The first thing that strikes you about Dan Padernacht, the first candidate to jump in the race for the 11^th City Council District seat, is the speed at which he speaks – and not in a nervous way. Padernacht leaves you with the impression that if he could have squeezed additional information into each answer, he would have done so. Is he prepared? It would seem so, and that is precisely the platform on which he is running.

 

Asked what differentiates him from his peers, the lifelong Bronxite cites his experience. “I was an economics major, so that was my background in college,” he said. “As an attorney, I’ve got a good amount of experience in the sense of dealing with just [real estate] transactional and then, I do a good amount of pro bono in housing court as well.”

 

Padernacht said it is this combination of housing and real estate experience, plus his decade of service on Bronx Community Board 8, in different capacities, that gives him an edge. He seems well placed to weigh in on the ongoing debate around rent deferral.

 

“So, what I think is happening right now, and what I think should happen is that the State and the City really need to bolster HRA (Human Resources Administration) in the City of New York,” he said. “Make sure that they have the financing that they need to subsidize the families that need help with their rent.”

 

He said that when New Yorkers fall behind on their rent, they usually have to apply for assistance to HRA, and that with the new Universal Access Program, attorneys are helping most tenants with these applications, and have their own connections and liaisons within HRA.

 

New York City’s Universal Access to Legal Services initiative is a program to provide all tenants facing eviction in New York City’s Housing Court with access to free legal services. Universal Access implements the City’s “tenant’s right to counsel” law. New York City is the first city in the country to ensure that anyone facing eviction in court will have access to legal help.

 

Padernacht said the agency assesses the individual and family applications for assistance by examining their income, rent, need, and ability to pay in order to form a bigger picture. They then make a determination based on affordability, and on what the family most needs.

 

The problem Padernacht sees with the process is that there appears to be no targeted approach, and each applicant is painted with the same broad brushstroke. Padernacht said this results in needy folks feeling scared because they know they don’t have the money or the resources to sustain themselves, and yet the outcome of their applications is uncertain.

 

“I always say in a lot of these circumstances, you need a scalpel, and not a brush,” he said. “I think what’s happening is that they’re not being given that reaffirmation from the City and the State that they’re going to be there to back them up, and then you have another range of folks who can afford to pay their rent, and can afford to go on, but they’re not,” he said. There are, of course, many people who would beg to differ with Padernacht’s assertion, especially given the current economic climate.

 

“They’re kind of in that brush supporting this movement that everything should be canceled. You don’t have a sharp tool going out there to find those people and assess their situations, and not only help them with rent arrears, but with food delivery, with other services that they need,” he added.

 

“That’s a whole other bigger issue but right now, we need to go and find those families who are vulnerable, and figure out not just rent assistance, but what else they need.”

 

Padernacht added that, from an economic perspective, it makes sense to do the same thing. “If you were just to do this wide-sweeping, “cancel rent” for this [pandemic] period, what you’re essentially doing is creating another vulnerable population of small owners – folks who own one to four family houses who can’t support themselves,” he said.

 

He acknowledged there were calls to cancel mortgages as well but said that this creates another problem – pressure on regional banks, whether they can afford to take that hit, and what that means for future investment within the community.

 

“Now, you’re sucking money out of the economy, and any economist will tell you, if you want to grow an economy, you need to spend money,” he said. “You need to put money in the pockets of people who are going to spend it, and that’s how you generate demand within an economy for further services, and with more services and sales, you’re generating jobs, and it’s growing, growing, growing.”

 

Padernacht said the alternative approach creates a vacuum, sucking up the essential fuel that is needed to grow an economy. “So, my take is, you bolster the agency, you make sure you have the financial assistance for those who really need it, and you put the money into the pockets of especially the smaller owners who are going to need that help as well.”

 

He said what was not needed was housing stock going down, which would affect a lot of homeowners. “Most folks, the average individual, their retirement savings is generally the equity they have in their homes, when they spend 20-30 years paying down a mortgage,” he said. “At the end, they have that money for retirement and when you start playing with the economy, and you start playing with the housing market and the [market] values, you start hurting that population, and you start dipping into folks who have been saving their entire lives.”

 

Given the known reticence by undocumented New Yorkers to share personal information with government officials, and their fears of completing the census or participating in contact tracing efforts, Norwood News asked Padernacht if he thought the same undocumented residents were also potentially afraid to contact HRA for assistance.

