Sandy Repairs Lag for Poor NYers | Bloomberg’s Legacy at Willets Point | Foreclosures and Prices Ris

November 1st 2013

The big to reshape Willets Point comprises some of the defining elements of the Bloomberg approach to development.

  1. Income gap seen in Sandy recovery One year after Superstorm Sandy, more than 75% of the households that were damaged by the storm and reported at least an average annual income of $57,000 have seen full repairs to their homes. However, only about half of households with total incomes below that threshold have had their homes fully repaired, according to a survey released Thursday by Enterprise Community Partners, a nationwide nonprofit advocating for affordable housing. [Crain’s NY – 10/31/13]
  2. Public Housing Residents Relying on Agency Still Recovering From Storm. A year after the storm, the food line is one of many reminders of the persistent vulnerability of New York City’s public housing and the hundreds of thousands of people who live in the projects. There are the unrepaired leaks and the recurring mold in apartments, and in the ground-floor units that remain empty and uninhabitable. There is the unreliable heat from portable boilers, and the sinkholes that keep some playgrounds closed. [NY Times – 10/30/13]
  3. Public housing authority turns attention to future threats. The authority that runs New York’s housing projects says it has completed basic repair work on Sandy-damaged properties, and is shifting focus to preparing for future storms. [WNYC – 10/29/13]
  4. Joe Lhota slams Bill de Blasio over being quiet on affordable housing in Atlantic Yards. Housing emerged as an issue in the mayoral race Monday when Bill de Blasio came under withering attack for the lack of affordable units in the Atlantic Yards development rising in his Brooklyn backyard. [NY Daily News – 10/28/13]
  5. What it will take the establish a Philadelphia land bank. Land banks are essentially centralized publicly controlled clearinghouses for selling vacant city-owned land. Developed in the shrinking city of Flint, Mich., the concept has recently spread to other cities grappling with large amounts of abandoned properties, including St. Louis, Chicago and, of course, Philadelphia. [Next City – 10/28/13]
  6. Why Superstorm Sandy is still wreaking havoc on poor communities. One year ago Superstorm Sandy slammed into the world’s financial capital and its surrounding region to devastating effect on people of color and the working poor. With a 250 mile-wide path of destruction across three states, the historic storm crippled New York City like never before. As its deadly waters receded, Sandy revealed many uncomfortable truths about the Big Apple, a metropolis where income inequality and its corresponding racial implications are more severe than almost any other place on the planet. Disturbingly there’s evidence that the critical environmental and climate justice issues revealed by Sandy remain unaddressed. One year later Sandy’s disproportionate impact on historically marginalized communities continues in shocking ways. [Colorlines – 10/29/13]
  7. Lessons of Willets: Will the next mayor do development differently? Bloomberg has been caricatured for his so-called “nanny-state” health initiatives-the bans on smoking, trans fats, and Big Gulps-but few of his policies have been as prescriptive or as far-reaching as those on land-use and development. Bloomberg’s handed developers free land, new infrastructure, and generous subsidies in the hopes of realizing wider benefits down the road. He’s already rezoned 37 percent of the city, and in his last year in office he’s aggressively pushed for more. [City Limits – 10/30/13]
  8. Anti-foreclosure activists put BlackRock in a hard place.  Jean Sassine of Queens Village held a letter from the Home Defenders League to BlackRock CEO Laurence Fink, whose $75.8 million salary makes him the highest-paid financial services CEO in the country. The protest was one of several actions taking place across the country on Wednesday, coordinated by the Home Defenders League, as a response to BlackRock’s decision to sue Richmond, California. The city of Richmond has put forth a plan to seize 624 homes under its right of eminent domain-which requires the city to pay market value for the homes. Because this market value is less than the mortgages on the homes, which banks have refused to write down, this action would allow the city to sell the homes back to the homeowner at a lower rate, thereby lowering their mortgage payments and preventing foreclosure. [In These Times – 10/30/13]
  9. Even with surge in foreclosures post-Sandy, real estate prices in Queens, Brooklyn rise. One year after Hurricane Sandy, New York area homeowners are drowning under a wave of foreclosure notices. In a sign that Sandy victims can’t keep up with their mortgage payments or are choosing to abandon battered homes, foreclosure activity in New York City and Long Island surged 33% in the first nine months of the year, compared with the same period last year, according to a special report from Realty Trac. But even though Sandy has put more people at risk of losing their homes, the rise in foreclosures hasn’t been enough to put a dent in an overall strong real estate market. [NY Daily News – 10/30/13]
  10. Deal reached on S.I. megadevelopment. Some late wheeling and dealing Tuesday resulted in a surprising agreement that assures final approval for Staten Island’s largest development project since the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge: a huge Ferris wheel and massive outlet mall near the borough’s ferry terminal in St. George. While full details have not been disclosed, Crain’s has learned that the broad strokes of the deal signal a clear win for both organized labor and Councilwoman Debi Rose. [Crain’s NY – 10/30/13]
  11. Forest City Ratner sues the City for Atlantic Yards tax breaks. The developer has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Finance, in an attempt to knock the assessment on the southern section of the development site down from $11.2 million to a scant $1.6 million,DNAinfo reported. The property, block 1129, comprises the southern side of the Atlantic Yards site [NY Observer – 10/30/13]
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