NYC Council Elections 2021: Jeffrey Omura Seeks UWS Seat

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — Voters in New York City's 6th Council district, which includes almost the entirety of the Upper West Side, will see six names on their ballots when they vote in the June 22 primary election.

One of those names will be Jeffrey Omura, an artist and labor union leader, who is among the Democrats seeking to replace the term-limited incumbent Helen Rosenthal.

Patch reached out to all candidates in the election to create these profiles. Omura's responses are below.

Answers have been lightly edited for clarity.

Jeffrey Omura

Age (as of Election Day)

36

Position Sought

City Council District 6

Party Affiliation

Democrat

Neighborhood of residence

Lincoln Square

Family

n/a

Does anyone in your family work in politics or government?

no

Education

Carnegie Mellon University

Occupation

Actor, 15 years
Labor Leader, 5 years

Previous or Current Elected or Appointed Office

Twice-elected officer of Actors Equity Association

Campaign website

jeffreyomura.com

Why are you seeking elective office?

My industry, the Arts & Culture sector, has been wiped out by the pandemic. The $110 billion sector is an enormous economic engine for this city, employing more than 300,000 arts workers, and drawing more than 65 million tourists who support our hotels, restaurants, and retail, contributing 40% of the city’s sales tax. New York’s economic recovery depends on the revitalization of Arts & Culture.

However, the City Council’s arts advocates are all term-limited, and there may be no one left to advocate for the arts and arts workers at a time when the industry needs it most. I will be that champion. I’ve drafted a detailed Arts & Culture Recovery Plan to ensure the revival of New York’s Arts & Culture sector and to get its workers back to work. More artists—and arts patrons too—live on the Upper West Side than any other neighborhood. The arts are a major reason why many in this neighborhood choose to live here.

The pandemic laid bare longstanding inequities and now gives us a chance to fundamentally change this city’s path. We need leaders who can bring new ideas to the table to breathe new life into small businesses, address housing & homelessness, improve the quality of our public schools, expand employment protections to gig economy workers, prepare this city for climate change, and both ensure accountability & oversight in policing while also prioritizing public safety.

The single most pressing issue facing our (board, district, etc.) is _______, and this is what I intend to do about it.

Housing & Homelessness

EXPAND AFFORDABLE HOUSING
Rezone and repurpose commercial office space: the pandemic has led to a surplus of newly vacant commercial office space. We can turn lemons into lemonade by rezoning and transforming that real estate into residential space, while protecting space for artists and small businesses.

Streamline basement apartment conversions: we can create as many as 210,000 new units within city limits by expanding the City’s Basement Apartment Conversion Pilot Program, which modifies zoning and streamlines the permit process to make it easier for owners of one- and two-family homes to add attic, basement, or garage apartments. That’s more housing than was produced during the entirety of the last decade!

Develop City-owned land: the City currently owns thousands of undedicated parcels of land. That land can be committed to Community Land Trusts to work with non-profit developers to build permanent low-income and affordable housing. The Comptroller estimates this could create as many as 53,116 new units.

Redefine affordable housing: The metric by which the City calculates eligibility for affordable housing does not serve the population of New York City residents who need it. We must redefine affordable housing pricing standards to ensure it is truly affordable and accessible to New Yorkers of all income levels.

Pied-a-terre Tax. We must implement a tax on empty and overpriced luxury condos, owned by shell companies controlled by people who don’t live in this city, that inflate the price of housing for the rest of us. We can use the revenue to fund affordable housing initiatives.

Create public banking and empower home ownership: under the current private big banking system that prioritizes profit, home ownership is out of reach for many city residents. By creating a public municipal banking system dedicated to investing in communities, we can expand credit services in low income neighborhoods. Additionally, we can expand down payment assistance programs to make home ownership possible for more New Yorkers.

