City Limits (https://citylimits.org/author/kate-pastor/)
A former dairy worker is leading the push to close a loophole in labor laws. Agriculture businesses claim farmworkers are trying an end run through the courts after repeatedly failing to make their case in the state legislature.
The board’s vote against the city’s proposal included the caveat that they’d accept a better rezoning that met certain conditions, but many protestors said there should be no rezoning at all.
Advocates hope access to healthy food, expanding school breakfast and ways to address hunger and the forces that drive it are issues that candidates for city office will be forced to discuss between now and Election Day.
A pilot program gives women alleging abuse the chance to obtain a temporary order of protection via videoconference, allowing them to avoid the dangers and difficulties inherent in a trip to court. Can the program expand without raising fairness concerns?
Some 24,000 legally exempt daycare providers in New York City are enrolled to be paid through public assistance but are unlicensed and operate under very limited oversight.
Mayor de Blasio says his housing plan will create good jobs as well as affordable places to live. But limited city oversight of subcontractors, who can change their names after legal trouble or bad publicity, hampers the administration’s ability to deliver on that promise. See which contractors are currently subject to special review for labor practices.
A bill to create a right to counsel for many tenants in housing court has the support of most Council members and appears aligned with the mayor’s and speaker’s agendas. So why has there been no action on the idea?
Moves by real estate companies and analyses from city agencies yield a blueprint for where affordable—and not so affordable—units could go in the borough with the city’s lowest rents and highest poverty. City Limits maps them.
More petitions were filed in Bronx Housing Court than in any other borough in 2013 — more than 33 percent of the 248,732 filed citywide, though Bronx residents make up less than 20 percent of the city’s population.
Tenants who fail to save their homes in Bronx Housing Court often end up in shelters, to which the borough contributes more people than any other. As borough aims to build housing for young professionals, will more reforms to housing court stem the tide?