City Limits’ coverage of homelessness in New York City is supported by Trinity Church Wall Street.
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“This policy, while likely formed with good intent, is short-sighted and places more strain on a system that is close to breaking. It also shifts focus and continues to villainize individuals who need help, rather than providing the resources that they desperately need. This is a band-aid, meant to make the problem less visible, ignoring the real issues.”
While Gov. Kathy Hochul included a pathway to basement legalization in her February budget proposal, the word ‘cellar’ is absent from her plan. The two terms may be indistinguishable to most property owners, but they’re different under zoning and dwelling laws, and excluding cellars from the state’s plan would omit a significant swath of below-grade housing stock from potential conversion, advocates say.
Councilmembers are weighing a slate of bills to expand programs and resources that follow the model of social housing—deeply affordable homes built “for public good” rather than profit, what supporters say could help turn the tide in a city where increasing numbers of tenants are struggling to afford rent. But City Hall officials pushed back on some of the proposals, saying they could undermine Mayor Adams’ efforts to build new housing as quickly as possible.
City Limits rounds up the latest housing and land use-related events, public hearings and upcoming affordable housing lotteries that are ending soon. Adi TalwarNew Dorp Plaza, Staten Island
Welcome to City Limits’ NYC Housing Calendar, a weekly feature where we round up the latest housing and land use-related events and hearings, as well as upcoming affordable housing lotteries that are ending soon. If you know of an event we should include in next week’s calendar, email jeanmarie@citylimits.org. To get more resources like this as well as our latest reporting on local housing issues, sign up for City Limits’ Mapping the Future newsletter here.Upcoming Housing and Land Use-Related Events:
Thursday, March 9 at 10:30 a.m.: The NYC Council’s land use committee will hold a hearing on the city budget. More here.
Adams will announce a proposal during her State of the City speech Wednesday to support and expand NYCHA tenant-owned businesses, the number of which has jumped significantly in recent years as residents turn to home-based ventures such as catering, child care services and carpentry.
City councilmembers introduced new legislation Thursday to change the city’s fire code and allow homeowners more space on their roofs to install solar panels.
In a six-page decision Thursday, a panel of Third Department judges sided with Albany landlords in finding that state property laws preempt and nullify the city’s 2021 good cause eviction protections. The ruling makes the need for similar protections at the state level more urgent, tenant advocates say.
City Limits rounds up the latest housing and land use-related events, public hearings and upcoming affordable housing lotteries that are ending soon.
The city’s landmark Right to Counsel law was the country’s first to guarantee legal representation in housing court to low-income tenants most at risk for eviction. But advocates and providers say it’s been undermined in recent months as the courts schedule eviction cases faster than there are available housing attorneys to take them. “When the law was first passed, it worked,” Ruth Riddick, a Flatbush tenant, testified Friday at a city hearing on the initiative.
The governor’s proposed budget did not include funding for the state-run Homeowner Protection Program, or HOPP, a network of legal service providers and counselors aimed at preventing foreclosures. Program supporters say the omission ‘makes no sense’ as New York grapples with a housing crisis, which Hochul’s administration has centered as a policy focus this year.
La Ley Municipal 97 promete reducir las emisiones de carbono y crear una ciudad más eficiente desde el punto de vista energético. Pero los ambientalistas advierten que la normativa actual deja un vacío legal que permite a los propietarios, sobre todo a los de oficinas, saltarse el cumplimiento de la ley.
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