Balance affordable to market rate units: the cost of rent has outpaced median income growth and more and more New Yorkers are severely rent burdened. For example, with the 80/20 Program, developers take advantage of tax breaks in exchange for reserving only 20% of units for low-income residents, but the quota doesn’t provide nearly as many affordable units as we need. We must increase the ratio of affordable housing to market-rate housing in all new buildings to prevent New Yorkers from getting squeezed out of their neighborhoods.

Better serve New Yorkers with Disabilities: we need to expand independent and integrated living options for New Yorkers with disabilities. We must reduce the financial, technological, and physical barriers to access affordable housing.

Make Council District 6 and New York City more affordable for Seniors: I will call for automatic enrollment in the Senior Citizens’ Rent Increase Exemption (SCRIE) for anyone over the age of 62 earning less than $50,000, freezing their rent at a third of their income; raise the Senior Citizens’ Homeowners’ Exemption to embrace those earning less than $50,000; create a financial assistance program to retrofit seniors’ apartments with grab bars, widened doors, no-slip showers, lower kitchen counters, etc., and enhanced incentives for landlords to install them--we can offer grants to make home modifications for those over 60 living with disabilities and making at or below 80% of AMI at a relatively low cost to taxpayers, certainly less than the alternative: institutional living; encourage the development of “horizontal” Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities to expand affordable housing for the elderly and requisite support services, embracing areas of multiple blocks, beyond existing, single building, “vertical” NORCs, as part of the City’s Age Friendly Neighborhoods Program.

END HOMELESSNESS
Expand and prioritize Permanent Supportive Housing: the City’s current shelter system is meant to be temporary and too often those it serves end up on the streets. By transitioning away from a temporary shelter system, we can get more New Yorkers experiencing homelessness off the street and into permanent supportive housing.

Streamline the process for securing housing: DHS policies create regulatory hurdles and require prolonged periods of waiting before those experiencing homelessness can qualify for housing. We must streamline the process for moving New Yorkers living on the streets into available housing.

Strengthen Kendra’s Law: individuals with serious mental illness must be able to access critical mental health services. Under New York State’s Kendra’s Law, courts can order these individuals to stay in assisted outpatient treatment for up to a year while continuing to live in the community.

Studies show that Kendra’s Law reduces homelessness by 74% and keeps the public safer by reducing physical harm to others by 47%. By reducing hospitalization and incarceration, Kendra’s Law saves taxpayers 50% of the cost of care. We must work with the Department of Homeless Services to promote, fund, and strengthen Kendra’s Law so families can get their loved ones the care they need.

IMPROVE NYCHA
Capital Improvements. It is imperative that we improve the quality of life in NYCHA housing. We must lobby the federal government to fully fund NYCHA’s capital improvements, to make NY’s public housing a desirable place to live.

Redesign and rebuild NYCHA spaces: the needs of a community change over time. We can empower NYCHA residents, as has been done successfully with London’s public housing, to work directly with developers to demolish the current stock and rebuild developments to include mixed-use and new market-rate units to fund the rehabilitation needs of the current public housing units.

Ensure oversight over the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) Program: NYCHA residences desperately need renovations and repairs, but they cannot come at the expense of residents’ autonomy. We need to ensure that the private management companies where RAD has already been implemented operate with full transparency and appropriate oversight.

Community Investment: NYCHA is more than just its buildings. We must invest in the communities themselves by creating workforce development, like the Residential Economic Empowerment & Sustainability (REES) program and Resident Leadership Academy, for NYCHA residents.

What are the critical differences between you and the other candidates seeking this post?

I’m the only labor leader in the race. Being a union officer has taught me that good policy will only get you so far, and that success is only possible if your workers are behind you. Educating, organizing, and galvanizing a constituency is our specialty.

Too many in our community feel ignored, abandoned, and talked down to by their leaders in city government. I’ve made it my mission to speak to every small business owner in the District, and I’m about 50% of the way there. Small business owners tell me I’m the first person who’s come to ask how they’re doing.

