Goodbye Bronx is Burning 1970's Here Comes Bronx Gentrification and High Rents
Here Is The South Bronx's 1,300-Unit Gentrification DeathStar (Village Voice) The Bronx is New York City’s poorest borough, with neighborhoods in the South Bronx seeing their poverty rates hover persistently around 40 percent. However, over the past several years, there’s been a concerted effort to rebrand the Boogie Down, led by developers looking to boost real estate values and encourage wealthier renters to hop on over the Harlem River. Now, from the developers who brought you the "Bronx is Burning" party in 2015 comes two towers totaling 1,300 units, where market-rate renters will be able to look out upon Manhattan and literally turn their backs on the Bronx. The Long Island City-style development at 2401 Third Avenue and 101 Lincoln Avenue, first revealed by New York Yimby, will feature gyms, doggie day-care, a pool, a cafe, and something referred to as a “library/wine room.” This would be the largest market-rate housing development in the Bronx in at least thirty years, says YIMBY writer Rebecca Baird-Remba.
It would also mark a turning point in the development of the Bronx, which heretofore has seen almost all new large-scale housing development built as “affordable” units, with various incentives given to developers to keep rents in line with what the neighborhood can afford. As the Times noted earlier this month, that plan has mostly worked — affordable housing is being built on formerly vacant land, as the city has given away tracts for practically nothing. But that new development has raised land values and rents in surrounding areas, paving the way for the market rate development that’s just gearing up.
Gentrification
More Than Coffee: New York’s Vanishing Diner Culture (NYT) With the number of restaurants that call themselves diners and coffee shops dwindling in the city, a devotee wonders how New Yorkers will get along without these antidotes to urban loneliness.
More on Gentrification
Manhattan Institute Ignores the Effect Of Gentrification on NYC Housing
De Blasio's building challenge: The key to creating moreopportunity for all is producing far more housing at all levels (NYDN) The mayor's new rhetorical pivot from inequality to inclusive growth — more housing, more jobs for everyone — is welcome, even if many of his tax-and-spend proposals aren't the best way to advance that growth. The most promising tool in his toolbelt to grow the city's economy and make it more inclusive is his rezoning effort to reduce housing scarcity — and the blunt reality is, de Blasio hasn’t wielded that tool effectively. If Wall Street and our high-income tax base leave, or if the international poor stop coming, it could only mean something terrible has happened to New York's opportunity engine. It would mean we've either taxed away our tax base or entirely priced out the working class with tight zoning, a la San Francisco. True, the East New York rezoning went through, but everywhere else seems to be bogging down. Major rezonings in the Bronx and East Harlem — which would permit thousands of new units of all kinds for all incomes, fund new schools, create local retail jobs and grow the tax base — are at risk of stalling out. One of the most symbolically frustrating defeats came in Inwood, where local NIMBYs defeated an application to build 355 apartments, half of which would have been below-market. Upon defeat, the project defaulted to a smaller, all-market-rate building, with less housing of all kinds. The mayor expressed his disappointment after the fact, but didn't help Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez when it counted. Even now, Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito needs help in her East Harlem district to make the case for the rezoning proposal there; where is the mayor?
The "Hot Neighborhood" Enabling Role the Media Plays With Gentrifying Communities
Remember de Blaio Rezoning of East NY and the Fact That the Only Section of the NYT That Still Makes Money is the Real Estate Section
This is going to be NYC’s next hot neighborhood (NYP) The city’s next hottest neighborhood for real estate is gritty East New York, according to a report. The Web site Property Shark says the Brooklyn community is likely to see an influx of residents because of a rezoning project and new residential towers, according to the survey of 203 investors, brokers and appraisers. Affordability in East New York, which has a median house price of $339,275, is a draw for those priced out of nearby trendy Brooklyn neighborhoods, such as Bushwick and Bedford-Stuyvesant, according to the survey.
NYP and Most of the Media Does Not Connect the Dots Gentrification and Rising Rents Are Causing Increasing Homeless
Meanwhile, homelessness is on a rapid rise, making a mockery of de Blasio’s early insistence it wasn’t a problem and his more recent claims it’s declining. Some 61,000 individuals were in the program as of Dec. 1, a record, with many being jammed into astonishingly expensive commercial hotels.*
Slumlords Found Guilty Of Terrorizing Tenants in A Gentrifying Neighborhood
Slumlords admit to terrorizing tenants to drive them out (NYP) Two Brooklyn slumlords admitted Tuesday to terrorizing rent-controlled tenants with dogs, packing the halls with drug addicts, and tearing down walls in order to push the renters out of the lucrative spaces. As part of the plea deal, brothers Joel and Amron Israel will now have to cough up nearly $250,000 to the nine tenants they wronged around Williamsburg, Greenpoint and Bushwick in 2012 and 2013. The two have six months to shell out the dough, or they could be sentenced to up to four years prison. If they follow the rules, they’ll be sentenced to five years probation and 500 hours community service, Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Danny Chun said. Both Amrom, 38, and Joel, 35, admitted to tearing down walls, leaving tenants without heat or hot water, allowing vermin to make themselves at home and inviting drug addicts to come get high in their hallways in order to drive people out. They also admitted to paying goons to patrol the halls of the buildings with pitbulls. The duo will also have to agree to a five-year-settlement plan with the Governor’s Tenant Protection Unit, prosecutors said.
Crown Heights Developer Generated Gentrification is Replacing the the Community That Blew Up 25 Years Ago
A quarter-century after Crown Heights riots, the Brooklyn neighborhood battles to hold onto its territory (NYDN) Crown Heights today is not defined by racial tensions between blacks and Hasidic Jews. Today it is seen as the ground zero of gentrification, which is bringing into the area a steady influx of upwardly mobile whites from all over the world. Real estate developers and apartment building owners see these newcomers as growing bank accounts. And the rich get richer as the poor and the unemployed (mostly blacks) are forced to leave long-time dwellings for cheaper residences, often outside the city. Look along Franklin Ave. just west of the Hasidic section, which is centered at Kingston Ave. and Eastern Parkway, the headquarters of the Chabad-LubMitch movement. See the cafés and hipster eateries there. Sometimes it's hard to find a black face among those on Franklin Ave. these days, except for the lowest-wage workers in the businesses there. And even they worry that they soon will be forced to leave the area. To those of us who see rapid gentrification as an affront to the history and character of our neighborhoods, Crown Heights is a historical template and a cautionary tale. Its earliest years, some two centuries ago, reflect the black presence in America and it foreshadowed the gentrification we are experiencing now. It was not a comfortable story for black people, and the future doesn't look too comfortable either. Thus we witnessed our first explosion of Brooklyn gentrification, way before the term came into use. As the whites came in, the blacks left. The portion of African Americans in Brooklyn dropped from one-third to 1% by 1900. This story of early Crown Heights should be scary to struggling black New Yorkers today. History seems to be repeating itself. Following the Great Migration of blacks from the South and immigration from the Caribbean, the black population of Brooklyn zoomed back up to one-third again, which it is currently. Now the question is: Will blacks all but disappear again, as they did 100 years ago? At this rate, it's not unlikely. Shamefully, rather than examining the past and trying to learn, our leaders are showing stunning disregard for our history and its relics. They have handed the future of the city over to developers. By far the loudest voice in Crown Heights against developers is Alicia Boyd. She's the founder of a group called the Movement to Protect the People. Boyd shows up at Community Board 9 meetings and rails against construction of new apartment buildings, while she alleges elected officials are receiving money from builders. It's time to "kick their asses out of office," she has said of black elected officials in Brooklyn. On at least one occasion, community board administrators called police, who handcuffed and arrested her. Harboring anger also is Evelyn Tully Costa, who said she believes Mayor Bill de Blasio should be challenged face to face by every righteous citizen who runs into him. He's in cahoots with the developers, she believes, and she contends the best weapon against the rash of construction and displacement is the designation of more historic districts and buildings.
That could save precious properties from bulldozers and greedy landlords. Costa, founder of Crown Heights South Association, has been aiming her outrage lately at the city's plans for a century-old former armory on Bedford Ave. The city has said it would let developers known as Bedford Courts take over the structure and build luxury units. Half of the approximately 300 units would be "affordable," and of those 99 would rent within the price range of a family of three that earns $85,400 a year. Just 67 apartments would be affordable to households earning less than $40,000. That's just another way of telling current Crown Heights residents to get the heck out of the neighborhood, Costa and others say. The median income for all households in Crown Heights South, where the armory is located, is under $42,000.
Mayor Ignores Community Leaders Opposing His Zoning Plan
As New Yorkers Get Push Out of Their Communities With High Rents the Council Does Fluff Resolutions, Color Code Their Outfits to Make Themselves Look Better
City Council members accuse peers of putting pet causes before ‘substantive work’ (NYP) Some city lawmakers are more interested in planning parties, writing nonbinding resolutions and wearing colorful T-shirts to support pet causes than they are in passing weighty legislation, several City Council members told The Post. Acting more like a student-body government than a professional Legislature, members wore teal the past three Septembers to promote ovarian-cancer awareness; donned crimson on Feb. 5 for heart disease; and wore denim on April 27 in a pledge to end sexual violence. They plan to go purple on Oct. 6 to support domestic-violence victims. “I don’t have time to start looking for a purple tie,” one member, who requested anonymity, groused of the ever-changing, politically correct dress-code directives. “I have a hard enough time getting my son up and ready and my own outfits to match to remember what color I’m supposed to wear,” said Staten Island Councilman Joseph Borelli, one of the 51-member council’s three Republicans. Members pointed to Brooklyn Councilwoman Laurie Cumbo and Bronx Councilman Andy King as the body’s biggest cheerleaders. “This is what they’re doing in celebration of this day and that day, or they’re busy hosting a party — and that’s not substantive work,” complained one lawmaker who requested anonymity. And when they’re not fretting over the day’s color code, council members often propose scores of resolutions supporting far-flung causes. The council considered 299 resolutions and adopted 210 of them so far this year. By contrast, it passed only 104 real laws. Passing too many political resolutions and color-themed celebrations waters down their effect and distracts from doing the business of the city, good-government advocates say.
The Brooklyn Wars: How Big Banks Killed Our Neighborhoods
Across the globe, the word “Brooklyn” has come to represent cutting-edge cuisine, a vibrant music and literary culture, and the epitome of hip. But most of the world doesn’t see the price that local residents pay as their neighborhoods are swallowed by change. Masterful storyteller and award-winning journalist Neil deMause turns a spotlight on how the New Brooklyn came to be, who shaped it — and the winners and losers when “urban renaissance” comes to town. “A teeth-gnashing account of how the Big Money boys teamed up with City Hall pols to grab everything from Coney Island’s Thunderbolt to once–working class neighborhoods of downtown Brooklyn in the name of progress.” —Tom Robbins, Investigative Journalist in Residence, CUNY Graduate School of Journalism* “The Brooklyn Wars recovers the great Brooklyn virtue of telling it like it is. Neil deMause writes with the street-savvy common sense Brooklyn was known for before it became a ‘brand.’” —Paul Moses, author of An Unlikely Union: The Love-Hate Story of New York’s Irish and Italians “A great read, impeccably researched. This is essential reading for anybody who witnessed the mind-blowing transformation of Brooklyn over the past 20 years and hungers to understand what actually happened.” —Kelly Anderson, director of My Brooklyn
How Gentrification is Changing Neighborhoods
How Blacks the Poor and the Middle Class are Being Push Out of Brooklyn Because of Albany's Tax Breaks for Luxury Developers
Airbnb Bad Neighbors, Warehouses Apartments -- Rising Rents and Increasing Gentrification
When is the Media Going to Cover Groups Fighting Gentrification Going After Airbnb?
Airbnb’s illegal hotel purges slammed as ploy to throw off NYC regulators (NYDN) Airbnb’s highly publicized purges of suspected illegal hotel listings are a ploy to placate regulators and have done nothing to alleviate the city’s serious housing crisis, elected officials, housing groups and hundreds of tenants charge in a letter to the company. The letter, sent Friday to Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, raps the company for not sharing the nixed listings with law enforcement and regulators. “One can only conclude that your lack of cooperation . . . is nothing more than a craven attempt by your company to generate sky-high profits at the expense of our precious affordable housing,” the letter from the Share Better coalition of pols and the New York Hotel Trades Council states. Critics charge that the site is a platform for illegal hotel operators, including greedy landlords who use rent-regulated units as hotel rooms rather than residences for New Yorkers, which worsens the city’s affordability crisis. The company, when reached for comment, dismissed Share Better as a “front group for the big hotels.”
As Hispanic Get Push Out of Williamsburg the NYP Calls A Councilman Protesters Gangsters Because They Protest A New Housing Development That Will Increase the Push Out of Their Community
Gangster politics — the wrong way to fight a housing project (NYP) Last Wednesday night, Brooklyn City Councilman Antonio Reynoso crossed the line — literally and figuratively — in a thuggish bid to thwart a housing development. Rabsky Group, a local developer, plans to build 1,100-plus apartments — 30 percent of them affordable units — on long-vacant Pfizer sites at the Broadway Triangle where Bedford-Stuyvesant, Bushwick and Williamsburg converge. Led by Reynoso, a band of demonstrators opposed to the project marched into the neighboring district of Councilman Steve Levin and shut down a public City Planning meeting on the proposal And it was no accident the protest got that loud. Reynoso tweeted his intention a month in advance: “Rabsky just filed draft scope with City Planning for Pfizer Sites! Our community is ready to shut this one down!” In the background here are old tensions between area Hispanics and Hasidim, stemming partly from a 2009 rezoning fight. But that makes Reynoso’s behavior even more deplorable: If elected officials fan the flames of racial and ethnic conflict, they put whole neighborhoods at risk. Then, too, it sets a terrible precedent if this tactic succeeds: Politics already makes it far too hard, and too expensive, to get anything built in this town. If near-riots become an acceptable way to stop a project, New York’s housing crisis will grow even worse.* Now NYC has publicly funded mobs (NYP) Dozens of members of Churches United for Fair Housing were at the hearing, and were the loudest voices screaming for it to end. CUFFH is a Brooklyn group that “connects residents” with lists of available affordable-housing units and “counsels them through the grueling paperwork.” This year it received more than $220,000 from the city — most of its operating budget.
@gblainnydn Given this was placed w Lovett, we can assume Cuomo's building a "stupid, not criminal" defense for his own indictment? LOVETT: Cuomo should have seen warning signs beforeauthorities began bribery probe into his staff(NYDN) * LOVETT: Gov and staff privately trashed reporters...
Daily News Calls It Bizarro World That New Housing Causes Gentrification Displacement . . . The Paper Should Interview the Long Term Residents of Crown Heights About the Effects of New Construction
Yes in their backyards: Affordable housing now (NYDN) Construction of affordable housing faces doom in New York at the hands of the very City Council that cries how desperately needed it is. The vote confirmed that a key component of Mayor de Blasio’s drive to spur affordable housing is in deep trouble. While the plan is widely lauded, Council members balk at construction in their communities. The committee vote killed a project slated for Inwood, which is represented by Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez, usually a loyal de Blasio ally. Rodriguez bowed to an uproar by constituents who are convinced — in a Bizarro World interpretation of the laws of supply and demand — that new apartments would hasten displacement of longtime tenants. By Council custom, fellow members defer to the desire of their local colleague. So, down went the development. Message received: Each Council member has veto power over new construction, rendering the entire Council captive to anti-development agitators while depriving places to live to New Yorkers hungry for housing.
Now the Gov Wants to Subsidized 421-A Workers to Push Gentrification?
De Blasio: Subsidized wages for construction workers are fine — if it doesn’t cost city (NYP) Mayor de Blasio said he’s fine with the state subsidizing higher wages for construction workers who build affordable housing in the five boroughs – as long as it doesn’t impact the city’s bottom line. Asked about a report in the New York Times that Gov. Cuomo was considering reviving a suspended real estate tax break program with a proposal that would see tens of millions of state tax dollars going to ensuring union-level wages, de Blasio said “God bless ’em.” “If that’s what the state thinks is the right thing to do with state money, of course we can work with that,” he said at an unrelated press conference on parks in The Bronx. “What’s not acceptable to us is to add to the cost of the city’s affordable housing program, which is already stretched very thin and trying to reach half a million people.”* De Blasio cautiously supports affordable housing tax break for developers — as long as it doesn’t drive up costs(NYDN) * In Attempt to Convince Lawmakers to Vote for Affordable Housing Project, Mayor Appears to Anger Queens Councilman(NY1) * Allies of Bronx Borough President Wonder if Politics Played Role in Lack of Funding for Orchard Beach Pavilion Repairs(NY1)
* De Blasio, who has made creating more affordable housing a priority, has faced fierce community opposition on specific projects, slowing his plans to build more units as a larger push to keep New York affordable for working class people, The Wall Street Journal writes * Critics rip Cuomo plan that combines tax and wage subsidies (NYDN) * A proposal to revive the lucrative 421-a affordable housing tax credit for developers by providing government wage subsidies for the workers they hire is being blasted by business groups, nonprofit providers and economic experts, the Daily News reports. * Cuomo wants the government to pay union workers higher wages (NYP) * Why Cuomo wants you to pay unions to build luxury housing (NYP) What Andrew Cuomo did this month was like a parody of a black-and-white 1940s movie about beefing kids in the alley. Bully No. 1 has a baseball bat: “Why I oughta smash your head in!” Bully No. 2 has a knife: “I’m gonna slice you up good.” It’s a standoff, until along comes Andrew, kindly and whistling, the grown-up, the soothing Bing Crosby character. “What seems to be the trouble, boys?” says Bing Cuomo. The two bullies explain themselves. “He owes me money!” “No, he owes me money!” And that’s when you happen into the picture. Yes you, the entirely innocent New York taxpayer, the random citizen who happens to be walking by.
