Brian Lehrer: Now, we continue our 2022 series, 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks, in which we're welcoming all 51 members of the New York City Council in this year when most of the members are new because of term limits, and it's majority female for the first time ever. Here, on July 6th, right around the halfway point in the year, we arrive at District 26, which if you do the math is the exact halfway point of 51 council members. There are 25 numbers before 26. There are 25 numbers after 26 to reach 51. I'm a math geek. I think about those things.

I will point out though that we were supposed to have the council member from District 25 today, Shekar Krishnan from Elmhurst, Jackson Heights, but something came up for him at the last minute that caused him to reschedule for next week. We're jumping ahead to District 26 for today, which brings us to Western Queens, covering the neighborhoods of Long Island City, Sunnyside, Astoria, and Woodside. The council member is one of those freshman women, Julie Won. In fact, she is the first woman and immigrant to represent the district like much of Queens, one of the most diverse places on earth.

According to the council member's bio page, she came to this country with her family at the age of eight, has served in civic life on the Western Queens Community Board, Community Board 2, I believe that is, was co-founder of the Queens Small Business Alliance, considers herself a tenant activist, and also worked at IBM for a decade. Council Member 1, thanks for moving up by a week on short notice to cover for your colleague, and welcome to WNYC.

Julie Won: Good morning. It's so good to be here. So good to speak to you, Brian. Thank you for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Can you tell us a little more of your own story first? Under what circumstances and from where did you come to this country at the age of eight?

Julie Won: Of course. Like many of the immigrant families that I represent because more than 50% of my district is foreign-born. I was born in South Korea. I came here in 1998 with my family, with my parents and my brother after a financial collapse that took over South Korea. We went into a great deep recession. In search of a better education opportunity and financial opportunity, my parents decided to move all of us here where my dad's older brother or my uncle was living.

Brian Lehrer: I'm just curious because I know this is true for some Korean immigrants. Did either of your parents go from a professional career there to something more working-class like going to a grocery store here or something like that in order to make the leap for the benefit of you?

Julie Won: Yes. I think my most fixated memory that I have of my childhood when I first moved to the States was walking home with my older brother. He would pick me up from elementary school. Then he would walk me down to the local library, and we would always make only one stop. We weren't allowed to talk to strangers because I was only eight years old. We weren't allowed to buy any ice cream, but I was able to stop at the nail salon that my mom was working at. We would always stop at the window. I would press my face in and wave at her, and she would be sitting at her desk usually doing somebody else's nails.

One of those days, I think just a few weeks after we arrived to the US, my mom wasn't sitting at her desk. Then I just looked up at my older brother, and I could see him tearing up and crying. Eight-year-old me, I thought that maybe my mom got kidnapped or something happened to her. She's hurt. Instinctively, I opened the store door, and I run in screaming, "Umma," which means mom. I'm frantically looking for her. Then I look back, and my mom stands up. She was sitting at a pedicure chair near the floor in the back of the store doing somebody else's toenails. She just waved at me. She smiled.

She walked over, pat my head, and she's like, "Don't worry. I'm just doing my job. Go to the library and do your homework." Then I gave her a hug, and I walked out. My brother just grabbed my hand, and we walked silently to the library the rest of the way. He didn't say anything, but I just remember him crying. Now, when I look back, it was because my mom was a professional. She was a professor at a culinary school. When she moved to the States, she became a nail salon technician. Even till this day, my mom has no shame in that. She loves her job. She still works at nail salons now. She takes pride in the fact that she makes women feel beautiful and is a friend to them, especially during lonely times like COVID.

Brian Lehrer: What a classic immigration story. It's unusual to hear about a path that goes from working for IBM for a decade to being on a local community board or an advocate for affordable housing. What did you do at IBM and how did you first get interested in politics or public service?

Julie Won: For the last decade, I've been really grateful to be part of a legacy company like IBM. For the last three years, I was in digital strategy, working for a department within IBM called IBM Garage where our motto is the speed of a start-up at the scale of an enterprise. I was partnering with start-ups who wanted to take their products or their services to a global scale and working as a consultant doing that, doing a lot of user research and user design to make sure that everything that we develop, whether it's a handheld device or it's a mobile application or a native app that it is truly with the user in mind, the person that's going to be using it, and bringing it to scale.

