Adi Talwar
Looking east from 876 Atlantic Ave., within the city's proposed rezoning area, toward a new tower at 809 Atlantic Ave., just outside the area subject to Adams' large-scale rezoning plan.
Mayor Eric Adams has proposed neighborhood-level rezonings near future Metro-North stations in the East Bronx and along an Atlantic Avenue light manufacturing corridor in Crown Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant. The local councilmembers say they support both plans.
The New York City Council held a hearing Thursday to discuss the Fair Chance for Housing Act, which would make it illegal for landlords and realtors to factor in criminal backgrounds when considering a tenant. Supporters say stable housing is key to preventing recidivism, but critics have slammed the bill, citing safety concerns.
City Limits rounds up the latest housing and land use-related events, public hearings and upcoming affordable housing lotteries that are ending soon.
Housing Works and the Doe Fund are breaking into the cannabis industry and pioneering new terrain for nonprofit organizations post-pot prohibition. But the two organizations have different business models as well as divergent approaches to substance use when it comes to their own clients.
“Just Home”—a NYC Health + Hospitals (HHC) plan to convert an empty staff residence on the Jacobi Hospital campus into supportive housing for a few dozen people with serious medical problems discharged from Rikers Island—is a pressure cooker for many of the most fraught issues in the city: homelessness, mental health, development, and the risk of crime, whether real or perceived.
The mayor issued a directive to the NYPD, emergency medical services and the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene empowering them to “involuntarily transport” people experiencing acute mental health crises to hospitals, even if they do not present an immediate threat to themselves or others. But it remains unclear where they will go for continued assistance and housing after they are discharged.
In the absence of specific data, the housing organization Open New York has launched a project asking everyday residents to crowdsource the locations of vacant apartments—rent-stabilized and unregulated units alike—to paint a more complete picture.
The new regulation could have a “chilling effect” on advocacy by residents who use photos and videos to show proof of problems inside New York City homeless shelters.
The latest version of the Innovation Qns plan features 1,436 income-restricted apartments, around 45 percent of the total. “We have set a new precedent for building affordable housing on private land,” the neighborhood’s Councilmember Julie Won said in prepared remarks ahead of the vote.
In a document issued Monday, Councilmember Jennifer Gutiérrez laid out her priorities for any new development that requires changes to the zoning code in one of the city’s most intense real estate markets. Under the City Council’s informal tradition of member deference, local members have effective veto power over land use applications in their districts.
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