Councilmember seeks third term representing District 38

On a warm September morning outside Sole Cafe, Councilmember Alexa Avilés sat down with the Sunset Post to reflect on her record and the challenges that shaped her long before taking office.

Avilés was born in Bayamón, Puerto Rico, where childhood meant family gatherings around the marquesina and playful afternoons chasing lagartijos in the yard. That childhood was cut short when Avilés witnessed her father’s murder.

Her mother moved the family to East New York, one of the city’s most disinvested neighborhoods, and struggled to make ends meet. Avilés recalls some days of hunger and winters without boots, tying grocery bags around sneakers to keep her feet dry.

“There was no shame in that,” Avilés said. “We were surviving and everybody was quite poor around us, so we were all doing the same thing.”

At that time her relatives were all coping differently with the death of her father, she said, and they didn’t know how to help her manage her own painful memories.

“It does give me an experience that allows me to be deeply empathetic with people who experience violence and trauma,” Avilés said.

She said she had never been to Sunset Park as a child and it felt like another world. She described visiting her boyfriend, now her husband, seeing the area for the first time and knowing right away that she wanted to make the neighborhood her home.

Her two daughters grew up in Sunset Park, and Avilés served on Beacon’s PTA for a decade. Now one of her daughters is in college and the other is a senior in high school. “We’re soon to be empty nesters, which is very weird to think about,” she said. Balancing family life with council work was tough, and she admitted, “We do better some days than others.”

Avilés pointed to three accomplishments from her first term that give her the most pride.

The first was saving the United Senior Center from closure. “One senior told me, if I don’t have this center, I will die,” she recalled. “That was intolerable to me. Now it’s stable for another ten years.”

Second was funding parks near Third Avenue, starting with the PS 503–506 Playground on 60th Street. “That was the first project I was able to complete in the neighborhood, and it’s so used by the community,” she said. “Seeing all those green spaces finally renovated is going to be amazing, even if I’m out of office by the time they finish.”

She also highlighted her office’s constituent services, estimating they had managed about 10,000 cases over the last four years. “We’ve helped thousands of people in the neighborhood, from translating complex government documents to helping scam victims recover their life savings when banks refused,” she said.

Looking ahead, Avilés identified three urgent priorities: immigrant services, English language programs, and housing. As chair of the Council’s Immigration Committee, she said she secured about $30 million in legal services funding, over the mayor’s objections. She also said she won the largest increase in English classes, in a district where about 70 percent speak English as a second language. And she said she continues to push for housing preservation and real affordability.

Avilés campaigns alongside Zohran Mamdani, the Astoria assemblymember now running for mayor, who, like her, is part of the Democratic Socialists of America. She supports Mamdani’s push for free buses, rent freezes, and universal child care. “People shouldn’t have to choose between child care and paying the rent,” she said, adding that rent freezes could mean the difference between seniors staying in their homes and being priced out.

In the general election she faces Republican candidate Luis Quero, a Sunset Park native who works in the financial sector. Quero is making quality of life central to his pitch, arguing that under Avilés the neighborhood has seen more garbage on the streets and an over-concentration of homeless shelters.

Avilés said sanitation is a constant battle in a dense neighborhood like Sunset Park. “I talk to DOT and Sanitation more than anyone could imagine,” she said. “Because we are a dense community, we don’t have a low population, and we need more service and a different kind of level of service.” On homelessness, she added that quality of life must be addressed “with dignity, not by dehumanizing people who are unhoused.”

He also attacks her votes against police training initiatives and her push to cut the NYPD budget, saying she puts ideology ahead of public safety. Avilés responded that adding police trainings is a “band-aid” and that the city needs better alternatives: “You can’t solve a mental health crisis by sending police. We need real teams that are trained to respond.”

On immigration, Quero rejects her record of securing millions for legal services, insisting that newcomers should pay for their own representation.

As for her take on Quero, Avilés said she doesn’t know much about him beyond hearing he once did some tenant organizing. “I’ve never seen him really in the neighborhood,” she said.