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New York City’s new housing commissioner is returning to public office after a years-long stint working with a quick-to-evict Bronx developer recently subject to a state investigation, raising concerns among tenants and advocates in the borough.
The effectiveness of New York’s plastic bag ban could serve as a portend for other, similar bans on single-use plastics either already approved or under discussion at both the city and state legislative levels. To get a better sense of how its implementation is going, City Limits’ CLARIFY interns spoke to more than 50 bodega owners and store workers in the outer boroughs to see if they’re still using plastic, and if so, to tell us why.
Once a seemingly promising structure to ensure that real estate groups don’t run roughshod over local neighborhoods in development deals—and still a common practice in other cities—CBAs are now disdained by many New York City community groups and developers alike. The mechanism’s demise is a lesson, development experts say, in both the strength and limitations of demanding concessions in exchange for neighborhood-changing construction projects.
Home prices in the predominantly Black and Latino neighborhood began to tick up before then-Mayor Bill de Blasio announced plans to rezone 190 blocks in 2014. But affordable housing advocates and local residents say the rezoning, approved in 2016, only drove more speculators to scoop up homes, jack up prices and push out existing residents.
State guidelines and federal regulations mandate that home health aides working 24 hours at a client’s home get eight hours for sleep and three hours of meal breaks, all unpaid. But many workers say the rule routinely leads to underpayment because their patients actually need constant care, leaving the aides little time to sleep or take breaks.
So far, 85 undocumented applicants have been approved to receive the city and state joint relief assistance funds; another 33,000 survivors have been approved for FEMA’s Individual Assistance Program as of Nov. 21. Both relief programs are set to close on Dec. 6.
As part of the 2018 Jerome Avenue rezoning deal, city officials committed $1.5 million in financial assistance for area merchants, intended to help relocate existing businesses that would be displaced. But officials have yet to issue any such grants, a City Limits investigation found.
In June, the city spent $122 million to purchase 14 former cluster site buildings, turning them over to nonprofit organizations to fix up and operate as permanent housing. The organizations have their work cut out for them: There were more than 1,100 open Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) violations across the portfolio at the time of purchase.
Dozens of men splitting a single jug of water, sweating walls in cell units, inmates sucking air from cracks under doors—these are just some of the conditions inmates and advocates have reported from Rikers Island over the past few months.
Since June, the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP), which took over inspecting duties from the police this year, has conducted 1,508 street vending inspections and issued 424 tickets, slightly surpassing NYPD’s three-month average number of civil citations prior to the pandemic.
City Limits uses investigative journalism through the prism of New York City to identify urban problems, examine their causes, explore solutions, and equip communities to take action.
Founded in 1976 in the midst of New York’s fiscal crisis, City Limits exists to inform democracy and equip citizens to create a more just city. The organization is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit funded by foundation support, ad sponsorship and donations from readers.
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