Cuomo Wants to Use Government Money to Revive Gentrification Causing 421-a
Cost of a good intention on 421-a fix (NYDN) At the urging of construction unions, the governor smashed the renewal of a property tax break, called 421-a, that is crucial to building housing, including affordable units, in the city. By demanding a so-called prevailing wage rate, Cuomo threw the economics entirely out of whack. He prevailed on the state Legislature to bake into law an unusual mandate for the Real Estate Board of New York, representing developers, and the construction unions to work out wage rates both could live with. Without such an agreement, the law fated 421-a to die. The two sides failed to reach a deal, and no wonder: financing higher wages on top of the affordable housing would bust the developers’ tight budgets, rendering many projects unbuildable. To break a months-long logjam, Cuomo now looks to dedicate potentially tens of millions of dollars of state taxpayers’ money to achieve private sector wage hikes that are acceptable to the unions.He pledges to kick in $15 an hour on wages of up to $65 for workers on large rental towers in Manhattan south of 96th St. and $50 on the booming Brooklyn-Queens waterfront.
At a time when New York desperately needs housing, affordable housing most of all, the governor has boosted the cost and put the taxpayer on the hook.
Fighting Gentrification in the Bronx
Bronxites ProtestGentrification Outside of Nonprofit Developer's Offices (DNAINFO) A group of Bronxites rallied outside of SoBro'soffices on Friday afternoon to protest the role that they believe the economic development group is playing in bringing gentrificationinto the borough. Members of the organization #TheBronxIsNotForSale gathered by 555 Bergen Ave. with signs describing SoBro as "Poverty Pimps" and declaring "These Are Our Homes, Leave The Bronx Alone" in support of keeping the borough affordable for its current residents.* Brooklyn (Billfold) * Ken Thompson, Brooklyn Prosecutor, Emerges as Shrewd Victor in Akai Gurley Case (NYT) In the sort of polarizing police misconduct case that can define a career, Mr. Thompson, the Brooklyn district attorney, gambled with trying an officer who fatally shot an unarmed man. * Peter Liang, Ex-Police Officer, Apologizes to Akai Gurley’s Partner in Meeting (NYT)The meeting with Kimberly Ballinger came a day after a recommendation that Mr. Liang, who was convicted of manslaughter in Mr. Gurley’s shooting, receive no prison time.
How Blacks the Poor and the Middle Class are Being Push Out of Brooklyn Because of Albany's Tax Breaks for Luxury Developers
More On Gentrification
NYT Leaves Out the Fact That Gentrification Occurs In the Existing Housing When New Buildings Are Built in A Neighborhood
New York Passes Rent Rules to Blunt Gentrification (NYT) Under the new housing rules, private developers will be compelled to build low-cost rental units, a centerpiece of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s efforts to blunt neighborhood gentrification.
How Black Bed-Stuy Dies? As the Last Black Residences Fight Developers Who Cash In On Gentrification the Mayor and Council Move In for the Kill
Is this how black Bed-Stuy dies? A lifelong resident laments, and fights, the gentrification tide (Howell NYDN) For me, the sign that the end times were approaching came last year, in a phone conversation with a childhood friend. Jeannie Bish, her five brothers and their late mother were pillars of their Hancock St. block. (Forgive me, Jeanie, but I will always know you by your maiden name.) The Bish family had been involved in Bed-Stuy politics going back to pre-war years. Like me, Jeannie and her five brothers were among the neighborhood's Baby Boomers, and our worship of our village was manifest in our words and deeds, the way we talked and walked. Jeannie's oldest brother became a cop at the nearby 81st Precinct; another went on to work for a local elected official; another became a minister; yet another joined up with the black revolutionary crowd at Sista's Place, over at the corner of Jefferson and Nostrand Aves. And, oh, the fifth — who had treated me as a baby cousin in the late 1950s when he accompanied me to Little League games at Lincoln Terrace Field — became hooked on heroin and struggled for decades before he was delivered to a drug-free life by the active love of Jeanie, a now-retired nurse. "We're selling the house," Jeannie told me in that phone conversation of last year. Jeannie now lives in Salisbury , N.C. Williamsburg a decade earlier. Up popped cafés and stylish restaurants to serve these struggling pioneers, who appeared to be genuinely eager to embrace the place they were calling home. Now, in Bed-Stuy, a second wave has come in, drawn by the long-term financial comfort beckoning from the brownstones whose prices have kept soaring over the past 30 years. "They don't even speak to you," longtime black homeowners say of the new wavers.
If the Reason the Media Ignores the Airbnb Effect On Gentrification the Fact That the Mayor's Campaign Manager
Where Are the Elected Officials Fighting To Save the Bed-Stuy Neighborhood From Developers?
Harlem Activist Fight Citibike 'Gateway' to Gentrification
Harlem activists fight Citibike 'gateway to gentrification' (NYDN) Harlem leaders want Citibike to keep its cycle of gentrification out of their neighborhood. "This bike-share is the gateway to gentrification," community leader Martin Baez said at a town hall meeting Thursday. "We cannot continue to allow the Mayor's office, the Governor's office, or any other office to tell us what we should do. This is our community."*
Gentification Gives the Chance for A Jailed Developer (anti-trust) to Kill A Community Garden
Brooklyn DeveloperAllegedly Harassing Community Gardeners To Force Them Out (Gothamist) Real estate developers trying to claim a property occupied by a community garden in Prospect Lefferts Gardens Maple Street Garden 237 Maple St. for $5,000 from nephews of the deceased owners back in 2003. The house that once occupied the lot was abandoned after its owners' deaths, and burned down in 1997. The lot accumulated junk for 15 years until neighbors banded together to clean it up and turn it into a community garden—after they say a worker at the Makhanis' LLC refused to discuss the property.Late last summer, after the gardeners had put two years of work into transforming the property, the Makhanis showed up demanding the garden be removed. The next morning, a crew set to ripping out a vegetable bed, but were stopped by cops when the Makhanis couldn't produce satisfactory ownership paperwork. Since then, the realtors and developers have been in court fighting over the validity of the Makhanis' deed and the gardeners' right to stay. In the meantime, the Makhanis filed permits to build a five-story, 17-apartment building on the site. The Makhani brothers served three months in federal prison in 1999 and paid $20,000 in fines each for anti-trust violations, and in Michael Makhani's case, for fraud, according to a U.S. Attorney's Office spokeswoman. The New York Times reported that convictions were for their roles in a scheme involving foreclosed properties in Queens , though the spokeswoman couldn't confirm that. In late 2008, the Times wrote, three companies Joseph Makhani was a principal in, including one under fire for alleged predatory lending, pleaded guilty to filing false deeds in Queens and were fined $5,000.
Bushwick Natives: Gentrification is the New Colonialism
CHECK OUT HOW THESE BUSHWICK NATIVES ARE PROTESTINGHIPSTER-LED GENTRIFICATION (Village Voice) Just a few blocks northeast of the Dekalb Avenue L stop in Bushwick, attached to the side of the La Iglesia de Santa Cruz Episcopal Church, sits a grassroots community-organizing center aptly named "Mayday." Encircled by one of the most rapidly gentrifying areas in New York City, the organization was created in January of 2013 as a “home for radical thought and debate,” a space where local activists could start mobilizing the neighborhood around issues like immigrant rights, tenant protections, and the growing displacement of its residents. And while gentrification is often described as a form of modern-day colonialism — the exploitation and plunder of low-income communities for land and profit — Mayday Space has, in many ways, become a command post for the resistance movement in the area. Earlier this month, roughly a dozen of Mayday’s core members and volunteers gathered on St. Nicholas Avenue to begin work on the group’s latest protest project, Mi Casa No Es Su Casa: Illumination Against Gentrification. Working in collaboration with the NYC Light Brigade — a social justice organization born out of the Occupy Wall Street movement — the group has created illuminated signs, blaring provocative phrases like “Gentrification in Process,” “Not 4 Sale,” and “No Eviction Zone,” that it plans to install in homes throughout the neighborhood this week. Though the signs were created by weaving strings of white lights through punctured pieces of black plywood, they're more an act of political subversion than a simple holiday arts-and-crafts project.* Bushwick gentrifiers are driving up the burglary ratebecause they don't lock their doors, precinct commander says * This MassiveDevelopment Site Will Utterly Transform Dumbo (Brownstone) New Dumbo condos anticipated to start @ 3 million...
NYC Real Estate Barrons' Found Their Puppet A Progressive Mayor to Gentrify East New York
The study, "The Effects of Neighborhood Change on NYCHA Residents," written by the consulting firm Abt Associates with help from New York University's Furman Center for Real Estate, found that NYCHA tenants often wind up feeling like aliens in their own neighborhoods, surrounded by newcomers who claimed they'd just "discovered" the neighborhood. “NYCHA residents could be priced out of new private amenities and new, higher-income neighbors may not contribute to accessible community resources,” the report reads.* * New York City hired five NYCHA residents as urban “interpreters” who gathered information for a $250,000 report that concluded most New Yorkers already accept as true: gentrification doesn't help the poor,the Daily News reports de Blasio Spins Back The city's voluntary inclusionary housing program, which rewards developers who set aside apartments for low rents, yielded more than triple the number of units in fiscal year 2015 than it did previous year,Politico New York reports:
Gentrification Another Factor Killing Public Housing
de Blasio What Gentrification: Never saw his report that found gentrification doesn’t benefit NYCHA tenants
De Blasio hasn’t read a $250,000 study his administration paid for that found NYCHA tenants don’t reap the benefits of gentrification, but made clear he’s still dedicated to his plan to put up expensive market-rate apartments on NYCHA land, the Daily News reports: * Nevertheless, on Monday — after the Daily News uncovered the report, “The Effects of Neighborhood Change on NYCHA Residents” — he made clear he’s full steam ahead with the plan to put up expensive market-rate apartments on NYCHA land. “I haven’t seen the report, but I can say for sure we believe that the right kind of development on NYCHA sites will create more affordable housing for neighborhood residents,” de Blasio said.* NYCHA residents see little benefit from gentrification in their neighborhoods, report shows (NYDN) The city hired five NYCHA residents to work as urban “interpreters” who gathered information for a $250,000 report that reached a conclusion most New Yorkers already accept as true: gentrification doesn't help the poor.* .@BilldeBlasio promotes #EastNewYork rezoning plan to skeptical locals * Anti-white symbol used in flier against Bronx gentrification(NYP)
In NY Not Only Gentrification Developers Get Tax Breaks Slum Lords Also
NYC’s “worst landlord” collected $2.7M in tax breaks,subsidies: Accused slumlord Ved Parkash, who has more than… * A Bronx landlord who owns 60 buildings with more than 4,000 serious violations has cashed in on millions in federal subsidies and state tax breaks, records show.
How Blacks the Poor and the Middle Class are Being Push Out of Brooklyn Because of Albany's Tax Breaks for Luxury Developers
East Side Pols Say Nothing As China Fun Shuts Closes Down Blaming Govt Over-Regulations
Manhattan culinary staple China Fun shutters,blaming government over-regulation (NYDN) For 25 years, China Fun was renowned for its peerless soup dumplings and piquant General Tso’s chicken. What left a bad taste in the mouths of its owners and loyal patrons was the restaurant’s sudden Jan. 3 closing, blamed by management on suffocating government demands. “The state and municipal governments, with their punishing rules and regulations, seems to believe that we should be their cash machine to pay for all that ails us in society.” The Second Ave. restaurant became a beloved local mainstay, with customers bemoaning its unexpected disappearance. The Daily News hailed the soup dumplings as the best on the Upper East Side in 2015. Albert Wu, whose parents Dorothea and Felix owned the eatery, said the endless paperwork and constant regulation that forced the shutdown accumulated over the years. “When we started out in 1991, the lunch special was $4 a plate,” he recalled. “Now it’s $10, $12. The cost of doing business is just too onerous.” Wu cited one regulation where the restaurant was required to provide an on-site break room for workers despite its limited space. And he blamed the amount of paperwork now required — an increasingly difficult task for a non-chain businesses. “In a one-restaurant operation like ours, you’re spending more time on paperwork than you are trying to run your business,” he griped. Increases in the minimum wage, health insurance and insurance added to a list of 10 issues provided by Wu. “And I haven’t even gone into the Health Department rules and regulations,” he added. Media Cares More About City’s top eateries are freaking out over a white-truffle shortage (NYP) *
"Due to rent, labor and food costs on the rise.." Two More Manhattan Diners Have Closed
Selling Gentrification to the Black Community From the Same Guy Who Sold Atlantic Yards As Affordable Housing
As Gentrification Changes Harlem, Crown Heights, Bed Stuy Racial Make Up and Change Black Churches into Condos the Mayor Sells Affordable Housing to East New York Just Like He Did 15 Years Ago to Prospect Heights and Atlantic Yards
Brooklyn's Second Coming: Borough of churches now borough of condos. At least (most) of the bars are safe. @Dnainfo **** De Blasio Aims to Sell Wary Churchgoers on Rezoning Plan for East New York (NYT) The mayor promoted his development plan, which would transform blocks of rowhouses and vacant lots into a community with lower-cost housing. * Bill de Blasio: Housing plan for East New York will not force long-term residents out (NYDN) * Mayor Bill de Blasio took to East New York Sunday to sell his administration’s vision for the revitalization of the area, visiting a church to pitch the residents, The NewYork Times writes: * The number of overcrowded apartments in New York City has spiked, rising 20 percent over the last decade a report from Comptroller Scott Stringer has found, theDaily News reports: * Rise in overcrowded NYC apartments shows need for morehousing, says Controller Scott Stringer (NYDN) * Ex-worker on NYC affordable housing units alleges wage theft, sexual and racial harassment (NYDN) * NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio attempted this weekend to sell wary churchgoers on his administration’s plan to rezone East New York . As Borough President, no one will fight harder to make Brooklyn more affordable for working families, stop outof control and irresponsible development(AYR) * The due diligence of BP candidate Bill de Blasio, or the (AY) end justifies the means (AYR)
A report from New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer finds that the city’s overcrowded housing has drastically increased in recent years, with about 1.5 million New Yorkers now living in overcrowded conditions:* De Blasio Defends His Affordable Housing Plan inEast New York (DNAINFO) Mayor Bill de Blasio told a church in East New York that his plan to rezone the neighborhood would bring more affordable housing and help keep people in their homes, not force them out as some have feared. * The de Blasio administration is challenging a lawsuit that would undo a longstanding policy of reserving 50 percent of low-income, city-funded apartments for residents of the local community, Politico New York reports:
The Loss of Thousands of Mom and Pop Stores is Killing NYC's Traditional Route to the Middle Class
Why Are There SoMany Shuttered Storefronts in the West Village? (New Yorker) At the end of this month, the House of Cards & Curiosities, on Eighth Avenue , just south of Jane Street , in the West Village West Village ?” by Tim Wu for The New Yorker: “Abandoned storefronts have long been a hallmark of economic depression and high crime rates, but the West Village West Village Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu writes in the New Yorker about the surge in shuttered shops in the West Village Seattle where the minimum wage is now $15 an hour:* * Four Reasons You Can’t Stop the Brooklyn Juggernaut - Commercial Real Estate * Some South Bronx residents fear the new apartment buildings expected under a proposed rezoning would be too expensive for them and that jobs at the many auto repair shops in the area will be driven out, The Wall Street Journal reports:
The Gentrification of East New York
There Has Never Been A Community Target by Developers That has Not Lost Affordable Apartments
Developers who build in certain areas of New York City, firstly East New York, would be required to set aside at least 25 percent of units for lower-income residents under proposed zoning rules officially released by the de Blasio administration, the Times writes: * Developers who want to build in certain areas of New York City would be required for the first time to set aside at least 25 percent of their units for lower-income residents under proposed zoning rules officially released by the de Blasio administration. * Listing for brownstones in Brooklyn are beginning to spike.
Gentrification Causing the Racial Busing Fight 50 Years Later
Race and class issues have collided in the rezoning of two public schools in Brooklyn , with the proposal drawing intense opposition from both white and black families at both schools who fear changing demographics, The New York Times reports: * Locals Fear LES Is Being Rezoned Into A "Rich WhiteGirl's Dorm" (Gothamist)
Bodega In Gentrifying Brooklyn Puts Front Window Space on Airbnb for $329 A Night to Pay for Rent Increase
Brooklyn Bodega PutsFront Window Space On Airbnb For $329/Night (Gothamist) A group of Brooklyn activists who recently peddled Artisanal Roach Bombs ($15.99) and Hand-Fried Chicken Cutlet Sandwiches ($13.50) at Jesse's Deli, a corner bodega in Boerum Hill currently facing an alleged 2.5x rent increase, has now posted the 7'x4' space in its front windowon Airbnb—for $329 per night. "Unique property on Atlantic Avenue in gentrifying section of Brooklyn ," reads the listing. "The cozy semi-private 7x4 bedroom with lofty 14 ft ceilings is separated from the deli by a Doritos and Lays chip stand and book shelf.... Chef-style kitchen with professional toaster, meat slicer, and microwave. Also includes coffee maker." According to Jesse's, the proposed rent hike, from $4,000 to $10,000, is still on the table. A store manager who identified himself as Mike told us this morning, "We're fighting it [the rent hike] in court right now, so it's up to the judge. We'll be here for about 5 or 6 more months, at least."
