A WSR Conversation With Candidate Tiffany Khan in the Run-Up to the UWS, Morningside Heights Council Race

By Gus Saltonstall

We are now two weeks away from Election Day in New York City and West Side Rag is speaking with candidates running in the June primary for the City Council District 7 seat, which includes the Upper West Side north of West 92nd Street. The district also includes all of Morningside Heights and much of West Harlem; City Councilmember Shaun Abreu is the incumbent, and he is being challenged by multiple candidates.

Early voting will begin on June 14.

Abreu, who took office in 2022, is being challenged by three fellow Democrats: Tiffany Khan, Jomo Williams, and Edafe Okporo. As of the beginning of June, there were no declared Republican candidates for the position.

West Side Rag is seeking to interview all four candidates and present their views before voting begins.

Below is our interview with Khan, who was born in Chicago, grew up in Brooklyn, attended NYU and Columbia University, and works in the translation and interpretation field. Khan is also a member of Community Board 9 and the Metropolitan Council on Housing.

Khan spoke with us over the phone at the end of May.

Answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

WSR: You’re a first-time candidate, why was this the right time to run for office?

Khan: One of the groups I’m involved with is Concerned Citizens for a Better Harlem. We found out about a development at the corner of 145th Street and Amsterdam that would demolish multiple healthcare facilities at the address. It felt like there was all of this wrongdoing in the situation and we were rewarding bad actors. Then there were a number of other issues in the neighborhood where we felt like we weren’t being represented in these ongoing projects that weren’t benefitting the community. Along with that, it’s other things that I see that we need as a community. I used to work as an interpreter with the Department of Education, and I frequently see things that can be resolved a certain way and are not. I want to help bring those resolutions.

WSR: Housing is a leading topic in every election this cycle. How would you look to create and preserve housing in District 7, and throughout the city?

Khan: You have about 114,000 people in the shelter system in New York City. You have far more vacant apartments than people living in the shelter system, and this was before we had the pandemic and these new vacant office spaces. It’s also not counting the around 5,000 apartments in NYCHA that are vacant. If you just went after this warehousing, by both the private and city-owned properties, you could resolve this housing problem without the need to do all of these mixed-use developments that are 80 percent luxury units and 20 percent so-called affordable.

Also, we have grants that allow first-time home buyers to get over that hurdle of the down payment that is so often a barrier to entry. I want to target two things that become the biggest barrier to entry into home ownership: the turn around time it takes for these applications to be processed, and the application fee of $850, which is absurd to me.

WSR: Anything else specific within the housing issue?

Khan: The first thing I want to target is fire evictions. There is current criteria that allows landlords to remove an apartment building from rent stabilization. I see landlords not maintaining their buildings, creating precarious conditions, and then a fire takes place — something I have experience with in my own former building. So, it’s not just how the fire starts or how and why it spreads, but also what happens following the fire. A lot of tenants, especially if they are working class or immigrants, do not necessarily know what their rights are. And following a bad fire, another tactic by landlords is to delay the renovation of the building. Tenants get put in hotels for three days and then placed into homeless shelters, if they have nowhere else to stay. And then these renovations take years and years, where these people have to continue living in shelters. So what can we do? Number one is the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal needs to be more working-class friendly. The agency only allows you to do certain things between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. This is a state agency and I’m running for City Council, but raising awareness about the issue and working with the state to go back to pre-pandemic rules and policies they had would be a step in the right direction. Number 2, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, Department of Buildings, and the New York City Fire Department all need to step up their games and have a more thorough analysis of what happens with these fires.

WSR: Part of the housing conversation in District 7 includes Columbia University. Do you consider the school a good neighbor when it comes to community development?

Khan: Let’s not be doe-eyed about this. Columbia is its own institution acting in its own self interest. And I say this as an alumna. I’m disgusted with how bad a neighbor Columbia has been for years. Let’s go back to eminent domain, which is something that is reserved for government agencies, so why should a private institution be allowed to use eminent domain as a means for land grabbing? Instead of making these soft requests of the school, we need to have strong demands, even to the point where we can explore their tax-exempt status.

WSR: Another part of the streetscape is our businesses. How would you look to better support existing small businesses, but also find a way to fill these vacant storefronts faster?

Khan: I have a small business, and while I’m fortunate to be able to run my business virtually, the price of rent is something I’ve thought about for awhile. We used to have commercial rent stabilization and that’s something I would like to re-explore as a councilmember.

There are also lots of resources out there like the New York City Small Business Services that help with everything from legal assistance to finding a CPA, and there are a lot of businesses that are not aware of them. Also, it depends where you are renting, but if you are in a co-op, there are cases where the co-op can use an historic district status to gain funds for the business. Along Morningside, it really goes back to Columbia University owning some of these buildings, and how much they are doing to help or hurt.

