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Hungry and Homeless in the Shadow of Wall StreetWorkers Vanguard No. 10147 December 2012Billionaire Bloomberg Squeezes NYC WorkersHungry and Homeless in the Shadow of Wall StreetDECEMBER 4—Five weeks ago, a weakening Hurricane Sandy, which had devastated parts of the Caribbean and the U.S. East Coast, combined with a Nor’easter to steamroll much of the coastal areas of New York City. From the east and south shores of Staten Island across the Lower New York Bay into Brooklyn’s Coney Island and Red Hook and the Rockaways in Queens, the densely populated banking center and port metropolis was slammed with killer winds, a record storm surge and massive flooding. Since then, what stands in stark contrast is the extent of recovery for the city’s rich and poor, for the capitalist owners and for the workers who make the city run.Wall Street was back online within two days of the storm’s landfall. In little more than a week, a grueling, 24-7 deployment of transit, sanitation and utility workers had restored life in most of Manhattan to conditions little changed from the holiday shopping season one year prior. But for the largely black and Latino residents of public housing projects and the homeless, the picture was very different.
Many were served their Thanksgiving dinners from volunteer food lines in outdoor parking lots or inside parish halls. More than a month after the storm, thousands of people still lack heat, water, power or working elevators, at best getting intermittent service. The high-traffic emergency room of Bellevue, the 276-year-old free public hospital evacuated in the storm, is still closed and will not resume operation as a Level One trauma center before February.After Sandy flooded the Red Hook Houses in Brooklyn, it took the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) two weeks to dispatch workers to knock on tenants’ doors to see if they were alive. When agency workers finally did arrive, they found 127 residents requiring medical care, six of whom needed ambulances. When the NYCHA showed up in the Rockaways, one member of a family of 12 living in a single apartment told the New York Daily News (13 November), “We’re living like animals and all they were worried about was the $1,000-a-month rent.”Even in fair weather, it is a struggle for the impoverished families who live in the projects to get apartments painted, elevators maintained or broken boilers fixed. But after the storm, even as the NYCHA announced that it would be weeks or months before heat was restored, it initially threatened to evict anyone who didn’t pay rent.
An estimated 825,000 adults, or 13 percent of all New York City households, lack a bank account, according to a released Friday by the city comptroller's office. That is nearly double the national rate. In at least two neighborhoods in the Bronx, more than half of all residents were classified as 'unbanked,' meaning they had no relationship at all with a financial institution.In looking at 74 FDIC-insured banks that do retail banking in New York City, the comptroller's office found that among the 20 banks offering the most affordable combination of fees and opening deposits, the vast majority, or 90 percent, have 25 branches or fewer. Trending News.'
Our study showed that New Yorkers trying to open their first checking account face a bewildering array of options, and that the bank on your block might not give you the best bang for your buck,' Scott Stringer, the city's comptroller, said in a that also unveiled an to help New Yorkers find a viable banking option.' The economic impact of being unbanked or underbanked are severe,' Stringer's study said. 'On an annual basis, a full-time, minimum wage worker in the State of New York could end up paying $364 in check-cashing fees along, plus the cost of any money orders needed to pay bills.' The City's Community Investment Advisory Board recently found that there are for every 1,000 residents in areas where most people are minorities, compared to 3.6 locations per 1,000 residents in areas that are mostly white. The Bronx has the lowest concentration of bank branches per household of any county in the nation, while also having the lowest median household income of New York City's five boroughs.Twenty-eight percent of New York City banks did not appear to offer, or widely advertise, a basic checking account, also known as a 'Lifeline account,' as required by state law, Stringer's office found. A 'Lifeline account' should require no more than $25 as an initial deposit, a minimum balance of no more than a cent and a monthly maintenance cap of $3, while also offering at least eight free withdrawals a month and an unlimited number of deposits.When researchers asked about the accounts, 22 banks could not offer any information about a product that met the requirements, according to the study.For a low-balance customer in in New York City, the average total cost of maintenance and transaction fees came to $73 a year.
The average monthly maintenance fee was $5, or $60 a year, or the equivalent of nearly seven hours of work by a minimum wage worker, Stringer's office said.Access to an affordable bank account could save hundreds of dollars a year compared to costly alternative financial services, such as check-cashing services. Americans spent more than $89 billion on interest and fees for financial services provided outside traditional banks, an average of $2,400 per underserved family, a commissioned by the Inspector General for the U.S. Postal Service found.