 

“Yeah, you don’t need many of those documents when you’re making your application to HRA,” he said. “I mean, it’s been going on for many, many years now where you can get assistance without having to come forward with that. I don’t believe that’s a concern, and I don’t think the City of New York has made that a priority to exclude folks who don’t have such documents.”

 

In light of Padernacht’s experience in the real estate world, we move on to the topic of Opportunity Zones and his views on why it would appear certain developers received tax breaks under this federal program, without ever investing in the economically distressed areas that were identified under the program.

 

“Criticism is properly placed for the execution of the program and its lack of oversight,” he said. “The biggest problem was the selection of zones. Like other tax incentives, this program is a tool to bring capital to areas that need economic stimulus. Of the 514 zones [identified], more than 300 tracts were in New York City, ten were in Long Island, and 12 were in Westchester. Anyone looking at the market in 2018 could tell you this program was not necessary in these downstate areas.”

 

He said the zones should have been targeted at Upstate and Western New York in places where investment was barren, and jobs were low. “As a tool, Opportunity Zones could be used to pool capital from a group of local residents to rehabilitate housing stock in their communities,” he said. “They could also generate larger projects creating construction jobs and supporting mom-and-pop shops. In both scenarios, local reputable non-profits could provide useful information and even manage projects.”

 

Padernacht added that he did not know what local input was sought out when the Opportunity Zones were originally identified and recommended. “There should be a targeted approach to re-task the program to areas in the State where this program could be beneficial,” he said.

 

In terms of his background, Padernacht grew up in the Shalom Aleichem Houses on Sedgwick Avenue along the Jerome Park Reservoir. “It was built for socialists,” he said. “And it was supposed to be a cooperative, but it failed, like, right away in the Depression, so it went into private ownership and it stayed in private ownership.” He said the building now houses rent-stabilized apartments. “My grandfather was the Super here, became the Super in 1949, and my father grew up here,” he said. “We grew up here.”

 

He said he attended PS 95, Fordham Prep, and later Fairfield University. “I worked for a while, and then I went to law school when I was 28,” he said. He later started his own law practice.

 

In terms of campaign fundraising, Padernacht has accumulated the third highest total contributions according to the City Campaign Finance Board, after Eric Dinowitz and Jessica Haller. However, it’s votes that count at the end of the day, and Padernacht’s campaign recently received a boost with the endorsement of the Northwest Bronx Democrats following a recently conducted poll, in addition to a previous endorsement from his former running mate in the 11^th District Council race, Dionel Then, who dropped out of the race in August.

 

Having correctly anticipated, as early as 2018, Councilman Andy Cohen’s eventual judgeship nomination, Padernacht has patiently bided his time in terms of his higher political ambitions. He has continued to serve on Community Board 8, and dropped out of a prior political race for the sake of the Democratic Party.

 

“In 2010, I ran for State Senate against somebody named Pedro Espada,” he said. Both Espada and the incumbent, Efrain González Jr., had legal troubles at the time and were controversial figures. When Espada announced he was courting the support of the Republican Party in Albany, Padernacht decided to run against him, as did now Sen. Gustavo Rivera.

 

“The Democratic Party wanted me to step back, so that way Gustavo had a one on one,” he said. “Ultimately, that’s what I decided to do for the good of the party. I just backed Gustavo, Gustavo became the state senator, Pedro [was] out, and then I continued on the community board, and I became the chair in 2014.”

 

When Padernacht later stepped down as board chair, he didn’t run for any position as he said he wanted to just take the year to be a regular member but then, a friend who had been the new traffic & transportation chair fell ill the following year. “I kind of stepped up and took on the traffic committee,” he said. “I don’t think anybody else wanted to do it at that point.”

 

Padernacht said when he stepped back from the senate seat in 2010, he thinks most people saw that he will always do what’s good for the general public. “I’m going to put other people’s needs in front of mine,” he said.

 

“Any issue that’s put in front of me, I’m going to problem-solve, and I’m going to give real solutions. I’m not going to give sound bites. I’m not going to give what people want to hear. I’m actually going to give the real, hard facts of any situation, look at it from every end, and say, ‘Look, these are possible solutions, and these are the consequences of taking those actions,’ and go from there.”

 

*This article is based on an interview conducted on July 29.