Teflon Brooklyn Pols Escape Blame for Pushing Their Own Voters Out of Their Homes
Brooklyn Now The Most Unaffordable Place To Buy A Home In America * 'NOT GOING TO LIE TO YOU GUYS': Mayor de Blasio admits there's no quick fix for NYC growing homeless population (NYDN) *Prospect Lefferts Gardens
Another Win for Developers Over Libraries Who Run NY Govt
City approves deal to sell library and replace it with high-rise (NYP) The City Planning Commission unanimously approved a deal Monday to sell a Brooklyn Heights Brooklyn Heights
Over Development In Downtown Brooklyn Has Caused Overcrowding Of Brooklyn Heights Schools
Popular public school may have eligibility zone cut in half (NYP) Parents itching to send their kids to a wildly popular public school in Brooklyn Heights will be out of luck if a new plan to cut the school’s eligibility zone in half gets passed. The Department of Education is forging ahead with a plan to reduce the school zone of highly-rated PS 8 — meaning some kids who want to attend the Hicks Street school will instead have to trudge to PS 307 in Vinegar Hill. The new zone will be about half its current size — leaving out much of DUMBO and Vinegar Hill, according to DOE officials, who presented a preliminary rezoning proposal last Tuesday. DUMBO resident Steven Grin, 37, whose wife just gave birth, isn’t taking any chances — they’re moving to Monclair , NJ
True News Reported Last Year That Gentrification Would Reduce Crime
There's a high correlation between poverty & violent crime. A key reason why most NYC neighborhoods are relatively safe is gentrification
High Rents and Gentrification Killing Bodegas and Mom and Pops Stores
City Council Controlled By Developer Lobbyists and Campaign $$$ Looks the Other Way
Bodegas Declining in Manhattan as Rents Rise and Chains Grow (NYT) The corner stores that are a ubiquitous part of life in the city are struggling to survive, especially in Upper Manhattan . The Bodega Association of the United States said about 75 corner stores have closed this year in upper Manhattan as commercial rents rise and chain stores expand in some neighborhoods * Similarly, self-service laundromats seem to be vanishing in some New York City neighborhoods, which one City Councilwoman’s office described as a quality of life issue for seniors, the Journal reports: * * City Councilman Ritchie Torres does not intend to support a project that would convert vacant Fordham library space into artists’ studios and rehearsal space, saying it could precipitate gentrification in his Bronx district, the Observer reports: * A love letter, in photos, to New York City ’s vanishing mom-and-pop shops (New Yorker) “Analogue,” Zoe Leonard’s epic yet intimate sequence of photographs, now installed in MOMA’s atrium, is a story of two vanishing worlds. The first is the mom-and-pop commerce of the Lower East Side and Williamsburg , now steamrolled by gentrification.
Gentrification in Bed Stuy Pushes Out Tenants and Small Black Business
Update A bill to be introduced in New York City Council would ban commercial landlords from using physical intimidation or threats, denying repairs or cutting off heat and utilities to try to force the business to leave, the Daily News reports:
Residents ProtestShuttering of Longtime Neighborhood Candy Store (DNAINFO) BEDFORD-STUYVESANT — Community members and elected officials rallied on Friday in front of a longtime Brooklyn business, protesting the shuttering of Jimmy’s Candy Store under a new landlord. The store that operated for more than 40 years at 406 Tompkins Ave. closed its doors in late May after its owners were evicted following a court ruling in favor of the building’s new deed holder.
END OF A BOOZY ERA: Hogs & Heifers to close its iconic doors after 23 years (NYDN) * ICONIC NYC DAIRY RESTAURANT FACES UNCERTAIN FUTURE AFTERRECENT EAST VILLAGE EXPLOSION (Tablet) * FAILE Bring A Gentrification Game To The Brooklyn Museum New York ? Well that commercial rent taxplays a role. Here's a fix @ (CrainsNY) * One of the Last NYC Kosher Dairy Restaurants Is At Riskof Closing * New DevelopmentCould Kill '60s-Era Market Diner In Hell's Kitchen *Bed-Stuy Leads Brooklyn Home Sales as Prices Jump 21Percent, Report Says * Biscotti Bakery Closing After Rent Hike, 'Mall-ization ofManhattan'(DNAINFO)
Developers Closing Down Black and Hispanic Churches
Harlem pastor accused of illegally selling church (NYDN) A Harlem pastor accused of selling his church for a song is now singing the blues. The Holy Cross African Orthodox Church, a longtime local fixture in its W. 129th St. townhouse, is the center of a holy war started by recently-defrocked Bishop Alfred Drake’s last-ditch land deal. Drake claimed he was tricked in the $175,000 sale, while top church officials said he had no business peddling the property at all — much less for a fraction of its possible $2 million worth. Real estate values are exploding in Central Harlem , where the church has welcomed worshipers since 1931.
Brooklyn's Second Coming: Borough of churches now borough of condos. At least (most) of the bars are safe. @Dnainfo In Brooklyn’s “brownstone belt," which stretches from Bedford-Stuyvesant to Carroll Gardens 167 N. 6th St. in Williamsburg preserved the house of worship's façade and interior details. Brian Moskin, a real estate agent, said the condos, named "The Spire Lofts," have been "masterfully restored." "People love the aesthetic of the reclaimed wood, old beams, exposed brick and stained glass," he said of the units, which run from $5,000 a month for a one-bedroom to $7,384 a month for a 2 1/2-bedroom. * "Barronexpressed concern [about] a 'gentrified class' wud come into the community 2 reap the benefits.” #EastNewYork * East New York RezoningOutreach Proposals Leave Residents Uneasy (DNAINFO) * Empty homes owned by NYC still not fixed (NYP) Kathleen Gittens-Baptiste last week stood in front of the ramshackle, empty house she has lived next door to for more than 15 years. In her hands was a framed copy...* A federal lawsuit filed yesterday on behalf of three black residents accuses New York City of perpetuating residential segregation by reserving as many as half of the subsidized apartments planned in the city for applicants already living in the neighborhood where the units are to be built.
NYT Reports On Landlords and Developers Buying Up Bed-Stuy But Ignores the Cancer (421-a) Driving the Gentrification Market
In Bed-Stuy Housing Market, Profit and Preservation Battle (NYT) A tall and slender man of 60, he has lived several blocks from the cleaners for close to a year now, during which he has watched investors and developers canvass the streets looking for properties from which they might extract significant profits. “They’re up and down here every day,” he told me, as he recounted getting approached by someone who offered him money to unearth information about the owners of a neighboring townhouse. It is standard in Bedford-Stuyvesant to see posters calling on locals to join the dubious mission of turnover.
“If you find someone who want to sell you will get up to $20.000.00 for finder fee,” reads one, somewhat inexplicably. In response to all of this, fliers in the neighborhood recently warned older black homeowners, many living in brownstones passed down through generations, to protect themselves from getting bilked by predatory, and by implication, racist real-estate interests. (“Free leg or thigh if you sell your grandma’s deed!” one of them proclaimed. This particular enticement to fury ran under the headline “Landgrabbers Realty Corp.,” and featured a drawing of a drumstick.) It is hard to overstate the acquisition frenzy that hangs over Bedford-Stuyvesant, and to reconcile it with some of the realities that persist in the neighborhood, where the felony assault rate is more than three times what it is in Park Slope. When I met Mr. Leow and his team last week — a team that includes a young broker named Mipam Thurman, the brother of the actress Uma Thurman, who told me he had to move to Flatbush because he couldn’t afford to buy anything in Bedford-Stuyvesant — they showed me a house on Lafayette Avenue that had just gone into contract for slightly under the asking price of $1,550,000. * Anti-Gentrification Fliers Plastered Throughout Stuyvesant Heights in Bed Stuy (Brownstone) *
Pols Pounce on Unconnected Crown Heights Landlord Trying to Empty His Building
Slumlord’ arrested for turning off heat, dangerous renovations (NYP) Brooklyn landlord was arrested on charges that he drove tenants out of rent-regulated apartments by doing construction and demolition at one of his buildings and shutting off the heat. This was the first arrest by a joint task force launched in February by NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio and AG Eric Schneiderman.* A Brooklyn landlord was arrested, accused of forcing tenants from rent-regulated units in the first case brought by Mayor Bill de Blasio and Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s joint task force,
The Associated Press reports: A Brooklyn landlord isaccused of driving tenants out of apartments with construction and by turningoff the heat (NYT) * A MANHATTAN LANDLORD IS EVICTING AN ENTIRE BLOCK OF LATINO BUSINESS OWNERS (Village Voice)* Longtime Tenants in Manhattan See an Effort to Push Them Out (NYT) Metal gates installed in front of apartment buildings near Columbia University are just one of the tactics the landlord, the Orbach Group, has used in its effort to push out rent-regulated residents, tenants say* Many longtime tenants in a Manhattan neighborhood around Columbia University feel as though their landlords are trying to push them out so they can rent their homes at market rate, the Times reports: * Mystery buyer planning $250M NYC penthouse (NYP)
NYP's Silent Cover-Up That 421-a Has Not Put A Dent In the Loss of Affordable Housing
Rents has Gone Through the Roof Up to 90% in Gentrifying Neighborhoods
Rent soars in partsof Manhattan, Brooklynas affordable housing drastically dwindles: study (NYDN) Rent has gone through the roof in some neighborhoods, rising a crazy 50% to 90% in some spots, according to an analysis by the Community Service Society, a nonpartisan anti-poverty group. Rents rose 32% citywide since 2002, but in six neighborhoods in Manhattan and Brooklyn , median rent presented to recent movers has spiked by at least 50%, the survey found. “The sharpest increases occurred in neighborhoods surrounding the traditionally high-rent area of Manhattan below Harlem,” the report states, noting that median rent in Central Harlem has jumped a “shocking” 90% since 2002.
The survey shows skyrocketing rents have exacerbated the plummeting number of apartments affordable to low-income renters, which have dropped 44% from 995,000 in 2002 to 555,000 last year. That’s primarily due to rent-stabilized units going market rate when their rent rises to the level that they become eligible for vacancy decontrol. * De Blasio writes in the Daily News that it would be a “tremendous missed opportunity” for Albany to extent rent-regulation laws without ending vacancy decontrol and making other reforms:* One NYC neighborhood’s rent has increased 90% since 2002,and it’s not where you’d think: 
More About Gentrificatkion
The Crown Heights Gentrification Media Cover Up
Re-Zoning is Expected to Speed Up Gentrification in Crown Heights and PLEGNA . . . Two Weeks After WFP Candidate Who Pledged to Slow Gentrification Elected
Crown Heights BoardMoves Ahead With Controversial Rezoning Study (SNAINFO) After more than a year of controversy, Brooklyn Community Board 9 voted Tuesday to again recommend the city study zoning changes in parts ofCrown Heights. At the end of a three-hour meeting marked by chanting, shouting and a constant police presence, CB9’s members voted 26-6, with 3 abstentions, to accept a rezoning resolution to the Department of City Planning, requesting that the agency start studying possible land-use changes in the parts of southern Crown Heights and Prospect-Lefferts Gardens.
Following intense protest by the local activist group Movement to Protect the People, the spring resolution was formally rescinded last fall and languished in committee ever since, stalled by both protests and a series of parliamentary missteps by the board. Before Tuesday’s vote, the board considered and rejected one such misstep: the fact that the CB9’s most recent committee vote on the resolution — a necessity to adopt the document that was taken last week during a particularly hectic meeting in which MTOPP’s leader, Alicia Boyd, was dragged out and arrested by police — was not properly tallied or reported. * WFP Candidate Diana Richardson Wins Special Election for 43AD (DNAINFO) * VIDEO: Activist Arrested Amid Vote on Controversial Crown HeightsRezoning (DNAINFO) * City acts to tamp down hysteria over de Blasio zoning plan (CrainsNY) As civic leaders warn of a City Hall proposal to 'dismantle' neighborhood protections, planners water it down and dispatch emissaries to explain it. Note: DNAInfo is Doing Great Coverage of the Crown Heights Gentrification Story *** After 1 Year of Protests Crown Heights Community Board Pass Re-Zoning Plan * Alicia Boyd on Black Elected Officials (Video)
Developers Have Made Gentrification Into A Science
It Starts With A Coffee Shop
Developers have figured out the secret sauce for gentrifyingn neighborhoods (Quartz) First came the new coffee shops—two of them—in 2009. Newcomers had been trickling in for a few years, but that’s when the gentrification of New York ’s Crown Heights Brooklyn neighborhood was the scene of ugly race riots, fueled by long-simmering tensions between black and Jewish residents.
But by 2012, the area had become typical of the gentrification that’s overtaking so many of the world’s largest cities asthey assume the mantle of economic growth drivers. Often, at least in America , we think of regular people as the agents of change—the artist, the boutique coffee shop owner, the tech startup. But as much as gentrification is an organic process, fueled by opportunity seekers and bargain hunters, it’s developers and financierswho have become the savvy midwives of change. Once they detect the early signs of gentrification, they bring on the serious money. In the case of Crown Heights Butler ’s trendy Brooklyn Flea joining in the winter months.
NYT Reports On Landlords and Developers Buying Up Bed-Stuy But Ignores the Cancer (421-a) Driving the Gentrification Market
In Bed-Stuy Housing Market, Profit and Preservation Battle (NYT) A tall and slender man of 60, he has lived several blocks from the cleaners for close to a year now, during which he has watched investors and developers canvass the streets looking for properties from which they might extract significant profits. “They’re up and down here every day,” he told me, as he recounted getting approached by someone who offered him money to unearth information about the owners of a neighboring townhouse. It is standard in Bedford-Stuyvesant to see posters calling on locals to join the dubious mission of turnover.
“If you find someone who want to sell you will get up to $20.000.00 for finder fee,” reads one, somewhat inexplicably. In response to all of this, fliers in the neighborhood recently warned older black homeowners, many living in brownstones passed down through generations, to protect themselves from getting bilked by predatory, and by implication, racist real-estate interests. (“Free leg or thigh if you sell your grandma’s deed!” one of them proclaimed. This particular enticement to fury ran under the headline “Landgrabbers Realty Corp.,” and featured a drawing of a drumstick.) It is hard to overstate the acquisition frenzy that hangs over Bedford-Stuyvesant, and to reconcile it with some of the realities that persist in the neighborhood, where the felony assault rate is more than three times what it is in Park Slope. When I met Mr. Leow and his team last week — a team that includes a young broker named Mipam Thurman, the brother of the actress Uma Thurman, who told me he had to move to Flatbush because he couldn’t afford to buy anything in Bedford-Stuyvesant — they showed me a house on Lafayette Avenue that had just gone into contract for slightly under the asking price of $1,550,000. * Anti-Gentrification Fliers Plastered Throughout Stuyvesant Heights in Bed Stuy (Brownstone) *
The Crown Heights Gentrification Media Cover Up
Re-Zoning is Expected to Speed Up Gentrification in Crown Heights and PLEGNA . . . Two Weeks After WFP Candidate Who Pledged to Slow Gentrification Elected
Crown Heights BoardMoves Ahead With Controversial Rezoning Study (SNAINFO) After more than a year of controversy, Brooklyn Community Board 9 voted Tuesday to again recommend the city study zoning changes in parts ofCrown Heights. At the end of a three-hour meeting marked by chanting, shouting and a constant police presence, CB9’s members voted 26-6, with 3 abstentions, to accept a rezoning resolution to the Department of City Planning, requesting that the agency start studying possible land-use changes in the parts of southern Crown Heights and Prospect-Lefferts Gardens.
Following intense protest by the local activist group Movement to Protect the People, the spring resolution was formally rescinded last fall and languished in committee ever since, stalled by both protests and a series of parliamentary missteps by the board. Before Tuesday’s vote, the board considered and rejected one such misstep: the fact that the CB9’s most recent committee vote on the resolution — a necessity to adopt the document that was taken last week during a particularly hectic meeting in which MTOPP’s leader, Alicia Boyd, was dragged out and arrested by police — was not properly tallied or reported. * WFP Candidate Diana Richardson Wins Special Election for 43AD (DNAINFO) * VIDEO: Activist Arrested Amid Vote on Controversial Crown HeightsRezoning (DNAINFO) * City acts to tamp down hysteria over de Blasio zoning plan (CrainsNY) As civic leaders warn of a City Hall proposal to 'dismantle' neighborhood protections, planners water it down and dispatch emissaries to explain it. Note: DNAInfo is Doing Great Coverage of the Crown Heights Gentrification Story *** After 1 Year of Protests Crown Heights Community Board Pass Re-Zoning Plan * Alicia Boyd on Black Elected Officials (Video)
Yuppies on the smart phones get excited about Wegmans Moving In While Long Time Low Rent Area Residents Fear Gentrification Push Out
Rochester-based supermarket chain Wegmans Food Markets, a grocery store with a loyal upstate following, is set to open at the Brooklyn Navy Yard to anchor a $140 million renovation of Admiral Row, Gannett Albany reports: http://goo.gl/Sz8RaO This is the same community where a councilwomen got in trouble for claiming that Asians were replacing blacks in public housing. Councilwoman Raises Concerns About ‘Blocs’ ofAsians Moving Into NYCHA The two housing projects Cumbo named — the Walt Whitman Houses and Ingersoll Houses in Fort Greene 
More on Gentrification
The Pols Have Created A Gentrification Market Where Scam Predators Target Minorities to Flip Their Homes
Real Estate Shell CompaniesScheme to Defraud Owners Out of Their Homes (NYT) Relying on the secrecy of limited liability companies, white-collar thieves are targeting pockets of New York City for fraudulent deed transfers, leaving the victims groping for redress. In Bedford-Stuyvesant and other pockets of the city, white-collar criminals are employing a variety of schemes to snatch properties from their owners. Often, they use the secrecy afforded to shell companies to rent out vacated properties until they are caught or sell them to third parties. Victims are left groping for redress, unable to identify their predators or even, in some cases, to prove a crime has been committed. Attention lately has focused on the growing use of shell companies to buy prized real estate in Manhattan and other glittering destinations for global wealth. But the stealthy practice of deed theft illustrates another way that limited liability company law used to create such entities has been twisted and stretched to conceal the ownership of real estate. This is particularly true in Brooklyn neighborhoods where profits in the hundreds of thousands of dollars from quick turnaround sales have become common.In other cases, signatures are simply forged on deeds. The thieves, meanwhile, hide behind inscrutable mazes of limited liability companies, rented post office boxes and fake addresses. Coming amid waves of gentrification, the reports of deed theft have helped feed the unease felt in neighborhoods where longtime residents — blacks and Hispanics, the poor and middle class — are increasingly being priced out.* Real estate shell companies are defrauding New York City residents out of their homes, and a growing number of fraudulent deed transfers are often difficult to crack due to the secrecy of limited liability companies, The NewYork Times reports:
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Only In NYC Can the Pols Want to Give A Tax Break to Mom and Pol Stores Who Are Being Pushed Out By Developers Getting A Tax Break
In NYC, debate oversaving small shops amid chains' rise Looking for a "Seinfeld"-style coffee shop? It's sharing the city with 280 Starbucks and more than 530 Dunkin Donuts. A good neighborhood deli? It's competing with some 460 Subways. And the corner store may well now be a Chase bank or Walgreens. Amid eye-popping rents and the demise of a number of well-known local haunts, some activists and lawmakers are proposing new rent-renewal rights for small businesses that they see as saving the personality of the city.
