SAN FRANCISCO, CA – A new Bluetooth-enabled digital coronavirus test, known as “Cue,” is being touted as a fast and efficient way for individuals to test themselves for the virus on a regular basis, as experts are predicting that COVID-19 – despite the current lull in overall infections compared to this period of time last year – is most likely to be here to stay.

Advertising for Cue facetiously shows the device utilizing its Bluetooth connectivity to “communicate” with other smart devices in a person’s home, such as the Amazon Echo and Google Nest; eventually, a young boy who is awaiting his results is shown to be relieved when he tests negative for COVID.

Cue’s website notes that it produces “reliable, easy-to-use COVID-19 tests with PCR-quality results delivered right to your mobile device in 20 minutes. No lab visits. No lines. No second guessing your results.”

However, after Cue administers its molecular COVID-19 test, it will then transmit the results – positive or negative – directly to several state and federal government agencies for record-keeping purposes, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which many of the device’s users may not be aware of.

The “Fact Sheet For Healthcare Professionals” that is included in the Cue’s packaging – which most people probably don’t bother to read – states that “The Cue Health Mobile Application (Cue Health App) automatically reports test results according to the reporting guidelines of the appropriate public health authorities.”

Likewise, Cue’s privacy policy notes that the unit will report a user’s personal information “to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or other federal agency and/or state government agencies as required for public health surveillance and related purposes.”

But – being a fully-digital platform – Cue also possesses serious potential security vulnerabilities; in April, a researcher discovered one that could allow the recorded tests results to be altered prior to being transmitted; this issue has since been discovered and rectified, but additional problems with securing individual’s private medical records could nonetheless exist.

“Unemployment continues to be higher in places like Flatbush, Brooklyn—my neighborhood—than in the wealthiest parts of the city and state. For my unemployed neighbors and those earning low wages, price increases hit us much, much harder than the richest residents of the Upper East Side who may own two or three homes.”

Another day, another flurry of headlines about inflation. Everywhere we turn, prices are rising. The cost of everything from rent to food to countless other goods and services is going up.

Here in New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul is acting as if she’s basically powerless to do anything about these increases in what we have to pay to survive and maintain a basic standard of living.

That’s not just wrong; it’s an abdication of her responsibility to lead in this time of crisis. Many New Yorkers, especially those of us who live in low-income communities of color, are still reeling from the COVID pandemic. Unemployment continues to be higher in places like Flatbush, Brooklyn—my neighborhood—than in the wealthiest parts of the city and state. For my unemployed neighbors and those earning low wages, price increases hit us much, much harder than the richest residents of the Upper East Side who may own two or three homes.

There’s plenty Gov. Hochul can do to help bring prices down. But first, she must call out what is happening: price gouging. In most cases, these are not fair price hikes, but prices inflated by corporations and others with unchecked power to raise them higher and higher.

In the case of skyrocketing rent increases we’re seeing all over the city, there’s nothing fair or reasonable about a landlord doubling or tripling rent overnight. It’s greed plain and simple. But it can be stopped through passage of good cause eviction legislation. That popular bill, which Hochul should enact immediately, would create a better system in which tenants in unregulated apartments can more easily renew their leases and negotiate fair rent increases.

READ MORE: NYC Tenants Reignite Push for ‘Good Cause’ Eviction Protections, Despite Landlord Opposition

And to fight the biggest corporations that dominate our economy and regularly abuse that dominance, Hochul should quickly pass the 21st Century Anti-Trust Act. Indeed, New York needs substantially tougher and more robust anti-trust tools like this law to fight Amazon and other market-dominating companies whose pricing-to-maximize-profit strategy harms small businesses, consumers, and workers alike. It would enable the New York State Attorney General to investigate and sue major corporations for anti-competitive behavior, including some of the massive price hikes we’re currently seeing. Additionally, it would allow class-action lawsuits to be filed against dominant corporations that abuse their power by unfairly exploiting consumers, workers, and small business competitors, and increase penalties that they face: violators of the 21st Century Anti-Trust Act would be fined $1 million and face Class C felony charges.

