcare program. Housing insecurity is another big issue, as a number of residents have been unable to pay their rent due to being laid off from jobs that were closed during the shutdown response to the pandemic. Helping those residents recover, and finding a solution to the missing rent while not transforming the housing crisis into an eviction crisis will be a high priority. There is money from the federal government and the state available, but we will also need to work out some longer-term solutions so that people are not punished, and impoverished, for following the government’s instructions to stay home. No one should become homeless because of COVID, and it will be my job, along with allies in the new city council, to push back against real estate forces that would evict thousands or residents. Beyond health care and housing, there is going to a need to help the small businesses of the city get back on their feet, which is why I have called for a capital fund to help small companies start and restart as part of COVID-19 recovery, with targeted investment in minority & women-owned businesses. I believe there is pent-up demand for businesses to reopen, but they will need start-up capital, and the city should step in where banks or investors fear to tread. We should make direct capital into businesses, not loans, but investments to help small businesses get started as we move out of the pandemic’s restrictions.

Many in Harlem are worried about gentrification and the displacement of longtime residents. What is one specific policy you would push for to slow gentrification?

I have worked in the field of affordable housing for over 20 years, most recently at the nonprofit Housing Partnership. To slow gentrification, I have called for greater enforcement of existing tenant protections so residents are not displaced and also the creation of 1,000 new affordable units in District 7, on underutilized sites that are either owned or controlled by NYC. This would generate homes for over 3,000 people in district 7, allowing low-income residents and seniors to stay in the community rather than being priced out by rising rents.

Many Harlemites have complained of dirty streets during the pandemic. How would you help clean up the sidewalks?

The city distributes sanitation resources across the city relatively evenly, but as residents in District 7 know, the problems are not evenly distributed and we need more attention to our dirty streets. We need a “CompStat” for trash. Right now, the police have statistics to understand crime incidents throughout the city, and manage resources to address hotspot increases in crime. We need the same system for our garbage. Data can show where an increase in trash complaints are coming from across the city and we then must hold the Department of Sanitation accountable, so we can redeploy sanitation resources to areas of rising concern, like District 7, to clean up the sidewalks.

A developer is seeking to build a 17-story building on 142nd Street that would include 20 affordable apartments, but which some neighbors criticized for its size and the proposed rezoning. As Council Member, would you support this project, oppose it, or push to change it?

This proposed building would destroy some townhouses that were expressly called for by Community Board 9 to be preserved. The size of the building would also be greatly out of context for the adjacent and surrounding buildings along Riverside Drive. I would push to change the plan, to be a smaller, more compact project, but if we were not able to come to an agreement, I would oppose it.

Describe the other issues that define your campaign platform.

Affordable housing, public education, climate change and criminal justice reform are my top priorities. I have advocated for 1,000 affordable units in the district on sites either owned or controlled by NYC. We must fix the segregation of our public schools and not simply make adjustments. This includes removal of screens and equitable funding of our elementary and middle schools. Lastly, we need a Green New Deal for NYC as climate change will impact us all, but some more deeply that others: particularly people of color and low-income New Yorkers will bear the brunt of global warming unless we ensure the burden and the benefits are shared. It will take time and resources, but we must have a community-based discussion in the districts most impacted by climate change and have mandated resident input before making any decisions on how to proceed in the new administration. Building trust is not a quick endeavor, and I am ready to invest the time in building back a rapport between the residents and their government on how to move forward together. One glaring area of eroded trust is NYCHA. The Ocasio/Sanders Green New Deal for Public Housing bill would fund the $40 billion backlog of repairs in NYCHA while also decarbonizing the city’s public housing stock. It would be a template for approaching the rest of our city’s housing. What will matter is how those resources will be managed. I am not reassured by our current and previous NYCHA leadership, and some other method of prioritizing and managing the billions in investment should be considered, the risk of waste and corruption is enormous in the existing structures we have. A Municipal Assistance Corporation-like board of government agencies, nonprofits and residents could be created, to promote transparency and accountability, and include the voices of residents so frequently left out of the conversation. Lastly, our society has been trained to turn to law enforcement to respond to situations that would be better handled with other means. We need a “mental health corps” to respond to people dealing with mental illness. Twice as many 311 calls are for mental illness than for violent crime. Over 30 years ago NYC managed 500,000 major felony offenses with 10,000 fewer cops than the 36,000 we have today with the far fewer 100,000 offenses we now see each year. Despite spikes in some crime in the news, overall crime incident are at historic lows, and we can manage public safety while also shifting some resources to affordable housing, the aforementioned mental health corps, medical clinics, drug treatment, job retraining and small business investment.

What accomplishments in your past would you cite as evidence you can handle this job?

I am an affordable housing advocate with over 20 years of experience in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. I am a New York native, NYC public school graduate and parent. I have spent the past decade working at affordable housing nonprofits, including most recently at the Housing Partnership, assisting in the creation and preservation of over 5,000 affordable housing units each year. I have served on Community Board 7 and now on Community Board 9, I am the founder of one park group - Friends of Anibal Aviles Playground, and serve on the board of another, Friends of Morningside Park. Working closely with the Columbus-Amsterdam BID as the volunteer president of Valley Restoration LDC, we secured $75,000 in grants for trees in Manhattan Valley. I did, and do, most of these things not as a job but as a volunteer. While I have accomplished most of this as a volunteer, I hope the residents of District 7 will be as excited as I am when I take on the responsibility to achieve much more as the councilmember for District 7. I am ready.

The best advice ever shared with me was:

"Be prepared for luck" from former Assembly Member Ed Sullivan.

What else would you like voters to know about yourself and your positions?

I have been endorsed by Assembly Member Daniel O’Donnell, State Senator Robert Jackson, former Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger, former Assembly Member Ed Sullivan, former State Senator Franz Leichter, activist Zephyr Teachout, Uptown Community Democrats, West Harlem Progressive Democrats, West Side Democrats, Three Parks Independent Democrats and Broadway Democrats. I am the son and grandson of union members. Since 2010, I have been re-elected five times as the Democratic State Committeeman in the 69th Assembly District and I am a founder of the Progressive Caucus of the New York State Democratic Committee, a voice of reform within the Democratic Party. A three-time NYC Marathon finisher, I am the son of a Cantor and an attorney. My family and I are longtime members of Congregation Rodeph Sholom, and I was raised in rent-regulated housing in Upper Manhattan in the same neighborhood where I live with my wife and young son today.