By Gus Saltonstall

On Tuesday, Eli Northrup was endorsed by longtime Assemblymember Danny O’Donnell to succeed him in the Upper West Side, Morningside Heights 69th District seat. For those who may not have not been following the local assembly race, it begs the following question.

Who is Eli Northrup?

Northrup is one of five Democratic candidates running to represent the 69th District, which stretches from West 80th to 125th streets, and includes large sections of Riverside Park and Central Park.

Northrup is a public defender and policy advocate. He was also the first person to announce his candidacy for the 69th District. He works as policy director at the Bronx Defenders, where he helped spearhead campaigns for cannabis legislation and bail reform in Albany.

Election Day for the primary is on June 25, with the Early Voting period starting in the 10 days prior.

West Side Rag continues its coverage of the upcoming election in the following conversation with Northrup. It has been condensed and edited for clarity.

We also spoke and published interviews Thursday with candidates Eli Northrup and Micah Lasher. Additionally, the Rag reached out to candidates Jack Kellner and Carmen Quinones, and we will be publishing their interviews next week.

There are no Republican candidates at this point who have filed to run in the race.

We asked all the candidates versions of the same questions, in hopes of giving prospective voters a heightened understanding of where the different candidates stand on important local issues.

The Interview

West Side Rag: What is one of the first pieces of legislation you would look to introduce, and which Assembly committees would you be most interested in joining during your first year?

Northrup: A new effort that I would undertake is to change the way the scaffolding laws work. It’s Local Law 11 within the city, but it’s important to take on the sidewalk sheds at the state level because this is something that’s become an $8 billion industry in New York. It is especially striking on the Upper West Side and it needs immediate attention.

Another one would be addressing noise pollution from sirens. We’ve got high-frequency sirens that are really, really loud, and it affects us in ways we might not understand or acknowledge when it comes to stress levels. There are low frequency sirens that are just as effective.

In terms of the committee, Codes is the one that I would say first. The codes committee might not sound sexy, but most of the laws have to pass through Codes before they get enacted, so it touches on a number of different other areas. My expertise and background as a lawyer can be used efficiently to look at legislation with an eye toward ensuring it does not create inequity. There is a lot of well-intentioned legislation that passes through the Assembly that sometimes has negative consequences, and most often those consequences are passed down to people that are lower income and black and brown, and my experience would help me identify those unintended consequences.

West Side Rag: Zoning laws in Morningside Heights haven’t change since the 1960s. It is one of the few areas in Manhattan where there are no requirements to building affordable housing. In recent years, there has been a community push on the city-side of the legislature to rezone the neighborhood. Do you have a stance on whether the neighborhood should be rezoned, and how would you look to generate more housing in the area in general?

Northrup: We need a rezoning. Right now the neighborhood is unprotected. There are no rules, which allows for big developers to come in and exploit the air rights to build these huge towers that we’ve already seen. On top of that, they have no requirements to make any portion of that affordable, so I do think a rezoning is necessary.

West Side Rag: What do you see as Columbia University’s role to play in Morningside Heights housing?

Northrup: Columbia owns 6,000 units in Morningside Heights and less than 5 percent of those units are rented out to non-Columbia affiliates. We need to ensure that as Columbia attempts to continue to expand in our neighborhood, that they have a requirement to give back to ensure some of these buildings are maintained for residents of the neighborhood and not purely Columbia-affiliated people.

With housing in the neighborhood in general, it starts with keeping people in their homes. That means we protect the rent controls we won in 2019. They’ve already started to be rolled back in this year’s budget, they increased the individual apartment-increase cap for landlords, so that they can recover more money for substantial improvements, and that’s going to motivate them to push out longtime tenants, especially elderly people.

We can’t have that. We need to push back on the rent guideline board when we see them raising rents at a level that’s not consistent with what’s necessary. We also need protection for market-rate tenants. The version of Good Cause [Eviction] that was passed as part of this budget is so watered down, and puts the onus on the tenants to find out if they have any rights, and has so many carve outs, it’s really not sufficient.

