“Public land is a treasure that we need to maximize for truly affordable housing,” said Councilmember Lincoln Restler, whose new bill would preventing the city from selling off land to private, for-profit developers unless no qualified nonprofit group makes an offer.
At a Council hearing short on details, officials from Mayor Eric Adams’ administration pinned the shelter population rise on newly arriving immigrants from the Southern Border.
Councilmember Julie Won issued a list of “land use principles” she said she will apply to new projects in her district that require Council-approved changes to the city’s zoning code—including a controversial proposal to build a 3,000-unit complex in southern Astoria.
The 15-member NYC Districting Commission released a set of preliminary maps this month for the public to review, updating Council districts to reflect population changes based off the 2020 Census ahead of the City Council elections next year. See how would your current City Council district change under the proposal.
The land use plan, part of a broader initiative known as Resilient Edgemere, encompasses the area bound by Beach 35th Street and Beach 50th Street and will change zoning rules to increase density in some areas, limit development in others and raise the shoreline along Jamaica Bay.
“Scientific research very clearly demonstrates that solitary confinement is torture. It also shows that it is counterproductive in achieving its goals because it often increases an inmate’s violent behavior.”
Eric Adams’ “Housing Our Neighbors” blueprint is missing key details about how to track and accomplish its broad goals, according to critics. City officials pledged to include the updated benchmarks in a revised Mayor’s Management Report (MMR), an annual assessment of municipal agency performance over the previous fiscal year.
The mayor’s office has approved the highest funding for tree planting in half a decade, officials say, allowing the Parks Department to plant 20,000 trees a year for the next four years. But some councilmembers say that pace isn’t fast enough to keep up with extreme weather events that damage the city’s tree canopy.
In 2009, the new Yankee Stadium opened, replacing what used to be a park. Since the Yankees were getting public land, the city said they needed to give back something. How did that go? Journalism students at CUNY Lehman college investigate.
Since Jan. 1, City Limits has been publishing more accurate homeless shelter census figures after a Council bill to force the city to publish a true number failed last year. The total commonly cited by city officials excludes thousands of people staying in shelters run by agencies other than the Department of Homeless Services (DHS), failing to count more than 15 percent of the actual population.
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