In the upcoming general election on Nov. 8, voters of Assembly District 80 will decide who best represents their interests in Albany. Running for the seat on behalf of the Democratic Party is a former A.D. 80 male district leader, John Zaccaro Jr., who served in the latter role from 2018 to 2020. If elected to the assembly, he will replace incumbent assembly member, Nathalia Fernandez, who is running as the Democratic nominee in the State Senate District 34 race.

 

Zaccaro Jr. was selected on Sept. 7 by a Bronx Democratic Party committee as the Democratic nominee for A.D. 80, which includes parts of Norwood, Mosholu Parkway, Bedford Park and extends east to include Allerton, Morris Park, Pelham Parkway, Pelham Gardens and Van Nest. As reported, the State’s assembly districts will be redrawn ahead of the 2024 primaries.

 

In an interview with Norwood News, Zaccaro Jr. spoke about his top three campaign issues for the district: quality of life, housing, and education. “[In] quality of life, you find a lot of issues: crime and public safety,” he said.  “Addressing cleanliness in the community, from sanitation and clean up services and a host of whole other issues, transportation, parks, and so many other things that fall under the umbrella of quality of life, and make up the fabric of what we want to see progress in our community.”

 

As a housing organizer, housing is another issue Zaccaro Jr. plans to address, if elected. “We’re in a massive affordability crisis right now,” he said. “We have more people than we have units available for people to live in. Those who are living in housing now can’t afford it.” We asked Zaccaro Jr. if by housing, he means rented units. We did not receive a response as of press date.

 

For those families who are dissatisfied living in rental units, Zaccaro Jr. wants them to know that he sees what holds them back from purchasing a home. “We need to do everything we can to create those opportunities, not just for affordable housing but affordable home ownership.”

 

New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), the largest public housing authority in the country, oversees 177,569 apartments across 335 housing developments. Over 339,900 residents depend on NYCHA for their housing needs. Within A.D. 80, the Parkside Housing Project and Pelham Parkway Houses are NYCHA properties. In June 2022, The New York Times described some of the dire conditions under which people were living in NYCHA housing.

 

“Walls and ceilings crumble and leak, mold grows in kitchens and bathrooms, elevators cease to function, the heat goes out in the dead of winter,” The Times reported. The publication also reported that in more than 40 percent of NYCHA apartments, “residents reported three or more maintenance problems.”

 

Longstanding problems in public housing made State legislators pass the Public Housing Preservation Trust bill in June which was strongly supported by New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Under the law, going forward, NYCHA will draw hundreds of millions of new federal dollars per year by utilizing federal tenant protection vouchers, which receive a higher per-unit subsidy than traditional Section 9 public housing vouchers. This additional subsidy will be used by the trust to float bonds to raise funds which NYCHA can then use to upgrade 25,000 NYCHA apartments with necessary capital improvements, as part of a pilot program.

 

It is this kind of partnership between State and City officials that Zaccaro Jr. hopes to expand on to help NYCHA residents, if elected.  As chief of staff to district 17 city council member, Rafael Salamanca Jr., Zaccaro Jr. said he has become intimately aware of how intertwined some of the housing and homelessness issues are between the City and State. “When we’re talking about housing, we’re not just talking about affordable housing, but we’re talking about addressing homelessness and addressing issues affecting NYCHA,” he said.

 

“I had the pleasure of helping work on Intro 1211 in the City Council that mandated developers receiving city subsidies to set aside 15 percent of those total unit counts for homeless families ready for independent living,” he recalled. The nonprofit organization, Coalition for the Homeless, described the bill as a “historic vote” which “represents a major turning point in combating the city’s record homelessness crisis.”

 

Serving in Albany, Zaccaro Jr. said, would allow him to do more in finding solutions to the multiple housing problems the City faces. “On a State level, we need to find creative ways to expand on this out-of-the-box thinking by providing additional housing subsidies, while ending the practice of paying market rate rents to shelter providers for sub-par temporary housing,” he said.

 

Rounding out his third campaign priority is education. The candidate was previously appointed to serve as the Bronx director for intergovernmental affairs under former Schools chancellor, Carmen Farina. As a father of three, there’s nothing more important, I think, outside of the health and well-being of a child, than the education that our children are receiving, ensuring that they are receiving a high-quality education, that we have schools that are performing, and schools that are not overcrowded,” he said.

 

Zaccaro Jr. is a product of the north Bronx. Born at North Central Bronx Hospital in Norwood, he attended P.S. 246, located across from Poe Park in Fordham Manor, J.H.S. 143 John Peter Tetard in Kingsbridge Heights, which closed in 2007, and later DeWitt Clinton High School in Jerome Park.

 

He is open about his struggles as a teenage student. “I struggled through high school and ended up in a transitional high school which is CUNY Prep, which is right here in the district on White Plains Road,” he remembers. He said he also had to assume household responsibilities from an early age. “Being the only man in the house, raised by a single mother, it was my obligation from the age of 12 to work and to provide, and be of assistance,” he said.

 

From humble beginnings, continued close ties to his community and now, with more than 14 years of experience working for City government, Zaccaro Jr. believes he has what it takes to move on to State-level lawmaking. Asked to describe A.D. 80, he was effusive in his praise of its diversity, citing former Mayor David Dinkins’ oft-quoted description of New York City as ‘a beautiful mosaic.’

 

The candidate added that he sees the district filled with rich culture. “Everywhere you go at every corner of the district you can find such great diversity,” he said. “You go to Little Yemen, and you see what they’ve built for themselves, and how we coexist, and the work we do together.”

 

Zaccaro Jr. is an executive board member of the Liberty Democratic Association, a member of the Pelham Parkway Neighborhood Association, and former board member of Bronx Community Board 7. The Pelham Parkway resident wants voters to know that his lived experience has prepared him for what he hopes will be an opportunity to serve his community in a greater capacity. Whether it is quality-of-life issues, housing problems, or finding solutions for a better education, he is asking voters to give him a chance to work it out for them from Albany.

 

“These are the issues that are important to me, the issues that I’m hearing about from my neighbors that are important to them,” he said. “These are the issues that I feel I also have the experience to address and look forward to doing that upon taking office.”

 

Election Day is Nov. 8. Early voting continues through Nov. 6. Check your polling site ahead of time.  

 

*Síle Moloney contributed to this story.