West Side Rag: There seems to be a Venn diagram of sorts between storefront vacancies, the proliferation of illegal smoke shops, and the state’s struggle to roll out legal cannabis sales. How can the Assembly play a part in helping local businesses, and with this topic in general?

Northrup: A positive thing that occurred in the budget this year was further tools to shut down these unregulated cannabis shops. They’ve already started to do this and I anticipate it will continue to happen. 75 got shut down in the city last week.

I work in social equity for cannabis, it is something that I’ve dedicated a lot of time and effort into, and that was for people who were previously convicted and prosecuted for possessing cannabis, which was really a racially targeted enforcement in New York City for decades — they were supposed to be the first ones to be able to open up the legal shops, and if you go to these legal shops, they are much, much different then what you see in the unregulated bodegas.

Unfortunately, the unregulated shops outnumber them 10 to 1, and it has given the whole rollout a really bad taste in people’s mouths. When we can remove the unregulated shops, which I am very much in favor of, people will better understand what legal weed in New York is supposed to look like, and we will get tax revenue that goes back into our communities and we will be giving a chance to people that have been harmed.

We had people who had to comply with so many regulations, so when we see these unlicensed shops popping up, it is so frustrating. It is also preventing those that we are trying to prioritize from advancing. It is something I care deeply about, closing the unregulated shops, and it starts with going after landlords. You can’t just allow landlords rent to people they know are engaging in illegal activities.

West Side Rag: And ways to help other types of small business?

Northrup: There has to be some sort of regulation of this tax write-off that commercial landlords get for keeping a storefront vacant. The landlords can write those losses off, and oftentimes they are better off keeping a storefront unoccupied, instead of renting it out, which is nonsensical. When we have vacant storefronts, it changes the character of our communities. We want to have a vibrant Broadway.

West Side Rag: Central Park and Riverside are major components of the 69th Assembly District. Both have strong Conservancies. What do you see as government’s role in finding ways to support the parks?

Northrup: The park gathering spaces are so important. Both Riverside and Central Park luckily have very supportive conservancies of community members that are working to ensure communities get what they need, and they are also doing that in partnership with government to a certain extent.

I’m a big proponent of spaces for athletics within parks. We want our kids to be able to go out in New York, just like in other places, and be able to play basketball, or baseball, or soccer, or pickleball. Those are places where people can gather, compete, get to know each other, and meet people they wouldn’t otherwise.

We also need to be looking at the parks that are maybe not as well resourced. I know Morningside Park isn’t technically in the district, but many residents of the district use the park. That’s a place that could use further investment and support. Also, Strauss Park, which is right on 107th Street and Broadway, has a really dedicated group of people that work in it and has been able to get some funding. It’s a beautiful respite in the center of our district. Obviously, Central Park and Riverside Park are important, but we should be looking at these other parks too and making sure the government invests money.

West Side Rag: Crime statistics are up in New York City compared to the period before the pandemic, but there also remains a conversation about the perception of safety vs. the reality of the crime numbers. How do we make people feel safe in this neighborhood, and what is the right way to help an emotionally distressed person who is not committing a crime?

Northrup: A lot of the things I see that people have expressed surrounding safety have to do with mental health issues, which have come to the forefront following the pandemic, not just in New York, but the entire country.

It’s not an issue unique to New York, but we’re all so close to each other here that it can be in our faces on the trains and streets. We need to be seeing this as a public health issue and treating it as such. That means we respond, when people are in distress, even if they aren’t committing a crime. And we respond with people who are experts in mental health, not necessarily police officers. In fact, if you ask most police officers, that’s not what they want to be doing, that’s not what they are experts in. We need to be moving toward a world where we have public health responses to public health problems. We have a number of laws that would enable us to connect people who are in distress with treatment, but then we need beds for them. We need to invest in real psychiatric beds, we need to invest in supportive housing, we need to have a path for help that people understand and we need to have people working in those jobs.

