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
If anyone needed a perfect Rorschach test for 21st-century gentrification angst, it showed up this summer on Slate. The website created an “Are You a Gentrifier?” calculator that promised a simple yes/no answer. The calculator itself was fairly ham-fisted — … Continue reading
Bushwick has been in the national spotlight of late, the most recent neighborhood to be emblematic of the New Brooklyn of hipster beards and trendy clubs. There’s now an artisanal Bushwick-scented candle you can buy for $81 “scent highlights include … Continue reading
When the subject of Brooklyn’s hottest neighborhoods comes up, Broadway Junction seldom enters the conversation. Named for the tangle of J and L train tracks that pass overhead, Broadway Junction is less a neighborhood than the absence of one: a … Continue reading
The Associated Press today on the housing market and the economy: BOSTON (AP) — Home sales in the Northeast rose in February as the economy showed signs of recovery, inspiring buyers. … Nationwide, homes sales were up 8 percent from … Continue reading
Sure, Brooklyn has become fashionable on Mayor Bloomberg’s watch, but can he make it livable? A few years back, when the New York real estate market still looked within reach of, say, itinerant op-ed writers, I got to spend some … Continue reading
I just received my hot-off-the-presses copy of the new issue of City Limits Investigates, with a report by CLI editor Jarrett Murphy and myself on how one New York City zip code — 11237, which covers most of the neighborhood … Continue reading
The New York Times ran a Page One story yesterday headlined “Where Home Prices Crashed Early, Signs of a Rebound,” all about the housing market in Sacramento, which it declares to be in “the earliest stages of a recovery, a … Continue reading
After a three-week hiatus, I make my return to the Metro op-ed page with a discussion of how a poorly thought out rent law is forcing people out of their homes: On a recent trip to my local coffee shop, … Continue reading