Landlords Who Target Low Rent Tenants in Gentrifying Neighborhoods
The Underbelly of the Lobbyists and Developers is Pushing People Out
BrooklynLandlords Accused Of Trashing Apartments Arrested (WCBS) An alleged Brooklyn slumlord and his brother were arrested Thursday morning, accused of creating appalling and squalid conditions for tenants. Joel Israel and his brother, Amram, were led in handcuffs into the courthouse in downtown Brooklyn on Thursday for their arraignment, CBS2’s Valerie Castro reported. * 2 Brooklyn Landlords Accused of Making Units Unlivable AreArrested (NYT) *Brothers Joel and Aaron Israel—collectively forming JBI Management— made headlines last year for taking such drastic measures as blasting a crater-sized hole in the middle of one family's Bushwick apartment at 98 Linden Street, as well as incurring similar miseries on the occupants of other properties in Greenpoint and Williamsburg.
In addition, the state’s Tenant Protection Unit last year served a subpoena on JBI Management, whose principals are Joel and Aaron Israel, to force it to produce records related to rent rolls and business practices for 10 buildings the company owns in Bushwick, Greenpoint and Williamsburg . * The Brooklyn district attorney said two landlords have been arrested and accused of making buildings uninhabitable in an effort to drive out tenants and rent units at higher rates, The New York Times reports * Landlords indicted in scheme to ‘gut apartments, oust tenants’(NYP) * Brooklyn slumlord brothers busted for trashing apartments to force out long-time tenants: officials (NYDN) * The Rent Guidelines Board found that landlord operating costs covering a million rent-stabilized apartments went up by just 0.5 percent last year, which could put pressure on the city for a rent freeze, the Post writes: *2 Brooklyn Landlords, Accused of Making Units Unlivable, Are Charged With Fraud (NYT) Prosecutors say that Joel and Aaron Israel — who pleaded not guilty to seven different charges, including fraud and burglary — intentionally wrecked apartments to drive out rent-stabilized tenants.* Landlord Brothers Charged With Harassing Tenants Out of Rent-Controlled Brooklyn Apartments (NY1)
When Will The Council Look At All the Low Wage Workers Building
Under Deal, Living Wage for Workers at a Tower in Hudson Yards (NYT) All of the workers in a proposed office tower in Midtown Manhattan will be paid at least $13.30 an hour, the first broad application of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s executive order mandating a living wage.* About one-third of the migrant construction workers employed at NYU’s campus in Abu Dhabi — or about 10,000 people — were excluded from the protections of the university’s labor guidelines ensuring fair wages, hours and living conditions, according to an investigative report.* Union-friendly bill could slow affordable housing (Capital)*Rent destabilization (NYP Ed) Now that his appointees dominate the Rent Guidelines Board, Mayor de Blasio plainly means to win what he sought last year — a freeze on rent hikes for the city’s...
Speaker Supports Gentrification Igniting Rezoning
Council Speaker Rejects Claims That de Blasio Rezonings Are Moving Too Fast (NYO) Defending her ally, Mayor Bill de Blasio, Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito rejected the claims of affordable housing advocates that City Hall is moving too swiftly with its plan to rezone more than a dozen neighborhoods. “I’m not understanding why they’re talking about the pace–[the rezonings] haven’t even been submitted, right? The conversations have just started,” Ms. Mark-Viverito, a Democrat like the mayor, told the Observer at an unrelated City Hall press conference this afternoon. “In my case, where East Harlem was mentioned in the State of the City with the mayor, there hasn’t been a formal plan presented to City Planning.”* Melissa Mark-Viverito on 2017: ‘You Can Never BeOver-Ready’ (NYO)
Question Not Asked if the 421-a Destroying Affordable Housing by Causing More Gentrification?
New Yorkers Spend 60% of Their Income On Rent
De Blasio’s 421-a dilemma (Capital) 
Fact and Reality: Stop the Gentrification Push Out In Crown Heights Before Promising to Do it City-Wide Hundreds of Black Residence Are Being Push Out of Crown Heights and the City Has Nothing to Stop It. Why doesn't the NYT demand the mayor stop the push out in Crown Heights to demonstrate that it is possible to stop gentrification push out with his increased development that he promised in his Stat of the City speech.* East New York residents are calling for more details about the mayor’s affordable development plans for the neighborhood, and they have demands of their own, City Limits reports
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City and State Officials Cover Their Ass After Arrests of Inspectors Pushing Tenants Out
As Developers Prepares to Push More Affordable Tenants Out, Remaking Neighborhoods Out, the Government Which Approved the Development CYA With Task Force to Protect Tenants
Schneiderman, de Blasio to fight owners forcing out tenants (NYDN) * City and state officials are set to launch a coordinated crackdown on New York City landlords accused of trying to harass tenants into leaving their rent-stabilized apartments* New York's master builders: New megaprojects will remakes waths of the city from scratch (NYDN) Hudson Yards, Pacific Park and Essex Crossing are just a few of the big scale redevelopments happening in the five boroughs.* With tenant harassment complaints against landlords rising, New York City and state officials announced the creation of a multiagency task force to weed out and punish bad landlords, The New York Times reports:
Corrupt NYC Building Inspectors Emptying Building For Landlord In Gentrifying Areas
A plot to trick Brooklyn residents into moving was just one discovery of a bribery and kickback investigation involving city workers and others that resulted in dozens of indictments this week Inspectors Were Paid to Pretend Brooklyn Tenants Had to Move, Prosecutors Say(NYT) A plot to trick a building’s residents into moving was just one discovery of a bribery and kickback investigation involving city workers and others that resulted in dozens of indictments this week.One night last December around nine o’clock, tenants at 159 Suydam Street in Bushwick, Brooklyn , were startled by loud banging on their doors and walls. A man in some kind of uniform was going up and down the four stories of their building, yelling that they had 72 hours to get out. If they did not comply with the city’s order, he said, a marshal would come with police officers to take them out in handcuffs. * DA: Landlord paid building inspectors to evict Bushwicktenants — and the inspectors went to the wrong address (Brooklyn Paper) A Brooklyn Legal Services attorney who represents tenants in housing court said the staggering 26 indictments show the need for greater oversight in the borough’s overheated real estate market.
More on Gentrification
On this day 35 years ago, a writer in the NYT worried about
what was happening to Brooklyn : http://nyti.ms/16hWAzq
Gentrification in America is good for the poor http://econ.st/1CVxDpA
Brooklyn state Sen. Velmanette Montgomery said,
“white people don’t eat the way we do” while slamming a grocery store’s
closure as an unfair incident of gentrification, the Daily News
reports: http://goo.gl/S7DdkM
* The success of Times Square has reached a point where large
crowds are becoming a serious problem, with companies in the area taking steps
to try to adjust, the Times’ Charles V. Bagli reports: http://goo.gl/M7vzi2Brooklyn landlords pushing black tenants out for whites: http://nyp.st/1p7gp4N
via @nypost
how contentious rezoning in NYC can be, Crown Heights
The Windsor Terrace Food Co-op is expected to
open on March 21 in Brooklyn , which has become
a hotbed of small co-ops in the last few years.
Lower East Side Without Bagles How Much of the Blame Goes to Airbnb?
Landlord"Pushes Out" Gramercy's Ess-A-Bagel After 39 Years(Gothamist)
How NYC is Losing the Middle Class
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NYT Disconnect From de Blasio's Build Baby Build, the Barclays Gentrification Push Out
From the NYTs: The NYT calls de Blasio's housing plan timely and exciting mission. His plan is to build aggressively and densely, and demand that a significant portion of new units be permanently affordable. Use all means possible to protect what’s there, including strengthening rent regulations and tripling, to $36 million a year, the amount the city spends to protect tenants from greedy landlords in housing court.
Mr. de Blasio’s skeptics are right about some real estate truisms; the people with lots of money are poised to win no matter what — they will get their water views and dog salons — and developers will profit mightily. And in parts of the city on the churning edge of the gentrification wave, as in stretches of Franklin Avenue in Crown Heights Barclays Center Manhattan , giant luxury towers still sprout skyward, while rich foreigners park their money in luxe apartments that stay empty.
Fact and Reality: The NYT is Right in Saying That Thousands of Affordable Housing Have Been Lost in the Barclays Center Area and Not One Affordable Apartment Has Been Open to Date Where is the proof that increase development leads to more affordable. There is proof that increased development leads to gentrification push out. Most of the 400 affordable planned for the Barclay site rent for $3500 hardly affordable to the seniors being forced out of their $700 Crown Heights Apartments.
Summary: The Hidden Money Buying Up New York Time Warner Center United States are now purchased anonymously through shell companies.
Why Not Demand That the Mayor Stop Crown Heights Residence From Being Push Out Before He Promises to Stopping Gentrification in Other Neighborhoods?
Some See Risk in de Blasio’s Bid to Add Housing (NYT) Many New York residents, especially in Brooklyn , say the influx of market-rate apartments called for in Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plans could gut neighborhoods, not preserve them. State of City
Bronx Least Affordable County in the County
Bronx least affordable county in the country for renters (NYDN) Renters in the Bronx can expect to pay more of their income than most of the country toward rent, new study says. THE BRONX is the least affordable county in the country for renters, a new report shows. Tenants in the city’s northernmost borough can expect to spend a whopping 68% of their earnings on rent — or almost $2,000 a month for a three-bedroom apartment, according to a RealtyTrac.com study.* Manhattan Apartment Prices Soar to Record Levels in 2014 (WSJ) The average price of a Manhattan cooperative or condominium topped $1.68 million in 2014 for the first time.* Manhattan apartment prices soared to record levels in 2014, propelled higher by a rush of expensive new condominiums affordable only to multi-millionaires and rising prices on older co-op buildings, The Wall Street Journal reports:
Raging Gentrification is Creating A New Racial Divide in Crown Heights
Racially Charged Shouting Match Heats Up Crown Heights Rezoning Debate (DNAINFO) CROWN HEIGHTS — An already heated debate over possible new development rules in Crown Heightsturned into a racially charged shouting match Wednesday night. * The Community Board 9meeting — which was supposed to give the public a chance to discuss the shaping of a City Planning Department study about how the neighborhood should be rezoned —devolved into arguments after a local rabbi urged the community to leave race out of the conversation. Rabbi Eli Cohen of the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council condemned “the rhetoric that’s gone out trying to [set] one neighbor against the other, one race against another, one religion against another," alluding to recent brochures and emails distributed by the activist groupMovement to Protect the People. * 
de Blasio State of the City: I Will Stop People From Being Forced Out By Gentrification
One such flier distributed at a CB9 meeting on Jan. 22 blamed “Uncle Toms,” “white developers” and the Jewish community for displacing black people in the neighborhood. During her public remarks several minutes later, Boyd forcefully reiterated her group's concern that land-use changes allowing for larger developments on major streets west of New York Avenue would displace those who live in the neighborhood now. *Two Views - Can New York's de Blasio Stop Gentrification? *de Blasio’s housing plan a heavy lift for Albany and NYers (NYDN) * A clash over an affordable housing project touted by Mayor Bill de Blasio at Sunnyside Yards in Queens has further strained his relationship with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, the Timeswrites: * It's now more expensive to rent in Queens than in Brooklyn , according to a report: (DNAINFO)* Bed-Stuy Rocked with Building Inspectors “On The Take” AsGentrification Grows (Our Times Press)
Goodbye Bronx is Burning 1970's Here Comes Bronx Gentrification and High Rents
Here Is The South Bronx's 1,300-Unit Gentrification DeathStar (Village Voice) The Bronx is New York City’s poorest borough, with neighborhoods in the South Bronx seeing their poverty rates hover persistently around 40 percent. However, over the past several years, there’s been a concerted effort to rebrand the Boogie Down, led by developers looking to boost real estate values and encourage wealthier renters to hop on over the Harlem River. Now, from the developers who brought you the "Bronx is Burning" party in 2015 comes two towers totaling 1,300 units, where market-rate renters will be able to look out upon Manhattan and literally turn their backs on the Bronx. The Long Island City-style development at 2401 Third Avenue and 101 Lincoln Avenue, first revealed by New York Yimby, will feature gyms, doggie day-care, a pool, a cafe, and something referred to as a “library/wine room.” This would be the largest market-rate housing development in the Bronx in at least thirty years, says YIMBY writer Rebecca Baird-Remba.
It would also mark a turning point in the development of the Bronx, which heretofore has seen almost all new large-scale housing development built as “affordable” units, with various incentives given to developers to keep rents in line with what the neighborhood can afford. As the Times noted earlier this month, that plan has mostly worked — affordable housing is being built on formerly vacant land, as the city has given away tracts for practically nothing. But that new development has raised land values and rents in surrounding areas, paving the way for the market rate development that’s just gearing up.
Gentrification
More Than Coffee: New York’s Vanishing Diner Culture (NYT) With the number of restaurants that call themselves diners and coffee shops dwindling in the city, a devotee wonders how New Yorkers will get along without these antidotes to urban loneliness.
More on Gentrification
Manhattan Institute Ignores the Effect Of Gentrification on NYC Housing
Manhattan Institute Ignores the Effect Of Gentrification on NYC Housing
De Blasio's building challenge: The key to creating moreopportunity for all is producing far more housing at all levels (NYDN) The mayor's new rhetorical pivot from inequality to inclusive growth — more housing, more jobs for everyone — is welcome, even if many of his tax-and-spend proposals aren't the best way to advance that growth. The most promising tool in his toolbelt to grow the city's economy and make it more inclusive is his rezoning effort to reduce housing scarcity — and the blunt reality is, de Blasio hasn’t wielded that tool effectively. If Wall Street and our high-income tax base leave, or if the international poor stop coming, it could only mean something terrible has happened to New York's opportunity engine. It would mean we've either taxed away our tax base or entirely priced out the working class with tight zoning, a la San Francisco. True, the East New York rezoning went through, but everywhere else seems to be bogging down. Major rezonings in the Bronx and East Harlem — which would permit thousands of new units of all kinds for all incomes, fund new schools, create local retail jobs and grow the tax base — are at risk of stalling out. One of the most symbolically frustrating defeats came in Inwood, where local NIMBYs defeated an application to build 355 apartments, half of which would have been below-market. Upon defeat, the project defaulted to a smaller, all-market-rate building, with less housing of all kinds. The mayor expressed his disappointment after the fact, but didn't help Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez when it counted. Even now, Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito needs help in her East Harlem district to make the case for the rezoning proposal there; where is the mayor?
The "Hot Neighborhood" Enabling Role the Media Plays With Gentrifying Communities
Remember de Blaio Rezoning of East NY and the Fact That the Only Section of the NYT That Still Makes Money is the Real Estate Section
NYP and Most of the Media Does Not Connect the Dots Gentrification and Rising Rents Are Causing Increasing Homeless
Meanwhile, homelessness is on a rapid rise, making a mockery of de Blasio’s early insistence it wasn’t a problem and his more recent claims it’s declining. Some 61,000 individuals were in the program as of Dec. 1, a record, with many being jammed into astonishingly expensive commercial hotels.*
Slumlords Found Guilty Of Terrorizing Tenants in A Gentrifying Neighborhood
Slumlords admit to terrorizing tenants to drive them out (NYP) Two Brooklyn slumlords admitted Tuesday to terrorizing rent-controlled tenants with dogs, packing the halls with drug addicts, and tearing down walls in order to push the renters out of the lucrative spaces. As part of the plea deal, brothers Joel and Amron Israel will now have to cough up nearly $250,000 to the nine tenants they wronged around Williamsburg, Greenpoint and Bushwick in 2012 and 2013. The two have six months to shell out the dough, or they could be sentenced to up to four years prison. If they follow the rules, they’ll be sentenced to five years probation and 500 hours community service, Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Danny Chun said. Both Amrom, 38, and Joel, 35, admitted to tearing down walls, leaving tenants without heat or hot water, allowing vermin to make themselves at home and inviting drug addicts to come get high in their hallways in order to drive people out. They also admitted to paying goons to patrol the halls of the buildings with pitbulls. The duo will also have to agree to a five-year-settlement plan with the Governor’s Tenant Protection Unit, prosecutors said.
Crown Heights Developer Generated Gentrification is Replacing the the Community That Blew Up 25 Years Ago
A quarter-century after Crown Heights riots, the Brooklyn neighborhood battles to hold onto its territory (NYDN) Crown Heights today is not defined by racial tensions between blacks and Hasidic Jews. Today it is seen as the ground zero of gentrification, which is bringing into the area a steady influx of upwardly mobile whites from all over the world. Real estate developers and apartment building owners see these newcomers as growing bank accounts. And the rich get richer as the poor and the unemployed (mostly blacks) are forced to leave long-time dwellings for cheaper residences, often outside the city. Look along Franklin Ave. just west of the Hasidic section, which is centered at Kingston Ave. and Eastern Parkway, the headquarters of the Chabad-LubMitch movement. See the cafés and hipster eateries there. Sometimes it's hard to find a black face among those on Franklin Ave. these days, except for the lowest-wage workers in the businesses there. And even they worry that they soon will be forced to leave the area. To those of us who see rapid gentrification as an affront to the history and character of our neighborhoods, Crown Heights is a historical template and a cautionary tale. Its earliest years, some two centuries ago, reflect the black presence in America and it foreshadowed the gentrification we are experiencing now. It was not a comfortable story for black people, and the future doesn't look too comfortable either. Thus we witnessed our first explosion of Brooklyn gentrification, way before the term came into use. As the whites came in, the blacks left. The portion of African Americans in Brooklyn dropped from one-third to 1% by 1900. This story of early Crown Heights should be scary to struggling black New Yorkers today. History seems to be repeating itself. Following the Great Migration of blacks from the South and immigration from the Caribbean, the black population of Brooklyn zoomed back up to one-third again, which it is currently. Now the question is: Will blacks all but disappear again, as they did 100 years ago? At this rate, it's not unlikely. Shamefully, rather than examining the past and trying to learn, our leaders are showing stunning disregard for our history and its relics. They have handed the future of the city over to developers. By far the loudest voice in Crown Heights against developers is Alicia Boyd. She's the founder of a group called the Movement to Protect the People. Boyd shows up at Community Board 9 meetings and rails against construction of new apartment buildings, while she alleges elected officials are receiving money from builders. It's time to "kick their asses out of office," she has said of black elected officials in Brooklyn. On at least one occasion, community board administrators called police, who handcuffed and arrested her. Harboring anger also is Evelyn Tully Costa, who said she believes Mayor Bill de Blasio should be challenged face to face by every righteous citizen who runs into him. He's in cahoots with the developers, she believes, and she contends the best weapon against the rash of construction and displacement is the designation of more historic districts and buildings.
