Doubling NYC Supportive Housing | Weiner’s Rent-Stabilization Flip Flop

Tours are being offered of the High Line’s unfinished third section. (Richard Perry/NY Times)

1. Bloomberg administrations doubles its commitment to create supportive housing. “The Bloomberg administration will soon seek developers to help double its commitment to create specialty apartment buildings targeted at the city’s neediest residents.Under the mayor’s New Housing Marketplace Plan, some 15,000 units of affordable housing have been built or preserved annually, with a fraction of those, about 500 per year, being part of so-called supportive housing developments.” [Crain’s New York – 06/07/13]
2. The ghost of Anthony Weiner’s rent-stabilized past. “‘Why No Tenant Should Vote for Anthony Weiner,” read the headline in May’s issue of Metropolitan Council on Housing. The op-ed, written by tenant advocate Michael McKee of the Tenants PAC, highlights a 1994 flip-flop by the then-councilman on rent stabilization—a term that has slowly evaporated from Big Apple real estate talk in the modern age.” [Village Voice – 06/05/13]
3. Former Governors Island Coast Guard housing imploded to make way for park. “Governors Island’s Building 877 was once a useful structure, providing housing for Coast Guard personnel and their loved ones. But since the mid-1990s it’s stood vacant, a nuisance to daytime sojourners who can’t see the Statue of Liberty past its 11-story bulk.” [Atlantic Cities – 06/10/13]
4. Sequester forces NYC to trim Section 8 subsidies “Government agencies that administer Section 8 housing vouchers for low-income New Yorkers will not issue as many as 6,000 new vouchers that had been planned for this year, while thousands in the system face subsidy cuts as federal sequestration snips $120 million from Section 8.” [Crain’s New York – 06/09/13]
5. A housing loan for veterans, but scant city housing that qualifies. “Joe Vollono and his wife, Monica Raquel Ortiz, are ready to buy an apartment..Yet more than seven months after the process began in earnest, they have not closed on their condominium. Why? Because Mr. Vollono, who served as an officer in the Navy submarine force for four years, wants to use a loan guaranteed by the Department of Veterans Affairs.” [New York Times – 06/10/13]
6. Sen. Sampson’s embezzlement indictment spurs reform in foreclosure suits. “State Sen. John Sampson’s alleged embezzlement scheme has sparked specific reform in how city courts handle foreclosure suits, The Post has learned. The Brooklyn Democrat was indicted last month for allegedly looting $440,000 from four foreclosure accounts he had been appointed to safeguard. Officials say the alleged scam was aided by a total lack of supervision over the cash raised by the auction of foreclosed properties.” [New York Post – 06/10/13]
7. Final High Line section shifts from “modernistic and showy” to overgrown and natural. “When the third and final section of the High Line opens next year, it will represent a sharp aesthetic departure from the first two sections: Instead of modernistic benches and showy perennials, there will be rusted tracks overgrown with Queen Anne’s lace and goldenrod.” [New York Times – 06/09/13]
8. After Sandy, a dire choice: Lift home or face sky-high insurance. “George Kasimos has almost finished repairing flood damage to his waterfront home, but his Superstorm Sandy nightmare is far from over.Like thousands of others in the hardest-hit coastal stretches of New Jersey and New York, his life is in limbo as he waits to see if tough new coastal rebuilding rules make it just too expensive for him to stay.” [Washington Post – 06/09/13]
9. Renting wall space to NYC graffiti artists. “Last summer, a small arts group approached the board of a co-op building at the southeast corner of West Houston and MacDougal streets with a proposition. Could the group rent wall space from the co-op for displaying a form of street art?” [Wall Street Journal – 06/07/13]