“While states like New York emphasize supporting vulnerable women and children as a priority, there has been too little focus on the need to improve the child support system to do so—especially within family courts. Instead, these courts—which handle hundreds of thousands of cases per year—have been historically neglected.”
Brad Lander’s Basement Resident Protection Law would create a “basement board” to oversee the conversions and ensure residents of these apartments—called accessory dwelling units or ADUs—have access to tenants’ rights and basic safety protections. It comes a year after rains from Hurricane Ida killed 11 New Yorkers in basement units.
Strained for shelter space, the Adams administration confirmed it was exploring the possibility of using camp facilities “should they become necessary,” to house asylum seekers arriving from the Southern border. The city has relied on commercial hotels and other stopgap facilities to quickly add shelter capacity for decades, but camps would be a new sort of accommodation for families.
“Many homeless New Yorkers are working and could afford rent stabilized rents—yet landlords have been warehousing rent stabilized apartments.”
The city estimates that around 6,300 asylum seekers have arrived via buses from the border in recent months. In addition to finding a safe place to stay, they must navigate access to medical care, keep tabs on their ongoing immigration cases and in some cases, attempt to reunite with family members they were separated from during their journeys. Some have left the shelter system altogether, citing safety concerns.
People living in group settings, like homeless shelters, are at particular risk because of the higher likelihood for skin-to-skin contact and because the virus can spread through clothing, towels and bed sheets used by people with monkeypox, health officials say.
Advocates want the city to take a more proactive approach to lead paint inspections and enforcement, saying the current system contains loopholes that allow property owners to skirt the rules. Their push comes as the Health Department considers lowering the childhood lead-level threshold that would automatically trigger an investigation.
Queens tiene el menor número de centros de enfriamiento de acuerdo con la densidad de su población, con sólo cinco centros por cada 100.000 habitantes, mientras que Manhattan tiene siete, según un análisis realizado por la oficina del Contralor de la Ciudad, Brad Lander. East Flatbush fue el barrio con el peor acceso a los centros de enfriamiento en relación con el grado de vulnerabilidad.
“As of 2016, the city had over 1,131 (more or less) parcels of property at its disposal. Instead of using executive orders on projects that benefit a small group of people, the mayor has the power to relinquish parcels of land and abandoned property to address homelessness.”
The move reflects the organization’s expansion of housing and homelessness coverage at this pivotal moment for New York, as the city emerges from the pandemic amidst a housing affordability crisis and a rising shelter population.
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