In a tragically too-familiar ritual, a group of grief-stricken cabbies mourned the suicide of one of their own on Sunday, and implored city to help save their fellow hacks from crushing debt.
Twenty cab drivers stood at the edge of Meadow Lake in Flushing Meadows Park, each holding a red carnation in one hand and, in the other a sign that listed the names of eight cabbies who committed suicide this year — including Roy Kim, who hanged himself Nov. 5 in his Flushing home.
“We’ve done too many of these prayers, too many of these vigils. It’s just been a very devastating pattern of loss,” said Bhairavi Desai, the founding member of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance.
Kim, 58, worked around the clock, but still couldn’t keep up as the value of his city-issued taxi medallion plunged and he faced crushing competition from ride-sharing apps like Uber and Lyft.
Dong Lee, 62, a longtime cabbie who met Kim at Kennedy Airport, said he often saw Kim working diligently throughout the night to find fares. “He bought his medallion almost three years ago. He has (a lot of) hardship. Very hardworking people. He’s my friend, now he’s gone.”
Lee called for the city to do more to help struggling cab drivers. “Please consider our hardship,” he said. “Please help us. We need it. We need it. Lots of help.”
Desai welcomed a decision by Mayor de Blasio and the City Council to cap the number of for-hire vehicles in New York and create a task force to study medallion devaluation. “But, you know, the truth is it’s been five years of loss, so a few months of legislation is not going to fix this issue,” she said.
Desai called for a debt relief program to restructure medallion loans. Her group is also trying to find a way to eliminate 20% of medallion owners’ outstanding debt.
Medallions, which give taxis the right to take street hails in most of Manhattan, sold for $1.2 million each five years ago. They’ve sold more recently for $300,000, city data shows.
“The reality is the medallion has fallen in value. That’s just the reality of the moment. But that loss has to be spread across this industry,” she said. “It cannot be on the medallion owners. The banks and the credit unions and the government need to step in to give people a proper debt relief.”