We have finally started to fund this. I know for a fact that what we’ve been doing with someone who is emotionally distressed, is taking them to Riker’s Island for 15 days — they are totally destabilized — and they come back and our whole community is less safe. Not to mention it costs $1,500 a night to house somebody on Riker’s. Think about what we could be doing with that money.

West Side Rag: Continuing on the topic of safety, street safety has become a louder conversation since the pandemic. Electric bikes are a leading topic from constituents within that subject. What do you see as ways to improve the conditions around e-bikes in the district right now?

Northrup: Something needs to be done because it’s a subject I’ve heard over and over again from people I’ve talked to. Much of it is delivery drivers who are in a rush, we are ordering food more frequently since the pandemic, and we have to realize that part of this is our doing.

I would be in favor of some sort of licensing and insurance system, but also enforcement that goes to the apps. I don’t think enforcing against individual drivers is going to be effective in the same way that if you went after the corporations. The apps would then incentive the drivers not to rush so quickly to get to each individual delivery and to hire appropriately. Education too, about what’s required and what’s not required while riding a bike. I do think we want a more bike-friendly city, ultimately it’s better to have a bike friendly city opposed to making all of our decisions based on cars, but there is a large role for street design in this.

The electric bike solution is not going to be accomplished by having a bunch of police officers standing on every corner and issuing a bunch of tickets. That’s a short term solution. Street design is more effective than that sort of enforcement.

West Side Rag: Stepping back, this is your first time running for elected office. Why was this the right moment and right district to step in and seek a leadership position?

Northrup: Danny played a really important role in the State Assembly. Danny has a background as a public defender, and was the chair of corrections for a number of years. He is known across the state as a champion of those issues, alongside LGBTQ rights as the first openly gay member of the assembly. His legacy is in that sort of reform. Losing him is a big loss for the entire body. We have so much legislation working on helping marginalized people, but we don’t have a lot of people that have experience working with those populations in the legislature. Mornginside Heights and the Upper West Side have sent a public defender to Albany for 22 years and it’s done really well for the state. I’m the candidate in this race that has spent their career standing up for people that don’t have political power. The Assembly needs more people like that, to explain how these issues work, have a keen eye for inequity, and to push back.

Affordable housing is also at a crisis. I’m a rent-stabilized tenant. I’m at the whims of the rent guidelines board, I’m at the whims of what protections Albany gives us. There are many, many tenants in our neighborhood who don’t feel seen or heard in Albany, and the real estate lobby has an outsized impact and relationship to elected official in the state. I am not taking money from them, I am standing up to them. I will be part of a coalition of legislators that will actually work for tenants, in a time when that is really important.

We need a fighter in Albany for Morningside Heights and the Upper West Side. It is a progressive district, it is an involved district, and I am somebody who is smart and principled, but also gets things done. I really do think there is a choice in this race, I’ve spent my career helping people and standing up against systemic inequity.

I’ve been up in Albany for the last six years, I know how it works. I understand the job of the Assembly person and I want that job. I am running for Assembly because I want to be an Assembly member — not be on the City Council or a Congressperson. I want to write and make laws on the state level that directly impact people in our community, and help make our neighborhood more livable.

West Side Rag: To wrap up, could you tell us some of your favorite places in the district?

Northrup: V&T is a big favorite of mine. I love Mama’s Too. Absolute Bagels obviously, but I have a soft spot for Wu and Nussbaum because they have great bagels and the line is much shorter. I love Saiguette and then farther down Barney Greengrass. Janie’s Life-Changing Baked Goods is also an amazing spot. My gym, Liberated Fitness on 109th and Columbus. The owner has really create a special place. Bob’s Your Uncle is a great community bar. I’m in Central Park all the time, walking around the North Woods.”

You can check out Northrup’s candidate website, which also includes his list of endorsements — HERE.

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