City Limits News
Below are selected articles from 2020 and 2021 when Nicole Javorsky was a staff writer at the NYC-focused investigative journalism non-profit, City Limits, and a corps member in the nationwide service program, Report for America. You’ll also find pieces from 2016 and 2018 when Nicole freelanced for City Limits …
Hotels as COVID Convalescent Homes: Challenges for Patients, Staff
The weekend of April 18, three people died while staying in Manhattan’s Hilton Garden Inn on 37th Street, one of the hotels participating in New York City’s program to make rooms available for people who tested positive for the coronavirus or are symptomatic.
The purpose of the city’s hotel program is to provide places for people to isolate without spreading the virus to other members of their households. Rooms have also been made available for some individuals who are homeless and health care workers who are frequently in contact with patients, so they can avoid exposing their family members at home …
Advocates Push for $20M in Budget to Maintain Support for NYC Foster Youth
The COVID-19 crisis has caused many to feel more isolated, stressed, and anxious. For children and teenagers, who rely on routines and predictability to feel a sense of stability, the mental health impact of the pandemic has been sizable. At the same time, the disruption to daily life over the past year has made existing challenges even harder for foster care youth, who already have to grapple with the stress and trauma of being separated from their families and attending family court proceedings …
Climbing Jail Population and Second COVID Wave Renews Push to Release NYers Behind Bars
The number of people in New York City jails has increased in recent months, reversing progress made earlier in the pandemic to reduce the jail population—and heightening advocates’ concerns about how both the city and state are managing the threat behind bars, especially as COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations rise again citywide …
CUNY Dorm Refund—and Answers—Can be Hard to Get
As the number of COVID-19 cases surged in New York in late March, CUNY evicted students from dorms with only a few days’ notice, in case the buildings were needed as makeshift medical facilities. Although CUNY said students with nowhere to go could move into a dorm at Queens College, most CUNY students who had been living in student housing had to return home to continue their classes online, whether still in New York or somewhere else.
But more than three months after the move-out date—and after CUNY approved refunds for graduating students—it appears that some CUNY families face obstacles trying to learn when students who graduated this spring will get their refunds …
3,311 Cases, 1,929 Classroom Closures: COVID-19 and the Uncertain NYC School Year
At a press conference Sunday, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a new phased re-opening plan for the city’s schools, following a systemwide closure on Nov. 19 after the city’s COVID-19 positivity rate surpassed 3 percent, the threshold set earlier this fall.
Unlike the approach taken at the start of this school year, the new plan does not include a threshold at which schools close system-wide. With increased testing, required consent forms from parents for testing, and having had the experience of monitoring cases among students and staff this fall, the mayor says, “The previous approach doesn’t apply anymore.”
NYC Faces Uphill Climb in Vaccinating Older New Yorkers
On Jan. 12, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that New Yorkers 65 and older were now eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine — but the news came with a warning.
“I urge patience as unfortunately there are far more eligible NYers than there is vaccine supply,” the governor said …
Everything You Want to Know About COVID-19 Antibody Testing but Were Afraid to Ask
Numerous scientific terms have been introduced into everyday conversation over the past several months, due to the enormous impact COVID-19 has had on daily life.
“We’re asking people to have a crash course in epidemiology, virology, immunology, genetics. We are throwing around these very scientific terms that people have never heard of,” says Danielle Ompad, an epidemiologist at NYU School of Global Public Health. “People are confused because it’s complicated stuff. It’s not part of the general knowledge.”
The term “antibodies” is one example of a scientific term that’s now crucial for understanding the antibody tests available to the public, which is a different test than the COVID-19 diagnostic test …
NYC’s Memorial Murals Honor Those Who’ve Gone, Then Go Themselves
After Jessie Hernandez was killed by two Denver police officers in January 2015, the street artist who goes by Lmnopi painted a memorial mural.
“I often find myself crying while I am painting. In fact, when I have those waves of emotion wash over me while painting someone, I know I am on the right path,” Lmnopi says. “It’s like riding a wave of love. My hands translate it.”
When Lmnopi went back to the Brooklyn Brewery wall in Williamsburg where she painted Hernandez less than two years before, the only part of the mural left was the mouth …