Sunset Park Gentrifies | Affordable Housing and de Blasio | Housing Domestic Violence Victims

Sandy Devastation. Now, homeowners will be able to elevate, thanks to a unanimous decision out of City Planning on Wednesday.

1. Setting Sun: Sunset Park was built by immigrants. Can they afford to stay? Sunset Park is not a neighborhood of warehouses or raw lofts; it does not seem poised to become the next hip locale. Yet the future of Sunset Park as a starting point for immigrants - the neighborhood where my grandparents established Tom Wah Laundry and built a life for our family - now hangs in the balance. With high-rise condominiums popping up and new zoning regulations allowing for larger commercial expansion, the face of Eighth Avenue and the greater Sunset Park area is changing radically - perhaps irrevocably [BKLYNR – 09/05/13]
2. Affordable housing, pedestrian safety, and Bill de Blasio, the Dems’ probably NYC mayoral nominee. Bill de Blasio, the New York City mayoral candidate who ran on fixing inequality and raising taxes on incomes over $500,000, took a fairly even number of votes across the income scale in yesterday’s primary. Which is to say, Democrats rich and poor like the guy. I [Next City – 09/12/13]
3. NYC looks beyond Bloomberg’s era of inequality. After 12 years of Michael Bloomberg, family homelessness has increased dramatically, rents skyrocketed and the minimum wage froze for the past six years - all while the city’s controverisal"stop-and-frisk” policy has been criticized for being disproportionatly applied on minorities and the poor. Even the affluent are acknowledging the disparity, and mayoral hopefuls are taking notice. [Al Jazeera – 09/08/13]
4. Why Wall Street is very, very angry at Richmond, California right now. Very early Wednesday morning, the city council in Richmond, California, narrowly voted to move forward with a plan to aid underwater homeowners. It’s a plan so controversial that everyone from Wall Street investment banks, to the National Association of Realtors, to U.S. congressmen, to state politicians, to the Federal Housing Finance Agency has weighed in. [Atlantic Cities – 09/11/13]
5. Real estate’s election strategy shift. The real estate industry is expected to rack up a number of wins in Tuesday’s Democratic primary elections after spending $7 million on City Council races through its controversial “super PAC,” Jobs for New York. But the price of victory includes a compromise that calls into question what the industry will get for its effort. [Crain’s New York – 09/10/13]
6. Hunts Market talks off. The Hunts Point Terminal Produce Market, upset over lack of progress towards a new long term lease for its 113-acre Bronx facility, will walk away from government offers of $172.5 million in grants towards new warehouses and hope the next mayor will offer a better deal, The Post has learned. [NY Post – 09/09/13]
7. Be our guest: city must help domestic violence survivors find safe, affordable housing. Less than one percent of supportive housing in New York City is designated for domestic violence survivors. Only 28 percent of domestic violence shelter residents are eligible for NYCHA’s Domestic Violence priority. [Daily News – 09/08/13]
8. Mapping the changes coming to Harlem’s 125th Street. The Harlem Shake has come and gone, but Harlem is still slowly being shaken up by new construction projects. Just take a look at 125th Street, where the changes are as large as Columbia’s Manhattanville expansion and as small as retailers and restaurants opening next to the Apollo Theater. Curbed intern David Stein took a stroll along 125th Street to map the changes for the latest installment in our Microhood Maps series. [Curbed – 09/11/13]
9. Zoning change will give Sandy homeowners a lift The City Planning Commission has saved the day for tens of thousands of Sandy-devastated property owners by allowing homeowners to elevate their properties to meet new flood standards without risk of violating pre-storm zoning. On Wednesday, the agency unanimously approved sweeping changes that won’t count storm-related elevation as against neighborhood height restrictions. [http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/queens/city-zoning-change-sandy-homeowners-article-1.1452967 – 09/11/13]
10. The Richest 10 Percent of American Families Got Half of All Income Last Year In the economic recovery since the 2008 crash, the rich have bounced back just a little bit faster than everyone else. That is to say, that for the first time in recorded history, the richest 10 percent of families received half of all income in 2012. This figure, which comes from an annual income inequality study by prominent economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty, illustrates that “even after the recession the country remains in a kind of new Gilded Age. [Atlantic Cities – 09/11/13]