After saving others, man dies in Grand elevator ELEVATOR continued from p. 1
and into a hallway. But when he tried to follow her himself, the elevator suddenly dropped, pinning him between its ceiling and the floor. “When I got into the elevator, I felt it dropping and I thought my feet would get caught in the gap but the man pushed me out and said, ‘Happy New Year,’ ” Sanchez told The New York Post. “I saw he was trapped and the elevator was crushing him. It was awful,” she said. Residents reportedly tried to rescue the 25-year-old in vain. A spokesperson for the New York Police Department said officers from the Seventh Precinct responded to a 911 call shortly after midnight and found Hewett-Brown unconscious and unresponsive, still pinned by the elevator and severely injured. He was brought to NewYork-Presbyterian/ Lower Manhattan Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, according to police. According to news reports, the party that Hewett-Brown had hoped to attend continued until the wee hours. Residents at the building, which is part of the Grand Street Guild complex and whose apartments are for low-income tenants, have reportedly complained for years about faulty elevators. The building owners, Grand Street Guild East HDFC, were slapped with two Environmental Control Board violations last year, and Department of Buildings records currently list three open violations dating back to a 2012 inspection. Jay Yablonsky, the director of property management at Wavecrest Management, which operates the property, said the company was working FIGHT FOR 15 continued from p. 10
wages for students in order to make education more accessible. The average four-year public school tuition, according to the 2015 College Board report, is currently $9,410, with the total cost rising to $19,548. For a private school, the costs are even higher, and at N.Y.U., some students work to try and pay off their loans. “Students are trying to work two or three jobs to get through school when they’re supposed to be doing homework or studying,” Ascherman said. “It’s just not possible to make it work.” Ascherman added that the barrier for education is higher for low-income families. “People can’t afford to stop working and go to college to get a better job if they constantly have to work to survive,” he said. This is a problem that Choi has faced in attempting to learn English. “Because she works six days a week, it is virtually impossible for her to find an English class that fits her schedule, which creates a barrier for her to learn English,” her daughter, Rae, said. “Tutoring or English schools are also expensive for workTheVillager.com
Stephen Hewett-Brown, 25, was killed in an elevator accident on New Year’s Eve at one of the Grand St. Guild buildings.
with D.O.B. and police to determine the cause of the fatal accident, but wouldn’t comment on the complaints or violations. “The safety of our residents is our paramount concern,” he said in a statement. “The elevators underwent a complete modernization in 2011, and are regularly inspected and serviced by a licensed elevator maintenance and inspection agency.” In the meantime, Hewett-Brown’s mother has set up a gofundme page that is trying to raise $15,000 for the young man’s funeral. “I’m not surprised that he would commit this selfless act,” Miranda Brown wrote of her son in a
ing-class immigrants.” However, raising the minimum wage might actually do more harm than good, according to N.Y.U. economics professor Christopher Flinn, author of the book “The Minimum Wage and Labor Market Outcomes.” While Flinn agrees that education should be more affordable, he doesn’t believe that raising the minimum wage is the best way to increase access to education. “Fifteen dollars is not nirvana by any means,” Flinn said. “It’s not going to get them out of poverty. The only way to break the cycle is to raise the skill level of workers.” According to Flinn, having a higher skill level will allow workers to transition into higher-paying jobs. “If you don’t raise skill level then employers are doing charity work at some level,” he noted. Flinn believes it’s unfair to pay $15 per hour to a low-skilled worker, arguing that minimum-wage jobs were “never intended for supporting a family, nor thought of as a career.” The long-term fix, according to Flinn, is to raise the skill level of high school graduates by fixing America’s public K-through-12 education system. “The real culprit is a bad schooling
Residents say they have long complained about elevator problems at the Lower East Side highrise complex.
post on the fundraising Web site. “He was a good person, he would help anyone [and] even give you the shirt off his back if he had to.” As of press time, two days after it was created, the page had attracted around $7,500 in donations, with contributions steadily coming in. Residents of 131 Broome St. are meeting at 7 p.m. on Thurs., Jan. 7, to discuss elevator safety at their building.
system,” he said. Even more to the point, Flinn suggested that the biggest change would come from creating better affordable pre-school and early-education programs. “By the time kids are five years old, there’s already a huge difference in their prospects just based on their family and school environments,” he said. Flinn added that the raising minimum wage is only a short-term fix that will actually end up causing more unemployment. Using mathematical models, he has predicted that if the minimum wage were to almost double to $15 an hour, roughly 50 to 60 percent of the affected jobs would go away. These assertions are supported by the 2014 Congressional Budget Office report, which predicted that raising the minimum wage to $10.10 would reduce employment by about 500,000 jobs by the second half of 2016. “Companies are going to react like they did in Sweden,” Flinn said. “They’re going to hire less workers and have more automation. You’ll go into McDonald’s and order through a kiosk.” Ascherman pushed against this
argument, though, believing that McDonald’s and other corporations have money to spare. “I find that the C.E.O.’s have just made less money in other instances where minimum wage has been increased,” he said. “McDonald’s C.E.O.’s can afford it. They paid a $30 million stock bonus for all stockholders last year.” Despite Ascherman’s argument, Flinn said that McDonalds is not obligated to redistribute profits equally. “McDonald’s is not a welfare organization, it’s a business,” he said. Despite often being ignored, millions of minimum-wage workers like Kenya refuse to give up. Every day, Kenya gets up, goes to work and tries to get someone to listen. “I just pray that somebody will help me,” she said. In the past, it’s been easier to overlook the struggles of these workers, but now they refuse to go unnoticed. The movement has grown and pressure is building on both politicians and businesses to accommodate these workers. However, $15 an hour isn’t going to accomplish the American Dream. Minimum-wage workers may be able to survive on $15 an hour but it’s unlikely that they’ll be able to thrive. January 7, 2016
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