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Volunteers Deliver Meals To UES Public Housing Senior Center

Local City Councilman Ben Kallos and workers with Wildcat helped deliver food to seniors at the Stanley Isaacs Center.

By Brendan Krisel, Patch Staff 

May 1, 2020 2:56 pm ET

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Volunteers led by City Councilmember Ben Kallos handed out 200 meals to seniors at the Upper East Side's Isaacs Center. (Google Maps)

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — A team of volunteers led by Upper East Side City Councilmember Ben Kallos handed out meals to neighborhood seniors on Thursday.

Kallos and workers with Wildcat Services — which partnered with the councilmember for 2018 on a street cleaning pilot program — distributed 200 meals at the Stanley M. Isaacs Neighborhood Center. The center, located on the campus of the New York City Housing Authority's Stanley Isaacs Houses on First Avenue and East 93rd Street, had previously expressed a need for healthy volunteers to deliver meals to its seniors forced to stay inside during the coronavirus pandemic.

"In this moment of extraordinary crisis, and in alignment with all appropriate health and safety guidelines, we are proud to maintain critical operations to provide meals to isolated, homebound, and medically fragile older adults," Isaacs Center President and Executive Director Gregory J. Morris said in a statement.

Wildcat Services agreed to divert some of its workers from street cleaning to meal deliver after being approached by Kallos, who noted that a reduction in foot traffic due to social distancing measures reduced the need for street cleaning. Wildcat workers went door-to-door at the Stanley Isaacs Houses to drop meals at seniors' homes. Seniors, who are especially vulnerable to severe cases of the coronavirus, are being urged to avoid meal pickup locations due to the risk of infection.

In March, the Isaacs Center suspended all of its services except for meal delivery and case management to reduce the potential for exposure for the seniors who rely on the center. Before the coronavirus outbreak, the center served as a place for neighborhood seniors and children to socialize.

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Wildcat Services employs New Yorkers experiencing homeless, chronically underemployment and other hardships in an effort to provide people with the means to economic well being, according to the organization.

"Our neighborhood facilities that feed our seniors and house NYCHA residents needed help with getting meals to the community," Kallos said in a statement. "I knew I could not do it all myself so I called in reinforcements. My friends over at Wildcat pounced at the chance to help, today is a win for everybody involved."

NEW YORK—In response to the COVID-19 crisis, Mayor Bill de Blasio and Speaker Corey Johnson today announced the first group of streets that would be opened to pedestrians and cyclists every day starting next week, when spring temperatures are forecasted to arrive. The streets, spanning over seven miles and reaching all five boroughs, are part of the Open Streets initiative designed to provide greater social distancing among New Yorkers.

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"As the weather gets warmer, we need to make sure New Yorkers can go outside safely. East End Avenue is a perfect street to open exclusively to pedestrians. Making East End from 83rd to 89th Street one continuous pedestrian plaza will expand our open space to make it much easier for New Yorkers to get fresh air without risking infection. Once the street is open to pedestrians, this will relieve the pressure off our local parks and give everyone the space they need to the practice social distancing outdoors correctly," said Council Member Ben Kallos.

Connecting to Health Care Providers

In making that possible, Mason has been working with Council Member Ben Kallos to identify ways to distribute the test throughout the city. Kallos said he’s been connecting Mason to health care service providers throughout the New York, including City Med.

“They have something like 200 locations all over the city of New York as well as the metropolitan area,” said Kallos. “So we were working with them on having a situation where City Med could be a place to go and get rapid testing while [patients] waited, and that we could take one of the exam rooms and turn it into a lab processing room where we could be testing several hundred people an hour.”

Kallos said he’s been disappointed by how much time the United States lost by not having testing ready by the time the outbreak was declared a pandemic.