I have many policy proposals, but what I truly hope to be—and what I truly believe we need—is a “neighborhood organizer.” Using my skills and strengths not only as a labor leader but as an artist, a listener, a storyteller, that’s exactly what I’m running to become, and to restore a sense of community to District 6 in the process.

If elected, I’ll make history as both the first openly gay person to represent District 6 and as the first Japanese American ever elected to office in New York State.

If you are a challenger, in what way has the current board or officeholder failed the community (or district or constituency)

Those who ran for and succeeded in prior elections did so on the merits of their ability to meet the needs of their times. Times have changed. We are now emerging from a global pandemic, in the midst of a cultural awakening and dealing with the fact that many of the structures created by previous representatives are broken or no-longer appropriately serve our residents. Our Housing & Homelessness crisis and Small Business crisis have only grown worse in recent years. We need representation that has the vision, skills, and fortitude to take on these new challenges.

How do you think local officials performed in responding to the coronavirus? What if anything would you have done differently?

Our current City Council member was a great advocate for the residents of District 6 during the COVID crisis. I would try to emulate her work by:
Advocating for lifting restrictions on food brands under the WIC program
Promoting mental health resources
Raising awareness for rising rates of domestic violence
Advocating for an eviction moratorium
Advocating for allowing pregnant people to have access to midwives and doulas at the birth experience. During the pandemic, they’ve only been allowed to be accompanied by their partner
Advocating on behalf of Black and brown communities disproportionately affected by the pandemic
Putting forward two major revenue raising proposals: 1) to activate a financial transactions tax already on the books; and 2) broaden the sales tax to include many professional services currently exempt from it
Proposing a New Deal–style Works Progress Administration in New York City, with a focus on training for tech and infrastructure jobs.

I would have acted differently by:
Putting a greater focus on worker protections. Our frontline workers were put in enormously dangerous situations in the first few months of the pandemic when PPE was scarce.
Raising awareness for the health and safety of those workers and organizing an effort to have masks and other PPE manufactured locally.
Helping grocery store workers form a union.
Championing the cause of food delivery workers, who 15 months into this pandemic are still without basic wage and health and safety protections.
Helping small businesses advocate property tax reform and rent relief to ease the financial burden of the shutdown on small businesses and the jobs they provide in our community.
I would’ve handled the situation at the Lucerne differently by:
Communicating clearly with residents about the Lucerne, the makeup of the new residents, and what to expect.
Listening to community members when they express concern about crime and work with local police to address the issue.
Bringing the community together, lowering the temperature, and focusing on providing services.

Describe the other issues that define your campaign platform.

Revitalization of Arts & Culture
As an elected officer of Actors’ Equity, the union representing 51,000 stage managers and actors, I’ve seen firsthand how this pandemic has devastated New York’s Arts & Culture sector. We face a Cultural Depression.

New York City’s creative economy accounts for $110 billion in economic activity. Our Arts & Culture sector helps draw 65 million annual tourists, who support our hotels, restaurants, and retail, contributing 40% of the City’s sales tax revenue. As one of the City’s greatest economic engines, the revitalization of Arts & Culture is key to New York’s economic future.

Connect businesses with artists: when it’s safe, we will help restaurants and hotels recover by providing them with grants or tax incentives to hire small groups of professional musicians and entertainers.

Expand the Open Culture Law to be more inclusive and accessible.

Open access for New Yorkers with Disabilities: access to Arts & Culture is out of reach for too many. Our cultural institutions, especially those that receive funding from the City ought to provide free or pay-as-you-wish entry for all disabled visitors and up to one caregiver.

Repurpose vacant storefronts: we can repurpose available space into art galleries, rehearsal spaces, and music venues. The City should expand on programs like “Art on the Ave NYC”, a recent volunteer public arts initiative that has turned vacant storefronts into galleries, and Chashama, which has transformed unused real estate into space to create, present and provide free art classes for under resourced communities.

