Since Sanitation took the street vending enforcement reins, the department has confiscated abandoned or non-compliant material from street vendors in 228 cases, and has donated 32,220 pounds of food and composted another 3,880 pounds.
After dropping the year before, affordable housing production was up again during the 12-month span that ended June 30, officials said Thursday—what advocates say is a welcomed boost but still a far cry from what’s needed as the city struggles to address record-high levels of homelessness.
Nearly two years after the Gowanus rezoning’s passage, signs of change are all around: demolition projects and new builds are transforming the neighborhood. According to the Department of City Planning, roughly half of the expected 8,500 apartments along the canal are in planning or construction stages.
Schools are uniquely positioned to identify and support grieving children, but families and school staff say the system isn’t equipped to serve them.
A bill introduced in the City Council this week would create a 15-member commission that includes people who have experienced homelessness to study current shelter locations, identify new sites and figure out how to pay for them. “Homeless New Yorkers come from every neighborhood in New York City and accordingly we need to equitably site shelters,” the bill’s sponsor said.
The new, formalized procedure essentially codifies what has become a de facto sweeps policy under Mayor Eric Adams, and replaces a 2020 directive that removed the NYPD from most street homeless outreach and clean-ups in the wake of an uprising for police accountability and reform spurred by the murder of George Floyd.
“If everything…is just a question of ‘Does the local community support or not support it,’ the answer will almost, inevitably, always be ‘no,’ so it can’t just be that, it has to be a broader consideration,” the former councilmember said during an interview on the WBAI radio program City Watch.
The land use plan, part of a broader initiative known as Resilient Edgemere, encompasses the area bound by Beach 35th Street and Beach 50th Street and will change zoning rules to increase density in some areas, limit development in others and raise the shoreline along Jamaica Bay.
Eric Adams’ “Housing Our Neighbors” blueprint is missing key details about how to track and accomplish its broad goals, according to critics. City officials pledged to include the updated benchmarks in a revised Mayor’s Management Report (MMR), an annual assessment of municipal agency performance over the previous fiscal year.
De Blasio told City Limits that he wants to see New York City-style right-to-shelter laws for people experiencing homelessness in all cities, rent regulation across the country and a path to citizenship for 12 million immigrants living in the United States without authorization.
City Limits uses investigative journalism through the prism of New York City to identify urban problems, examine their causes, explore solutions, and equip communities to take action.
Founded in 1976 in the midst of New York’s fiscal crisis, City Limits exists to inform democracy and equip citizens to create a more just city. The organization is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit funded by foundation support, ad sponsorship and donations from readers.
Support local, investigative journalism that has informed and empowered New Yorkers for 45 years.
Support local, investigative journalism that has informed and empowered New Yorkers for 45 years.