All of that may sound harsh, but it’s what we need to force corporations to change how they operate and do business in New York. Currently, many of the biggest companies and retailers here and across the country are raking in record profits—by using inflation as a pretext and justification to keep pushing prices into the stratosphere. As Lindsay Owens of the Groundwork Collaborative recently noted, “Companies that historically might have kept prices low to pick up profit by gaining additional market share are instead using the cover of inflation to raise prices and increase profits. Consumers are now expecting higher prices at the checkout line, and companies are taking advantage. The poor and those on fixed incomes are hit the hardest.”

She knows what she’s talking about. Over the past year, Owens and her colleagues listened to hundreds of earnings calls where corporate executives bragged about their higher profits and how inflation is great for business. These companies are raking in profits, while small businesses are closing or finding it harder to stay afloat.

Without a fair marketplace and fair competition, the biggest corporations set prices and even restrict the supply of what’s available, as we’re seeing right now with the baby formula shortage. Indeed, as David Dayen points out, “The dominant companies claim to be ramping up production to solve the shortage. It should be noted that their incentives run in the other direction, to keep prices high by putting a lid on supply. When you’re a monopolist, you can do that without much trouble.”

Gov. Hochul must take action now to push corporations to lower prices and create an equitable recovery from COVID. It’s what all of us—small businesses, consumers, and workers—need. An economy that limits the power and dominance of corporations is the only economy where entrepreneurs like me can truly grow and thrive.

For nearly 15 years, I ran a store on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn selling Macy’s return items, until Amazon took control of the retail market and forced me to shut down in 2018. If the 21st  Century Anti-Trust Act is passed, everyday New Yorkers will finally have a powerful weapon on their side to build an economy that works for all of us, not just dominant companies like Amazon.

Leroy Johnson is a Flatbush resident, former small business owner, and leader of New York Communities for Change (NYCC), a grassroots community organizing group.

The budget plan proposes moving six staffers from the Human Rights Administration to the Source of Income (SOI) discrimination unit at the Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), which had zero attorneys working on those cases after its final employee departed last month following years of employee exits and unfilled vacancies, City Limits previously reported.

New York City officials are poised to restore a wiped-out housing discrimination unit by shuffling in staff from the city’s social services agency, according to a Council-backed proposal included in Mayor Eric Adams’ executive budget.

As City Limits previously reported, the city’s Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) lost the last attorney working in its Source of Income (SOI) discrimination unit last month—following years of employee exits and unfilled vacancies—and moved to slash 18 empty positions as part of Adams’ cost-cutting mandate (in its budget reponse, the City Council has called for those 18 staffers to be restored).

The SOI unit, once made up of six attorneys and investigators, fields complaints, contacts landlords and at times files lawsuits on behalf of would-be renters who say they were denied an apartment because they have a housing assistance subsidy, like a federal Section 8 or local CityFHEPS voucher.

Anti-voucher bias is New York City’s most common form of housing discrimination, annual CCHR reports show, and the deterioration of the unit sparked criticism from people with housing vouchers, their advocates and policymakers. “It is truly heartbreaking to see such a powerful unit dissolve,” former SOI Unit head Steph Rudolph, who left the agency in 2020 and now works at the organization JustFix, told City Limits last month.

In the recently released Executive Budget, the Adams administration proposed restoring the unit by moving a similar six-person enforcement team from the Human Rights Administration (HRA)—part of the Department of Social Services (DSS)—into CCHR at a cost of just under $452,000 per year. DSS Commissioner Gary Jenkins has mentioned the arrangement in planning sessions with advocates and experts earlier this month, according to two people familiar with the conversations.

An HRA spokesperson directed questions about the plan to CCHR, which responded in an emailed statement.

“HRA and CCHR are in discussions about SOI enforcement, and the Executive Plan includes a transfer of staffing resources from HRA to CCHR,” said CCHR spokesperson Jose Rios Lua.

Rios Lua said the CCHR SOI unit is currently staffed but did not respond to a follow-up question asking how many people work on the team. Attorneys and staff from other parts of the agency’s Law Enforcement Bureau also take on SOI cases.

While HRA’s litigation unit can only sue on behalf of the city, CCHR is able to intervene on behalf of individuals who experience discrimination—like renters who encounter explicit  “no programs” stipulations in online apartment listings or voucher holders steered away from units by brokers on recorded phone calls. After the reshuffling, the two agencies will coordinate on complaints, according to a budget report prepared by the Council’s Finance Division.

Still, the interagency move raises questions about what exactly the transferred unit will be doing and whether the shift marks a permanent change, said Amy Blumsack, whose organization Neighbors Together helps tenants use their vouchers and fight discrimination.

