One of the truisms of modern “Rent Is Too Damn High” New York City is that rent-stabilized apartments are all but impossible to find unless you’re lucky enough to inherit one from a deceased relative. And a new report issued … Continue reading
One stormy evening last summer, in a corner of a playground on Union Street in Flushing, a small crowd gathered. They were residents of 140-35 Franklin Avenue one block to the south, and they were there to hear Aaron Carr, … Continue reading
StreetEasy has all but usurped the apartment-finding role once held by Craigslist, and before that, by rushing out to pick up the Voice on Tuesday nights before your fellow would-be renters. Ever since the site launched its first subway ad … Continue reading
When New York state’s 421-a tax break program came crashing down early last year amid a standoff between developers and construction unions over wages, there were mixed feelings among many housing advocates. On the one hand, 421-a had been a … Continue reading
The city’s venerable 421-a tax break for housing development, which expired last January and which Governor Cuomo now wants to renew and expand, has long come under fire from housing advocates as an insanely inefficient way to spur new residential … Continue reading
After a rush of activity culminating in last spring’s approval of the sweeping Mandatory Inclusionary Housing and Zoning for Quality and Affordability reforms to the city’s zoning code, the approval of the rezoning of East New York, and the withdrawal … Continue reading
For the one million New York City tenants living in rent-stabilized apartments, it’s a familiar dance: Your landlord offers to fix your splintering floor or crumbling kitchen cabinets, if you’ll agree to a rent hike. Landlords can use a panoply … Continue reading
When Bushwick community groups announced in January 2014 that Read Properties, owners of the long-derelict Rheingold Brewery site along Flushing Avenue, had agreed to build as many as 200 units of affordable housing as part of the city’s rezoning of … Continue reading
In a city where more than 60 percent of residents are renters and rents are perpetually too damn high, New Yorkers are preconditioned to view their landlords as mustache-twirling cartoon villains. Even the most cynical of apartment dwellers, though, would … Continue reading
The former Rheingold brewery site in northwest Bushwick was set to be a perfect flash point between the families who’d rebuilt the neighborhood after the fires of the 1970s and the newcomers who’d begun settling there in the Great Williamsburg … Continue reading