Mayor Adams celebrates the launch of the nation’s first deliveristas hub program. Image Credit: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office.
Through federal grant funding, the City will turn underused existing infrastructure into hubs for food deliveristas. On October 3, 2022, Mayor Eric Adams and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced a first-of-its-kind hub program for NYC’s 65,000 food delivery workers. The “Street Deliveristas Hubs” program will create safe places for delivery workers to seek shelter from the elements and charge both their electric bicycles and cell phones.
Through a $1 million federal grant in the upcoming appropriations bill, secured by Senator Schumer for Workers Justice Project/Los Deliveristas Unidos, the City will use existing infrastructure like vacant newsstands to provide a place to rest and recharge. By revitalizing empty structures, the hub program will help ensure the City’s public spaces better serve everyone. Additionally, a portion of the federal grant funding will be used to renovate a delivery worker center in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
The Street Deliveristas Hub pilot program will be the first-of-its-kind in the nation for app-based food delivery workers, who make up an exploding economic sector after the COVID-19 pandemic. Hubs will be placed in high-traffic neighborhoods, with design input from both delivery workers and local residents to create spaces that benefit entire communities.
Delivery workers can use these hubs to seek shelter from the elements and obtain essential services, such as workers’ rights information. Along with the millions of dollars Majority Leader Schumer secured for safer bike infrastructure in the Bipartisan Infrastructure and Jobs Law, this program represents city and state leaders’ commitment to safe, innovative infrastructure that supports critical essential workers.
Ligia Guallpa, executive director of the Worker’s Justice Project/Los Deliveristas Unidos, praised Mayor Adams and Majority Leader Schumer’s “commitment to invest and build the nation’s first Deliveristas Hubs, a new infrastructure model that will deliver worker-led training programs, essential services, workers’ rights information, micro-mobility charging stations, and a safe place for deliveristas to rest.”
Guallpa added that Los Deliveristas Unidos is “proud to be partners in developing the concept of Street Deliveristas Hubs and to be transforming app delivery jobs into a profession that deserves a living wage, safe working conditions, and new deliverista infrastructure.”
Mayor Adams: “Deliveristas are out there doing the hard work, day in and day out, and are essential to New Yorkers’ way of life and to our city’s economy, and essential workers deserve essential services. While most people have a break room to rest while at work, app-based food delivery workers do not. I’m proud to partner with Majority Leader Schumer to create the first-in-the-nation Street Deliveristas Hubs that will eventually help serve the more than 65,000 deliveristas in New York City.
Majority Leader Schumer: “When I rode my bike alongside deliveristas last fall, I pledged to fight for better infrastructure to support their needs, including charging stations, shelter, rest areas, and more. With $1 million in federal funding I have secured for deliveristas, we are creating these innovative Street Hubs and a renovated worker center. Alongside millions for better bike infrastructure in the Bipartisan Infrastructure and Jobs Law, we are proudly on our way to meeting that promise for better and safer biking infrastructure.”
By: Cassidy Strong (Cassidy is a CityLaw intern and a New York Law School student, Class of 2024.)
Mayor Adams, Majority Leader Schumer Announce First-in-Nation Street Deliveristas Hubs to Serve NYC’s Food Delivery Workers, October 3, 2022
1. This subsidizes an unsustainable way of life
2. Courses should focus on not riding on the sidewalk
3. Good place to collect and check biometric data