Dear New Yorkers, When Henry Ludmer had to undergo an assessment to determine whether he was eligible for Access-A-Ride’s paratransit service following a 2017 hip replacement, he went to a walk-in clinic just a few minutes from his West Village apartment. But the 81-year-old’s recertification this spring was anything but close to home: The MTA directed him to an address 27 miles away — on the South Shore of Staten Island. “That’s a long trip,” Ludmer told THE CITY. “It’s absurd.” Access-A-Ride’s assessment requirements have long been a sore point for paratransit users — many with limited mobility. Now, there are fewer locations for screenings, and none in Manhattan. But the service is crucial for hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who are unable to navigate the buses and subways because of health conditions. MTA’s Access-A-Ride dashboard shows total monthly ridership for the service was just short of 800,000 in February, down from a pandemic-era high of 838,000 last August. Read more here. Some other items of note: Yesterday, amid waves of asylum-seekers arriving in New York, the city abruptly moved to shut down a volunteer-run welcome center that had been operating at the Port Authority Bus Terminal since last summer. The midtown site had grown into a vibrant outpost for new arrivals The move comes ahead of the expected opening of the Roosevelt Hotel, a shuttered midtown hotel the administration recently announced would serve as a new centralized intake center for arriving migrants. Add this to the list of daunting and expensive tasks faced by NYCHA: Resolving hundreds of open brickwork code violations that pose potential danger across the city. The Housing Authority estimates it would need $3 billion to perform the necessary facade work on every building that requires it. In jobs news, the city’s unemployment rate has ticked up to 5.4 percent (by comparison, the national rate is 3.4 percent, tied for the lowest rate since 1969). The unemployment rate for Black workers was still in double digits, at 12.5% as of last month, according to THE CITY’s analysis of Current Population Survey census data. The rates for Hispanic and Asian workers were 7.1% and 5.4%, respectively. Join THE CITY’s COVID-19 memorial project, MISSING THEM, this Sunday from 2 to 5 p.m. for the closing reception of our ongoing exhibition with Photoville, honoring New Yorkers who are no longer with us. The free event at the Bronx Documentary Center's Annex will include a live theatrical performance by the Working Theater. RSVP here. For the latest local numbers on COVID-19 hospitalizations, positivity rates and more, check our coronavirus tracker.
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