Every day, when the bell rings at her middle school in Queens, young Tendas packs her school bag and heads to her dance studio to pursue her New York Dream. For up to 15 hours a week, Tendas – or “Das” as her parents affectionately call her per the Tibetan custom of combining the first and last name – hones her dance skills with 49 other girls in her competitive group. She’s hard to motivate but energetic – her mother, Jean Hahn, says she bounces off walls during vacations. Dance is her outlet: She loves to compete with her groups, which have won awards at competitions. She hopes to attend a performing arts high school, and she receives English tutoring on the side to improve her grades.
But thanks to Kathy Hochul’s newly implemented congestion tax, Tendas’ family may no longer be able to afford her dancing aspirations.
New York City residents like the Hahn family already endure living in one of the most expensive cities in the world. They have also weathered draconian COVID lockdowns that forced other middle-class families to flee the city. Now, Tendas’ father – a technician at a hospital in lower Manhattan – is being charged $9 a day for commuting on one of America’s most unkempt streets. Due to his work schedule, public transportation is not an option.
“It’s grueling, easily doubling the commute time when you’re doing an off-hour shift and coming home at midnight,” Mrs. Hahn said. “There’s a reason why he drives – his job is physically taxing. So when he’s on his feet all day – to add this additional time until he gets home, he misses out on sleep, which he needs for his job to perform.”
Almost a third of workers in the city commute from outside. Among these are middle-class workers who are the Big Apple’s backbone. They populate Manhattan’s 22 police precincts, 48 firehouses, 363 public schools, and 470 health facilities, including Bellevue, NYU Langone, Mount Sinai Beth Israel, and VA Hospital. These New Yorkers cannot live on the island because of its untenable cost of living but are the ones who awarded the city its epithet, “the city that never sleeps.”
New York City’s governing class is openly punishing middle and working-class residents who cannot sacrifice their jobs for the environment. Hochul’s congestion tax could be the final blow to many locals’ New York Dreams.
“For my family, it’s a quality of life issue, and taking a hit on maybe what we’ll be able to provide for our child,” Hahn said of the new congestion pricing. “But I know for other families, because I have extended family members that are working class, that it’s almost existential, because now they have to change their livelihood,” she said.
Affected New Yorkers include congestion zone residents with access to the heart of NYC’s subway system. Take Holli Porreca, a union stagehand grip who lives on the Lower East Side. She has many subway options, but her contractual work demands unique hours and equipment she can’t haul on public transportation.
“A typical day for me might start in Staten Island shooting a prison scene on Law and Order and end in a chase scene on Long Island. I need to transport myself and my tools to both locations,” she said. “I don’t think there’s any way that I can change my commuter plan. I take my car because it’s necessary.”
Porreca lives in a Housing Development Fund Corporation (HDFC) apartment, which she is thankful for owning. She still worries for other working-class Manhattanites in her neighborhood, however. “You know, a plumber who’s renting, maybe a rent-stabilized apartment down the street, suddenly has a $600 a month cost of living increase just to get his work van home, and that person might be forced to move,” she said.
“It seems pretty clear that the state is depending on people not being able to change their commuter style because otherwise, how would they be raising $15 billion in revenue from all the tolls?”
Porreca is right. The congestion tax is an assault on stagehand grips, firefighters, plumbers, and other skilled trades workers with tight budgets and no other means of commuting. Make no mistake: It’s also an assault on other middle-class New Yorkers who now must bargain their peace of mind by taking the subway.
New Yorkers are paralyzed by fear from the recent subway crime wave that shocked the nation over the holidays. Days before Christmas, a Guatemalan illegal migrant burned a sleeping subway rider to death on the F train.
Since then, two New Yorkers were slashed at Grand Central, with one sustaining injuries to the throat, an assailant left a man with critical injuries after shoving him into the train tracks, a middle-aged man was stabbed in the neck while waiting for the C train on 50th street, two more stabbings occurred on New Year’s day, and an MTA worker was also stabbed after a “verbal altercation” with another man.
MTA CEO Janno Lieber mocked New Yorkers who cite these crime stories as participants in “grievance politics.” But that can’t explain why New Yorkers drive to work 100 hours a year rather than taking public transport.
The lack of safety has kept NYC subway revenue from rebounding to pre-pandemic levels. Eighty-two percent of New Yorkers rated subway safety during the day as good or excellent in 2017. In 2023, only 49% believed the same. In 2017, 46% of New Yorkers rated nighttime subway safety as excellent or good, but by 2023, that number plummeted to just 22% – a 52% decrease.
Residents no longer want to brave a treacherous late-night commute after a long workday. Hochul’s new congestion tax forces New Yorkers to choose between a roof over their heads or safety – a gamble no American should make.
Public officials have taken advantage of New York pride for too long, and the new congestion tax may be the final straw for many. For families like Jean’s, the congestion tax will rob her daughter of an essential creative outlet and future possibilities. For working-class union workers like Porreca, who lived in NYC for 20 years, the unavoidable tax could force them out of Manhattan.
Until recently, natives and longtime residents willingly dealt with the higher cost of living because the city’s invisible curriculum offered cultural competence and an inspiring landscape of opportunities. But now, Hochul’s congestion pricing may have dealt the final blow to NYC’s other epithet – The City of Dreams.
New Yorkers are second-guessing whether the punishment is worth NYC’s dwindling promise.
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