John Sanchez said there’s a role for everyone to play in changing society. One of six remaining candidates aiming to replace newly elected Congressman, Ritchie Torres, in the 15^th District City Council race, Sanchez is focused on reducing unemployment, expanding affordable housing, and investing in municipal broadband services as one way to address education inequality in the Bronx.

 

Ever the optimist, he said campaigning in a borough with a large non-voting population is not disheartening. “Even if people can’t vote, they know people in their neighborhood that can vote, and even if people are unable to vote, they’re still able to support our campaign by making phone calls, sending emails, sending texts,” he said. “As a council member, I plan to involve everyone in our office, regardless of their ability to vote.”

 

Leading a campaign powered largely by women, Sanchez sees his role as district manager of Bronx Community Board 6 as a natural springboard into City Council politics, saying council members do very much the same thing as district managers, except they have a bigger budget, and they get to initiate and pass legislation.

 

“A major part of my platform is to invest in workforce development, specifically, doubling the funding that goes towards the Workforce 1 Centers,” he said. Because the pandemic has disproportionately affected the retail and service sectors, which impact the Bronx economy more than in other boroughs where employees can work remotely, we asked Sanchez about the importance of job diversification.

 

In response, he said he advocates for investment in nonprofits that already train Bronx residents how to get high-paying jobs that can be performed remotely. “There are nonprofits such as Per Scholas Inc., The Knowledge House and Pursuit which train Bronx residents in web development, computer science, without a college degree,” he said.

 

With the discretionary dollars the City Council has at its disposal, Sanchez said investment in such training would mean Bronx residents could earn $80,000 to $100,000 annually. He said it’s also possible to draw both public and private sector jobs to the Bronx.

 

“What’s great about the district is we have some major anchor institutions that can be attractive to the private sector,” Sanchez said, referring to Fordham University, The Bronx Zoo, and The Botanical Garden. He also wants to expand the city-owned Bathgate Industrial Park to attract more public and private sector investment, along with the Old Fordham Library and Tremont Park.

 

“We have the Old Fordham Library, [located at 2556 Bainbridge Avenue], which hasn’t been used in nearly a decade, and we also have Tremont Park, which is the old site of Borough Hall, torn down in the ‘70s with a stairway to an empty patch of grass,” he said. “I’m proposing to develop both of those sites as job and workforce development centers.” He said this was something the community wanted for a long time. “It needs to be done. 50 years is too long, and we need to restore the glory of that old past,” he said.

 

We asked Sanchez why, in his opinion, these sites were never identified or developed under the federal Opportunity Zones tax program, given the program’s objective was to re-develop underserved areas in exchange for attractive tax breaks. “I think it depends,” he said. “I think there’s valid criticisms that the Opportunity Zones haven’t created opportunity for people that need it the most, but because the two properties I mentioned are city owned, there’s more leverage for the City in determining what happens with those sites.”

 

Sanchez said focusing on city owned properties wields more power when partnering with private sector developers, in contrast with wholly private developments, where the City has less influence on what happens at a specific site. Though not in the 15^th District, this raised the question as to why it has taken the city owned Kingsbridge Armory project so long to come to fruition. “It’s a valid point,” he said. “It speaks to a larger point on how come it costs so much money to redevelop a site that the city owns.”

 

Sanchez acknowledges the cost to renovate certain spaces is too high, and said the point should be a major [reform] platform for the next city council, across the board. “We’re dealing with limited dollars,” he said. “We need to have procurement reform. We need to change the cost of construction projects in the city and make them more affordable so we can get more done with less money, because if the costs keep ballooning, then we’ll never be able to have any improvements in our parks, our libraries, or our streets. City Council can change that.”

 

He said there’s also a need to expand the availability of affordable housing. “We need to expand the basement apartment program, so we can construct new housing at a lower cost, but also allow homeowners to have extra income.” The aim of the program was to investigate if basement apartments could legally and safely be converted to sanctioned affordable housing units, but cuts to the City budget has caused the program to be suspended.

 

For his part, Sanchez decried the shortage of housing in the city. “We have wealthy areas in this city, such as Riverdale and Soho, which have outdated rules which prevent affordable housing being built there,” he said, adding that this has caused most re-zonings to occur in low-income neighborhoods.

 

“Because we have limited funds right now in this budget, we need these wealthy areas to do their fair share and build affordable housing in those areas, so we have more subsidy dollars to build housing in the Bronx,” he said. “We cannot have gated communities in New York City,” he continued. “This is the biggest city in America, and we need to invite people to live here. There’s no area in this city which should not have affordable housing.”

 

Sanchez said if housing is not expanded, it will simply cause further gentrification and displacement, with higher-income earners battling with lower-income neighbors over the scarce housing that does currently exist in the borough.

 

When it comes to the cost of building such affordable housing, Sanchez said the HPD budget was cut by about a billion dollars leaving less money for affordable housing, but said by building in wealthy areas of the city, market rates would help subsidize the affordable units. “So, you don’t require as much City subsidy, and because of that, the City subsidy that’s freed up can be used in the Bronx,” he said.

 

Meanwhile, on the topic of education, Sanchez wants municipal broadband to be regarded as a public utility, like gas and electricity. “We need to have the City invest in municipal broadband so every family in the city can have internet, not only for schooling, but for their job,” he said.

 

Indeed, in advance of the first ever online census, a September 2019 report produced by the city comptroller, Scott Stringer,  indicated that about 29 percent of the City’s residents did not have reliable access to the internet. Later, when the pandemic hit, there was a rush to provide tablets to students, but as Sanchez notes, those tablets are not much use in areas where there is poor internet connectivity.

 

In terms of where he sees himself on the left-right political spectrum, Sanchez said he doesn’t like titles because people interpret them in different ways. Instead, he defines himself as a public servant who is willing to work with all stakeholders.

 

“I want to make this a neighborhood where people that graduate from college want to return back to the neighborhood, and stay and raise their family, rather than leave and move elsewhere. I want people to stay here. I want people to move here. I want people to enjoy living in the 15^th City Council District.”