“I want to see CCHR’s unit staffed up fully and robustly and I don’t know what moving DSS folks over would mean,” Blumsack said. “But putting more resources to enforcing against source of income discrimination is good.”

Both CCHR and DSS’ enforcement units have prioritized “pre-complaint intervention” with staffers contacting landlords, brokers or management companies accused of SOI discrimination, informing them that voucher bias violates the law and threatening further action if they do not offer the prospective tenant a lease.

Despite its dwindling staff numbers, CCHR has filed more complaints on behalf of tenants in the current fiscal year than in either of the past two, the agency told City Limits in March. The SOI unit had filed 29 complaints between July 2021 and March 2022 compared to 28 in the 2021 fiscal year and 27 in fiscal year 2020. CCHR has won fewer damages and penalties from property owners, but has also settled with landlords to set aside more units for tenants with housing vouchers.

But Housing rights advocates have urged the city to file more impactful litigation to hold lawbreakers accountable. In the absence of that more aggressive enforcement by the city, nonprofit groups like the Housing Rights Initiative have taken on landlords, property managers and brokers who tell would-be renters that they do not accept “programs,”  steer voucher-holders away from apartments or simply ghost applicants once when they learn about a subsidy.

Reinforcing the source of income discrimination unit is just one component to making housing vouchers work for people experiening or at-risk of homelessness, however.

In recent weeks, the city has taken additional steps to make the vouchers more effective by raising values and targeting administrative obstacles that torpedo moves to permanent housing for tenants—and turn off landlords otherwise willing to accept them. City Limits has documented those hurdles based on conversations with dozens of voucher holders, policymakers, property owners and managers.

“Source of income discrimination is bad, but there’s another aspect of this and that’s the bureacratc failures that make the process hell for landlords dealing with the city,” said Shams DaBaron, an advocate who has lived in shelters and on the streets and goes by Da Homeless Hero.

DaBaron uses a CityFHEPS voucher to rent a Manhattan apartment, but was served an eviction notice last year after the city was slow to make payments to his landlord. He is now working with a group of owners known as “Landlords Who Care” on a project to streamline the administrative process and reserve 1,000 apartments for people moving out of shelters with the city subsidies.

DaBaron has also consulted with city officials and other formerly homeless New Yorkers to propose ways to streamline applications and approvals.

The CityFHEPS usage rate shows there is still much work to be done to ensure more would-be renters are able to use the subsidies.

In December of last year just 24 percent of households—637 of 2,623—who were approved by a landlord to rent a unit managed to move in, according to data obtained through a Freedom of Information Law request by the Urban Justice Center and first reported by the Daily News. In November 2021, just 12 percent of households—295 of 3,230—accepted for a CityFHEPS move actually got the apartment.

But one outspoken advocate for more effective housing vouchers says the city is on the right track.

“Government has an incredible power to do good and an endless power to screw up good things,” said former Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who leads the family shelter provider Win. “But the things that are broken are administrative and they’re fixable if people dig their heels in.”

Quinn said the city has overcome one major problem hindering the vouchers by increasing the rates in accordance with a 2021 law meant to ensure the subsidies keep up with the actual cost of housing. New voucher values took effect earlier this month, raising the subsidy for an individual to $2,218 from $1,945 last year and $2,527 from $2,217 for a family of four.

“It’s so unusual to pass a law that has such wide-ranging and permanent effects,” Quinn said. “The bill said the amount would go up, but as a former legislator, you don’t really trust it. But it happened.”

The first rate increase went into effect in September 2021 and had an immediate impact, Quinn said. The number of families and individuals moving out of Win shelters with CityFHEPS vouchers increased from 150 between September 2020 and April 2021 to 257 from September 2021 to April 2022, according to agency statistics.

DSS introduced another impediment earlier this year, however. Apartments are subject to a “rent reasonableness” assessment that continues to prevent people from using their vouchers if the asking rent for a unit is deemed too high, even if it falls below the voucher value. Advocates in February wrote to DSS Commissioner Gary Jenkins urging the city to eliminate the rent reasonableness requirement as part of a comprehensive list of program improvements.

Quinn said she thinks the Adams administration seems willing to adjust the rigid rules because officials have begun listening to people directly impacted.

“It’s thrilling to see that the voices of homeless families are being responded to,” she said.