For me, I think the last 10 years I've been able to work everywhere within IBM because it's such a large company globally from finance to supply chain, to doing digital marketing, to doing digital strategy, and servicing different clients like the Federal Government or even Fortune 500 companies. While I was doing all of that, because of my upbringing as you heard, most of my childhood was through public services or public goods like public library, free courses, free after-school classes, free lunch in schools.

That's what kept me full. Because of my parents have always instilled in me the opportunities that this country has given me, I need to give back. I've always been a very social person. I've always wanted to know who are my neighbors, who is my community because that's also a very Korean thing: you know everyone that lives in your apartment building because those are the kids you play with.

That's just what I've done my whole life where I've made sure if I live in an apartment building and there's 300 neighbors, I will most likely try to figure out who else is living in my apartment complex immediately and how are we organizing? Is there a tenant association? That's how I found myself on the community board here locally, as well as on the board of two local nonprofits to make sure that I'm doing my best. Even though I was working in the private sector, that I'm doing my best to give back at least in my time if I don't have the money to donate, which I didn't.

Brian Lehrer: Julie Won is our guest. City Council Member representing Western Queens, Astoria, Sunnyside, Woodside, District 26, and our series 51 Council Members in 52 Weeks in which we're welcoming all 51 members of the New York City Council in this year. Most of the members are new because of term limits, and it's majority female for the first time. Talk about the district you represent. Your council website notes that it's majority immigrant. Give us a picture of who lives there and where those families come from.

Julie Won: It's truly a tale of two cities. I see my district when I imagine the map 3D. You see the Queensboro Bridge or Ed Koch Bridge, and you'll see two sides of my district because I have Long Island City, Sunnyside, Woodside, and Astoria.

Rex: [babbles]

Julie Won: Who you hear is my newest intern, my newborn baby who is three months old.

Brian Lehrer: Another baby makes their radio debut on the Brian Lehrer Show? What's your baby's name?

Julie Won: His name is Rex.

Brian Lehrer: Rex, R-E-X?

Julie Won: R-E-X. Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Wow. Hello, Rex, you're on the radio. That's the furthest I'm going to go with that. Go ahead, council member. Why Rex, by the way? People might think, "Oh, that's an aggressive name."

Julie Won: It's Latin for king, and he's also a giant baby. He was born 10 pounds. He's three months but 20 pounds and 30 inches. He is living up to his name, like a dinosaur.

Brian Lehrer: Wow, 10 pounds, that's really rare.

Julie Won: Yes. For my district, the Queensboro Bridge is a dividing line. It's truly a tale of two cities where you see the wealth that has exponentially boomed in Long Island City in Court Square and Hunters Point the last 10, 15 years, where there's an immense amount of wealth. You'll see mostly white-collar workers of 1.5 generation or second-gen, third-generation immigrants like myself. We have 33% growth according to the 2020 Census of Asian Americans. You'll see a lot of Japanese Americans, Korean Americans, Chinese Americans, and others with a lot of European immigrants as well in Long Island City who have white-collar jobs working in finance, tech, United Nations, in law. Then, on the other side of the bridge, you have the largest NYCHA houses. We have Queensbridge Houses. We have Ravenswood Houses, and I also represent Woodside Houses. You also see people living below the poverty line. You also have a booming Bangladeshi population in Astoria. We also have,  I think, one of the greatest gems in New York City, which is the Himalayan population, which I think not a lot of people know about. We have a booming Tibetan population, Nepali population, as well as Bhutanese population in my district. Of course, we have the OG, Irish population, Italians who have been here, the first of the immigrants to pave he way for the rest of us.

Brian Lehrer: The OG immigrants.

Julie Won: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: I hadn't heard them referred to that way before. Let me ask you a very on-the-ground question. With all these people from all these different places in New York City, tale of two cities as you said at the beginning of that answer, how are the rents right now?

Julie Won: If you are trying to look for an apartment in Hunter's Point where you see the Pepsi Cola sign the beautiful luxury buildings, high rises, a two-bedroom there could cost anywhere from $3,000, $4,000 up to $6,000 to $8,000. Now you're seeing those--

Brian Lehrer: That's a month not to buy it?

Julie Won: Yes, per month to lease. You see those prices bleeding into other parts of Astoria, Sunnyside, and Woodside as well. Where if you just looked maybe five years ago in Sunnyside for a two-bedroom, you could probably get an apartment around $1,500, $1,200, because this really attracts a lot of value buyers who don't need the fancy amenities or swimming pools or gyms or anything like that, but they just want the best for their buck. They want as much square foot as they can for the dollar that they have. Now even in Sunnyside, because I recently had a baby and we were looking for a two-bedroom, on average, two bedrooms are averaging over $3,000.

