From rent regulations renewal in Albany to decisions about the future of NYCHA to the roll-out of the mayor’s plan for 200,000 units of subsidized housing, 2015 will see a crucial test of efforts to keep New York affordable. All City Limits reporting on New York’s housing crisis is supported by the Charles H. Revson Foundation.
An elaborate community planning process underway in East Harlem has the Council speaker’s backing, foundation support, critics and fans. What it doesn’t have is a sense of whether and how the city will be guided by the plan it produces.
The comptroller’s audit finds that too many DHS apartments are in poor shape and too few families who live there are getting the services they need. City Hall says it is working to address those issues.
There are no shortage of ideas on what the city should do now to deal with rising shelter numbers. But selecting the right cure depends on diagnosing the causes of today’s homelessness problem.
Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer recommended approval of the mayor’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing plan after the administration agreed to address a range of concerns about the proposal. She rejected a second zoning proposal, however.
The state and city have cracked down on a number of landlords who get 421-a tax benefits but don’t follow rent-regulation rules. But some reports indicate a wider problem—one that a few tenants, like the ones at 125 Court Street in Brooklyn, say they are battling on their own.
Conventional wisdom is that gentrification displaces the poor. Research contradicts that—but it doesn’t paint a simple or fully reassuring picture.
In Bill de Blasio’s effort to create a more equal city, the housing authority—a successful Big Government program that now faces existential threats—is the ultimate test flight. And Shola Olatoye is its pilot.
Initiatives to develop mixed-income housing on NYCHA land and move a substantial number of apartments from public housing to other programs have some advocates concerned. But they have Ritchie Torres’s support.
The former NYCHA chairman was vilified for his plan to develop housing-authority land. Now that the de Blasio administration has issued its own infill plan, is it time for another look at Rhea’s reign?
As many community boards around the city balk at proposed zoning changes, Commissioner Vicki Been cites research suggesting fears of displacement are overblown.