How New Yorkers Can Help Haiti After the Earthquake

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It’s Wednesday.

Weather: A chance of showers today with a high in the low 80s, turning to heavy rain this evening.

Alternate-side parking: In effect until Sept. 6 (Labor Day).

Credit…Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

After Haiti was rocked by an earthquake over the weekend that killed nearly 2,000 people and then was pelted by a devastating tropical storm on Tuesday, New Yorkers began finding ways to send help.

The 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck western Haiti about 80 miles west of Port-au-Prince, the capital. It was stronger than the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that devastated the country in 2010. Doctors in Haiti have been stretched thin, while churches, the main source of aid for many Haitians, have also been destroyed.

“We must provide sustained support,” Jumaane Williams, the New York City public advocate, said in a statement. “In the past, people and nations have rushed to Haiti’s aid in the immediate moment of crisis, when the headlines are fresh and the cameras are present, only to abandon them in the aftermath and invite future crises.”

“We need to listen to the people on the ground,” he said, “and direct our support and resources so that it actually gets to them.”

[Read more about what’s happening in Haiti.]

New York City’s relief efforts

The mayor’s office directed New Yorkers to donate to the following relief organizations: Ayiti Community Trust, Capracare Haiti, Hope for Haiti and Partners in Health. Police Department precincts across the city are also taking supply donations.

The office of Councilwoman Farah Louis of Flatbush is hosting grieving and counseling sessions every day until Aug. 23 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Haitian American Caucus training center at 495 Flatbush Ave. and the Evangelical Crusade Christian Church at 557 East 31st Street.

Donovan Richards Jr., the Queens borough president, will host a donation drive through Sept. 22 at Queens Borough Hall. Donations of supplies such as bottled water, nonperishable food and feminine hygiene products can be dropped off in a box in the lobby, open 24 hours a day, next to the security desk.

More ways to help

Donating to organizations working on the ground is recommended, rather than larger, more removed organizations such as the American Red Cross, which has been criticized for spending a high percentage of donations for Haiti’s 2010 earthquake relief on its own administrative costs and fund-raising.

A spokesman for Representative Yvette Clarke of Brooklyn, co-chair of the House Haiti Caucus, recommended donating supplies or volunteering with organizations vetted by the U.S. Agency for International Development, or to sites coordinated through Ms. Clarke’s office at the following Brooklyn locations: 231 Crown St., hosted by Medgar Evers College students; the first floor of 3021 Tilden Ave.; 2002 Mermaid Ave; and Assemblywoman Diana Richardson’s office at 330 Empire Blvd.

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Want more news? Check out our full coverage.

The Mini Crossword: Here is today’s puzzle.

What we’re reading

Five Queens women filed a lawsuit against a prominent Jackson Heights physician on charges that he sexually abused patients as young as 14 years old. [The City]

If Gov. Andrew Cuomo is convicted of multiple sexual misdemeanor counts in New York, he could potentially have to register as a sex offender. [Gothamist]

Menu prices in New York have skyrocketed, but it could be a good thing for the food industry. [Grub Street]

And finally: The challenges faced by New York’s Black homeowners

The Times’ Stefanos Chen writes:

Kirkland Lynch, a 35-year-old Black renter, has a six-figure job with Google, a law degree from Harvard, sterling credit and a mortgage pre-approval. But after a six-month house hunt in Brooklyn, with six unsuccessful bids, he is close to giving up, disheartened by slights that verge on discrimination.

“It doesn’t have anything to do with race,” he said. “Other than the fact it has everything to do with race.”

The pandemic has compounded the challenges of an already difficult housing market, particularly for Black home buyers, who face a range of additional obstacles, and it threatens to widen the gap between Black and white homeownership to levels not seen since housing discrimination was made illegal five decades ago.

After declining for much of the past 20 years, the national Black homeownership rate has stayed near 42 percent from 2016 to 2019, the lowest since 1970.

In New York — once a destination for Black families leaving the South, and more recently Caribbean immigrants, including Black Latinos — gentrification, limited affordable inventory, and a subprime mortgage crisis that disproportionately affected people of color, have stunted new home buying and pushed out many longtime owners.

To explore the difficulties that Black New Yorkers face, The Times interviewed more than a dozen Black homeowners across the city, from new buyers to longtime owners, in condos and co-ops, brownstones and grass-hemmed houses. They described the challenges of qualifying to buy a home, fending off predatory lenders, keeping a home amid rising costs, and dealing with aggressive cash-investors making unsolicited offers.

“It’s a reminder of the American history we sit on, the multiple obstacles this country put in front of us,” said Kenyatte Reid, 47, who works for the Department of Education and had dreamed of buying the house that his grandparents, one of the first Black families to own in the neighborhood, purchased in the 1950s.

It’s Wednesday — make a difference.

Metropolitan Diary: Traffic jam bouquets

Dear Diary:

A friend and I were driving out of the city. We were in a long line of cars waiting to enter the Lincoln Tunnel. There were a lot of cars, so we were stopping and waiting frequently.

We came up to a man who was selling bouquets of flowers out of a small cart. As we inched past him, he gave each of us one.

“Young ladies,” he said, “these flowers were sent to you by the two young gents a few cars ahead.”

Just then the line started to move. We looked ahead of us, but never saw who sent the flowers.

— Diane Delaney

Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Read more Metropolitan Diary here.

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