This week, taxi drivers protesting near City Hall announced a hunger strike. It's a desperate cry for help from city policies that have left thousands of drivers facing financial ruin. errollouis reports
Photo: Carlo Allegri/REUTERS A bitter hypocrisy of progressive New York is that we boast endlessly about our history as an immigrant-friendly, forward-looking gateway to the American Dream — but in reality, many of the city’s newcomers are treated with a shocking level of contempt and indifference that can, at times, prove deadly.
It is a desperate cry for help from city policies that have left thousands of drivers facing financial ruin, including bankruptcy, foreclosure, eviction, and homelessness. For decades, the city carefully limited the number of medallions in circulation, freezing the total at around 13,000 — the same number in effect in the 1940s — which steadily drove up the value of those scarce licenses. A financial bubble began to grow after the year 2000, fueled by unscrupulous lenders who convinced thousands of drivers to borrow ever-larger sums and bid up the price of medallions at city-run auctions, on terms that would spell disaster if medallion prices ever cooled off.
Satwinder Singh, a medallion owner and driver, said the same thing. “How do you compete? It’s like 13,000 [medallions] compared to 60,000 [app-hail] cars. When we purchased our medallion, there was a right that when anybody has his hand up [to hail a cab], that’s my ride — I paid for it,” he said. “Our rights are being betrayed or sold, given to others without paying anything.”
One of those who died that year was Kenny Chow, a driver swamped with debt who left his car near Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Gracie Mansion residence and threw himself into the nearby East River, where he drowned. His brother, Richard Chow, is also a heavily indebted driver who is among the protesters outside City Hall.
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