The Inequities of COVID-19: A Focus on Public Housing

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Arrington

In major cities across the United States, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are not being experienced equally. Whether it's infection rates, deaths from the virus, or job losses, it's people of low-income and people of color who are being hit hardest.

Zip code data is helping to bring this home in New York City. There are color-coded maps showing the relative rates of infection across the city. Those maps looks depressingly similar to pre-COVID-19 maps that show the rates by neighborhood of indices like infant mortality and jail incarceration.

NSI-NYCHA

Members of Neighborhood Safety Initiatives unload supplies for emergency deliveries to public housing residents

Many of the more than half million New Yorkers who live in public housing are in communities where both disadvantage and coronavirus infections are concentrating. The Center for Court Innovation’s Neighborhood Safety Initiatives program partners with the city to work with public housing residents. That work has taken on new urgency now as the focus has turned to identifying needs and delivering food and supplies.

On this edition of New Thinking, Alicia Arrington, an engagement coordinator with Neighborhood Safety Initiatives working with the Red Hook Houses in Brooklyn, explains the challenge, and the response.

Resources and References

The following is a transcript of the podcast:

SFX: conference call

Matt WATKINS: That’s the sound of work right now at the Center for Court Innovation. And welcome to the first socially distanced episode of New Thinking. I’m Matt Watkins recording at my home in Brooklyn—New York City.

For as long as the stay at home orders last, I want to use some of these episodes to have some more compact conversations—get a sense of how COVID-19 is affecting the justice system, and how it’s affecting the work of a large agency like the Center for Court Innovation. 

We know that in major cities across the US, the effects of the coronavirus are not being experienced equally. Whether it’s infection rates, deaths, or job losses, it’s people of low-income and people of color who are being hit hardest.

In New York City, it’s zip code data that is bringing this home. There are color-coded maps showing the relative rates of infection across the city. Those maps looks depressingly similar to pre-COVID-19 maps that show the rates by neighborhood of things like infant mortality and jail incarceration. 

Many of the more than half million New Yorkers who live in public housing are in communities where both disadvantage and coronavirus infections are concentrating. The Center for Court Innovation’s Neighborhood Safety Initiatives program partners with the city to work with public housing residents. That work has taken on new urgency now as the focus has turned to identifying needs and delivering food and supplies.

To find out more I spoke by phone with Alicia Arrington. She is an engagement coordinator working with the Red Hook Houses in Brooklyn. I started by asking her how COVID-19 has affected her work.

Alicia ARRINGTON: The pandemic, clearly it didn't come out of nowhere, but as far as the impact that it made to our work, it was very abrupt. And it took us maybe three days to overhaul all that we were doing and make it into a digital system.

So, trying to make sure that we're still fulfilling our goals of ensuring safety in the very broad way that we interpret that. Getting an understanding of, not only what do our immediate stakeholders need, but what does the community at large need? What are we hearing from our neighbors? There were quite a few partners to connect with, and I can certainly say the same across all the sites. So really trying to, I guess, do a bit of asset mapping and understanding where is our strength at a time like this and what need can we fulfill for the residents.

WATKINS: And part of fulfilling those needs, I understand, has involved simply getting food and supplies to residents.

ARRINGTON: So, I myself have not personally been there building the boxes, but I have seen our wonderful team operation in there, and we have the essential things that any family would need, whether it's 20 pound bags of rice or cases of water or sanitation supplies. We've been trying to put together a type of essentials box that can last families at least throughout the week when we will be able to address their need the following week.

And this again is really an attempt to make sure that we're helping the families that are most high-risk, checking in individually with residents. And we have this assessment form that we've developed that we've been using to really gather all of the information from folks—from their emails to their phone number to their address and all of the forms of communication that they have access to—assessing their internet access.

WATKINS: What are the most pressing needs for people that are emerging when you're doing these surveys of what people need?

ARRINGTON: Definitely food and water. There are some very strong underlying concerns around health and access to medication. I think there's also the big need of just balancing work-home life. Some of the major concerns that we have as an organization also involve some of the more tricky situations like domestic violence cases and how do you make sure that, in a lock-in situation or pandemic where everyone is shut in, that those families are still safe.

