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How Financial Co-ops Are Helping Puerto Rico Rebuild — and Why It Matters for New York
New Economy Project recently sat down with Pablo DeFilippi and Rene Vargas Martinez from Inclusiv to learn about their work supporting financial cooperatives (or “cooperativas”) in Puerto Rico. While mainstream banks have been widely criticized for abandoning the Island or profiting off disaster, the cooperativas have been central to Puerto Rico’s resilience and recovery. The…
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CBS News: New Yorkers Say State Agency Snatched Their Tax Refunds
CBS News — David Evans, a 59-year-old New Yorker, was making a modest living working as a messenger and enjoying a state tax refund of $150 or $200. But in the last four years, his refund hasn’t been coming through, Evans told CBS News.
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City Limits: NY Can Reduce Redlining’s Residue by Backing Credit Unions
City Limits, Op-ed by Yuh-Line Niou and Maureen Genna — A Bloomberg report this month showed that the largest banks in the U.S., led by JPMorgan Chase, are closing branches rapidly in poor neighborhoods, even as they open new ones in affluent communities. In other news: water is wet.
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Brooklyn Daily Eagle: Brooklyn Facing Crisis in Housing Theft and Foreclosures, Advocates Say
Brooklyn Daily News — As real estate values in Brooklyn have gone through the roof, homeowners in gentrifying black and brown communities in the borough are increasingly being targeted by housing predators, legislators were told on Friday at Brooklyn Borough Hall.
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Gothamist: NYC Economic Justice Groups Refuse To Meet With Trump’s Consumer Financial Protections Bureau Head
Gothamist — In its original conception, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) exists to impose oversight on our market such that you, the consumer, don’t get grifted by investors and lenders. Like so many other government institutions, however, the Trump Administration has turned that concept on its head. On Thursday, ahead of a scheduled meeting…
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Foreclosure Crisis Far from Over for NYC Neighborhoods of Color
More than a decade after the financial meltdown, how secure are New Yorkers from the threat of foreclosure? Our recent issue brief seeks to answer this question, based on our analysis of pre-foreclosure notices that mortgage servicers are required to send homeowners at least 90 days before filing a foreclosure action in New York State…
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Patch: MTA Took BK Veteran’s Tax Refunds For Decades-Old Ticket: Lawsuit
Patch — A few years ago, Brooklyn veteran David Evans got something strange in the mail — a notice that the MTA would be taking hundreds of dollars from his tax returns to pay for tickets from nearly 20 years ago.
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Gothamist: The MTA Is Allegedly Seizing Tax Refunds From Poor NYers Over Decades-Old Infractions
Gothamist — While not particularly good at executing major capital projects or managing a budget or even running trains much of the time, the MTA is apparently very adept at squeezing money out of low-income riders.
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The Laura Flanders Show: NYC Organizers Say #NOHQ2 and Win
The Laura Flanders Show — Our Juleon Robinson joins Maritza Silva-Farrell from ALIGN NY and Sasha Wijeyeratne from CAAAV to discuss a cooperative, community-led vision for economic development in New York.
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Daily News: The Ultimate Unfair Fares: The MTA is Seizing the Tax Refunds and Wages of Poor New Yorkers to Settle Decades-Old Debts
Daily News — It turns out that the same MTA that fails, frustrates and delays New Yorkers daily shows astounding, relentless energy when it comes to seizing the tax refunds and slapping liens on the wages of subway customers accused of breaking low-level rules like smoking on a platform or riding between cars.
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NY1 Inside City Hall: Lawsuit Alleges NYC Transit Authority is Seizing Tax Refunds for Old Violations
Inside City Hall — Our Legal Director Susan Shin joins plaintiff David Evans and Katherine Deabler-Meadows from the National Center for Law and Economic Justice to discuss a lawsuit filed against the New York City Transit Authority, alleging the agency is enforcing judgments against riders for decades-old infractions and then seizing their tax refunds without their…
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The Nation: New York Fights – and Amazon Flees
The Nation — Amazon has ended its plan, less than three months after it was announced, to locate one of its two new headquarters in Long Island City—a deal had triggered fierce if entirely predictable opposition to throwing billions in public subsidies at the world’s richest man, bypassing public review processes, securing few promises for…