Barclays At 1: Taking The Next Step | Hotel Program For Sandy Evacuees to end | Better To Buy

Rendering of the B2 32-story modular apartment in Brooklyn, (credit: Shop Architects/FCRC)

1. Atop the Puck building. The Puck Building, a beacon of SoHo that was built in 1885, is going to be a residential destination for the first time in its history. Jared Kushner, a scion of Kushner Companies, which owns the building, is transforming the eighth and ninth floors into six deluxe penthouses. [NYTimes – 09/23/13]
2. New York’s East Harlem: Fighting to keep its culture in the face of gentrification. One of the city’s poorest districts, East Harlem has a median household income around $30,000, compared to around $55,000 for all of New York City, according to U.S. census data from 2010. But the area is also just north of Yorkville, one of Manhattan’s wealthiest and most expensive neighborhoods, making it a prime spot for development. [SeattlePi – 09/21/13]
3. Homeless, unemployed, and surviving on Bitcoins. The park offers free wireless access, and with his laptop, Angle watches YouTube videos in exchange for bitcoins, the world’s most popular digital currency. Angle, 42, is on food stamps, but that never quite gets him through the month. The internet provides the extra money he needs to buy a meal each and every day. [Wired – 09/20/13]
4. City housing repairs funded. A new source of funding will allow the city’s struggling public housing agency to repair 24 public housing developments. Last week, the New York City Housing Authority completed a bond deal in which it borrowed $476 million for current work that will allow the city to speed up necessary repairs at its aging housing developments. [Crain’s – 09/20/13]
5. Barclays at 1: taking the next step. In the coming weeks, Forest City Ratner, developer of the arena and the surrounding 22-acre site, will truck in the cornerstone of the first of 14 residential towers planned for the decade-old project. And what a cornerstone it is. Corner-module might be more apt. B2, as the 32-story apartment building is known, will be the largest modular building in the world when it is completed, tentatively next summer. [NY Daily News – 09/22/13]
6. Hotel program for Sandy evacuees nears an end. New York City is trying to end its hotel program for Sandy victims, which has cost $73.5 million and still houses 348 displaced New Yorkers almost 11 months after the storm. City officials said Friday that they have asked Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice Margaret Chan to rescind her order from May requiring the city to keep the families in the hotels. The officials said the federal government will no longer reimburse New York for rooms after Sept. 30. [Wall Street Journal – 09/21/13]
7. Community activists furious as yet another homeless shelter proposed for East New York The city is planning to open another homeless shelter in East New York, and livid officials from the neighborhood say enough is enough.It would be the third shelter to open in East New York, one of the poorest communities in the city, since 2011, when nearly 400 total beds were added for homeless families and women at two shelters on Van Siclen and Blake Aves. [NY Daily News – 09/20/13]
8. Buying a home still beats renting by 35% in America’s biggest cities Despite rising home prices and mortgage rates, it’s still cheaper to buy a home than to rent one in America’s largest cities.  A new report from San Francisco, Calif.-based real estate site Trulia finds that, nationally, it’s 35% less expensive to own a home. Even in notoriously pricey, renter-heavy cities like San Francisco and New York, it remains 9% and 21% cheaper, respectively. [Forbes – 09/21/13]
9. Kingston’s wealthy legacy gets new life. With its rich history and burgeoning small-business and dining scene, upstate New York’s Kingston is increasingly on the radar of second-home buyers. Located on the western bank of the Hudson River, Kingston is about 90 miles north of New York City, and there is daily bus service connection with the Port Authority terminal. The Rhinecliff-Kingston Amtrak station also is nearby. Kingston was initially settled in the mid-17th century and became the state’s first capital during the Revolutionary War. The area was a hub for coal, bluestone and cement shipping for much of the 19th century. [Wall Street Journal – 09/21/13]
10. Habitat for Humanity New York City to revitalize vacant homes in southeast Queens. About three dozen vacant and blighted properties in southeast Queens will soon be part of a neighborhood makeover. Habitat for Humanity New York City plans to gut and rehab 38 of the city’s empty eyesores with the help of local volunteers - and sell them to low-income families who will help rebuild them. Thirty-four of the properties are in southeast Queens - an area still struggling to recover from the recent foreclosure crisis. [NY Daily News – 09/21/13]