More than 500 new households can access city-funded rental vouchers after the elimination last month of the so-called “90-day rule” for applicants, Mayor Adams said Tuesday. The update came weeks after he vetoed a package of legislation, passed by the City Council in May, which would have expanded CityFHEPS eligibility to even more households.
Unofficial numbers released Sunday by the New York City Board of Elections (BOE) show just 44,611 people participated in early voting, held across nine days in every borough but Staten Island. The polls close at 9 p.m. Tuesday.
As the city faces dual affordable housing and homelessness crises, City Limits asked the candidates’ running in Tuesday’s primary for their stance on a number of key related issues. Are they a renter or a landlord? Do they support the idea of “member deference” on local land use votes? What’s the best route for funding repairs at NYCHA?
“You think about a $106 billion budget—we’re asking for $400 million with an M,” Councilmember Carmen De La Rosa said at Thursday’s rally. “NYCHA tenants deserve more and we’re going to continue to stand with you until we see a budget that reflects the dignity that you have long deserved.”
Officials and environmental advocates want to increase the city’s tree canopy to 30 percent by 2035, up from the current threshold of 22 percent. Hitting the new benchmark may not be so straightforward: questions remain over maintenance, funding, and how to mobilize city dwellers to plant more trees.
“As a city, do we want to make people suffer through three months of homelessness before we give them a chance to regain stability through housing?”
“It’s not just enough to realize it is our hands that have created the ecological disaster our world faces, but it is also our responsibility to address it.”
City Limits rounds up the latest housing and land use-related events, public hearings and affordable housing lotteries that are ending soon.
Albany’s inaction has made it more urgent for the council speaker to help pass a package of bills aimed at boosting the supply of homes accessible to, and controlled by, low-income New Yorkers, more than 100 groups said in a letter Tuesday. Some of the legislation has gotten a frosty reception from Mayor Eric Adams’ administration, as well as for-profit developers.
At a Council hearing, officials said the city has recorded 318,000 “engagements” since February 2022 between street homeless residents and police or outreach workers, including instances where the same individual was contacted multiple times. Of those, 4,600 people have agreed to go into shelter; about 1,300 people remain in those placements.
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.
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