Homelessness burns while condos fizzle (Metro NY)
Yes, “Condos Fizzle While Homelessness Burns” would have made a better Nero reference, and it’s what I suggested originally, but character counts are a harsh mistress. In any case, read on about how...
View ArticleKicking the middle class (Metro NY)
After a three-week hiatus, I make my return to the Metro op-ed page with a discussion of how a poorly thought out rent law is forcing people out of their homes: On a recent trip to my local coffee...
View ArticleRealtor goggles
The New York Times ran a Page One story yesterday headlined “Where Home Prices Crashed Early, Signs of a Rebound,” all about the housing market in Sacramento, which it declares to be in “the earliest...
View Article11237: One New York City Neighborhood in the Bloomberg Era (City Limits...
I just received my hot-off-the-presses copy of the new issue of City Limits Investigates, with a report by CLI editor Jarrett Murphy and myself on how one New York City zip code — 11237, which covers...
View ArticleNYC: A view from the basement (Metro NY)
Sure, Brooklyn has become fashionable on Mayor Bloomberg’s watch, but can he make it livable? A few years back, when the New York real estate market still looked within reach of, say, itinerant op-ed...
View ArticleAP vs AP
The Associated Press today on the housing market and the economy: BOSTON (AP) — Home sales in the Northeast rose in February as the economy showed signs of recovery, inspiring buyers. … Nationwide,...
View ArticleWary Optimism Greets De Blasio’s Brooklyn Redevelopment Plans (City...
When the subject of Brooklyn’s hottest neighborhoods comes up, Broadway Junction seldom enters the conversation. Named for the tangle of J and L train tracks that pass overhead, Broadway Junction is...
View ArticleThe Gentrifier’s Guide to Not Being an Asshole | Village Voice
If anyone needed a perfect Rorschach test for 21st-century gentrification angst, it showed up this summer on Slate. The website created an “Are You a Gentrifier?” calculator that promised a simple...
View ArticleAt Old Rheingold Plant, a Battle Brews | Village Voice
The former Rheingold brewery site in northwest Bushwick was set to be a perfect flash point between the families who’d rebuilt the neighborhood after the fires of the 1970s and the newcomers who’d...
View ArticleWhat’s in a Name? Tenants Accuse Shamco of Illegal Rent Hikes | City Limits
In a city where more than 60 percent of residents are renters and rents are perpetually too damn high, New Yorkers are preconditioned to view their landlords as mustache-twirling cartoon villains. Even...
View ArticleBushwick Developer Sells Out, Takes Housing Promises With Him | City Limits
When Bushwick community groups announced in January 2014 that Read Properties, owners of the long-derelict Rheingold Brewery site along Flushing Avenue, had agreed to build as many as 200 units of...
View ArticleWhat Happens to Families Forced Out of Bushwick? (City & State/City Limits)
Bushwick has been in the national spotlight of late, the most recent neighborhood to be emblematic of the New Brooklyn of hipster beards and trendy clubs. There’s now an artisanal Bushwick-scented...
View ArticleLandlords Will Bleed Tenants Of More Than $270 Million In 2016 From ‘MCIs’|...
For the one million New York City tenants living in rent-stabilized apartments, it’s a familiar dance: Your landlord offers to fix your splintering floor or crumbling kitchen cabinets, if you’ll agree...
View ArticleTests Loom for De Blasio’s Approach to Community Planning | City Limits
After a rush of activity culminating in last spring’s approval of the sweeping Mandatory Inclusionary Housing and Zoning for Quality and Affordability reforms to the city’s zoning code, the approval of...
View ArticleReport: NYC ‘Wasted’ $2.5 Billion on Tax Breaks For Developers | Village Voice
The city’s venerable 421-a tax break for housing development, which expired last January and which Governor Cuomo now wants to renew and expand, has long come under fire from housing advocates as an...
View ArticleCuomo’s New Tax Giveaway For Developers Will Cost $600K Per Each Affordable...
When New York state’s 421-a tax break program came crashing down early last year amid a standoff between developers and construction unions over wages, there were mixed feelings among many housing...
View ArticleStreetEasy’s Ad Campaign Is Neocolonialist Propaganda For The Seamless...
StreetEasy has all but usurped the apartment-finding role once held by Craigslist, and before that, by rushing out to pick up the Voice on Tuesday nights before your fellow would-be renters. Ever since...
View ArticleHow to Catch Your Landlord Cheating on Rents | Village Voice
One stormy evening last summer, in a corner of a playground on Union Street in Flushing, a small crowd gathered. They were residents of 140-35 Franklin Avenue one block to the south, and they were...
View ArticleStudy Shows How Weakened Rent Laws Cost NYC More Than 150,000 Rent-Regulated...
One of the truisms of modern “Rent Is Too Damn High” New York City is that rent-stabilized apartments are all but impossible to find unless you’re lucky enough to inherit one from a deceased relative....
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