Create exclusive artist housing: we must pass legislation to allow for the creation of affordable housing exclusively for artists, ensuring artists can make New York their home for decades to come.

City-sponsored, Sector-wide Promotional Campaign. After 9/11, the state created a promotional campaign to help Broadway. This time we’ll need a campaign for the entire sector. Broadway, yes, but for all theatre, music, dance, comedy, art spaces, and museums, beamed across the world trumpeting that the global capital of Arts & Culture is open for business.

Support live musicians and performers in bars and restaurants by modernizing state liquor and city zoning laws: venues that provide live music often struggle to get liquor licensing, forcing them to decide between selling alcohol and employing artists. The State Liquor Authority should have no say in whether or not a venue can employ musicians and performers. I will work with state lawmakers to revoke the State Liquor Authority’s power to regulate live music, and work with the Office of Nightlife and other authorities to change outdated and confusing zoning laws, to allow more restaurants and bars to hire live musicians and performers.

NYC’s own International Festival. Inspired by the River-to-River Festival that brought back life to Lower Manhattan after 9/11, the City can sponsor an annual multi-borough Olympic-sized festival bringing the world’s arts communities together and celebrating neighborhoods across the city.

Directly buy tickets: like after 9/11, the City can directly buy tickets to shows and give them away to schools and community groups, opening up access and cultivating the next generation of artists and arts patrons, and to tourists, as a reward for spending money at stores, restaurants, or other cultural institutions.

Restore funding to the Department of Education’s arts education budget to support teaching artists: the City must restore funding to ensure equitable access to arts education for all of our students. We must also streamline the vendor application process to make it easier for artists to secure funding and allow schools to directly hire organizations with whom they have established relationships.

Live from New York. The city can organize a weekly broadcast of live-streamed performances, featuring different artists, that the entire world can tune in to. Think Jazz at Lincoln Center but global.

Invest in all five boroughs. We must expand the arts community’s Manhattan-centric footprint by coordinating partnerships between Manhattan based cultural institutions and those in the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island to present events and productions in every Council district, giving each City Council member a reason to personally invest in the City’s arts budget.

Connect artists with schools to share resources: New York’s public schools contain thousands of art, dance, music, and theater spaces that sit empty most weekends and for two-thirds of each weekday. The city can share these spaces with local artists, providing affordable work space in communities across the city. Upper West Side Schools have 41 arts rooms, 41 music rooms, and 40 theater rooms.

What accomplishments in your past would you cite as evidence you can handle this job?

In 2016, my acting career had taken off, but my colleagues and I were struggling to make ends meet while working for unlivable wages at New York City’s renowned Off-Broadway theaters. So, I helped create and lead #FairWageOnStage, a grassroots campaign to ensure that stage managers and actors receive fair pay Off-Broadway. The movement gave Actors’ Equity Association leverage to achieve historic wage increases, up to 83%, across Off-Broadway theaters. I was soon elected to the board of Actors’ Equity, where I’ve organized from the inside, negotiating higher wages and greater benefits for the union’s members. I recently helped lead the union’s first strike in over 50 years.

As a union officer, I’ve seen firsthand how the pandemic has devastated New York’s Arts & Culture sector. Most of the industry’s employers shuttered, with 70% of arts workers out of work. Realizing that the sector was getting left out of conversations at every level of government, I helped create a new campaign, Be An #ArtsHero, organizing the nation’s arts sector to collectively lobby Congress for direct arts relief. After meeting with over 60 US Senate offices, the #ArtsHero organizers helped secure $16 billion for the arts in the December 2020 stimulus package.

My skills as an organizer, activist, and negotiator, as a listener and storyteller, have helped me get tangible results for workers and arts institutions on both a local and national level.

The best advice ever shared with me was:

Sometimes you have to decide whether you want to be right or effective.

What else would you like voters to know about yourself and your positions?

We may not agree on everything, but I will always value your opinion, want to know what you think, what you’re experiencing, and what you need so that I can better represent you.