Taxi Drivers' Hunger Strike Ends, After City Agrees To Additional Medallion Debt Relief
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- After 46 days of protests and a two-week hunger strike, yellow taxi cab medallion owners are getting the financial relief they've been asking for.
The city has reached a deal with the lender and New York Taxi Workers Alliance.
"I'm happy. I'm feeling American," Mouhamadou Aliyu told CBS2's Cory James.
Aliyu, a 20-year cabbie, has been drowning in a $651,000 medallion loan.
"There is no day I don't think about committing suicide myself," he said.
But now, he says he will no longer contemplate that after Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Wednesday a new agreement to help struggling taxi drivers, saying in part, "Our taxi workers are the backbone of our city and we refuse to leave them behind."
"What a victory for working people ... Finally have a future, finally can plan, finally can save," taxi driver Augustine Tang said.
Tang says he has a $485,000 loan and is paying nearly $3,000 a month.
Now, all loans will be restructured to max $170,000, capping debt monthly payments to around $1,100 for medallion owners, who celebrated outside City Hall.
"This is a huge win," Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou said.
Niou says this change was needed.
"Ninety-eight percent of our taxi drivers are immigrants, and we know that this predatory debt, this kind of predatory lending ... really targets our communities," she said.
Communities with people like Aliyu, who moved here from Africa nearly three decades ago and finally feels like he is getting a second chance at giving his wife and four kids the American dream.
"Today is a great day because I'm happy being alive. I'm happy I got my life back," he said. "I will never forget November 3rd."
The cost to purchase a medallion now is around $100,000.
The New York Taxi Workers Alliance says its 25,000 members can take advantage of the new deal. Non-union members who are cab drivers can take advantage of it, too.