That could save precious properties from bulldozers and greedy landlords. Costa, founder of Crown Heights South Association, has been aiming her outrage lately at the city's plans for a century-old former armory on Bedford Ave. The city has said it would let developers known as Bedford Courts take over the structure and build luxury units. Half of the approximately 300 units would be "affordable," and of those 99 would rent within the price range of a family of three that earns $85,400 a year. Just 67 apartments would be affordable to households earning less than $40,000. That's just another way of telling current Crown Heights residents to get the heck out of the neighborhood, Costa and others say. The median income for all households in Crown Heights South, where the armory is located, is under $42,000.
Mayor Ignores Community Leaders Opposing His Zoning Plan
As New Yorkers Get Push Out of Their Communities With High Rents the Council Does Fluff Resolutions, Color Code Their Outfits to Make Themselves Look Better
City Council members accuse peers of putting pet causes before ‘substantive work’ (NYP) Some city lawmakers are more interested in planning parties, writing nonbinding resolutions and wearing colorful T-shirts to support pet causes than they are in passing weighty legislation, several City Council members told The Post. Acting more like a student-body government than a professional Legislature, members wore teal the past three Septembers to promote ovarian-cancer awareness; donned crimson on Feb. 5 for heart disease; and wore denim on April 27 in a pledge to end sexual violence. They plan to go purple on Oct. 6 to support domestic-violence victims. “I don’t have time to start looking for a purple tie,” one member, who requested anonymity, groused of the ever-changing, politically correct dress-code directives. “I have a hard enough time getting my son up and ready and my own outfits to match to remember what color I’m supposed to wear,” said Staten Island Councilman Joseph Borelli, one of the 51-member council’s three Republicans. Members pointed to Brooklyn Councilwoman Laurie Cumbo and Bronx Councilman Andy King as the body’s biggest cheerleaders. “This is what they’re doing in celebration of this day and that day, or they’re busy hosting a party — and that’s not substantive work,” complained one lawmaker who requested anonymity. And when they’re not fretting over the day’s color code, council members often propose scores of resolutions supporting far-flung causes. The council considered 299 resolutions and adopted 210 of them so far this year. By contrast, it passed only 104 real laws. Passing too many political resolutions and color-themed celebrations waters down their effect and distracts from doing the business of the city, good-government advocates say.
The Brooklyn Wars: How Big Banks Killed Our Neighborhoods
As Hispanic Get Push Out of Williamsburg the NYP Calls A Councilman Protesters Gangsters Because They Protest A New Housing Development That Will Increase the Push Out of Their Community
Gangster politics — the wrong way to fight a housing project (NYP) Last Wednesday night, Brooklyn City Councilman Antonio Reynoso crossed the line — literally and figuratively — in a thuggish bid to thwart a housing development. Rabsky Group, a local developer, plans to build 1,100-plus apartments — 30 percent of them affordable units — on long-vacant Pfizer sites at the Broadway Triangle where Bedford-Stuyvesant, Bushwick and Williamsburg converge. Led by Reynoso, a band of demonstrators opposed to the project marched into the neighboring district of Councilman Steve Levin and shut down a public City Planning meeting on the proposal And it was no accident the protest got that loud. Reynoso tweeted his intention a month in advance: “Rabsky just filed draft scope with City Planning for Pfizer Sites! Our community is ready to shut this one down!” In the background here are old tensions between area Hispanics and Hasidim, stemming partly from a 2009 rezoning fight. But that makes Reynoso’s behavior even more deplorable: If elected officials fan the flames of racial and ethnic conflict, they put whole neighborhoods at risk. Then, too, it sets a terrible precedent if this tactic succeeds: Politics already makes it far too hard, and too expensive, to get anything built in this town. If near-riots become an acceptable way to stop a project, New York’s housing crisis will grow even worse.* Now NYC has publicly funded mobs (NYP) Dozens of members of Churches United for Fair Housing were at the hearing, and were the loudest voices screaming for it to end. CUFFH is a Brooklyn group that “connects residents” with lists of available affordable-housing units and “counsels them through the grueling paperwork.” This year it received more than $220,000 from the city — most of its operating budget.
As New Yorkers Get Push Out of Their Communities With High Rents the Council Does Fluff Resolutions, Color Code Their Outfits to Make Themselves Look Better
The Brooklyn Wars: How Big Banks Killed Our Neighborhoods
Across the globe, the word “Brooklyn” has come to represent cutting-edge cuisine, a vibrant music and literary culture, and the epitome of hip. But most of the world doesn’t see the price that local residents pay as their neighborhoods are swallowed by change. Masterful storyteller and award-winning journalist Neil deMause turns a spotlight on how the New Brooklyn came to be, who shaped it — and the winners and losers when “urban renaissance” comes to town. “A teeth-gnashing account of how the Big Money boys teamed up with City Hall pols to grab everything from Coney Island’s Thunderbolt to once–working class neighborhoods of downtown Brooklyn in the name of progress.” —Tom Robbins, Investigative Journalist in Residence, CUNY Graduate School of Journalism* “The Brooklyn Wars recovers the great Brooklyn virtue of telling it like it is. Neil deMause writes with the street-savvy common sense Brooklyn was known for before it became a ‘brand.’” —Paul Moses, author of An Unlikely Union: The Love-Hate Story of New York’s Irish and Italians “A great read, impeccably researched. This is essential reading for anybody who witnessed the mind-blowing transformation of Brooklyn over the past 20 years and hungers to understand what actually happened.” —Kelly Anderson, director of My Brooklyn
How Gentrification is Changing Neighborhoods
How Blacks the Poor and the Middle Class are Being Push Out of Brooklyn Because of Albany's Tax Breaks for Luxury Developers
Airbnb Bad Neighbors, Warehouses Apartments -- Rising Rents and Increasing Gentrification
How Blacks the Poor and the Middle Class are Being Push Out of Brooklyn Because of Albany's Tax Breaks for Luxury Developers
Airbnb Bad Neighbors, Warehouses Apartments -- Rising Rents and Increasing Gentrification
When is the Media Going to Cover Groups Fighting Gentrification Going After Airbnb?
Airbnb’s illegal hotel purges slammed as ploy to throw off NYC regulators (NYDN) Airbnb’s highly publicized purges of suspected illegal hotel listings are a ploy to placate regulators and have done nothing to alleviate the city’s serious housing crisis, elected officials, housing groups and hundreds of tenants charge in a letter to the company. The letter, sent Friday to Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, raps the company for not sharing the nixed listings with law enforcement and regulators. “One can only conclude that your lack of cooperation . . . is nothing more than a craven attempt by your company to generate sky-high profits at the expense of our precious affordable housing,” the letter from the Share Better coalition of pols and the New York Hotel Trades Council states. Critics charge that the site is a platform for illegal hotel operators, including greedy landlords who use rent-regulated units as hotel rooms rather than residences for New Yorkers, which worsens the city’s affordability crisis. The company, when reached for comment, dismissed Share Better as a “front group for the big hotels.”
As Hispanic Get Push Out of Williamsburg the NYP Calls A Councilman Protesters Gangsters Because They Protest A New Housing Development That Will Increase the Push Out of Their Community
@gblainnydn Given this was placed w Lovett, we can assume Cuomo's building a "stupid, not criminal" defense for his own indictment? LOVETT: Cuomo should have seen warning signs beforeauthorities began bribery probe into his staff(NYDN) * LOVETT: Gov and staff privately trashed reporters...
Daily News Calls It Bizarro World That New Housing Causes Gentrification Displacement . . . The Paper Should Interview the Long Term Residents of Crown Heights About the Effects of New Construction
Yes in their backyards: Affordable housing now (NYDN) Construction of affordable housing faces doom in New York at the hands of the very City Council that cries how desperately needed it is. The vote confirmed that a key component of Mayor de Blasio’s drive to spur affordable housing is in deep trouble. While the plan is widely lauded, Council members balk at construction in their communities. The committee vote killed a project slated for Inwood, which is represented by Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez, usually a loyal de Blasio ally. Rodriguez bowed to an uproar by constituents who are convinced — in a Bizarro World interpretation of the laws of supply and demand — that new apartments would hasten displacement of longtime tenants. By Council custom, fellow members defer to the desire of their local colleague. So, down went the development. Message received: Each Council member has veto power over new construction, rendering the entire Council captive to anti-development agitators while depriving places to live to New Yorkers hungry for housing.
Now the Gov Wants to Subsidized 421-A Workers to Push Gentrification?
De Blasio: Subsidized wages for construction workers are fine — if it doesn’t cost city (NYP) Mayor de Blasio said he’s fine with the state subsidizing higher wages for construction workers who build affordable housing in the five boroughs – as long as it doesn’t impact the city’s bottom line. Asked about a report in the New York Times that Gov. Cuomo was considering reviving a suspended real estate tax break program with a proposal that would see tens of millions of state tax dollars going to ensuring union-level wages, de Blasio said “God bless ’em.” “If that’s what the state thinks is the right thing to do with state money, of course we can work with that,” he said at an unrelated press conference on parks in The Bronx. “What’s not acceptable to us is to add to the cost of the city’s affordable housing program, which is already stretched very thin and trying to reach half a million people.”* De Blasio cautiously supports affordable housing tax break for developers — as long as it doesn’t drive up costs(NYDN) * In Attempt to Convince Lawmakers to Vote for Affordable Housing Project, Mayor Appears to Anger Queens Councilman(NY1) * Allies of Bronx Borough President Wonder if Politics Played Role in Lack of Funding for Orchard Beach Pavilion Repairs(NY1)
* De Blasio, who has made creating more affordable housing a priority, has faced fierce community opposition on specific projects, slowing his plans to build more units as a larger push to keep New York affordable for working class people, The Wall Street Journal writes * Critics rip Cuomo plan that combines tax and wage subsidies (NYDN) * A proposal to revive the lucrative 421-a affordable housing tax credit for developers by providing government wage subsidies for the workers they hire is being blasted by business groups, nonprofit providers and economic experts, the Daily News reports. * Cuomo wants the government to pay union workers higher wages (NYP) * Why Cuomo wants you to pay unions to build luxury housing (NYP) What Andrew Cuomo did this month was like a parody of a black-and-white 1940s movie about beefing kids in the alley. Bully No. 1 has a baseball bat: “Why I oughta smash your head in!” Bully No. 2 has a knife: “I’m gonna slice you up good.” It’s a standoff, until along comes Andrew, kindly and whistling, the grown-up, the soothing Bing Crosby character. “What seems to be the trouble, boys?” says Bing Cuomo. The two bullies explain themselves. “He owes me money!” “No, he owes me money!” And that’s when you happen into the picture. Yes you, the entirely innocent New York taxpayer, the random citizen who happens to be walking by.
Cuomo Wants to Use Government Money to Revive Gentrification Causing 421-a
Cost of a good intention on 421-a fix (NYDN) At the urging of construction unions, the governor smashed the renewal of a property tax break, called 421-a, that is crucial to building housing, including affordable units, in the city. By demanding a so-called prevailing wage rate, Cuomo threw the economics entirely out of whack. He prevailed on the state Legislature to bake into law an unusual mandate for the Real Estate Board of New York, representing developers, and the construction unions to work out wage rates both could live with. Without such an agreement, the law fated 421-a to die. The two sides failed to reach a deal, and no wonder: financing higher wages on top of the affordable housing would bust the developers’ tight budgets, rendering many projects unbuildable. To break a months-long logjam, Cuomo now looks to dedicate potentially tens of millions of dollars of state taxpayers’ money to achieve private sector wage hikes that are acceptable to the unions.He pledges to kick in $15 an hour on wages of up to $65 for workers on large rental towers in Manhattan south of 96th St. and $50 on the booming Brooklyn-Queens waterfront.
At a time when New York desperately needs housing, affordable housing most of all, the governor has boosted the cost and put the taxpayer on the hook.
Fighting Gentrification in the Bronx
Bronxites ProtestGentrification Outside of Nonprofit Developer's Offices (DNAINFO) A group of Bronxites rallied outside of SoBro'soffices on Friday afternoon to protest the role that they believe the economic development group is playing in bringing gentrificationinto the borough. Members of the organization #TheBronxIsNotForSale gathered by 555 Bergen Ave. with signs describing SoBro as "Poverty Pimps" and declaring "These Are Our Homes, Leave The Bronx Alone" in support of keeping the borough affordable for its current residents.* Brooklyn (Billfold) * Ken Thompson, Brooklyn Prosecutor, Emerges as Shrewd Victor in Akai Gurley Case (NYT) In the sort of polarizing police misconduct case that can define a career, Mr. Thompson, the Brooklyn district attorney, gambled with trying an officer who fatally shot an unarmed man. * Peter Liang, Ex-Police Officer, Apologizes to Akai Gurley’s Partner in Meeting (NYT)The meeting with Kimberly Ballinger came a day after a recommendation that Mr. Liang, who was convicted of manslaughter in Mr. Gurley’s shooting, receive no prison time.
More On Gentrification
NYT Leaves Out the Fact That Gentrification Occurs In the Existing Housing When New Buildings Are Built in A Neighborhood
New York Passes Rent Rules to Blunt Gentrification (NYT) Under the new housing rules, private developers will be compelled to build low-cost rental units, a centerpiece of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s efforts to blunt neighborhood gentrification.
How Black Bed-Stuy Dies? As the Last Black Residences Fight Developers Who Cash In On Gentrification the Mayor and Council Move In for the Kill
Is this how black Bed-Stuy dies? A lifelong resident laments, and fights, the gentrification tide (Howell NYDN) For me, the sign that the end times were approaching came last year, in a phone conversation with a childhood friend. Jeannie Bish, her five brothers and their late mother were pillars of their Hancock St. block. (Forgive me, Jeanie, but I will always know you by your maiden name.) The Bish family had been involved in Bed-Stuy politics going back to pre-war years. Like me, Jeannie and her five brothers were among the neighborhood's Baby Boomers, and our worship of our village was manifest in our words and deeds, the way we talked and walked. Jeannie's oldest brother became a cop at the nearby 81st Precinct; another went on to work for a local elected official; another became a minister; yet another joined up with the black revolutionary crowd at Sista's Place, over at the corner of Jefferson and Nostrand Aves. And, oh, the fifth — who had treated me as a baby cousin in the late 1950s when he accompanied me to Little League games at Lincoln Terrace Field — became hooked on heroin and struggled for decades before he was delivered to a drug-free life by the active love of Jeanie, a now-retired nurse. "We're selling the house," Jeannie told me in that phone conversation of last year. Jeannie now lives in Salisbury , N.C. Williamsburg a decade earlier. Up popped cafés and stylish restaurants to serve these struggling pioneers, who appeared to be genuinely eager to embrace the place they were calling home. Now, in Bed-Stuy, a second wave has come in, drawn by the long-term financial comfort beckoning from the brownstones whose prices have kept soaring over the past 30 years. "They don't even speak to you," longtime black homeowners say of the new wavers.
Where Are the Elected Officials Fighting To Save the Bed-Stuy Neighborhood From Developers?
Harlem Activist Fight Citibike 'Gateway' to Gentrification
Harlem activists fight Citibike 'gateway to gentrification' (NYDN) Harlem leaders want Citibike to keep its cycle of gentrification out of their neighborhood. "This bike-share is the gateway to gentrification," community leader Martin Baez said at a town hall meeting Thursday. "We cannot continue to allow the Mayor's office, the Governor's office, or any other office to tell us what we should do. This is our community."*
Gentification Gives the Chance for A Jailed Developer (anti-trust) to Kill A Community Garden
Bushwick Natives: Gentrification is the New Colonialism
CHECK OUT HOW THESE BUSHWICK NATIVES ARE PROTESTINGHIPSTER-LED GENTRIFICATION (Village Voice) Just a few blocks northeast of the Dekalb Avenue L stop in Bushwick, attached to the side of the La Iglesia de Santa Cruz Episcopal Church, sits a grassroots community-organizing center aptly named "Mayday." Encircled by one of the most rapidly gentrifying areas in New York City, the organization was created in January of 2013 as a “home for radical thought and debate,” a space where local activists could start mobilizing the neighborhood around issues like immigrant rights, tenant protections, and the growing displacement of its residents. And while gentrification is often described as a form of modern-day colonialism — the exploitation and plunder of low-income communities for land and profit — Mayday Space has, in many ways, become a command post for the resistance movement in the area. Earlier this month, roughly a dozen of Mayday’s core members and volunteers gathered on St. Nicholas Avenue to begin work on the group’s latest protest project, Mi Casa No Es Su Casa: Illumination Against Gentrification. Working in collaboration with the NYC Light Brigade — a social justice organization born out of the Occupy Wall Street movement — the group has created illuminated signs, blaring provocative phrases like “Gentrification in Process,” “Not 4 Sale,” and “No Eviction Zone,” that it plans to install in homes throughout the neighborhood this week. Though the signs were created by weaving strings of white lights through punctured pieces of black plywood, they're more an act of political subversion than a simple holiday arts-and-crafts project.* Bushwick gentrifiers are driving up the burglary ratebecause they don't lock their doors, precinct commander says * This MassiveDevelopment Site Will Utterly Transform Dumbo (Brownstone) New Dumbo condos anticipated to start @ 3 million...
