Mental Health

 

What Micah’s Done

As New York State’s Director of Policy, Micah helped craft a plan to invest $1 billion in mental health services, reversing decades of State disinvestment. This included 1,000 new or recovered inpatient beds, thousands of units of supportive housing, and a significant expansion of outpatient services. He also worked to fund a dramatic expansion of school-based mental health services and advance legislation to stop some of the most pernicious practices of social media platforms that take a toll on the mental health of our young people.

 

What Micah Will Do

Micah will continue fighting for increased investment in mental health services, including more inpatient beds, supportive housing, and outpatient services. He’ll also work to make sure individuals don’t fall through the cracks of the system, and to enact new laws and regulations that hold hospitals and insurance companies accountable for admission and discharge decisions that put patients first. He’ll work to see through the expansion of school-based mental health services and the enactment of legislation to curb social media companies’ use of addictive, algorithm-driven feeds.

 

Affordable Housing

 

What Micah’s Done

As Director of State Legislative Affairs for the City of New York, Micah helped pass legislation to crack down on illegal hotels that were taking thousands of affordable apartments offline. As Chief of Staff in the Office of the New York State Attorney General, Micah helped establish a City/State Tenant Harassment Prevention Task Force, and forced 128 landlords to return 1,800 apartments to the rent stabilization program after they had been fraudulently removed. He also helped draft legislation to make it possible to criminally charge landlords with harassment of rent regulated tenants. And as New York State’s Director of Policy, Micah helped enact the State’s $4.5 billion affordable housing capital program — its most ambitious in history — and helped develop a plan that The New York Times called the “first serious attempt by a New York governor since the 1960s” to tackle racist, exclusionary zoning and build hundreds of thousands of units of housing.

 

What Micah Will Do

Micah will work to enact a comprehensive approach to our affordable housing crisis and respond to the need for nearly one million new units of housing in the State, including: legislation to spur the creation of new housing, with a focus on creating supply in areas where little housing has been permitted for decades, and around transit hubs, as well as the conversion of underused commercial office buildings into housing; additional investment in the State’s affordable housing capital program, targeted at below-market housing in high-income communities, as well as home-ownership programs; expanded support to help the New York City Housing Authority address its capital improvements crisis and meet its operating needs; eviction protections for tenants to ensure they aren’t crushed by unscrupulous landlords; and the creation of a State rental voucher program to help people who are homeless or on the precipice of homelessness find and remain in stable housing.

 

Public Education

 

What Micah’s Done

As Director of State Legislative Affairs for the City of New York, Micah helped fight for New York City’s fair share of education funding. A decade later, as New York State’s Director of Policy, he helped enact the first budget to fulfill the State’s promise under the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit and fully fund educational foundation aid. He also worked in the Attorney General’s office to make it easier for the children of undocumented immigrants to enroll in school, and at the New York City Department of Education to help create two new schools on the West Side: Frank McCourt High School and P.S. 452. Micah also helped make tuition assistance available to part-time students at CUNY and SUNY, supported increased investment in CUNY and SUNY faculty, and created the first-ever endowment matching fund for SUNY university centers. Most recently, he helped develop a plan to transform and improve the way reading is taught in schools statewide.

 

What Micah Will Do

As a public school parent of elementary school and middle school-aged kids, Micah knows the amazing work being done by our teachers, principals, security guards, paraprofessionals, nurses, counselors, and school staff — each and every day. In the Assembly, his top priority will be to ensure that our educators have the tools and resources they need to do that work. He’ll also work to fund more mental health professionals and guidance counselors in schools, hold the School Construction Authority’s feet to the fire on delayed construction and repair projects, support principals and teachers in improving literacy instruction, and make sure the school system reduces class sizes without compromising programs that are working well. And he’ll support and invest in our extraordinary public higher education systems, CUNY and SUNY, to help them become nation-leading institutions and enable more New Yorkers to access the opportunities they offer.