A Just Recovery from COVID-19
Our communities have been hit hard by the pandemic, and we need strong leadership working to provide relief for our families and real solutions to the longstanding economic, racial, and social inequities that exacerbated this crisis. Yudelka is ready to fight for a just recovery that uplifts the working families, communities of color, and immigrants who have been hardest-hit.
Yudelka knows that small businesses play a key role in creating jobs and keeping our local economy vibrant. She’ll keep fighting to ensure that small businesses can keep their doors open and have the support they need throughout this crisis and beyond.
Housing
New York City is facing a growing affordable housing crisis. With the city’s population projected to grow to over 9 million by 2030, it’s critical that we fight to ensure access to affordable housing for every New Yorker. Yudelka will fight to preserve and expand affordable housing in our communities and ensure that our senior populations can age in place.
Preserve and Expand Affordable Housing
Before the COVID-19 pandemic more than 36% of the families living in our Bronx neighborhoods were living below the federal poverty line. The pandemic has only created more challenges for these low-income families. We must build 100% sustainable, permanent affordable housing for extremely low and very low-income families, reform the broken 421-a program, and change the Area Median Income (AMI) formula, so that Bronx residents can have a fair shot at fair housing.
Protect Tenants
Yudelka will fight to stop evictions, build upon the state’s historic rent regulations, hold bad landlords accountable, and protect tenants from housing discrimination and tenant harassment.
Fight for NYCHA Residents
Public housing is in crisis. NYCHA has been abandoned for too long, and this abuse must end. We know it is an injustice to let our neighbors live in such terrible conditions, and we have a responsibility to fix it.
NYCHA is chronically underfunded, and the state must commit to funding major infrastructural improvement without jeopardizing the future of public housing stock through privatization or further neglect. Until then, we must support residents in their efforts to maintain livable conditions and ensure they do not shoulder the financial burden for doing the work NYCHA can't.
Schools
For years, Yudelka has been fighting to make our education system in the Bronx more equitable, effective, and safe. She will continue working to reduce the disparities of resources in minority communities and ensure we fully fund our schools.
Yudelka knows that a high quality education is the key to a stronger future for our children. That’s why she’ll work to ensure students have the support they need and develop programs in conjunction with parents to close the achievement gap and effectively reduce the school drop-out of our middle and high school students, to ensure their high school graduation and the pursuit for higher education.
To engage, educate, and empower our youth, Yudelka will work to expand after-school and summer learning opportunities and keep our communities safe by supporting gun safety laws and initiatives.
Environmental Justice
Climate change is here, and we’re already seeing its impact. Low-income communities of color bear a disproportionate burden of the hazards created by air and water pollution, lack of access to open space, and extreme weather.
As our Assemblymember, Yudelka will fight to ensure our communities are safe and healthy for all people by increasing investment in sustainability efforts and key infrastructure upgrades, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and ensuring access to open space and clean water. Yudelka is committed to fighting for a robust climate resiliency plan that brings community members to the table and places the needs of our city’s most vulnerable front and center.
Healthcare
Healthcare is a human right, and Yudelka is ready to fight to ensure that every New Yorker has access to affordable, high quality health care, especially our low-income families, young adults, and communities of color.
Criminal Justice and Police Reform
We need to keep our communities safe beyond policing. For far too long, police budgets have grown at the expense of community programming and it’s clear they need to be cut. Investing more in community programs, youth opportunities, good-paying jobs, and mental health care and social services will go farther in keeping our communities truly safe. It’s critical that we continue building on the transformative criminal justice reform legislation that state leaders have passed in recent years, including creating a prosecutorial misconduct review panel and raising the age of criminal responsibility.
If we want to reduce crime and gun violence, we need to concentrate resources on strong paths out of the cycle of incarceration that include re-entry programs, violence interruption programs, and alternatives to incarceration.
Yudelka has been on the front lines fighting for reforming open discovery, speedy trial reform, and the implementation of the historic bail reform legislation that has released thousands of legally innocent New Yorkers from jail. She will continue advocating for a more restorative approach to criminal justice by reforming sentencing laws, working to eliminate racial disparities in policing and punishment, ensuring due process, and holding law enforcement accountable.
Protecting and Supporting Our Seniors
In the Bronx more than 26% of our seniors live below the poverty level, and are in need of access to essential services, like affordable housing, affordable healthcare and medication, healthy food, among other things to ensure that they live a quality happy life. I will work to improve our seniors' living conditions and quality of life.