Brian Lehrer: Why do you and Rex think that's happening? We hear about this rising demand for rentals at the same time as we hear about hundreds of thousands of people, especially professional people who might be able to afford those rents leaving New York City during the pandemic. Do you have a take on how those things fit together in your district?

Julie Won: I think right now in New York City, or not right now, maybe the last 20, 30 years whoever knows how long it goes back, but there was an oversimplified narrative of supply and demand. That we just need to build more, more, more, more, and eventually the rent prices will even out, because there's an over of supply than compared to demand. We've seen that's not true in a district like mine because, one, there has been spot zonings and not comprehensive planning across the city, where it leads to infrastructure issues as well as other societal issues and Biden prices.

Because instead of looking for low and mid-tier markets for building affordable housing, we've focused on building luxury housing that are very costly, which are still great. I'm sure there are many people in my district who love living there and I don't knock them for it. Because we focus on that because that's where our real estate developer friends make the most profit, we've also saturated the market with luxury high rises that don't have enough affordable units. Because we know that the MIH Program really gives you a drop in the bucket for the amount of displacement that will take place every time one those luxury high towers go up.

Brian Lehrer: Now you mentioned supply and demand as a faulty assumption on which to base housing policy. I see that your office sent us your top three priorities coming into this job to help prepare me for this conversation. They were community-led development, expanding language access, and Wi-Fi for all. Let me ask you about community-led development. What does that mean? We usually hear about communities opposing development.

Julie Won: Yes. Especially as a community board member, I empathize for anybody who's on the community board right now. We call in my office, we joke around saying that it's government hazing, your intro into government 101 for local government--

Brian Lehrer: Is being on the community board?

Julie Won: Yes. Being a member of the community board was my first taste in the EULAR process, which is what our city government uses to rezone our land so that they can build whether you're going for manufacturing or industrial to residential or commercial. In seeing that process, it's very clear to me as someone who is systems-oriented and process-oriented, that we currently need to reform it, so that it's community-led instead of developer-led.

Right now, the process does not allow for the community to have-- It does not mandate for the community to have input on what is built in their neighborhood before to certifying these developments, which also leads to issues like I was referring to before with infrastructure issues in Sunnyside and Astoria and Long Island City, we see a lot of DP issues like sewage are main issues because of the density that has exponentially grown so quickly.

Yet we have not made the infrastructure investments in our sewage system to mend for all of the new population that has boomed. When it rains here, when it floods, like we saw during Hurricane Ida, our sewage mains become overwhelmed and overloaded and it starts to explode. People joke around in Sunnyside about exploding toilets. I have clips in my old apartment where every time it rained, I would have human feces and sewage water come right out of my kitchen sink, my bathroom sink, my bathtub, and my toilet.

Brian Lehrer: Wow. In fact, Gothamist had a story yesterday about how it's hurricane season again officially and we remember what happened last year in parts of Queens with so many people have basement apartments there getting flooded out in the way they did. Is that an issue in your district? To the point of the Gothamist article, has the city actually done anything about it or just said they were going to do stuff about it?

Julie Won: When I think about Hurricane Ida, it was right after my primary election and I had won. It was before I was an elected official. When Hurricane Ida hit, it truly was like a hurricane. It happened overnight where people had two minutes. They got that emergency cell phone warning where it beeps and it gives you a tiny little message that looks like a text message and if you can't read English, you are unfortunately screwed.

The way that basement apartment residents that I met with when I toured the Hurricane Ida areas that were hardest hit in my district, they had two minutes. Seeing that message told the water started flooding their apartment completely from floor to ceiling. I had a Nepali family who had a newborn baby, all three of them drowned and they passed away. It's unacceptable. It's inconceivable because, one, people don't want to live in the basement apartments, but they have no choice because they can't afford to live anywhere else.

As long as it is deemed illegal, it will not be safe because they're not regulated, but people need places to live. In terms of what the government is doing, it was actually really disappointing to me, not only do we not have emergency messaging in multiple languages to make sure that people who are the most vulnerable are aware of what's coming for them like a natural disaster. Also, even post-hurricane when people have lost every single thing in their homes, all of their belongings, all of their treasures, they were given scraps.

