Your guide to NYC's public proceedings.
Q&A
Council Member Williams questions NYC Commission on Human Rights about disability-related inquiries and trends
0:22:51
·
7 min
Council Member Nantasha Williams engages in a Q&A session with representatives from the NYC Commission on Human Rights, focusing on disability-related inquiries, complaints, and trends. The discussion covers recent data on disability-related cases, pre-complaint interventions, and how the commission tracks and resolves issues across different sectors.
- The commission reports that disability-related inquiries and claims comprise about 20% of their total cases across various areas.
- Pre-complaint interventions, especially in housing, are discussed as a way to resolve accessibility issues without formal complaints.
- The commission does not specifically track data by business size or industry type, focusing instead on individuals' rights and accommodations needed.
Nantasha Williams
0:22:51
Thank you.
0:22:54
I will focus my questions on the commission.
0:23:02
Okay, could you please share with us your most up to date numbers with respect to inquiries, pre complaint interventions and complaints on the basis of disability or perceived disability?
0:24:33
Thank you.
0:24:36
Another question that I have is Okay, so I know in a lot of our hearings we talk about new trends especially you know post pandemic, so has the commission noticed any trends in recent years when it comes to the data that you have?
0:25:03
Are you seeing more in housing versus like seeing more in, I don't know, a business, traditional business maybe like a retail business?
0:25:58
Okay another question I have, so the pre complaint interventions, can you talk about how it gets solved?
0:26:08
So is it the person just provides the accommodation, you know, does someone get fined?
0:26:14
Like if you can share like how it actually gets solved.
0:27:57
Thank specifically, but do you have a number of complaints towards small businesses specifically?
0:28:15
Do you break out the data in that way?
0:29:03
might
0:29:03
Yeah.
0:29:04
I guess I'm wondering like, I don't know, do you track it by like industry?
0:29:09
Like you know how you said housing?
0:29:10
Like do you track it by like housing, retail, construction,
0:30:04
I'm going to turn into Council Member Menon for questions.
0:30:13
Oh, I'm gonna turn to councilmember Menon for questions.
JoAnn Kamuf Ward
0:23:18
Sure, so I can serve, I share our fiscal twenty four numbers.
0:23:24
Those are our most up to date.
0:23:27
So I should say just as a kind of snapshot, disability related inquiries comprise about 20% of the jurisdictional inquiries we receive and also approximate about 20% filed claims.
0:23:43
So in fiscal year twenty four we had 164 inquiries related to disability and employment, 138 in public accommodations.
0:23:52
And as I mentioned in my testimony, we filed 116 claims.
0:23:57
70 of those were employment, 30 in housing, and about 13 in public accommodations.
0:24:06
One thing that I want to note just about the difference between inquiries and claims is that this is also an area where we have pre complaint interventions as a possibility.
0:24:16
In fiscal year twenty four the commission facilitated three zero seven pre complaint interventions.
0:24:24
85 of those were physical modifications to buildings.
0:24:28
And as mentioned in my testimony, the majority of those were in housing.
0:25:16
Yeah I think again the percentages that I mentioned, the kind of twenty percent disability across areas is pretty consistent.
0:25:26
Housing is also with disability related cases.
0:25:31
Housing is a primary area where seeing cases.
0:25:36
I don't think that has changed.
0:25:38
I think there was a lull during COVID in all of these areas because people were going outside less and not going necessarily to businesses.
0:25:50
But the trends are pretty solid across years.
0:27:46
But generally in pre complaints there's not a monetary amount that's levied.
0:27:52
The settlements are about bringing relief to the individual in question.
0:28:17
So we don't break it out that way.
0:28:20
I think part of the reason for that is that you know small businesses can be involved in cases in a number of ways as employers, as public accommodations.
0:28:32
And from the perspective of the New York City Human Rights Law, individuals' rights are the same in all of those instances.
0:28:38
What changes, if it's a small business, might be the type of affirmative relief or the undue hardship analysis if someone is seeking an accommodation.
0:28:47
But we do not track by business size.
0:28:50
And I think the law for employment covers everyone with four or more employees, so definitely a different kind of definition than we're talking about than small business services or some of the legislation
0:29:03
use.
0:29:14
you know?
0:29:15
We don't generally do that.
0:29:19
And I think, I mean, again, looking at the employment space, which is also businesses are covered in that way, a lot of the accommodations have nothing to do with the type of business.
0:29:29
It's really about workplaces and how those are functioning and communication.
0:29:35
So historically, have not tracked data that way.
0:29:38
We track how many small businesses we engage with on the outreach side.
0:29:43
So I mentioned our disability trainings already reaching 10,000 people.
0:29:48
But we also do resource fairs.
0:29:52
We do with council people business corridor outreach and reach several thousand individuals at small businesses that way.
Michael Griffin
0:26:19
Thank you Councilmember Williams.
0:26:21
So pre complaint interventions can resolve in a number of ways.
0:26:25
There's also a couple different types of pre complaint intervention.
0:26:30
As my colleague Joanne mentioned, Project Equal Access is mainly focused in housing, and that can involve staff members from the law enforcement bureau actually visiting a business to ensure that a potential physical accessibility modification is feasible.
0:26:53
Pre complaint interventions more broadly can be conducted by law enforcement bureau staff attorneys, the Project Equal access staffers, and non attorney staff.
0:27:05
And that will often involve once an individual has come to the commission and has stated at least an initially jurisdictional claim related to disability interfacing with the business, the covered entity, to see if they're amenable to pre complaint intervention, in which case the remedies would mostly be the specific relief, whatever the reasonable accommodation was, and could include trainings, policy changes or creation.
0:27:37
And then if a business is not interested in cooperating with the pre complaint intervention, it can be referred for complaint.