Archinect - News

Landlord groups and the quest to end Americans’ (un)air-conditioned nightmare

2024-08-06T11:36:00-04:00

Most often, homes with little or no air conditioning are occupied by low-income residents – often renters — and people of color, a 2022 Boston University analysis of 115 U.S. metro areas found. That leaves them vulnerable as climate change makes heatwaves more frequent, more intense and longer lasting. Heat stress now kills more people globally each year than any other weather-related cause, according to the World Health Organization — and many of these deaths occur indoors.

New York, Los Angeles, and Austin are each currently mulling aggressive cooling laws that would levy huge fines against landlords who do not provide their tenants with efficient cooling systems, joining other states and cities in a burgeoning movement. As was reported last week, 2023 saw a 20% rise in heat-related emergency room visits in America. This year is already on track to be the hottest on record, making the possibility for successful opposition bids increasingly untenable.

New York City could soon mandate air conditioning in all residential buildings

2024-07-18T18:40:00-04:00

City Councilmember Lincoln Restler of Brooklyn, who confirmed the news with Gothamist on Wednesday, said he plans to introduce his bill during Thursday’s stated meeting. The bill is intended to mimic current local law requiring landlords to provide tenants with heat during the winter months by requiring them to ensure tenants can cool their homes to at least 78 degrees when it is 82 degrees or warmer during the summer, Restler said.

Councilmember Restler, who argues that the new legislation is tantamount to requiring heating in the winter, also told the New York Times it will "save lives as we reckon with the challenges of the climate crisis." Landlords would have a maximum of four years to comply with the mandate.

The Thursday vote comes as meteorologists are saying 2024 is likely on pace to be the hottest year on record.

Manhattan’s office building spree is now ‘over,’ according to the New York Times

2023-12-29T11:49:00-05:00

Just three large office towers — of more than 500,000 square feet — are being built across New York City, with two expected to open in 2024 or 2025 and nothing else projected to go up for years. Normally, a handful of sites that size would be in various stages of construction, with at least one opening every year since 2018, according to JLL, a real estate services firm.

Due to an obvious confluence of interest rates, office vacancy records, and construction costs, the Times says Manhattan is “entering its most significant office construction drought since after the savings and loan crisis in the late 1980s and early ’90s.” Recent superlatives like BIG’s 66-story The Spiral and the Foster + Partners-led 270 Park Avenue replacement may stand as the last major realized office designs before the early 2030s. Another three proposals totaling over 3 million square feet are stuck in the approvals pipeline as of right now.

The stasis has notably led to the cancellation of the much-maligned ten-block Penn Station revitalization plan, among other significant stall-outs. A “flight” to high-quality modernized office spaces of the kind featured in 425 Park Avenue and One Vanderbilt could spark a turnaround if not for their asking price. As the report stated, some industry experts believe $200 or $300 per square foot rents might be a reality for similar buildin...

One of Manhattan’s art deco gems is slowly breaking down its tenants with persistent elevator malfunctions

2022-03-29T12:34:00-04:00

At 20 Exchange Place, the sheer height of the building has made the persistent outages particularly infuriating for residents, who can pay as much as $5,000 a month for a market-rate one-bedroom unit. Since November, the skyscraper has been plagued by long elevator outages that have turned daily life upside down and trapped residents with mobility issues inside their apartments. Elevator service is unpredictable and often nonexistent, for hours at a time, above the 15th floor.

The building’s owner DTH Capital says Con Edison is the culprit, but a spokesperson for the company told the Times there was “no indication” that the malfunction has nothing to do with its service or equipment. The problems are so bad that the building had to hire an elevator mechanic to be on call 24 hours in order to replace the system's operating boards, which DTH attempted unsuccessfully to buy in bulk.

Tenants in the 57-story tower at 20 Exchange Place are getting by buying two weeks of groceries at a time. Some have been given new apartments elsewhere in the area or have signed non-disclosure agreements with the owners. Others are afraid to talk on the record, while still more either broke their leases or else wound up climbing a mountain of lament — including a 28-year-old nurse who thought she scored a deal during the Covid boom (“I’m a young, in-shape person, so I can do it. But it’s miserable.”)

“It’s a privilege that we are able to afford to live here, but we did not sign...

Corrupt NYC landlord ordered to pay a record $8M to tenants and sentenced to 1 year at Rikers

2017-12-22T14:31:00-05:00

In the summer of 2016, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman charged Croman with 20 felonies, including harassing tenants at rent-regulated apartments within his various properties as well as falsifying rental income in order to secure as much as $45 million in financing. This fall, Croman plead guilty to charges of grand larceny, tax fraud, and an additional fraud charge relating to false statements.

The notorious Manhattan landlord Steve Croman, who owned nearly 150 buildings across the city, has agreed to pay $8 million to his former tenants, the largest-ever settlement with an individual landlord in the state. Additionally, he has been sentenced to serve one year of jail time at Rikers Island.

In recent years, New York lawmakers have been pushing for stricter laws to crack down on abusive landlords. Back in August, Mayor Bill de Blasio signed an 18-law package that aims to protect tenants from harassment by landlords and make it easier for residents to take abusive building owners to court. They also increase punishments and enforce laws against dangerous and illegal construction.

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has echoed these efforts, emphasizing that his office has zero tolerance for landlords who try to boost their profits while disregarding the wellbeing of their tenants. Croman, who would push out rent-regulated tenants by turning off their electricity, removing wa...

NYC's squatters get their own graphic novel/historic documentation

2017-02-28T19:59:00-05:00

Amy Starecheski, oral historian, former squatter, and author of the recent book, Ours to Lose: When Squatters Become Homeowners in New York City, gathered a group who have been documenting the squatting movement from multiple perspectives, from firsthand experience to generational remove. Below, Amy guides us through some of the documents they have gathered and created: a graphic novel, a sketchbook with instructions for DIY electrical wiring, interviews, and installations...

Thanks to Amy Starecheski, the documentation of the gritty romance of squatting in city-abandoned NYC buildings in the 1980s and 1990s can now be perused, graphic-novel style:

Airbnb offers landlords a cut of the profits

2016-09-13T17:27:00-04:00

Landlords have had a gripe with Airbnb for a while. The sharing platform facilitates subletting apartments without their consent or knowledge, not to mention a cut of the profits. Now, Airbnb is hoping to make amends by rolling out a new initiative dubbed the 'Airbnb Friendly Building Program'. Here's how it works, according to Fortune:

Building owners—provided they operate in a jurisdiction where short-term rental laws are clear, meaning that there’s no ambiguity nor potential for a regulatory mess—apply for the program. Once accepted, the owner then decides the terms (which units, for how long, revenue division, etc.) under which tenants can rent out their homes and submits them to Airbnb as well as amends its tenants’ leases. Eligible tenants in that can then sign up for their building’s program through Airbnb, and become part of the regular reports the company sends to the landlord.

What’s more, Airbnb also handles paying out both the hosts and their landlords, as well as collecti...