NYC Real Estate Barrons' Found Their Puppet A Progressive Mayor to Gentrify East New York
The study, "The Effects of Neighborhood Change on NYCHA Residents," written by the consulting firm Abt Associates with help from New York University's Furman Center for Real Estate, found that NYCHA tenants often wind up feeling like aliens in their own neighborhoods, surrounded by newcomers who claimed they'd just "discovered" the neighborhood. “NYCHA residents could be priced out of new private amenities and new, higher-income neighbors may not contribute to accessible community resources,” the report reads.* * New York City hired five NYCHA residents as urban “interpreters” who gathered information for a $250,000 report that concluded most New Yorkers already accept as true: gentrification doesn't help the poor,the Daily News reports de Blasio Spins Back The city's voluntary inclusionary housing program, which rewards developers who set aside apartments for low rents, yielded more than triple the number of units in fiscal year 2015 than it did previous year,Politico New York reports:
Gentrification Another Factor Killing Public Housing
de Blasio What Gentrification: Never saw his report that found gentrification doesn’t benefit NYCHA tenants
De Blasio hasn’t read a $250,000 study his administration paid for that found NYCHA tenants don’t reap the benefits of gentrification, but made clear he’s still dedicated to his plan to put up expensive market-rate apartments on NYCHA land, the Daily News reports: * Nevertheless, on Monday — after the Daily News uncovered the report, “The Effects of Neighborhood Change on NYCHA Residents” — he made clear he’s full steam ahead with the plan to put up expensive market-rate apartments on NYCHA land. “I haven’t seen the report, but I can say for sure we believe that the right kind of development on NYCHA sites will create more affordable housing for neighborhood residents,” de Blasio said.* NYCHA residents see little benefit from gentrification in their neighborhoods, report shows (NYDN) The city hired five NYCHA residents to work as urban “interpreters” who gathered information for a $250,000 report that reached a conclusion most New Yorkers already accept as true: gentrification doesn't help the poor.* .@BilldeBlasio promotes #EastNewYork rezoning plan to skeptical locals * Anti-white symbol used in flier against Bronx gentrification(NYP)
In NY Not Only Gentrification Developers Get Tax Breaks Slum Lords Also
NYC’s “worst landlord” collected $2.7M in tax breaks,subsidies: Accused slumlord Ved Parkash, who has more than… * A Bronx landlord who owns 60 buildings with more than 4,000 serious violations has cashed in on millions in federal subsidies and state tax breaks, records show.
How Blacks the Poor and the Middle Class are Being Push Out of Brooklyn Because of Albany's Tax Breaks for Luxury Developers
East Side Pols Say Nothing As China Fun Shuts Closes Down Blaming Govt Over-Regulations
Manhattan culinary staple China Fun shutters,blaming government over-regulation (NYDN) For 25 years, China Fun was renowned for its peerless soup dumplings and piquant General Tso’s chicken. What left a bad taste in the mouths of its owners and loyal patrons was the restaurant’s sudden Jan. 3 closing, blamed by management on suffocating government demands. “The state and municipal governments, with their punishing rules and regulations, seems to believe that we should be their cash machine to pay for all that ails us in society.” The Second Ave. restaurant became a beloved local mainstay, with customers bemoaning its unexpected disappearance. The Daily News hailed the soup dumplings as the best on the Upper East Side in 2015. Albert Wu, whose parents Dorothea and Felix owned the eatery, said the endless paperwork and constant regulation that forced the shutdown accumulated over the years. “When we started out in 1991, the lunch special was $4 a plate,” he recalled. “Now it’s $10, $12. The cost of doing business is just too onerous.” Wu cited one regulation where the restaurant was required to provide an on-site break room for workers despite its limited space. And he blamed the amount of paperwork now required — an increasingly difficult task for a non-chain businesses. “In a one-restaurant operation like ours, you’re spending more time on paperwork than you are trying to run your business,” he griped. Increases in the minimum wage, health insurance and insurance added to a list of 10 issues provided by Wu. “And I haven’t even gone into the Health Department rules and regulations,” he added. Media Cares More About City’s top eateries are freaking out over a white-truffle shortage (NYP) *
"Due to rent, labor and food costs on the rise.." Two More Manhattan Diners Have Closed
East Side Pols Say Nothing As China Fun Shuts Closes Down Blaming Govt Over-Regulations
"Due to rent, labor and food costs on the rise.." Two More Manhattan Diners Have Closed
Selling Gentrification to the Black Community From the Same Guy Who Sold Atlantic Yards As Affordable Housing
As Gentrification Changes Harlem, Crown Heights, Bed Stuy Racial Make Up and Change Black Churches into Condos the Mayor Sells Affordable Housing to East New York Just Like He Did 15 Years Ago to Prospect Heights and Atlantic Yards
Brooklyn's Second Coming: Borough of churches now borough of condos. At least (most) of the bars are safe. @Dnainfo **** De Blasio Aims to Sell Wary Churchgoers on Rezoning Plan for East New York (NYT) The mayor promoted his development plan, which would transform blocks of rowhouses and vacant lots into a community with lower-cost housing. * Bill de Blasio: Housing plan for East New York will not force long-term residents out (NYDN) * Mayor Bill de Blasio took to East New York Sunday to sell his administration’s vision for the revitalization of the area, visiting a church to pitch the residents, The NewYork Times writes: * The number of overcrowded apartments in New York City has spiked, rising 20 percent over the last decade a report from Comptroller Scott Stringer has found, theDaily News reports: * Rise in overcrowded NYC apartments shows need for morehousing, says Controller Scott Stringer (NYDN) * Ex-worker on NYC affordable housing units alleges wage theft, sexual and racial harassment (NYDN) * NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio attempted this weekend to sell wary churchgoers on his administration’s plan to rezone East New York . As Borough President, no one will fight harder to make Brooklyn more affordable for working families, stop outof control and irresponsible development(AYR) * The due diligence of BP candidate Bill de Blasio, or the (AY) end justifies the means (AYR)
A report from New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer finds that the city’s overcrowded housing has drastically increased in recent years, with about 1.5 million New Yorkers now living in overcrowded conditions:* De Blasio Defends His Affordable Housing Plan inEast New York (DNAINFO) Mayor Bill de Blasio told a church in East New York that his plan to rezone the neighborhood would bring more affordable housing and help keep people in their homes, not force them out as some have feared. * The de Blasio administration is challenging a lawsuit that would undo a longstanding policy of reserving 50 percent of low-income, city-funded apartments for residents of the local community, Politico New York reports:
The Loss of Thousands of Mom and Pop Stores is Killing NYC's Traditional Route to the Middle Class
Why Are There SoMany Shuttered Storefronts in the West Village? (New Yorker) At the end of this month, the House of Cards & Curiosities, on Eighth Avenue , just south of Jane Street , in the West Village West Village ?” by Tim Wu for The New Yorker: “Abandoned storefronts have long been a hallmark of economic depression and high crime rates, but the West Village West Village Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu writes in the New Yorker about the surge in shuttered shops in the West Village Seattle where the minimum wage is now $15 an hour:* * Four Reasons You Can’t Stop the Brooklyn Juggernaut - Commercial Real Estate * Some South Bronx residents fear the new apartment buildings expected under a proposed rezoning would be too expensive for them and that jobs at the many auto repair shops in the area will be driven out, The Wall Street Journal reports:
The Gentrification of East New York
Developers who build in certain areas of New York City, firstly East New York, would be required to set aside at least 25 percent of units for lower-income residents under proposed zoning rules officially released by the de Blasio administration, the Times writes: * Developers who want to build in certain areas of New York City would be required for the first time to set aside at least 25 percent of their units for lower-income residents under proposed zoning rules officially released by the de Blasio administration. * Listing for brownstones in Brooklyn are beginning to spike.
Gentrification Causing the Racial Busing Fight 50 Years Later
Race and class issues have collided in the rezoning of two public schools in Brooklyn , with the proposal drawing intense opposition from both white and black families at both schools who fear changing demographics, The New York Times reports: * Locals Fear LES Is Being Rezoned Into A "Rich WhiteGirl's Dorm" (Gothamist)
Brooklyn Bodega PutsFront Window Space On Airbnb For $329/Night (Gothamist) A group of Brooklyn activists who recently peddled Artisanal Roach Bombs ($15.99) and Hand-Fried Chicken Cutlet Sandwiches ($13.50) at Jesse's Deli, a corner bodega in Boerum Hill currently facing an alleged 2.5x rent increase, has now posted the 7'x4' space in its front windowon Airbnb—for $329 per night. "Unique property on Atlantic Avenue in gentrifying section of Brooklyn ," reads the listing. "The cozy semi-private 7x4 bedroom with lofty 14 ft ceilings is separated from the deli by a Doritos and Lays chip stand and book shelf.... Chef-style kitchen with professional toaster, meat slicer, and microwave. Also includes coffee maker." According to Jesse's, the proposed rent hike, from $4,000 to $10,000, is still on the table. A store manager who identified himself as Mike told us this morning, "We're fighting it [the rent hike] in court right now, so it's up to the judge. We'll be here for about 5 or 6 more months, at least."
Teflon Brooklyn Pols Escape Blame for Pushing Their Own Voters Out of Their Homes
Brooklyn Now The Most Unaffordable Place To Buy A Home In America * 'NOT GOING TO LIE TO YOU GUYS': Mayor de Blasio admits there's no quick fix for NYC growing homeless population (NYDN) *Prospect Lefferts Gardens
More About Gentrification
Another Win for Developers Over Libraries Who Run NY Govt
Another Win for Developers Over Libraries Who Run NY Govt
City approves deal to sell library and replace it with high-rise (NYP) The City Planning Commission unanimously approved a deal Monday to sell a Brooklyn Heights Brooklyn Heights
Over Development In Downtown Brooklyn Has Caused Overcrowding Of Brooklyn Heights Schools
Popular public school may have eligibility zone cut in half (NYP) Parents itching to send their kids to a wildly popular public school in Brooklyn Heights will be out of luck if a new plan to cut the school’s eligibility zone in half gets passed. The Department of Education is forging ahead with a plan to reduce the school zone of highly-rated PS 8 — meaning some kids who want to attend the Hicks Street school will instead have to trudge to PS 307 in Vinegar Hill. The new zone will be about half its current size — leaving out much of DUMBO and Vinegar Hill, according to DOE officials, who presented a preliminary rezoning proposal last Tuesday. DUMBO resident Steven Grin, 37, whose wife just gave birth, isn’t taking any chances — they’re moving to Monclair , NJ
True News Reported Last Year That Gentrification Would Reduce Crime
There's a high correlation between poverty & violent crime. A key reason why most NYC neighborhoods are relatively safe is gentrification
High Rents and Gentrification Killing Bodegas and Mom and Pops Stores
City Council Controlled By Developer Lobbyists and Campaign $$$ Looks the Other Way
City Council Controlled By Developer Lobbyists and Campaign $$$ Looks the Other Way
Bodegas Declining in Manhattan as Rents Rise and Chains Grow (NYT) The corner stores that are a ubiquitous part of life in the city are struggling to survive, especially in Upper Manhattan . The Bodega Association of the United States said about 75 corner stores have closed this year in upper Manhattan as commercial rents rise and chain stores expand in some neighborhoods * Similarly, self-service laundromats seem to be vanishing in some New York City neighborhoods, which one City Councilwoman’s office described as a quality of life issue for seniors, the Journal reports: * * City Councilman Ritchie Torres does not intend to support a project that would convert vacant Fordham library space into artists’ studios and rehearsal space, saying it could precipitate gentrification in his Bronx district, the Observer reports: * A love letter, in photos, to New York City ’s vanishing mom-and-pop shops (New Yorker) “Analogue,” Zoe Leonard’s epic yet intimate sequence of photographs, now installed in MOMA’s atrium, is a story of two vanishing worlds. The first is the mom-and-pop commerce of the Lower East Side and Williamsburg , now steamrolled by gentrification.
Gentrification in Bed Stuy Pushes Out Tenants and Small Black Business
Update A bill to be introduced in New York City Council would ban commercial landlords from using physical intimidation or threats, denying repairs or cutting off heat and utilities to try to force the business to leave, the Daily News reports:
Residents ProtestShuttering of Longtime Neighborhood Candy Store (DNAINFO) BEDFORD-STUYVESANT — Community members and elected officials rallied on Friday in front of a longtime Brooklyn business, protesting the shuttering of Jimmy’s Candy Store under a new landlord. The store that operated for more than 40 years at 406 Tompkins Ave. closed its doors in late May after its owners were evicted following a court ruling in favor of the building’s new deed holder.
END OF A BOOZY ERA: Hogs & Heifers to close its iconic doors after 23 years (NYDN) * ICONIC NYC DAIRY RESTAURANT FACES UNCERTAIN FUTURE AFTERRECENT EAST VILLAGE EXPLOSION (Tablet) * FAILE Bring A Gentrification Game To The Brooklyn Museum New York ? Well that commercial rent taxplays a role. Here's a fix @ (CrainsNY) * One of the Last NYC Kosher Dairy Restaurants Is At Riskof Closing * New DevelopmentCould Kill '60s-Era Market Diner In Hell's Kitchen *Bed-Stuy Leads Brooklyn Home Sales as Prices Jump 21Percent, Report Says * Biscotti Bakery Closing After Rent Hike, 'Mall-ization ofManhattan'(DNAINFO)
Developers Closing Down Black and Hispanic Churches
Harlem pastor accused of illegally selling church (NYDN) A Harlem pastor accused of selling his church for a song is now singing the blues. The Holy Cross African Orthodox Church, a longtime local fixture in its W. 129th St. townhouse, is the center of a holy war started by recently-defrocked Bishop Alfred Drake’s last-ditch land deal. Drake claimed he was tricked in the $175,000 sale, while top church officials said he had no business peddling the property at all — much less for a fraction of its possible $2 million worth. Real estate values are exploding in Central Harlem , where the church has welcomed worshipers since 1931.
Brooklyn's Second Coming: Borough of churches now borough of condos. At least (most) of the bars are safe. @Dnainfo In Brooklyn’s “brownstone belt," which stretches from Bedford-Stuyvesant to Carroll Gardens 167 N. 6th St. in Williamsburg preserved the house of worship's façade and interior details. Brian Moskin, a real estate agent, said the condos, named "The Spire Lofts," have been "masterfully restored." "People love the aesthetic of the reclaimed wood, old beams, exposed brick and stained glass," he said of the units, which run from $5,000 a month for a one-bedroom to $7,384 a month for a 2 1/2-bedroom. * "Barronexpressed concern [about] a 'gentrified class' wud come into the community 2 reap the benefits.” #EastNewYork * East New York RezoningOutreach Proposals Leave Residents Uneasy (DNAINFO) * Empty homes owned by NYC still not fixed (NYP) Kathleen Gittens-Baptiste last week stood in front of the ramshackle, empty house she has lived next door to for more than 15 years. In her hands was a framed copy...* A federal lawsuit filed yesterday on behalf of three black residents accuses New York City of perpetuating residential segregation by reserving as many as half of the subsidized apartments planned in the city for applicants already living in the neighborhood where the units are to be built.
NYT Reports On Landlords and Developers Buying Up Bed-Stuy But Ignores the Cancer (421-a) Driving the Gentrification Market
In Bed-Stuy Housing Market, Profit and Preservation Battle (NYT) A tall and slender man of 60, he has lived several blocks from the cleaners for close to a year now, during which he has watched investors and developers canvass the streets looking for properties from which they might extract significant profits. “They’re up and down here every day,” he told me, as he recounted getting approached by someone who offered him money to unearth information about the owners of a neighboring townhouse. It is standard in Bedford-Stuyvesant to see posters calling on locals to join the dubious mission of turnover.
“If you find someone who want to sell you will get up to $20.000.00 for finder fee,” reads one, somewhat inexplicably. In response to all of this, fliers in the neighborhood recently warned older black homeowners, many living in brownstones passed down through generations, to protect themselves from getting bilked by predatory, and by implication, racist real-estate interests. (“Free leg or thigh if you sell your grandma’s deed!” one of them proclaimed. This particular enticement to fury ran under the headline “Landgrabbers Realty Corp.,” and featured a drawing of a drumstick.) It is hard to overstate the acquisition frenzy that hangs over Bedford-Stuyvesant, and to reconcile it with some of the realities that persist in the neighborhood, where the felony assault rate is more than three times what it is in Park Slope. When I met Mr. Leow and his team last week — a team that includes a young broker named Mipam Thurman, the brother of the actress Uma Thurman, who told me he had to move to Flatbush because he couldn’t afford to buy anything in Bedford-Stuyvesant — they showed me a house on Lafayette Avenue that had just gone into contract for slightly under the asking price of $1,550,000. * Anti-Gentrification Fliers Plastered Throughout Stuyvesant Heights in Bed Stuy (Brownstone) *
Pols Pounce on Unconnected Crown Heights Landlord Trying to Empty His Building
Slumlord’ arrested for turning off heat, dangerous renovations (NYP) Brooklyn landlord was arrested on charges that he drove tenants out of rent-regulated apartments by doing construction and demolition at one of his buildings and shutting off the heat. This was the first arrest by a joint task force launched in February by NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio and AG Eric Schneiderman.* A Brooklyn landlord was arrested, accused of forcing tenants from rent-regulated units in the first case brought by Mayor Bill de Blasio and Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s joint task force,
The Associated Press reports: A Brooklyn landlord isaccused of driving tenants out of apartments with construction and by turningoff the heat (NYT) * A MANHATTAN LANDLORD IS EVICTING AN ENTIRE BLOCK OF LATINO BUSINESS OWNERS (Village Voice)* Longtime Tenants in Manhattan See an Effort to Push Them Out (NYT) Metal gates installed in front of apartment buildings near Columbia University are just one of the tactics the landlord, the Orbach Group, has used in its effort to push out rent-regulated residents, tenants say* Many longtime tenants in a Manhattan neighborhood around Columbia University feel as though their landlords are trying to push them out so they can rent their homes at market rate, the Times reports: * Mystery buyer planning $250M NYC penthouse (NYP)
NYP's Silent Cover-Up That 421-a Has Not Put A Dent In the Loss of Affordable Housing
Rents has Gone Through the Roof Up to 90% in Gentrifying Neighborhoods
Rent soars in partsof Manhattan, Brooklynas affordable housing drastically dwindles: study (NYDN) Rent has gone through the roof in some neighborhoods, rising a crazy 50% to 90% in some spots, according to an analysis by the Community Service Society, a nonpartisan anti-poverty group. Rents rose 32% citywide since 2002, but in six neighborhoods in Manhattan and Brooklyn , median rent presented to recent movers has spiked by at least 50%, the survey found. “The sharpest increases occurred in neighborhoods surrounding the traditionally high-rent area of Manhattan below Harlem,” the report states, noting that median rent in Central Harlem has jumped a “shocking” 90% since 2002.