Khan has received endorsements from the Downtown Women for Change and the MET Council Action. She has raised $9,861 from 206 donors.

WSR: On the topic of public safety, what would you say to a constituent who comes into your office saying they don’t feel safe in the community, regardless of what any statistics show?

Khan: I attend police precinct meetings frequently. A lot of the times these meetings are the same. We have a small number of felonies and they almost all have to do with stolen vehicles. Look, I grew up in Brooklyn in the 1980s and I can give you countless stories that would make any statistics of crime that we consider dangerous today, laughable. What we consider the danger here today is really nothing compared to the real crime that my family and friends experienced in the 80s and the 90s. That is not to say we live in paradise. Of course not. I am a woman, and I’m not a very big woman, so statistically speaking, I am more of a target. But, what I believe is we have crimes of poverty and lack of resources.

We have to have a two-part approach. It’s not just about being reactive, but instead preventing it from happening to begin with. Right now we need to have social services sent out into the public and not the NYPD. A lot of the people that wind up in the prison system are those who have severe mental health illness. We stopped investing in mental health. What we really need to do is start early. There are a lot more children for example in temporary housing or in the foster care system, or living in the shelter-industrial complex, who can be helped. Kids will quickly go from being 12 to 26, and we are not doing a good enough job of preventing them from winding up involved with the law.

WSR: Electric vehicles are also part of the public-safety conversation. Do you support more enforcement around the vehicles?

Khan: The Henry Hudson Parkway has a protected bike lane that I use quite often to take my daughter to school, and it is frustrating that you have signage that explicitly states no electric bikes or scooters that gets almost completely ignored. We can work with, for example, with Citi Bike, to prevent the electric bicycles from being able to use the pathway. We can also enforce it the same way officers stop people that run a red light in a car. We can do that along the busiest bike lanes in our district. I’d like to see more protected bike lanes as well. I also frequently experience examples where cars treat the bike lane like an extra parking spot, which forces cyclists to go into oncoming traffic. I see this from the perspective of both a cyclist and a pedestrian, and I think we really need to enforce e-bikes that are not following the laws. I don’t want to go after people that are trying to earn a living, but we can work with the restaurants if it is discovered that a specific delivery worker is committing consistent traffic violations, then the restaurant would be fined as well.

WSR: On the topic of parks, what do you see as government’s role in supporting city green spaces?

Khan: We used to invest about 1.78 percent of the total city budget on parks and recreation. Since then, that number has slowly been declining. We definitely need an increase in our budget for our city green spaces. If you go at 2 a.m. to Riverbank State Park, you will see a line of people sleeping outside with the goal of getting their children enrolled in the affordable courses that Riverbank offers. This is because of the rich variety that Riverbank State Park offers, everything from swimming to karate to figure skating. I would like to see our city parks matching that. This is a big part of the reason why so many families are leaving the city. Parks and recreation are vital, and unfortunately treated as something extracurricular and unnecessary, but they contribute significantly to our mental health and we need to go back to investing in our city parks.

WSR: Schools are still working their way back from the learning loss during COVID. How would you look to support schools in District 7?

Khan: We need to have free after-school programs. I’m tired of seeing families and schools having to resort to things like GoFundMe campaigns for basic needs. If we could invest in general after-school, but something that is really meaningful and enriching. I’d like to invest in more science and math in our curriculum. This would help kids prepare for the real world. Even if a child doesn’t pursue a career in the subject, having a background is almost a guarantee for higher-income positions. I want to see more afterschool programs that are meaningful and not limited to Monday through Friday.

WSR: Any favorite spots on the Upper West Side or in Morningside Heights you could share with us?

Khan: I love the farmer’s market on 116th Street. The market changes every year but I like the selection of honey they have. There is a spot in Riverside around 106th Street that has a live jazz band during the summer time. Ellington in the Park is also fantastic.

WSR: And to end, a 30-second pitch to voters on why they should vote for you?

Khan: I would be the first woman to represent us in the district. The first pre-K mom. I don’t want my identity to be a leading reason, I prefer to win on merit, but in some instances, it does matter because you gain a certain perspective you might not otherwise understand. There are several things that uniquely set me apart from not only my opponents in this race, but a number of other council members, which are having this international view on subjects such as housing and education.

We have to stop having this ethnocentric, only looking at the United States perspective, and see how we fit among peers worldwide, because jobs are global and if we are not preparing our kids for the real world, we are doing them a disservice. And also working as an interpreter and translator for so many different city and state government agencies across all five boroughs has given me an in-depth understanding of issues across our community. I’m ready to hit the ground running.

You can find out more about Khan on her campaign website — HERE.

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