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Mayor Bill de Blasio is one step closer to realizing his goal of adding tens of thousands of units of affordable housing in New York City, after a key panel passed the city’s plan to rezone a swath of industrial properties surrounding the Gowanus Canal — Commercial Observer
The proposal was approved by nine of the ten New York City Planning Commission members in a vote earlier this week. The plan calls for the rezoning of an 82-block section of Gowanus, along Fourth Avenue, between Atlantic Avenue and 15th Street. It would pave the way for the construction of up to... View full entry
Last month, New York State passed the Housing Our Neighbors with Dignity Act (HONDA), laying the groundwork for hotels and other commercial buildings to be converted into affordable housing. Nevertheless, a recent article by NBC News gives a laundry list of reasons why among commercial buildings... View full entry
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced today that construction projects across the state must stop work in order to comply with efforts to slow the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Carving out exceptions for hospital construction, transit infrastructure projects, utility repairs... View full entry
Shaun Donovan, the former Secretary for the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development under President Barack Obama, has filed papers to run for mayor of New York City in the upcoming 2021 election. Donovan is vying to succeed current New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who... View full entry
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced an initiative Tuesday that promised to “end long-term street homelessness as we know it” by bringing thousands of people off of the streets and into permanent or transitional housing within five years. [...]
The city plans to spend an estimated $120 million next year on the plan, which will create 1,000 new permanent apartments.
— The Wall Street Journal
The mayor's office has outlined de Blasio's latest plan to house the estimated 3,600 homeless people currently living on New York City streets — a fraction of the city's total homeless population of 80,000 — in the action plan The Journey Home. We’re announcing a plan to END... View full entry
Since the first known use the term 'nuclear family' in 1941 (defined by George Murdock as "a social group characterized by common residence, economic cooperation and reproduction[,] contain[ing] adults of both sexes, at least two of whom maintain a socially approved sexual relationship, and one or... View full entry
The City Council voted to close a zoning loophole that has allowed developers to boost building heights with excessive mechanical spaces—but it’s only the first step in addressing the issue, say lawmakers. — Curbed NY
The zoning amendment will limit the city's notoriously over-sized mechanical spaces to 25-feet in height before additional space begins to eat into a project's allowable buildable area. New York City lawmakers are pushing to close other loopholes, as well, including rules impacting the use... View full entry
"We're going to ban the classic glass and steel skyscrapers, which are incredibly inefficient," Bill de Blasio said on "Morning Joe." As the New York City mayor lays out plans for a municipal Green New Deal, he is looking to target one of the biggest sources of emissions in the city: buildings. De... View full entry
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio proposed a $10 billion plan to push out the lower Manhattan coastline as much as 500 feet, or two city blocks, to protect from flooding that’s expected to become more frequent as global temperatures rise. [...]
Portions of the extended land would be at 20 feet above sea level. The city can’t build flood protection on the existing land because it’s too crowded with utilities, sewers and subway lines, he said.
— Bloomberg
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has unveiled the city's comprehensive plan to increase resilience in Lower Manhattan, a low-lying, highly critical area that has proven to be vulnerable to storm surges and flooding. The newly published Lower Manhattan Climate Resilience Study recommends extending the... View full entry
A state lawmaker is gunning for more aggressive restrictions on the vast mechanical voids developers often abuse to boost their buildings’ heights as a “more robust” solution to the de Blasio administration’s recent zoning amendment. [...]
Current zoning exempts mechanical voids from a building’s floor-area ratio (FAR)—a given property’s square footage—and puts no height limits on those spaces.
— Curbed NY
"Luxury developers often exploit this loophole in residential towers to hike up the price for apartments on higher floors," explains Curbed NY one reasoning behind the newly introduced bill by New York State Assembly member Linda Rosenthal. View full entry
According to the United States’ General Accounting Office, receiverships in housing authorities generally result from “longstanding, severe, and persistent management problems that led to deterioration of housing stock.” NYCHA, who took the public advocate’s top spot for the city’s worst landlord in 2018, faces mounting repair costs in excess of $25 billion and has exhibited failures eliminating mold and lead paint, among a laundry list of other nightmarish woes for its tenants. — Curbed NY
Mayor Bill De Blasio and the Department of Housing and Urban Development have until the 31st of January to agree on how to run the agency. If that does not happen and Ben Carson declares New York City Housing Authority in substantial default, NYCHA which oversees housing for over 400,000 New... View full entry
New York City's cultural history includes a staggering array of musical talent, but only a handful of musicians get their names on street signs.
In its final meeting of the year, the New York City Council voted 48-0 to honor three music icons in their home boroughs: famed hip hop artists Biggie Smalls/Notorious B.I.G. (a.k.a. Christopher Wallace) and the Wu-Tang Clan, as well as folk singer Woody Guthrie.
— Gothamist
Don't program your GPS to take you to Christopher Wallace Way (Brooklyn), the Wu-Tang Clan District (Staten Island), or Woody Guthrie Way (Coney Island/Brooklyn) just yet—Mayor Bill de Blasio still has to sign off on the approved bill. View full entry
What model best represents new visions and values of New York City? Cast your vote today for the new icons of New York and influence which souvenirs will represent the city next. The top three winners will be presented to the Mayor Bill de Blasio as New York City's newest icons. Midnight... View full entry
New York City is in the throes of a humanitarian emergency, a term defined by the Humanitarian Coalition of large international aid organizations as “an event or series of events that represents a critical threat to the health, safety, security or wellbeing of a community or other large group of people.” New York’s is [...] a “complex emergency”: man-made and shaped by a combination of forces that have led to a large-scale “displacement of populations” from their homes. — The New York Review of Books
"What makes the crisis especially startling," author Michael Greenberg continues in his latest piece for The New York Review of Books, "is that New York has the most progressive housing laws in the country and a mayor who has made tenants’ rights and affordable housing a central focus of his... View full entry
The Manhattan Waterfront Greenway is a 32-mile ring of parkland that surrounds Manhattan—or almost all of it, that is. Between 41st and 61st Streets along the East River lies a “glaring gap”, as The New York Times calls it. Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced that the city will spend $... View full entry
