NYC Council District 9 Election: Pierre Gooding Seeks Harlem Seat

HARLEM, NY — Voters in New York City's 9th Council district, which includes all of Central Harlem and parts of East Harlem and Washington Heights, will see 13 names on their ballots when they vote in the June 22 primary election.

One of those names will be Pierre Gooding, an attorney, general counsel at the Scholar Athlete Fund and former staffer for Success Academy Charter Schools.

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

Age (as of Election Day)

37

Position Sought

City Council - District 9

Party Affiliation

Democrat

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

Harlem

Family

Karen Gooding, Steven Gooding, Rasheem Gooding, Torrell Gooding

Does anyone in your family work in politics or government?

No

Education

University of Pennsylvania - BA, Pace University - MS, University of Pennsylvania - JD

Occupation

Attorney - 10 Years

Previous or Current Elected or Appointed Office

General Counsel & Executive Vice President - Uptown Democratic Club, Reform Party Chairman - Manhattan

Campaign website

www.goodingforharlem.com

Why are you seeking elective office?

I am seeking to be City Councilor in my District for the second time in five years because currently our community lacks access to affordable housing, quality schools and good paying jobs. I am in this race because Covid-19 exposed the discriminatory policies that negatively impact Harlem. I am running because enough is enough and it is time to put Harlem First.

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

The single most pressing issue facing our district is a lack of access to affordable housing and I intend to pass legislation in City Council and work with related federal entities to ensure that the Area Median Income (AMI) used to determine who can move in to the affordable housing is based on our communities median income of approximately $35,000 and not New York City’s AMI of $63,000. We will also roll back the credit rating system recently put in place that further holds back low income applicants.

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

The critical differences between me and the other candidates running is that I am an attorney, deacon and former middle school teacher at I.S. 143m Eleanor Roosevelt Junior High School teaching 6th and 8th grade English as a Second Language. That experience has allowed me to lock up a Republican State Senate candidate scamming the public in Harlem, bring home 800 Americans marooned in Ghana over President Trump’s objection, and provide legal assistance to our residents and churches in the community. I am also the only candidate that has helped to run two homeless shelters overnight (Harlem, Queens) in this race and this is the type of experience that I believe is necessary to understand how to end homelessness in New York City.

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

As I first stated in the 2017 City Council election cycle, I appreciate the 30 years of service from Bill Perkins, but Mr. Perkins is currently unable to do the job and is in poor health, which has been reported by NY1. He was ranked the worst City Councilor in New York City by City & State and we cannot have this type of performance from the person in charge of $90 Billion tax payer dollars that are supposed to be used for housing, education, jobs, community centers, parks, trash and all of the other issues every candidate talks about. There have been zero sponsored bills from Mr. Perkins, and this is simply not good enough.

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

When Covid-19 hit Harlem, our City Councilor was nowhere to be found. Instead, my team had to take up the efforts to get remote learning devices to all students in need because the De Blasio administration had a policy that did not include charter students regardless of income level, to get masks into shelters that I saw on the ground was a problem even when the CDC said masks were optional (thank you to De Blasio here, his team did send masks to our bed stabilization program and other shelters which were out of supply in stores). I was out in the community as an essential worker when Covid-19 hit, and would have used the City Councilor’s discretionary funds to distribute masks in my community. I have been setting up vaccination sites in Harlem over the months, and would have used the position to ensure these sites came to Harlem immediately to prevent further death, and also to reopen the Harlem YMCA which was shut down due to Covid-19 with no current plans to open back up.

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?

Specifically, I would lower the Area Median Income to move into affordable housing from $63,000 to our communities area income of $35,000. I would also end the credit rating system which was recently added to further limit our communities ability to access its own affordable housing. It is unacceptable that the residents who put decades of sweat equity to build up Harlem cannot access the apartments in the neighborhood. These are the types of policies that directly lead to gentrification, and the City Councilor must have the legal mind to create positive changes in these spaces.

Some Harlem residents complain that the neighborhood is “over-saturated” with methadone clinics. Would you welcome more services for vulnerable people in the neighborhood, or push for a moratorium?

With creative policy, we can address multiple concerns at one time. I am in agreement with health advocates who have stated that we have a massive addiction and overdose problem in Harlem. I saw some of these problems firsthand while helping to run two homeless shelters overnight in Harlem and Queens and personally helped to save a guests life who overdosed on Heroine. Injection sites were created to be a place where multiple rehabilitative services are given to the visitor including mental health assistance, and we could and should consolidate the plethora of substance abuse programs in Harlem into a few injection sites to take care of the communities concern while caring for those in need.

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

I will work with the next mayor of New York City to make sure that the 223 trash cans taken out of Harlem are replaced immediately, and that we use this opportunity to create public private partnerships that can turn our trash into usable energy and our receptacles into items that we can be proud of instead of the current state where trash cans are either non-existent or in poor/unusable condition. This was an issue we raised immediately in 2018 and have been raising for years on my social media, along with the other issues discussed above and below.

Plans were recently unveiled for a large new development on 145th Street — it would include up to 282 affordable apartments, but some neighbors suggested that the buildings are too large for the neighborhood. As Council Member, would you support this project, oppose it, or push to change it?

I am opposed to this project until there is a significant increase in the allotment of affordable housing scheduled to be a part of One45 from 30% to 40% or higher, so that our community members have access to the apartments in our community that they have put decades of sweat equity into to build up. I will participate actively in the ULURP process just as I did with the Lenox Terrace project, where I sent a legal letter to City Councilor Bill Perkins and others to address similar access concerns along with a lack of equity for current tenants. The project was ultimately voted down due to these issues.

Describe the other issues that define your campaign platform.

Lowering the AMI to move into affordable housing, switching to rapid testing for Covid-19 in our schools, ensuring tax credits to hire community members, dramatically increasing revenue in the City through private public partnerships for community programs, higher teacher salaries, mental health programs, community centers, libraries and certified media specialists in our schools, elevators in subways, safe transit and streets.

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

When Jon Girodes was telling people he was going to send fried chicken, kool-aid and watermelons to Harlem and scamming hard working Harlemites and New Yorkers out of their money through a Craigslist scam while also serving as the 2016 State Senate Candidate for the Republican Party I was outraged. Instead of complaining about the problem with no real answer, I put the case together to make sure that Mr. Girodes was on your ballot from Rikers, which may be the first time in New York City history a candidate was in prison on Election Day. And when our Americans were marooned in Ghana due to Covid-19 and President Trump stated in an interview to “leave them over there” I put our legal resources to use, set up convoys and worked with electeds in the US and Ghanaian government to make sure our Americans came home after months of a lack of response from anyone in the US government.

The best advice ever shared with me was:

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

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

I encourage our Harlemites and New Yorkers to do their homework on the candidates and choose candidates that have been creating tangible policy changes in their community. I truly believe now is the time to create a shift in thinking at the City Council level, to put more of our tax dollars into the community, to ensure that every person in Harlem and New York City has a home, that our schools are high functioning, and that in the richest city in the world we stop being the #1 city for homelessness and the most segregated school system in the world. I believe these changes are highly achievable at a City Council level and encourage our voters to make your voice heard on June 22. I am the first name on your ballot so it will not be hard to find me and cast a vote to put Harlem First. Let’s go.