Earlier this week, Governor Cuomo announced the extension of the eviction moratorium until August 20th.
The original passage stipulated that tenants could not be evicted from their homes during this time because the government essentially shut down all eviction proceedings from occurring in the housing court. The court is physically closed.
“American society prizes housing for profit rather than housing as a fundamental human right.”
Dannelly Rodriguez, Activist
In reality, the current moratorium is set to protect renters until June 20th, but due to a set of loopholes in the memorandum, renters can still be SUED and taken to court for lack of payment during said extension. One of the said loopholes? Tenants must be able to prove that they were financially impacted by COVID-19.
While this may be possible for many traditionally employed New Yorkers, many undocumented, day laborers, and gig workers and more will find that harder to prove. Recently, there have even been reports of landlords attempting to barter sex from tenants in return for rent payment.
In the meantime, grassroots organizations like Right To Counsel NYC are calling for Cuomo to #cancelrent in totality. A moratorium has been a bandaid solution for the millions of renters across NYC because, well, rent is still accruing. With an unforeseen future of what’s to come, or when the next paycheck will come – paying back months of unpaid rent could financially collapse families once the ban is lifted.
Renter’s strikes are nothing new to NYC, but now with the courts opening soon and cases being reopened- who’s to say what will become of NYC?
A conversation with Jiyoon Han, Chief Daughter of NYC’s Bean & Bean Coffee Roasters
By Madeline Clough in collaboration with Jiyoon Han
Bean & Bean Coffee Roasters has been a New York City staple since opening its doors in 2008. As of now, Bean & Bean offers three NYC locations along with their Fort Lee shop in New Jersey. They set themselves apart by providing ethically-sourced specialty coffee cupped and curated by a family team. Not to mention the extensive seating (and wifi) they offer New Yorkers used to bumping elbows at Starbucks.
Rachel and Richard Han, the co-owners of Bean & Bean, worked in the food and beverage industry for years in South Korea before moving to Queens. The couple brought the first Wendy’s franchise (yes, the well known red-headed burger and frosty restaurant we all know and love) to Korea, then went on to create their own fast food joints.
Jiyoon Han, Chief Daughter of Bean & Bean, helped her parents open and run the first location on Wall Street. She led landlord negotiations, worked as a barista, and helped get the word out about the shop.
On top of opening an e-commerce site for their customers to continue to purchase their coffee, Bean & Bean is partnering with #NYLOVESCOFFEE to deliver coffee to NYC’s essential workers. On their site, customers can Send a Cup, for $2.50 per cup, directly to hospitals and other essential workers.
Customers, artists or those with an extensive coloring pencil collection can also participate in Bean & Bean’s Draw a Cup, where they can share drawings of coffee cup designs featuring the shop’s logo. Participants get the chance to be featured on both #NYLOVESCOFFEE and Bean & Bean’s Instagram pages, receive free merch, and promote their art through the love of coffee!
I sat down with Han (for a phone call, of course) to ask her a few questions about Bean & Bean and how they’re staying afloat and supporting the community during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Since launch, SEND A CUP has served over 1500+ frontline workers
How long have you been working for Bean & Bean?
Since forever! When the first location opened, I was a senior in high school. I remember working there as a barista after school and bringing extra pastries to my English class for friends and teachers. I remember us giving out free coupons for coffee on the street. It was really important to raise visibility given that our store is hidden inside a landmark building. I started to learn the different characteristics of different types of beans, and how to talk about coffee. I remember really starting to understand what customer service means. I think coffee shops are one of the best places to understand that.
We’re passionate about coffee, and we have always been in the business of delivering joy through coffee. I think the reason why we were able to grow, despite how saturated the coffee scene is in NYC, is our commitment to delivering freshness and quality. When we first opened in 2008, we were one of the only places roasting coffee on-site in Manhattan. Now, we roast our beans at our roastery (and shop) in Queens I love it when customers peep in when we’re roasting. They enjoy watching the process. Now that I’m back home while completing my semester online, I’m busy roasting coffee. Any coffee you’re ordering from us online, I’ll be roasting.
How do you decide which farms to work with? I saw you and your mother took a trip to a bunch of coffee farms recently.
Mother / Daughter Owners of Bean and Bean Coffee on a trip to visit some coffee farms
In January, my mom and I went to Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Colombia for about three weeks to visit 25 farms. We’ve been focusing more on working with female producers – a lot of times, they’re underrepresented when it comes to getting their coffee out on the market. Coffee is a way for them to make a living and become economically self-sufficient. We’re partners with a feminist coffee organization in Costa Rica called Bean Voyage. We are waiting to receive women-powered Costa Rican coffees.
It makes me sad because COVID-19 is affecting everyone along the value chain – a lot of these coffees are being held with the farmers not being able to send them off or mill them. My focus right now, with COVID-19 going on, is helping those producers by moving the coffee. This is why I quickly put up an online site for customers to buy our beans online.