Having resources for children I think is a big thing as well where there are kids now at home that are students that may or may not have to also bear the responsibility of looking after their brothers and sisters. But I think at the base of all of this is really those basic needs and making sure that everyone is okay while still balancing all of the responsibilities, that life does go on.

WATKINS: So, in a lot of ways, it sounds like what's happening with COVID-19 is playing on… These are not new problems to public housing, but the pandemic is, in a sense, making these even more apparent and even more of a problem.

ARRINGTON: As we know in all cases of communities that are facing oppression, whenever there is disruption, depression, recession, whatever it may be, the communities that were already most harshly impacted are again most harshly impacted at those times. And so it's really just a compounding of issues. When you talk about nationwide a loss of upwards of 15 million jobs, what does that do to a community that was already facing an employment issue?

What does that do to communities that have education issues where, at this point in time, we don't know when school will be reopened? I believe school is closed for the rest of the school year, or it's not, there's back and forth. But what does that impact have on the youth that are now at home in those situations that I mentioned before?

So, in all avenues of life, really, these are the moments that our jobs become very necessary because we have to do that much more to ensure that the communities we were already working hard to support now have the extra support they would need in this time.

WATKINS: And when we talk about kids being at home, often in public housing you have people living in pretty close quarters, which is going to make social distancing pretty difficult.

ARRINGTON: Just the sheer volume of the amount of families that live in any given housing development makes social distancing a bit of an issue, especially when you have everyone, every family, has to make those necessary trips outdoors every now and then. And how much more dangerous does that become when you have a community of 6,000 residents in one place?

WATKINS: And then a lot of people in public housing are doing the jobs now deemed essential, whether that's nurses or police officers or grocery store workers. So then that's even bigger challenges for them.

ARRINGTON: And there are many, many city workers as well that live in NYCHA developments. You're talking about the MTA, the buses, things that are, as you mentioned, essential. So again, it seems as you continue to explore through this conversation, you just reach more and more positions that really highlight and exemplify how much this is going to impact those living in these developments in a much different, much more impactful way, and how, I guess, at this time, it's our job to try to do the community organizing during and throughout to kind of catch that in a way that ensures stronger outcomes.

WATKINS: You work specifically in the Red Hook Houses in Southwest Brooklyn. Have you been hearing about COVID-19 infections or sickness or what is happening inside?

ARRINGTON: Unfortunately, I don't think there is an MEC—the MECs are the engagement coordinators that cover all of the 15 sites—that have not had a team member impacted or been personally impacted by COVID-19. I do know that in the building that we have, our community office, that there was someone that was recently hospitalized by the virus.

And I have members on my team that are now quarantined because they were trying to take care of their neighbors. But I do know that the developments in the Bronx and the Heights are facing even larger numbers than what we've seen in Red Hook. But as I mentioned, I don't think that there's a development that has not been impacted.

WATKINS: A big part of the work of Neighborhood Safety Initiatives is to organize residents, to work *with residents, to help them identify their needs, and then talk to the city and work to get those needs met. Needs are so urgent right now. How do you work to organize residents during a pandemic or right now is it just trying to maintain, do what we can to respond to the most urgent needs?

ARRINGTON: I think, luckily, we've built a really strong base of some strong community organizers. The entire premise of the Neighborhood Safety Initiatives model and what we do is building these teams of residents so that the residents themselves have greater autonomy over making those decisions that you've mentioned.

We have a really well-connected team of residents in each of these developments that have really been able to help us not miss a beat with understanding what is necessary. And so, because this pandemic is not just in New York City—this is a global thing—I think getting folks on board with helping to support residents in whatever way they may need at this time has not quite been that much of a challenge.

I think the assessment form that we've developed, really asking those hard questions about what your household size is, whether or not you have access to food or medication or clean water, whether or not you've been feeling those symptoms, gives us a really strong database to continue to get a clear view of what's happening.