The survey shows skyrocketing rents have exacerbated the plummeting number of apartments affordable to low-income renters, which have dropped 44% from 995,000 in 2002 to 555,000 last year. That’s primarily due to rent-stabilized units going market rate when their rent rises to the level that they become eligible for vacancy decontrol. * De Blasio writes in the Daily News that it would be a “tremendous missed opportunity” for Albany to extent rent-regulation laws without ending vacancy decontrol and making other reforms:* One NYC neighborhood’s rent has increased 90% since 2002,and it’s not where you’d think: More About Gentrificatkion
More About GentrificatkionThe Crown Heights Gentrification Media Cover Up
Re-Zoning is Expected to Speed Up Gentrification in Crown Heights and PLEGNA . . . Two Weeks After WFP Candidate Who Pledged to Slow Gentrification Elected
Crown Heights BoardMoves Ahead With Controversial Rezoning Study (SNAINFO) After more than a year of controversy, Brooklyn Community Board 9 voted Tuesday to again recommend the city study zoning changes in parts ofCrown Heights. At the end of a three-hour meeting marked by chanting, shouting and a constant police presence, CB9’s members voted 26-6, with 3 abstentions, to accept a rezoning resolution to the Department of City Planning, requesting that the agency start studying possible land-use changes in the parts of southern Crown Heights and Prospect-Lefferts Gardens.
Following intense protest by the local activist group Movement to Protect the People, the spring resolution was formally rescinded last fall and languished in committee ever since, stalled by both protests and a series of parliamentary missteps by the board. Before Tuesday’s vote, the board considered and rejected one such misstep: the fact that the CB9’s most recent committee vote on the resolution — a necessity to adopt the document that was taken last week during a particularly hectic meeting in which MTOPP’s leader, Alicia Boyd, was dragged out and arrested by police — was not properly tallied or reported. * WFP Candidate Diana Richardson Wins Special Election for 43AD (DNAINFO) * VIDEO: Activist Arrested Amid Vote on Controversial Crown HeightsRezoning (DNAINFO) * City acts to tamp down hysteria over de Blasio zoning plan (CrainsNY) As civic leaders warn of a City Hall proposal to 'dismantle' neighborhood protections, planners water it down and dispatch emissaries to explain it. Note: DNAInfo is Doing Great Coverage of the Crown Heights Gentrification Story *** After 1 Year of Protests Crown Heights Community Board Pass Re-Zoning Plan * Alicia Boyd on Black Elected Officials (Video)
Developers Have Made Gentrification Into A Science
It Starts With A Coffee Shop
Developers have figured out the secret sauce for gentrifyingn neighborhoods (Quartz) First came the new coffee shops—two of them—in 2009. Newcomers had been trickling in for a few years, but that’s when the gentrification of New York ’s Crown Heights Brooklyn neighborhood was the scene of ugly race riots, fueled by long-simmering tensions between black and Jewish residents.
But by 2012, the area had become typical of the gentrification that’s overtaking so many of the world’s largest cities asthey assume the mantle of economic growth drivers. Often, at least in America , we think of regular people as the agents of change—the artist, the boutique coffee shop owner, the tech startup. But as much as gentrification is an organic process, fueled by opportunity seekers and bargain hunters, it’s developers and financierswho have become the savvy midwives of change. Once they detect the early signs of gentrification, they bring on the serious money. In the case of Crown Heights Butler ’s trendy Brooklyn Flea joining in the winter months.
NYT Reports On Landlords and Developers Buying Up Bed-Stuy But Ignores the Cancer (421-a) Driving the Gentrification Market
NYT Reports On Landlords and Developers Buying Up Bed-Stuy But Ignores the Cancer (421-a) Driving the Gentrification Market
In Bed-Stuy Housing Market, Profit and Preservation Battle (NYT) A tall and slender man of 60, he has lived several blocks from the cleaners for close to a year now, during which he has watched investors and developers canvass the streets looking for properties from which they might extract significant profits. “They’re up and down here every day,” he told me, as he recounted getting approached by someone who offered him money to unearth information about the owners of a neighboring townhouse. It is standard in Bedford-Stuyvesant to see posters calling on locals to join the dubious mission of turnover.
“If you find someone who want to sell you will get up to $20.000.00 for finder fee,” reads one, somewhat inexplicably. In response to all of this, fliers in the neighborhood recently warned older black homeowners, many living in brownstones passed down through generations, to protect themselves from getting bilked by predatory, and by implication, racist real-estate interests. (“Free leg or thigh if you sell your grandma’s deed!” one of them proclaimed. This particular enticement to fury ran under the headline “Landgrabbers Realty Corp.,” and featured a drawing of a drumstick.) It is hard to overstate the acquisition frenzy that hangs over Bedford-Stuyvesant, and to reconcile it with some of the realities that persist in the neighborhood, where the felony assault rate is more than three times what it is in Park Slope. When I met Mr. Leow and his team last week — a team that includes a young broker named Mipam Thurman, the brother of the actress Uma Thurman, who told me he had to move to Flatbush because he couldn’t afford to buy anything in Bedford-Stuyvesant — they showed me a house on Lafayette Avenue that had just gone into contract for slightly under the asking price of $1,550,000. * Anti-Gentrification Fliers Plastered Throughout Stuyvesant Heights in Bed Stuy (Brownstone) *
The Crown Heights Gentrification Media Cover Up
Re-Zoning is Expected to Speed Up Gentrification in Crown Heights and PLEGNA . . . Two Weeks After WFP Candidate Who Pledged to Slow Gentrification Elected
Crown Heights BoardMoves Ahead With Controversial Rezoning Study (SNAINFO) After more than a year of controversy, Brooklyn Community Board 9 voted Tuesday to again recommend the city study zoning changes in parts ofCrown Heights. At the end of a three-hour meeting marked by chanting, shouting and a constant police presence, CB9’s members voted 26-6, with 3 abstentions, to accept a rezoning resolution to the Department of City Planning, requesting that the agency start studying possible land-use changes in the parts of southern Crown Heights and Prospect-Lefferts Gardens.
Following intense protest by the local activist group Movement to Protect the People, the spring resolution was formally rescinded last fall and languished in committee ever since, stalled by both protests and a series of parliamentary missteps by the board. Before Tuesday’s vote, the board considered and rejected one such misstep: the fact that the CB9’s most recent committee vote on the resolution — a necessity to adopt the document that was taken last week during a particularly hectic meeting in which MTOPP’s leader, Alicia Boyd, was dragged out and arrested by police — was not properly tallied or reported. * WFP Candidate Diana Richardson Wins Special Election for 43AD (DNAINFO) * VIDEO: Activist Arrested Amid Vote on Controversial Crown HeightsRezoning (DNAINFO) * City acts to tamp down hysteria over de Blasio zoning plan (CrainsNY) As civic leaders warn of a City Hall proposal to 'dismantle' neighborhood protections, planners water it down and dispatch emissaries to explain it. Note: DNAInfo is Doing Great Coverage of the Crown Heights Gentrification Story *** After 1 Year of Protests Crown Heights Community Board Pass Re-Zoning Plan * Alicia Boyd on Black Elected Officials (Video)
Yuppies on the smart phones get excited about Wegmans Moving In While Long Time Low Rent Area Residents Fear Gentrification Push Out
Rochester-based supermarket chain Wegmans Food Markets, a grocery store with a loyal upstate following, is set to open at the Brooklyn Navy Yard to anchor a $140 million renovation of Admiral Row, Gannett Albany reports: http://goo.gl/Sz8RaO This is the same community where a councilwomen got in trouble for claiming that Asians were replacing blacks in public housing. Councilwoman Raises Concerns About ‘Blocs’ ofAsians Moving Into NYCHA The two housing projects Cumbo named — the Walt Whitman Houses and Ingersoll Houses in Fort Greene
The Pols Have Created A Gentrification Market Where Scam Predators Target Minorities to Flip Their Homes
Real Estate Shell CompaniesScheme to Defraud Owners Out of Their Homes (NYT) Relying on the secrecy of limited liability companies, white-collar thieves are targeting pockets of
Only In NYC Can the Pols Want to Give A Tax Break to Mom and Pol Stores Who Are Being Pushed Out By Developers Getting A Tax Break
In NYC, debate oversaving small shops amid chains' rise Looking for a "Seinfeld"-style coffee shop? It's sharing the city with 280 Starbucks and more than 530 Dunkin Donuts. A good neighborhood deli? It's competing with some 460 Subways. And the corner store may well now be a Chase bank or Walgreens. Amid eye-popping rents and the demise of a number of well-known local haunts, some activists and lawmakers are proposing new rent-renewal rights for small businesses that they see as saving the personality of the city.
Landlords Who Target Low Rent Tenants in Gentrifying Neighborhoods
The Underbelly of the Lobbyists and Developers is Pushing People Out
The Underbelly of the Lobbyists and Developers is Pushing People Out
BrooklynLandlords Accused Of Trashing Apartments Arrested (WCBS) An alleged Brooklyn slumlord and his brother were arrested Thursday morning, accused of creating appalling and squalid conditions for tenants. Joel Israel and his brother, Amram, were led in handcuffs into the courthouse in downtown Brooklyn on Thursday for their arraignment, CBS2’s Valerie Castro reported. * 2 Brooklyn Landlords Accused of Making Units Unlivable AreArrested (NYT) *Brothers Joel and Aaron Israel—collectively forming JBI Management— made headlines last year for taking such drastic measures as blasting a crater-sized hole in the middle of one family's Bushwick apartment at 98 Linden Street, as well as incurring similar miseries on the occupants of other properties in Greenpoint and Williamsburg.
In addition, the state’s Tenant Protection Unit last year served a subpoena on JBI Management, whose principals are Joel and Aaron Israel, to force it to produce records related to rent rolls and business practices for 10 buildings the company owns in Bushwick, Greenpoint and Williamsburg . * The Brooklyn district attorney said two landlords have been arrested and accused of making buildings uninhabitable in an effort to drive out tenants and rent units at higher rates, The New York Times reports * Landlords indicted in scheme to ‘gut apartments, oust tenants’(NYP) * Brooklyn slumlord brothers busted for trashing apartments to force out long-time tenants: officials (NYDN) * The Rent Guidelines Board found that landlord operating costs covering a million rent-stabilized apartments went up by just 0.5 percent last year, which could put pressure on the city for a rent freeze, the Post writes: *2 Brooklyn Landlords, Accused of Making Units Unlivable, Are Charged With Fraud (NYT) Prosecutors say that Joel and Aaron Israel — who pleaded not guilty to seven different charges, including fraud and burglary — intentionally wrecked apartments to drive out rent-stabilized tenants.* Landlord Brothers Charged With Harassing Tenants Out of Rent-Controlled Brooklyn Apartments (NY1)
When Will The Council Look At All the Low Wage Workers Building
Under Deal, Living Wage for Workers at a Tower in Hudson Yards (NYT) All of the workers in a proposed office tower in Midtown Manhattan will be paid at least $13.30 an hour, the first broad application of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s executive order mandating a living wage.* About one-third of the migrant construction workers employed at NYU’s campus in Abu Dhabi — or about 10,000 people — were excluded from the protections of the university’s labor guidelines ensuring fair wages, hours and living conditions, according to an investigative report.* Union-friendly bill could slow affordable housing (Capital)*Rent destabilization (NYP Ed) Now that his appointees dominate the Rent Guidelines Board, Mayor de Blasio plainly means to win what he sought last year — a freeze on rent hikes for the city’s...
Speaker Supports Gentrification Igniting Rezoning
Council Speaker Rejects Claims That de Blasio Rezonings Are Moving Too Fast (NYO) Defending her ally, Mayor Bill de Blasio, Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito rejected the claims of affordable housing advocates that City Hall is moving too swiftly with its plan to rezone more than a dozen neighborhoods. “I’m not understanding why they’re talking about the pace–[the rezonings] haven’t even been submitted, right? The conversations have just started,” Ms. Mark-Viverito, a Democrat like the mayor, told the Observer at an unrelated City Hall press conference this afternoon. “In my case, where East Harlem was mentioned in the State of the City with the mayor, there hasn’t been a formal plan presented to City Planning.”* Melissa Mark-Viverito on 2017: ‘You Can Never BeOver-Ready’ (NYO)
Question Not Asked if the 421-a Destroying Affordable Housing by Causing More Gentrification?
New Yorkers Spend 60% of Their Income On Rent
De Blasio’s 421-a dilemma (Capital)
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The NYT and Mayor Ignored the Damage Done in Gentrify Neighborhoods Done By Airbnb
Fact and Reality: Stop the Gentrification Push Out In Crown Heights Before Promising to Do it City-Wide Hundreds of Black Residence Are Being Push Out of Crown Heights and the City Has Nothing to Stop It. Why doesn't the NYT demand the mayor stop the push out in Crown Heights to demonstrate that it is possible to stop gentrification push out with his increased development that he promised in his Stat of the City speech.* East New York residents are calling for more details about the mayor’s affordable development plans for the neighborhood, and they have demands of their own, City Limits reports
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City and State Officials Cover Their Ass After Arrests of Inspectors Pushing Tenants Out
As Developers Prepares to Push More Affordable Tenants Out, Remaking Neighborhoods Out, the Government Which Approved the Development CYA With Task Force to Protect Tenants
Schneiderman, de Blasio to fight owners forcing out tenants (NYDN) * City and state officials are set to launch a coordinated crackdown on New York City landlords accused of trying to harass tenants into leaving their rent-stabilized apartments* New York's master builders: New megaprojects will remakes waths of the city from scratch (NYDN) Hudson Yards, Pacific Park and Essex Crossing are just a few of the big scale redevelopments happening in the five boroughs.* With tenant harassment complaints against landlords rising, New York City and state officials announced the creation of a multiagency task force to weed out and punish bad landlords, The New York Times reports:
Corrupt NYC Building Inspectors Emptying Building For Landlord In Gentrifying Areas
A plot to trick Brooklyn residents into moving was just one discovery of a bribery and kickback investigation involving city workers and others that resulted in dozens of indictments this week Inspectors Were Paid to Pretend Brooklyn Tenants Had to Move, Prosecutors Say(NYT) A plot to trick a building’s residents into moving was just one discovery of a bribery and kickback investigation involving city workers and others that resulted in dozens of indictments this week.One night last December around nine o’clock, tenants at 159 Suydam Street in Bushwick, Brooklyn , were startled by loud banging on their doors and walls. A man in some kind of uniform was going up and down the four stories of their building, yelling that they had 72 hours to get out. If they did not comply with the city’s order, he said, a marshal would come with police officers to take them out in handcuffs. * DA: Landlord paid building inspectors to evict Bushwicktenants — and the inspectors went to the wrong address (Brooklyn Paper) A Brooklyn Legal Services attorney who represents tenants in housing court said the staggering 26 indictments show the need for greater oversight in the borough’s overheated real estate market.
On this day 35 years ago, a writer in the NYT worried about what was happening to
Gentrification in America is good for the poor http://econ.st/1CVxDpA
* The success of Times Square has reached a point where large
crowds are becoming a serious problem, with companies in the area taking steps
to try to adjust, the Times’ Charles V. Bagli reports: http://goo.gl/M7vzi2
Sad how many of these stories we've heard: Brooklyn landlords pushing black tenants out for whites: http://nyp.st/1p7gp4N
via @nypost
how contentious rezoning in NYC can be, Crown Heights
The Windsor Terrace Food Co-op is expected to
open on March 21 in Brooklyn , which has become
a hotbed of small co-ops in the last few years.
Lower East Side Without Bagles How Much of the Blame Goes to Airbnb?
Landlord"Pushes Out" Gramercy's Ess-A-Bagel After 39 Years(Gothamist)
How NYC is Losing the Middle Class
Fact and Reality: The NYT is Right in Saying That Thousands of Affordable Housing Have Been Lost in the Barclays Center Area and Not One Affordable Apartment Has Been Open to Date Where is the proof that increase development leads to more affordable. There is proof that increased development leads to gentrification push out. Most of the 400 affordable planned for the Barclay site rent for $3500 hardly affordable to the seniors being forced out of their $700 Crown Heights Apartments.
s
NYT Disconnect From de Blasio's Build Baby Build, the Barclays Gentrification Push Out
From the NYTs: The NYT calls de Blasio's housing plan timely and exciting mission. His plan is to build aggressively and densely, and demand that a significant portion of new units be permanently affordable. Use all means possible to protect what’s there, including strengthening rent regulations and tripling, to $36 million a year, the amount the city spends to protect tenants from greedy landlords in housing court.
Mr. de Blasio’s skeptics are right about some real estate truisms; the people with lots of money are poised to win no matter what — they will get their water views and dog salons — and developers will profit mightily. And in parts of the city on the churning edge of the gentrification wave, as in stretches of Franklin Avenue in Crown Heights Barclays Center Manhattan , giant luxury towers still sprout skyward, while rich foreigners park their money in luxe apartments that stay empty.
Fact and Reality: The NYT is Right in Saying That Thousands of Affordable Housing Have Been Lost in the Barclays Center Area and Not One Affordable Apartment Has Been Open to Date Where is the proof that increase development leads to more affordable. There is proof that increased development leads to gentrification push out. Most of the 400 affordable planned for the Barclay site rent for $3500 hardly affordable to the seniors being forced out of their $700 Crown Heights Apartments.
Summary: The Hidden Money Buying Up New York Time Warner Center United States are now purchased anonymously through shell companies.
Why Not Demand That the Mayor Stop Crown Heights Residence From Being Push Out Before He Promises to Stopping Gentrification in Other Neighborhoods?