What is the most NYC story that has happened at Bean & Bean recently?
I’ve been sending out newsletters to our customers since the pandemic, and I received such cool emails. I got one email from a filmmaker who said our story resonated with her and that she wanted to help tell our story by making a short clip. I think these amazing emails can only come from customers in NYC that are so interesting and diverse.
We’ve had to close down three shops indefinitely. Our baristas are without a job.
As part of Send A Cup we’ve also collectively started the NYC Barista Relief Fund. If you buy coffee kits, a portion will go directly towards the Barista Relief Fund.
How can NYC support you now?
We all need to support local businesses and entrepreneurs who are severely affected by the virus so they can stand back up post-pandemic. If you need coffee at home, buy our coffee beans online. Follow us on IG, give us some love on Google reviews.
Send a cup of coffee to an essential worker! Support your local barista!
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Earlier this week, Mayor DeBlasio announced the suspension of Electronics recycling and organic waste collection till June 30, 2020, as part of the $1.3 billion budget cuts (which also included cuts on NYC public beaches and summer programs). As the city’s lift on lockdown seems to only move further and further into the future, the concern over essential workers comes to the bay.
Since April, over 500 DSNY employees have been confirmed to have the Coronavirus, with many reporting a lack of masks, gloves, or any type of guidance of protection from higher-ups. Since reporting, 4 of them have passed away. In March, all 3 of Staten Island’s sanitation garages were shut down to be sanitized after the staff was confirmed sick. It’s a drastic difference from February of this year, when we wrote this article on the PLASTIC BAG BAN and how it was one step closer to getting New York City towards greener pastures.
Before the ban could fully go in place, we were hit by the Pandemic which promptly put an end to that. Like a Mentos being dropped into a Pepsi bottle, the usage of single-use plastic has skyrocketed into a blindingly, abrasive, sticky mess. You can thank the surge of toilet paper, sanitizer, and good ol’ Amazon deliveries for that.
After all – it’s not like doctors can reuse face shields and masks (oh wait, they are..oh America.) Regardless, the actual moneymaking behind recycling is dropping. With oil prices going down, it’s cheaper to MAKE plastic from scratch, than it is to recycle the former. If there’s no money to made, then there are no changes to be made. We learned this the hard way during this pandemic.
What might really come as a bigger shock is that America actually used to sell millions of plastic tons of waste to China, which was then converted into new products. In fact, China bought up over 70% of the world’s plastic waste up until last March, when the government decided to ban imports of trash after multiple reports of illegal dumping of trash across the country.
In a report by NPR last year, Martin Bourque, who ran one of the oldest recycling operations in the U.S hid a GPS tracking device in one of his trash piles that traveled from Berkley, California all the way to a village in China, only to find:
“dumping in the local canyon of materials they couldn’t recycle, plastic in the farmland incorporated into the soil of the cornfields nearby,”
You mean there’s corruption in the sanitation business? That doesn’t sound crazy at all.
While Tony Soprano is a character, the mafia has had a wild history with the sanitation industry
As Pandemic fears grow day by day, suddenly the idea of tossing a bag to avoid getting sick doesn’t sound so bad, but for the millions of pounds of PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) that hospitals and frontline workers use, there won’t be ANY recycling. That’s medical waste, and since the virus can live for multiple days on surfaces, people are freaking TF out. In cities all across the country, sanitation workers are striking, calling for more PPE and downright getting sick.
Most medical waste gets incinerated or goes straight to the trash (which, btw shameless plug – check out our article on how NYC was once a raging dumpster fire in the 1960s due to the hundreds of incinerators).
If the plastic glove littered streets of NYC are any sign of what’s to come, it seems the world of single-use plastic is here to stay. At the moment, recycling is still considered essential, though several residents have complained of recycling not being picked up in their apartment buildings, or worse, simply being thrown in the trash.
Do us a favor and try to avoid buying so much single-use plastic at home, hook up your neighborhood DSNY worker with some gloves, masks, and maybe a Venmo.
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#TODAYINHISTORY May 1st aka Moving Day in NYC. Ever since the colonial times, May 1st was one of the wildest days in NYC. If you thought moving was annoying, imagine if EVERYONE moved on the same day, every year. All leases in the city used to expire at 9AM on May 1st at the same time.
And You Thought Moving was rough in NYC? It’s estimated that over a million people in the city all changed their residences at the same time. It wasn’t until the start of World War II that Moving Day ended, as the moving industry lost their strapping young men overseas.
Not to be confused with “Mayday!” The term “Mayday” was created by Frederick Mockford, a radio officer at Croydon Airport in London as an international distress call in 1948 after the French word m’aider, which means “help me.
