Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good morning, everyone. You know, these last five months, New Yorkers have been fighting this battle against the coronavirus, fighting the battle against the economic crisis, the hunger crisis, all the things we've been dealing with at once, and I know people have felt often alone. This has been a tough, tough time. So many challenges in everyone's personal life, family life, work life, you name it. But I also mean that people felt alone because New York City's had to stand on its own.
We'll come back to that in a moment. But first back to the economic crisis, back to the pain that so many families are feeling. So many New Yorkers simply can't pay the rent. It's not their fault, that they didn't ask for a global pandemic, but if you don't get a paycheck, if you don't have a paycheck, what are you going to do? The last number I heard was 1.3 million New York City residents had filed for unemployment benefits in the course of this crisis. 1.3 million people – that represents families, so millions more effected by that. If you don't have a source of income, how the hell are you going to pay the rent? It's as simple as that, and on top of that, people are trying to get food, medicine, you name it. So, there have been eviction moratoriums over these last few months and that's been right because the last thing we want to see is a lot of people put out on the street, the last thing when I see is people flooding into our shelter system, but the eviction moratorium expired at midnight last night, and that is a huge problem for the people of New York City, and it must be addressed, and I'm going to say again, in these next weeks, you're going to hear a lot from me calling upon our State government to create a new system, to allow those who simply cannot pay for lack of income, to be able to have a payment plan model that will take them into next year, allow them to pay off the rent over time when they finally have resources. But no one should be put out on the street because they can't pay. They literally can't pay. So, while we're fighting that battle in Albany, right now I want to tell all New Yorkers who are threatened with eviction, that if you need help call 3-1-1, because we want to get you help. We can get you legal support and that really can help stop an eviction. Here to tell you about it is someone who's devoted his life to keeping people in their housing, our Commissioner for Social Services, Steve Banks.
Commissioner Steven Banks, Department of Social Services: Thank you very much. Look, as the Mayor said, eviction cases are now being filed. No actual evictions are moving forward right now because of an order of the court, but we're not waiting. We reached out to 14,000 people who had eviction warrants pre-COVID, to let them know that legal help is available. So, if you're somebody that's got an eviction warrant, as the Mayor said, call 3-1-1 and we can help you. We've also been paying back-rent through emergency renter grants. A sad fact is tens of thousands of people can't pay their rent. They were struggling before COVID, and now, as the Mayor said, they've lost their jobs, they've lost the ability to pay their rent, and to add insult to injury the Republican leadership in the Congress and the Senate has allowed the cutoff of the $600 a week in unemployment supplemental funds that was so essential for keeping people in their homes. But, you know, behind these cold numbers are devastating human costs. I remember when I was a housing lawyer at Legal Aid, how heartbreaking it was to talk to families in shelter who had been evicted in cases in which a lawyer could have kept them in their homes, and the impact on children in these cases is particularly harsh. And that's why New York City did something about this to prevent evictions through the first in the nation, Right-to-Counsel law. It drove down evictions pre-COVID by 41 percent while evictions were going up all over the country, and that's why it's critical that we've got legal help in place to address this new crisis. So, call 3-1-1, if you need legal help. But as the Mayor said, there's so much more we can do. We need help from Washington. We need help from Albany to extend the moratorium, and in the federal stimulus bill, we clearly need to provide rental assistance to help struggling families pay their rent in this period of time that the Mayor spoke so directly about. Mayor, I’m going to turn it back to you.
Mayor: I want to thank you, Steve, and everyone at Social Services for the work they are doing. Those 14,000 New York City families right now, who are on the brink – thank you for not waiting, but for reaching out to them to offer help, to do everything in our power to keep them in their homes. But look again, the bigger solutions reside in Albany with a law to allow people to have a payment plan, the best solution resides in Washington, D.C. Rental assistance for everyone who's lost their job so they can keep their home and landlords have the money to keep up their buildings.
All right, on another very important point. Thousands of New Yorkers right now are suffering because the power is still not back on. And look, I think we've all been frustrated over the years. We depend on Con Edison and we don't always get the answers we need and the follow through we need. I've been pushing Con Edison over the last few days on what they're doing. I spoke to the President of Con Edison in New York City, Tim Cawley, earlier today. And I said, first of all, we, the City of New York, anything we can do to help with our agencies, we want to do. And we have a lot of our agencies out there right now, clearing trees and trying to assist in every way. But Con Ed is of course the only folks that can actually put the power back on. Originally Con Ed had said that they were going to need until Sunday. And I think that was very distressing to lots of New Yorkers. Who wants to wait that long? Why should you have to wait that long?
So, based on conversation this morning, I have an update for you. First of all, where this started, once the winds died down after the hurricane, there were 180,000 customers in New York City that did not have power. Con Ed has restored 110,000 of those. So, there's about 70,000 households and customers left. They project today that they will restore between 15,000 and 20,000 of those customers. And then again, tomorrow between 15,000 and 20,000 of those customers. So, what I'm pushing for is that more than half of the outstanding households will be resolved by tomorrow, not Sunday, by tomorrow. And then everything else followed up on rapidly from then. We're going to keep pushing because we just can't have people wait that long. It's not fair. And the City of New York will do everything in our power to make sure that Con Ed keeps moving and gives people back their power, especially with everything else going on.
Okay, let's go to our indicators. Number one, daily number of people admitted to hospitals for suspected COVID-19, threshold 200 patients, today's report 75 patients. Number two, daily number of people in Health + Hospitals ICUs, threshold 375, today's report 303. And number three, percentage of people testing positive citywide for COVID-19, threshold 15 percent, today's report, the best ever, one percent. That's an amazing number. And that's again, because of you. Because of your hard work, stick to it.
