The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the failures of the capitalist economy. In the last decade, hospital after hospital in New York State has closed and been converted to luxury housing. Today, in the midst of COVID-19 — that housing sits vacant while 92,000 people are homeless and we sorely lack hospital beds.

Our economic system is characterized by systemic inequality and the persistent drive for individual profit over the collective good. It led us directly to this crisis. If we do not make fundamental changes now, the crisis will continue to hit the working class, poor, and oppressed people the hardest. Working class people in essential industries will be expected to work — and travel on public transportation to work — throughout the crisis, exposing themselves and others to infection. Working class people in the service industry will be laid off and lose their income, while still being expected to meet debt repayments, rent, and the daily cost of living.

Even as existing networks of employment, housing, and critical production are being disrupted, the need for food, shelter, transportation, and infrastructure will remain. Now is the time to call for New York State to bail out the people, instead of the rich and corporations! New York State and City governments should take the following steps to address this crisis and make sure that working people are protected, in both the short and long term.

Urgent Steps for Surviving COVID-19

1. Make COVID-19 testing and treatment free. New York State must guarantee access to COVID-19 testing and treatment, free at the point of service to all New Yorkers, including the uninsured and the undocumented. In the event that the federal government makes funding or supplies available for testing and treatment, the State must ensure these resources are distributed equitably to all who need them.

2. Protect Medicaid: New York State must accept increased federal funding for the Medicaid program in New York, instead of opposing this funding on the grounds that it will make it too difficult to balance the state budget by cutting Medicaid funds to New York City and other localities in the state. Balancing the state budget should be achieved through other means, such as wealth taxes, rather than cuts to essential services like Medicaid.  

3. Keep workers safe and secure. All workers in New York need support regardless of employer size, employment type, or immigration status. As millions of people are losing jobs and/or income, New York State should pass universal unemployment insurance for all workers. New York must also provide personal protective equipment, emergency response training, breaks, and premium pay for hazard work for all workers in essential industries. . Finally, work should be reduced to actual essential tasks, allowing workers to work in smaller shifts isolated from one another to prevent unnecessary infection.

4. Cancel rent and protect tenants’ homes. Millions of New Yorkers have lost their sources of income and are unable to pay housing costs — meaning that we are on track for mass evictions and foreclosures as soon as the courts reopen. Rent and mortgage payments, including commercial rents, during the COVID-19 State of Emergency should be canceled, and all rent debts accumulated during this time must be automatically forgiven. In addition, the State should immediately pass Senator Salazar’s Good Cause Eviction bill, to ensure renters whose lease expires during this time do not face displacement or price gouging, and to give tenants’ the right to organize in their homes.

5. Cancel debt payments. As unemployment skyrockets, those with medical, student, and other debts will become increasingly burdened and face an increased risk of extortive collections actions. All individuals’ debt payments due during the crisis must be waived, accompanied by an end to all debt collection enforcement mechanisms such as wage garnishments, repossessions, and bank account freezes.

6. House the homeless. More than 92,000 people are homeless in this crisis, living in crowded shelters where COVID-19 spreads rapidly and families suffer from a severe lack of services. The State must take all steps necessary to urgently and permanently house all homeless New Yorkers during this time, by any means necessary, including through emergency rent assistance, in city owned or subsidized vacant homes, and rehabbing all vacant public housing units across the State.

7. Decarcerate for public health. Governor Cuomo must grant clemency to at-risk people in New York prisons and jails, prioritizing populations such as all people over 50, pregnant people, and others with compromised immune systems. All those currently incarcerated or detained must also be tested for COVID-19 and receive medical care. The State Legislature and the Governor must also vigorously oppose any attempt to roll back bail reform, which would increase jail populations and worsen the spread of this virus. These are all urgent, intermediate steps New York State should take to dismantle the carceral state and its negative impact on public health.

8. Reduce policing to improve public health. To reduce the spread of disease in and out of prisons, New York should place an immediate moratorium on all arrests until after the crisis subsides. We also call for zero carceral enforcement of “New York State on PAUSE” since we know from failed policies like Stop-and-Frisk that communities of color and low income people will likely be unfairly targeted and harassed by police attempting to enforce such orders, contributing to needless incarceration.

9. Ensure immigrant communities' safety and health. To safeguard the health of our community, New York must have a system that provides for everyone in our community, regardless of citizenship status. To ensure that all New Yorkers can seek treatment and justice without fear of arrest or harassment, New York State must block ICE from hospitals and courthouses and ensure that state & local agencies will not share people’s immigration status with federal immigration enforcement. As COVID-19 spreads through detention centers, we also call for the release of all immigrants in detention and a moratorium on ICE detentions & deportation.

Long-Term Goals for a People's Bailout:

The end of the pandemic does not mean the end of the crisis. Even as the health crisis fades, we will be left with persistent economic upheaval. A federal, state and local recovery must address the needs of the 99% while rebuilding our economy to be democratic, sustainable and just.

1. Tax the rich. To pay for the emergency response to COVID-19 and build a permanent social safety net that adequately protects people during health, environmental, social, political or financial crises going forward, we will need to tax the rich in New York more than ever before. The #MakeBillionaresPay coalition has proposed more than a dozen specific ways that New York can tax the rich, collect tens of billions of dollars in State revenue, and pay for our needed social services.

2. Bring private hospitals in New York State into public ownership. To meet the extraordinary demands placed upon the healthcare system at this moment, including the need for a dramatic increase in hospital beds and intensive care unit (ICU) capacity, we need public control over our healthcare system. New York State should bring private hospitals under public control as a first step to bringing healthcare into the public domain and stemming the trend of divesting from our currently existing public hospital infrastructure.

3. Immediately pass the New York Health Act. The crisis has shown us that our current private health system is utterly unequipped to provide for an actually healthy society. Our healthcare professionals should be able to focus on providing care, not fighting corporate insurer greed. A universal, guaranteed, public health insurance system, combined with public hospitals, will save money and save lives.

4. Reclaim our Homes: The failure of the private market to provide stable, affordable and dignified housing has been on full display during COVID-19. Hundreds of thousands or even millions of New Yorkers have been rendered unable to pay their rent, and 92,000 New Yorkers are homeless — a number that is rapidly growing. New York must invest and expand our social housing stock and fully fund public housing across the State by any means necessary, including new development of public housing and eminent domain.

5. A Jobs Guarantee and a Green New Deal. We will face an inevitable economic downturn during and in the aftermath of this crisis. We need a Jobs Guarantee for New Yorkers coupled with public power, public banking and public broadband to provide jobs for displaced workers and mobilize all our resources to reduce our carbon footprint. Large scale public programs should be launched which will simultaneously provide these goods and dramatically increase employment.

6. State ownership of businesses and worker control. Large businesses facing closure or mass layoffs should be seized by the state where feasible and run as public goods. In the case of small businesses where this is not feasible, New York should provide a right of first refusal, zero-interest loans, and technical assistance so that workers in smaller scale industries can take over their workplaces from owners that would otherwise have to close or sell. This will allow people to remain in their jobs and help us transition to a more just economy by putting workers in control.

7. Divest from the NYPD and invest in social services. We will need emergency support and strengthened social services in the coming weeks and months and probably even years. Now is the time to cut the NYPD’s almost $6 billion budget and instead divert those funds to non-carceral approaches to direct service delivery and addressing social problems.