And in some cases, it's very sad. People are losing their jobs. People are experiencing change in a way that's so rapid that you're so uncertain of what's to come next. And it's highlighted in these communities because of those preexisting factors. But in general, I think it's best to call and not just offer up how good or bad your day is, but also what can we do about it. And I think that that's a good factor that helps to keep the mood at least by the end of the call positive.

WATKINS: What are you most afraid of, when we think about COVID-19 and all these extra challenges that people living in public housing are facing?

ARRINGTON: I think what I'm personally most afraid of is the things that we continue to highlight of how these are preexisting issues. These are issues that are not new when it comes to the issues facing folks in public housing at this point in time, but they're pressing and more eminent than ever at this point. And I'm afraid that once the coronavirus passes and the levels of fear have gone back down to normal, then those same people that rushed to make these observations will just back away.

I think that the support that's necessary for NYCHA communities is always necessary for NYCHA communities. And I just hope that this will be a moment that will turn around our understanding of the value that these communities bring, again, when we're mentioning many of them are those essential workers keeping the city afloat, and we bring the value back to these communities because we’ve seen now how much they need it.

WATKINS: There's a lot of focus, as there should be on, about how much we can reinvent the way we work and still get so much incredible good work done. And it's clear that you guys are doing that on a daily basis, but have you thought about what gets lost? I suppose it's another question about what you worry about. So much of your work is face to face, hands on with people. So do you worry about what gets lost when you can't do that anymore?

ARRINGTON: Yeah. I think socially you miss the physicality of it. You get a sense of excitement every time you see ... well, at least I do. I get a sense of excitement every time I see my team on the Zoom meeting or the Google Hangout meeting and it's like you're losing that engagement in a way. But the other side of it is also the very real part of providing tangible needs that the work doesn't ... it didn't seem to have stopped for me because I think everything that we were doing before was in a way necessary, and now it's just a little bit more, I guess, life-based in a way and that makes it a bit more pressing.

I think one thing that I can think of that does get lost is the environment, the built environment aspect of what we do, I think is very special. The idea of activating different spaces and how beneficial it might be at this time for a space to be activated for residents.

But I think that that's what we're attempting to do digitally. I mean, we're developing workshops and developing different activities where we can continue to have those engagements with folks. For instance, we're thinking of possibly doing a DJ battle and that's just very small entertainment-based thing, but it goes along with plans of something that we had planned before. And it's a way to show that, life is going to continue to go on, but we're going to continue to engage, we're going to continue to be here with you, and we're going to continue to build community in this virtual space and talk with you about whatever you think that should look like. So, I guess the work has just evolved, the difference is just the physicality of it.

WATKINS: When you describe the work right now as more “life-based,” could you just explain a bit more what you mean by that?

ARRINGTON: We work very hard to do these projects based on what residents say they need to make their communities more safe. And, at the end of the day, we know that whatever we do is going to be a community-building process. But right now, the work that we're doing is very much: what are the basic needs that you need to survive as far as how housing, food, water, shelter. Those are the basic necessities of life, and we're trying to address those needs in a very tangible way right now. And that feels much more urgent because, I don't want to seem morbid, but it seems a bit more life and death, of ensuring that we have these resources available to these communities, and it changes the work. It changes the work.

WATKINS: Yeah, I bet. Well, this has been great. Thank you so much. I appreciate it so much.

ARRINGTON: Yeah, thank you.

WATKINS: That was my conversation with Alicia Arrington. She is an engagement coordinator with the Center for Court Innovation’s Neighborhood Safety Initiatives. To learn more about that program’s work and for some further reading on the disparate effects of COVID-19, visit courtinnovation.org/newthinking, or click the link in your show notes.

This episode was edited and produced by me. Samiha Meah is our director of design. Emma Dayton is our VP of outreach. Our theme music is by Michael Aharon at quivernyc.com. And our show’s founder is Rob Wolf. And for more on how the justice system has been responding to COVID-19, check out Rob’s recent episodes of our In Practice podcast. This has been New Thinking from the Center for Court Innovation. I’m Matt Watkins. Thanks for listening.