NYC’s Housing Shortage | Bloomberg’s Storm Plan | NYCHA’s Looming Cuts
Critics call a canal race on the Gowanus a ‘political ploy’ to help The Lightstone Group
- City’s boom spurs a need for housing “In the coming decades, New York could confront a problem many cities would love to have: too many people and nowhere to put them. The city is expected to add one million more residents by 2040, but there likely won’t be room for hundreds of thousands of them unless a small city of new housing is built, according to a report by a Columbia University think tank.”
- Bloomberg outlines $20 billion storm protection plan “Bloomberg outlined a far-reaching plan on Tuesday to protect New York City from the threat of rising sea levels and powerful storm surges by building an extensive network of flood walls, levees and bulkheads along its 520 miles of coast.”
- Drastic cuts loom for NYC Housing Authority “Because of federal sequestration, the New York City Housing Authority will be forced to make drastic cuts to its staff and programming. The reductions are expected to have a dire impact for some of the more than 650,000 New Yorkers who rely on the agency for an apartment or a Section 8 voucher. NYCHA Chairman John Rhea announced Wednesday that the agency was facing a $205 million shortfall as a result of sequestration, and that the cuts would come from almost all quarters of the housing authority.”
- Brooklyn rents reverse upward climb, while Manhattan’s are as steep as ever. “Rental season has arrived with a vengeance as Manhattan prices show no sign of easing, while Brooklyn prices, surprisingly, eased slightly after booming since 2010, monthly market reports from residential brokerages released today show.”
- Groups press city council on budget for homeless. “New York can be an unwelcome place at night, particularly for the nearly 4,000 youths who might have no safe place to sleep. And for someone looking to take advantage, homeless young people can be easy prey.”
- Housing discrimination still exists, in deceptively subtle forms. “When the Department of Housing and Urban Development first began to systematically study housing discrimination in the United States in the 1970s, the most blatant forms of it were still common. Blacks here denied appointments to meet with real estate brokers or rental agencies to tour homes that had been publicly advertised. Or they were told these homes were no longer available, a lie that helped perpetuate racial divides between whole neighborhoods.”
- Barclays arena gives assist to retailers. “Nine months after Brooklyn’s Barclays Center opened its doors, restaurants and bars on neighboring streets say they are seeing some much-desired spillover from the arena on event nights. How much boils down to whether the main act is a Barbra Streisand concert or a Brooklyn Nets basketball game. The bottom line: Streisand fans are Barmuch heavier spenders than Nets fans. And not every nearby retailer is seeing a revenue increase from the 18,000-seat arena.”
- Fate of big BAM expansion is a cliff-hanger. “A change of heart by a key City Council member on plans to bring 300 apartments and three cultural institutions to a site in Fort Green, Brooklyn, has cast the future of the project in doubt on the eve of Wednesday’s key council vote.”
- Critics call Gowanus canal race unsafe ‘political ploy’ to help developer. “Critics are calling a boat race on the Gowanus Canal this weekend an “irresponsible” stunt designed to advance a pro-development agenda. They point to the fact that the Lightstone Group, a developer that wants to build a 700-unit housing project on the polluted canal’s banks, is a sponsor of the race.”
- Garden City housing discrimination suit to begin Monday “The Village of Garden City will defend itself against accusations of housing discrimination against minorities in a long-awaited trial on a federal lawsuit set to begin Monday. The 8-year-old lawsuit stems from an allegedly discriminatory and exclusionary zoning enactment adopted by Garden City on Nassau County-owned property. The trial is scheduled to run through July 8 before U.S. District Court Judge Arthur D. Spatt in Central Islip.”