When Red Cross was coming around, they gave you a paper form in English without interpretation services. It was heartbreaking. Most of the immigrants that were impacted or most of the residents were immigrants from Bangladesh or from Latin America or from Asia, mostly from the Himalayan area and they had no idea how to fill out this form. Even before the paper forms, I saw multiple Red Cross agents saying, "Oh, go onto this website." Their computers or their laptops have been drowned out in the water and they were being told to use a digital service. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead finish that thought sorry. Now you go.

Julie Won: Because of what I witnessed, that was one of the first bills that I introduced at city hall. In partnership with the Attorney General, we're going to mandate that at least 10 languages are used for translation in emergency messaging during natural disasters.

Brian Lehrer: Before we get off development and then we're going to wrap it up with a couple of closing questions as we run out of time with city council member Julie Won from Western Queens, I read that Mayor Adams said the other day that, unlike other recent mayors, he plans to focus on the quality of housing rather than high numerical goals for new construction. I'm curious if you support that concept since some people will argue that one solution to a housing shortage.

One necessary piece is, of course, to push a lot of new supplies. Supply and demand do come more into balance. It's just math, they would say, pushing up the rent, so at least that's one big component. He says, "No, maybe Bloomberg and de Blasio maybe didn't mention them by name and I'm going to build X hundred thousand new units and that's going to help bring supply and demand into balance." Sounds like he is not so interested in that. Sounds like you are not so interested in that.

Julie Won: No. I think you'll see that across the city because we've seen the repercussions of spot zonings and irresponsible development of just luxury high towers that are not affordable to so many New York City residents. For me, when I think about that development that we've seen with the last two mayors is Court Square in Long Island City. Right off of the Queensboro Plaza, you get out and there's hundreds of units in these shiny beautiful luxury high towers.

Yet you have no public library and you have no public park and you also have no public school, not even an elementary school. You also will very rarely see mom-and-pop shops because these commercial large spaces can only be affordable for large enterprises. How are you going to pay this rent? Now you have hundreds and thousands of people that live in this building but when they go outside, they're basically in a ghost town because there's no amenities, there's no actual communal spaces, and there isn't the infrastructure there to truly build a community to enjoy the city. You have to take [inaudible 00:21:07] somewhere else.

Brian Lehrer: Why don't the amenities spring up if there would be so many potential customers?

Julie Won: Because I think there was a mad dash for all of these tax breaks and what other kickbacks these developers were getting. I think truly it's a postcard of developer greed. I'm sorry to say it but I'm saying it. That's what you see in my district and we need--

Brian Lehrer: The private sector stuff develops and the public sector stuff like parks gets left behind. Let me ask you two questions-- Go ahead. Finish that.

Julie Won: We also have promises for community-based agreements for a public library, for public park, but we'll see over and over again that a lot of these developers don't keep their promises to pay for the maintenance of a coming park or to make sure that the library is truly taking place in the neighborhood or that a school gets built.

Brian Lehrer: Two quick things before we run at a time. We're asking every council member in this series what's the number one reason that constituents reach out to contact your office. Since you took office in January, we've got six months now under your belt, what's the number one reason that people actually contact your office?

Julie Won: I would say for emergencies in addition to affordable housing and eviction cases that are on the rise in my district. It's also DEP cases. We have a lot of flooding for sewage main issues all throughout the district that we've been working on because they're capital projects and you could imagine how much they cost.

Brian Lehrer: Finally, we're inviting each council member, as you know, to bring a show and tell item from your district, something you'd like the rest of our region to know about what you got from District 26 in Western Queens.

Julie Won: When you think about District 26, I think people see the Sunnyside Arch. It's a retro sign that you'll see outside of Bliss Street Plaza. That arch I've seen it in photos before I even moved to the United States because in 1980s, there was a Korean American boom of immigrants that moved to Sunnyside. You can still see the awnings when you walk around of all the Korean signages of the small businesses that were here and all the churches that had congregated here. To me, that arch will always be a postcard from the land far away that is now my home.

Brian Lehrer: The Sunnyside Arch, if you're in a state of Bliss, it's because when you're riding the number seven train up there, you see that arch from the stop known as Bliss Street, right?

Julie Won: Yes, and it's also in the movie Spiderman.

Brian Lehrer: Julie Won, freshman council member from District 26 in Western Queens, story of Long Island City, Sunnyside, Woodside. Thank you so much for joining us.

Julie Won: Thank you so much, Brian. Have a good one.

Brian Lehrer: Bye, Rex.

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