“I think the key thing here is when the President was saying we don't need testing, when my colleagues in this government were saying we don't need testing, I knew that the only way we were gonna get out of this crisis is with access to testing to everyone,” said Kallos, who is running to replace the term-limited Gale Brewer as Manhattan Borough President in 2021. Notably, Kallos’ opponent in the race, fellow Council Member Mark Levine, who chairs the health committee, had been calling on New Yorkers who were not extremely ill to stay home and not get tested for the virus to avoid overwhelming the city’s health care resources. “But that being said, we have the brightest minds on the planet here in my district, and in the city, and I'm certain that between Dr. Mason and others in our city and in our country that will be able to shore up the kind of testing that you need to get back to work and back to normal as soon as possible.”

The total cost: $269,187,271, the DOE said. The department will seek federal reimbursement, it added.

At least one lawmaker, City Councilman Ben Kallos, said the DOE “got a bad deal,” because laptops are not only much cheaper than iPads but better for schoolwork.

Enlarge Image“This is such a waste of money,” he told the Post.

DOE spokeswoman Miranda Barbot called it a “cost effective long-term investment in our kids that will be used as an educational tool long after the COVID crisis passes.”

The iPads are being “loaned” to kids, not given for free. A tracking device is installed in case kids do not return them.

Barbot said the DOE chose iPads because Apple could commit to producing devices on a large scale in a short time frame and give students connectivity without WiFi.

On Apr. 22, the City Council conducted the first virtual hearing in its 52-year history. The meeting saw the introduction of several new COVID-19 relief bills, courtesy of Laurie Cumbo, Council Speaker Corey Johnson (D-Chelsea, Hell’s Kitchen), and Council Members Carlina Rivera (D-East Village, Gramercy Park), Stephen Levin (D-Brooklyn), Brad Lander (D-Brooklyn), Adrienne Adams (D-Queens), Ritchie Torres (D-Bronx) and Ben Kallos (D-Yorkville, Lenox Hill), among others.

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The four bills in this category were as follows:

• Int. 1918, sponsored by Speaker Johnson and Majority Leader Cumbo, would require large employers to pay premiums to non-salaried essential workers, until New York lifts its state of emergency.
• Int. 1923, sponsored by Councilmembers Kallos, Johnson and Lander, would ban all employers from firing essential workers without just cause.
• Int. 1926, sponsored by Councilmember Lander, would expand the Earned Safe and Sick Time Act to include freelancers and gig economy workers.
• Res. 1285, sponsored by Councilmembers Lander and Kallos, would prevent businesses from misclassifying their employees as independent contractors to avoid paying benefits.

“As we continue to thank and praise all these workers, including cheering for them nightly, we must protect them from facing retaliation for speaking out against unsafe conditions and demanding protective equipment,” said Kallos, explaining the rationale behind Int. 1923.

MANHATTAN — After responding to the city’s COVID-19 crisis for weeks, members of the City Council are back together thanks to technology.

On Wednesday, the council held its first virtual stated meeting.

“It was a little unreal. I never thought we'd actually be doing it,” Manhattan Councilman Ben Kallos told PIX11 News.

“We have an essential workers’ bill of rights that I'm hoping we can get passed in the next two weeks in time to have a real impact during this pandemic,” Kallos said.

The bill of rights proposes paid sick leave for independent contractors and businesses with more than 100 essential employees would have to provide hazard pay ranging from $30 to $75 per shift.

“We have legislation that would put protections in place for those essential workers, so that they speak out and say, 'I need protective equipment,' they can't get fired for that,” Kallos explained.

At Mount Sinai, nurses blew the whistle on PPE shortages by posting pictures of themselves in garbage bags. Afterwards, along with protective gowns, they received warning notices about their jobs as well.

Health-care workers are already risking their health to save lives. They should not also have to risk their jobs when they tell the truth.

Together with my colleagues Mark Levine, Carlina Rivera, Ben Kallos and Adrienne Adams in the City Council, and a wide coalition of health-care unions and worker advocates, we are proposing legislation to protect health-care workers from being fired for speaking out.

At a time when the very lives of our hospital and health-care workers are on the line, it is unconscionable that they would be fired for ringing the alarm bell about health and safety issues. Our bill would prevent doctors and nurses from losing their jobs if they speak publicly about conditions in their hospitals.

 New York City council member Ben Kallos and Houston city council member Amy Peck join ‘America’s News HQ.