When Partap Singh purchased a taxi medallion — a allow to independently function a cab in New York City — in 1993, he thought he’d struck gold. As a Sikh immigrant from the Indian state of Punjab, he’d purchased into the concept that the $140,000 funding was a ticket to a middle-class life.
For years, Singh wakened at 4 a.m. to work 16-hour shifts, six days per week. As a results of the grueling hours, he developed a number of great well being issues, together with persistent again ache and eyestrain that required surgical procedure.
But after three a long time, Singh, 62, nonetheless owes greater than $65,000 in medallion loans.
It’s a long-standing disaster associated to bloated fees for licenses that has been aggravated by Covid-19, which has crushed demand for rides. Singh, who drives 60 hours per week, stated he makes $10 an hour “on a great day,” which doesn’t all the time cowl his prices. His mortgage and insurance coverage funds, in addition to fuel, surcharges and restore fees, can add as much as greater than $3,000 a month. He can also be behind on his medallion mortgage, bank card payments and property taxes.
“I’ve no future, no well being care plan, no financial savings, no retirement, nothing,” Singh stated. “I don’t understand how we are able to survive in our outdated age and who’s going to deal with us.”
Last week, the town introduced a plan to spend $65 million from a federal stimulus bundle on a reduction fund to supply drivers with as much as $29,000 in interest-free loans to refinance their money owed. The proposal is the primary concrete step the town has taken to handle the plight of drivers. But driver advocates and a few elected officers say it falls far wanting the kind of bailout most drivers want. Every day and night time final week, drivers protested the town’s plan exterior Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s residence.
In 2018, a spate of driver suicides uncovered how predatory lending practices and authorities complicity trapped 1000’s of medallion patrons in dangerous loans they could not pay again. Throughout the 2000s, trade leaders artificially inflated medallion costs from $200,000 to greater than $1 million — by overpaying for and advertising them as foolproof automobiles for financial success — whereas extracting windfall income from curiosity funds and fees. Since the market crashed in 2014, partially due to the rise of Uber and Lyft, almost 1,000 owner-drivers have filed for chapter.
The common driver immediately owes about $500,000 in loans, to be paid in month-to-month installments of about $3,000.
“These drivers have given 30 to 40 years of their lives to those streets of New York, and all they’ve incurred is debt,” one advocate stated. “I feel 9 to 12 months from now, you’ll see large foreclosures and bankruptcies.”
Now, in a market-cratering international pandemic, medallion debt has change into a disaster for immigrant seniors, a lot of whom have drained their retirement financial savings and will lose their properties as they enter the twilight of their lives. The fallout may hit New York’s South Asian neighborhood notably onerous, as immigrants from India, Bangladesh and Pakistan make up greater than 43 % of the town’s cabdrivers, in response to 2014 data from the town Taxi and Limousine Commission.
“These drivers have given 30 to 40 years of their lives to those streets of New York, and all they’ve incurred is debt,” stated Bhairavi Desai, govt director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, a labor union representing 21,000 cab and ride-share drivers. “I feel 9 to 12 months from now, you’ll see large foreclosures and bankruptcies.”
More than 90 % of drivers over age 62 have lively loans, in response to a latest survey the union performed. Four in 5 reported being meals insecure; 1 in 3 has both contracted Covid-19 or lives with somebody who has.
The union additionally proposed a debt reduction plan. In distinction to the mayor’s plan, it could cut back loans to a most of $125,000 and restructure month-to-month repayments to about $750. It would value the town $75 million over 20 years.
Desperation over their state of affairs has turned seniors into activists and pushed their grownup kids to run for workplace. Over the previous few weeks, immigrant drivers have organized a collection of actions to demand debt reduction, together with shutting down the Brooklyn Bridge and delivering searing testimony at Zoom hearings.
The medallion debt disaster has pushed Felicia Singh, a public schoolteacher and City Council candidate, and her household to the brink of homelessness. Last summer season, her father misplaced his medallion — which he purchased for a quarter-million {dollars} in 1988 — after he fell behind on his $3,200 month-to-month mortgage funds. In February, the chapter courtroom put their dwelling in the marketplace, giving the Singhs lower than 80 days to scrape collectively $100,000 in debt settlement.
The metropolis’s failure to advocate for working-class individuals, Singh stated, is one cause she’s campaigning to symbolize Southern Queens.
“The onerous half right here for me is that 9 individuals have taken their lives, and that was not sufficient for the town to cease and do one thing,” she stated. “Us being unhoused in a pandemic continues to be not making the town transfer with urgency.”
Desai stated elder South Asian drivers additionally must navigate language and cultural obstacles in in search of social and public well being providers. In many instances, she stated, the shortage of applicable language sources has restricted their capacity to get vaccinated, apply for pandemic reduction loans and file for unemployment advantages.
“South Asians have added danger of propensity for metabolic syndrome, so that they’re at great danger for coronary heart illness,” one skilled stated. “It’s a horrible downside that could possibly be addressed by taking some monetary stress off drivers.”
At the identical time, working into outdated age could cause problems for a bunch with underlying well being situations.
The Taxi Network, a analysis and neighborhood well being program developed by the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s Immigrant Health and Cancer Disparities Service, organizes free well being festivals for drivers at taxi garages and community-based organizations. Doctors stated that once they performed well being screenings in South Asian enclaves, they discovered staggering charges of unaddressed hypertension, excessive ldl cholesterol and diabetes.
“South Asians have added danger of propensity for metabolic syndrome, so that they’re at great danger for coronary heart illness,” stated Dr. Francesca Gany, a co-founder and director of the initiative. “It’s a horrible downside that could possibly be addressed by taking some monetary stress off drivers.”
For many working-class South Asian immigrants, the lasting legacy of the medallion disaster stands out as the accumulation of generational debt.
When the medallion market crashed in 2014, Partap Singh’s daughter, Jaslin Kaur, had simply begun her first yr in faculty. With medallion costs plummeting, her household may now not finance her training, so to complete college, she needed to take out a hefty mortgage, which she continues to be paying off immediately.
“It’s a lot of crises suddenly,” she stated, including that her household’s monetary struggles impressed her to run for a City Council seat this yr in an Eastern Queens district with a big working-class South Asian inhabitants.
Fighting for debt reduction “is about labor justice,” Kaur stated, “for individuals who had been successfully scammed out of one thing that was meant to supply a pathway to financial stability and financial prosperity.”
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