Some See Risk in de Blasio’s Bid to Add Housing (NYT) Many New York residents, especially in Brooklyn , say the influx of market-rate apartments called for in Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plans could gut neighborhoods, not preserve them. State of City
Bronx Least Affordable County in the County
Bronx least affordable county in the country for renters (NYDN) Renters in the Bronx can expect to pay more of their income than most of the country toward rent, new study says. THE BRONX is the least affordable county in the country for renters, a new report shows. Tenants in the city’s northernmost borough can expect to spend a whopping 68% of their earnings on rent — or almost $2,000 a month for a three-bedroom apartment, according to a RealtyTrac.com study.* Manhattan Apartment Prices Soar to Record Levels in 2014 (WSJ) The average price of a Manhattan cooperative or condominium topped $1.68 million in 2014 for the first time.* Manhattan apartment prices soared to record levels in 2014, propelled higher by a rush of expensive new condominiums affordable only to multi-millionaires and rising prices on older co-op buildings, The Wall Street Journal reports:
Raging Gentrification is Creating A New Racial Divide in Crown Heights
Racially Charged Shouting Match Heats Up Crown Heights Rezoning Debate (DNAINFO) CROWN HEIGHTS — An already heated debate over possible new development rules in Crown Heightsturned into a racially charged shouting match Wednesday night. * The Community Board 9meeting — which was supposed to give the public a chance to discuss the shaping of a City Planning Department study about how the neighborhood should be rezoned —devolved into arguments after a local rabbi urged the community to leave race out of the conversation. Rabbi Eli Cohen of the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council condemned “the rhetoric that’s gone out trying to [set] one neighbor against the other, one race against another, one religion against another," alluding to recent brochures and emails distributed by the activist groupMovement to Protect the People. *
de Blasio State of the City: I Will Stop People From Being Forced Out By Gentrification
One such flier distributed at a CB9 meeting on Jan. 22 blamed “Uncle Toms,” “white developers” and the Jewish community for displacing black people in the neighborhood. During her public remarks several minutes later, Boyd forcefully reiterated her group's concern that land-use changes allowing for larger developments on major streets west of New York Avenue would displace those who live in the neighborhood now. *Two Views - Can New York's de Blasio Stop Gentrification? *de Blasio’s housing plan a heavy lift for Albany and NYers (NYDN) * A clash over an affordable housing project touted by Mayor Bill de Blasio at Sunnyside Yards in Queens has further strained his relationship with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, the Timeswrites: * It's now more expensive to rent in Queens than in Brooklyn , according to a report: (DNAINFO)* Bed-Stuy Rocked with Building Inspectors “On The Take” AsGentrification Grows (Our Times Press)
Bronx BP Has His Own Gentrification Undersanding
Gentrification and Fake Affordable Housing Solutions
BEST LAID PLANS: WILL DE BLASIO'S HOUSING PLAN SPEEDGENTRIFICATION OR SOLVE THE LIVABILITY CRISIS? (City and State)
Park Slope Gentrification Pushing Out the Old From A Long Time Nursing Home
Elderly Evictions: Assisted Living Residents Refuse to MakeWay for Luxury Condos (Independent) Residents who have been fighting in court for the past six months to stay in their homes. Their battle with their landlord, Haysha Deitsch, has become a symbol of the clash between Brooklyn ’s rampaging real estate market and the needs of the borough’s longtime inhabitants.
Neighbors to the proposedthree tower development atop
East Harlem's East River Plaza are worried that the new buildings will drive up
rents across the neighborhood and begin in earnest the process of East
Harlem gentrification. "The affordable units built will be far
outweighed by the number of local residents displaced because
of rising rents," a concerned neighborhood resident said at the last
public hearing for the development. The project must face ULURP and the City
Council before it is approved. [NYDN;previously]
* A number of towers have shot up along the Williamsburg waterfront in Brooklyn over the past decade, and about 10 additional high-rise may eventually join them, the Times writes: http://goo.gl/oMVOkz
Real Estate Gentrification Move to Queens
Queens can now expect the same negative effects that Brooklyn is experiencing from Gentrification. Higher rents, less minorities, more homelessness and weaken neighborhoods voice caused by the rapid changing population
Brunch Hate Reads: Irritating People Discover Queens (Gothamist) Manhattan ’s office market have turned their attention to Long Island City , betting on rising office rents as tenants look for low-cost alternatives in the Queens neighborhood.
More on Gentrification
Airbnb Bad Neighbors, Warehouses Apartments -- Rising Rents and Increasing Gentrification
Smith the Ballot Fixer During His Final Campaign Took On The Serious Issue of Race and Gentrification to Win Reelection
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I can’t tell you much, but I can tell you one thing: being an African-American who is from Queens , who is independent, who is ambitious, must have upset somebody,” Mr. Smith, whose opponents in the primary are both also black, said. “Be careful who you talk to, be careful what you say. Because they’ve got their eye on southeast Queens , they’re trying to shift it. The same way Harlem is no longer Harlem and Brooklyn is no longer Brooklyn .” “Don’t get caught up with the innuendos, don’t get caught up with the media spin, don’t get caught up with the false allegations. I can’t tell you much, but I can tell you one thing: being an African-American who is from Queens , who is independent, who is ambitious, must have upset somebody,” Mr. Smith, whose opponents in the primary are both also black, said. “Be careful who you talk to, be careful what you say. Because they’ve got their eye on southeast Queens , they’re trying to shift it. The same way Harlem is no longer Harlem and Brooklyn is no longer Brooklyn .” “You will see my innocence is exactly what I say it is. You find out who is behind the attack on all the African-American leadership in this city, that will come out as well,” he said. “If you don’t believe southeast Queens gentrification is beginning to happen, look around. Sen. Malcolm Smith told a Queens audience that racially motivated forces of gentrification are behind his indictment on charges he tried to bribe his way onto the GOP line in the 2013 NYC mayor’s race. Mr. Smith warned the crowd that the accusations are part of a plot to eliminate a powerful black outer borough politician and target his district for real estate development and racial displacement. “Don’t get caught up with the innuendos, don’t get caught up with the media spin, don’t get caught up with the false allegations.* Smith claims federal bribery rap was a racist conspiracy(NYP)
Gentrification and Fake Affordable Housing Solutions
BEST LAID PLANS: WILL DE BLASIO'S HOUSING PLAN SPEEDGENTRIFICATION OR SOLVE THE LIVABILITY CRISIS? (City and State)
Park Slope Gentrification Pushing Out the Old From A Long Time Nursing Home
Elderly Evictions: Assisted Living Residents Refuse to MakeWay for Luxury Condos (Independent) Residents who have been fighting in court for the past six months to stay in their homes. Their battle with their landlord, Haysha Deitsch, has become a symbol of the clash between Brooklyn ’s rampaging real estate market and the needs of the borough’s longtime inhabitants.
Neighbors to the proposedthree tower development atop East Harlem's East River Plaza are worried that the new buildings will drive up rents across the neighborhood and begin in earnest the process of East Harlem gentrification. "The affordable units built will be far outweighed by the number of local residents displaced because of rising rents," a concerned neighborhood resident said at the last public hearing for the development. The project must face ULURP and the City Council before it is approved. [NYDN;previously]
* A number of towers have shot up along the Williamsburg waterfront in Brooklyn over the past decade, and about 10 additional high-rise may eventually join them, the Times writes: http://goo.gl/oMVOkz
Queens can now expect the same negative effects that Brooklyn is experiencing from Gentrification. Higher rents, less minorities, more homelessness and weaken neighborhoods voice caused by the rapid changing population
Brunch Hate Reads: Irritating People Discover Queens (Gothamist) Manhattan ’s office market have turned their attention to Long Island City , betting on rising office rents as tenants look for low-cost alternatives in the Queens neighborhood.
| Airbnb Bad Neighbors, Warehouses Apartments -- Rising Rents and Increasing Gentrification |
Smith the Ballot Fixer During His Final Campaign Took On The Serious Issue of Race and Gentrification to Win Reelection
.gif)
I can’t tell you much, but I can tell you one thing: being an African-American who is from Queens , who is independent, who is ambitious, must have upset somebody,” Mr. Smith, whose opponents in the primary are both also black, said. “Be careful who you talk to, be careful what you say. Because they’ve got their eye on southeast Queens , they’re trying to shift it. The same way Harlem is no longer Harlem and Brooklyn is no longer Brooklyn .” “Don’t get caught up with the innuendos, don’t get caught up with the media spin, don’t get caught up with the false allegations. I can’t tell you much, but I can tell you one thing: being an African-American who is from Queens , who is independent, who is ambitious, must have upset somebody,” Mr. Smith, whose opponents in the primary are both also black, said. “Be careful who you talk to, be careful what you say. Because they’ve got their eye on southeast Queens , they’re trying to shift it. The same way Harlem is no longer Harlem and Brooklyn is no longer Brooklyn .” “You will see my innocence is exactly what I say it is. You find out who is behind the attack on all the African-American leadership in this city, that will come out as well,” he said. “If you don’t believe southeast Queens gentrification is beginning to happen, look around. Sen. Malcolm Smith told a Queens audience that racially motivated forces of gentrification are behind his indictment on charges he tried to bribe his way onto the GOP line in the 2013 NYC mayor’s race. Mr. Smith warned the crowd that the accusations are part of a plot to eliminate a powerful black outer borough politician and target his district for real estate development and racial displacement. “Don’t get caught up with the innuendos, don’t get caught up with the media spin, don’t get caught up with the false allegations.* Smith claims federal bribery rap was a racist conspiracy(NYP)
Astoria Cove Ramps Up Queens Gentrification
City Council Approves AstoriaCove Project in Queens(NYO)* Council Approves Controversial Astoria Cove Development(NY1)
Telebeam Telecommunications Corporation, New York Cosmos LLC, Association of Water and Sewer Excavators Inc., Madelaine Chocolate Novelties, Inc., AMERICAN RECYCLING TECHNOLOGIES INC., Election Systems & Software, Inc., Touro College, Abbott Laboratories, Times Square District Management Association, Inc., Oxford Nursing Home, Inc., New York Community Bancorp, Inc., Marshall E Bloomfield ESQ, Palladia, Inc., RCN Telecom Services, LLC, AbbVie, Inc, 2030 Astoria Developers, LLC., HUNTS POINT TERMINAL PRODUCE COOPERATIVE ASSOCIATION INC, Taxicab Service Association Inc., Master Plumbers Council of the City of New York, Inc, American Recycling LLC, FIGLI DI SAN GENNARO, INC. ***Here is City Hall lobbyist Davidoff telling Earl Lewis on NY1 that the mayor will be OK
Davidoff Cashing in Again 5-building complex OK'd for Queens waterfront (CrainsNY) The City Planning Department has given a preliminary thumbs-up to a proposed residential project set to include three towers, each with as many as 32 stories, plus a pair of six-floor buildings farther inland, with a total of 1,698 apartments. "This project will take what is presently an isolated and desolate, underutilized area and transform it into a vibrant mixed-use community," said Howard Weiss, chair of Davidoff Hutcher & Citron's land-use group, who is representing the developer. Astoria Cove, south of Astoria Park on a gritty waterfront peninsula, is being developed by 2030 Astoria Developers Group, which includes Queens-based Alma Realty. The property will include 295 units of affordable housing, a public school and a supermarket, plus a waterfront park that will be open to the public.
City Council Approves AstoriaCove Project in Queens(NYO)* Council Approves Controversial Astoria Cove Development(NY1)
Lobbyist For the Astoria Cove Project Davidoff Spotted At City Hall
De Blasio Performs First Marriage at City Hall(NYO) between lobbyists Sid Davidoff. and Linda Stasi, a columnist for the Daily News.Sid Davidoff, an early de Blasio backer and longtime friend whom insiders view as one of the big winners of the 2013 elections. Has gotten the following contracts in 2014 to lobby the mayor: Telebeam Telecommunications Corporation, New York Cosmos LLC, Association of Water and Sewer Excavators Inc., Madelaine Chocolate Novelties, Inc., AMERICAN RECYCLING TECHNOLOGIES INC., Election Systems & Software, Inc., Touro College, Abbott Laboratories, Times Square District Management Association, Inc., Oxford Nursing Home, Inc., New York Community Bancorp, Inc., Marshall E Bloomfield ESQ, Palladia, Inc., RCN Telecom Services, LLC, AbbVie, Inc, 2030 Astoria Developers, LLC., HUNTS POINT TERMINAL PRODUCE COOPERATIVE ASSOCIATION INC, Taxicab Service Association Inc., Master Plumbers Council of the City of New York, Inc, American Recycling LLC, FIGLI DI SAN GENNARO, INC. ***Here is City Hall lobbyist Davidoff telling Earl Lewis on NY1 that the mayor will be OK
Telebeam Telecommunications Corporation, New York Cosmos LLC, Association of Water and Sewer Excavators Inc., Madelaine Chocolate Novelties, Inc., AMERICAN RECYCLING TECHNOLOGIES INC., Election Systems & Software, Inc., Touro College, Abbott Laboratories, Times Square District Management Association, Inc., Oxford Nursing Home, Inc., New York Community Bancorp, Inc., Marshall E Bloomfield ESQ, Palladia, Inc., RCN Telecom Services, LLC, AbbVie, Inc, 2030 Astoria Developers, LLC., HUNTS POINT TERMINAL PRODUCE COOPERATIVE ASSOCIATION INC, Taxicab Service Association Inc., Master Plumbers Council of the City of New York, Inc, American Recycling LLC, FIGLI DI SAN GENNARO, INC. ***Here is City Hall lobbyist Davidoff telling Earl Lewis on NY1 that the mayor will be OK
Davidoff Cashing in Again 5-building complex OK'd for Queens waterfront (CrainsNY) The City Planning Department has given a preliminary thumbs-up to a proposed residential project set to include three towers, each with as many as 32 stories, plus a pair of six-floor buildings farther inland, with a total of 1,698 apartments. "This project will take what is presently an isolated and desolate, underutilized area and transform it into a vibrant mixed-use community," said Howard Weiss, chair of Davidoff Hutcher & Citron's land-use group, who is representing the developer. Astoria Cove, south of Astoria Park on a gritty waterfront peninsula, is being developed by 2030 Astoria Developers Group, which includes Queens-based Alma Realty. The property will include 295 units of affordable housing, a public school and a supermarket, plus a waterfront park that will be open to the public.
Homelessness Is Caused by Gentrification and City and State Luxury Tax Breaks, Up 13%
The number of homeless people across the country fell this year, but in New York City the homeless population continued to swell, according to an annual federal survey. Homelessness up 13 percent since de Blasio took office * It IS noticeably quieter on the steps of City Hall since Bloomberg left & protestors pretty much left too:* IDC Leader Jeff Klein will introduce controversial legislation today to force NYC to alert communities before opening social service facilities in their neighborhoods. The senator said he was blindsided when the de Blasio administration opened a homeless shelter in his district without warning.
Under de Blasio Antipoverty Groups Have Lowered Their Voices As Homelessness Increases
Antipoverty groups that once stood as City Hall’s staunchest critics have lowered their voices since New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio took office, giving him the benefit of the doubt even as problems such as homelessness have worsened, the Journalreports:
*Antipoverty Groups Give Mayor Wide Berth(WSJ) Many See Mayor as an Ally and Don’t Want to Jeopardize His Progress
Secret Shelters: de Blasio Putting Homeless Shelters In Communities Without Telling Anyone
Residents furious as more homeless shelters pop up throughout neighborhoods in the city — sometimes without warning(NYDN) Staten Island — are essential to address the surge in homeless families that has swelled the population in the shelter system to record highs. There are 57,390 people currently living in city homeless shelters, some 24,760 are children. Twenty of the 23 new facilities are for families with kids under 18. When shelters opened in recent months in Astoria and Elmhurst , Queens, and Sheepshead Bay , Brooklyn , elected officials and residents were taken by surprise. “I had heard rumors and I was told it wasn’t set in stone,” said City Councilman Chaim Deutsch (D-Brooklyn). “Next thing I know, they’re moving in furniture.” * Big City: In New York Public Housing, Policing Broken Lights (NYT)* Opening a Stand-Alone Homeless Shelter Involves ‘Endless List of Items’(WSJ) Securing hundreds of bunk beds checks only one box off the list of things to take care of when setting up a stand-alone shelter in New York City .
Gentrifying the Old Out of Park Slope
In the eight months since the operator of the Prospect Park Residence announced it was closing, the number of residents has dwindled to eight from more than 120, and most of the staff has left or been let go.
Homelessness Is Caused by Gentrification and City and State Luxury Tax Breaks, Up 13%
The number of homeless people across the country fell this year, but in New York City the homeless population continued to swell, according to an annual federal survey. Homelessness up 13 percent since de Blasio took office * It IS noticeably quieter on the steps of City Hall since Bloomberg left & protestors pretty much left too:* IDC Leader Jeff Klein will introduce controversial legislation today to force NYC to alert communities before opening social service facilities in their neighborhoods. The senator said he was blindsided when the de Blasio administration opened a homeless shelter in his district without warning.
Under de Blasio Antipoverty Groups Have Lowered Their Voices As Homelessness Increases
Secret Shelters: de Blasio Putting Homeless Shelters In Communities Without Telling Anyone
Antipoverty groups that once stood as City Hall’s staunchest critics have lowered their voices since New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio took office, giving him the benefit of the doubt even as problems such as homelessness have worsened, the Journalreports:
*Antipoverty Groups Give Mayor Wide Berth(WSJ) Many See Mayor as an Ally and Don’t Want to Jeopardize His Progress
*Antipoverty Groups Give Mayor Wide Berth(WSJ) Many See Mayor as an Ally and Don’t Want to Jeopardize His Progress
Secret Shelters: de Blasio Putting Homeless Shelters In Communities Without Telling Anyone
Since Mayor de Blasio took office, 23 homeless shelters have opened
Residents furious as more homeless shelters pop up throughout neighborhoods in the city — sometimes without warning(NYDN) Staten Island — are essential to address the surge in homeless families that has swelled the population in the shelter system to record highs. There are 57,390 people currently living in city homeless shelters, some 24,760 are children. Twenty of the 23 new facilities are for families with kids under 18. When shelters opened in recent months in Astoria and Elmhurst , Queens, and Sheepshead Bay , Brooklyn , elected officials and residents were taken by surprise. “I had heard rumors and I was told it wasn’t set in stone,” said City Councilman Chaim Deutsch (D-Brooklyn). “Next thing I know, they’re moving in furniture.” * Big City: In New York Public Housing, Policing Broken Lights (NYT)* Opening a Stand-Alone Homeless Shelter Involves ‘Endless List of Items’(WSJ) Securing hundreds of bunk beds checks only one box off the list of things to take care of when setting up a stand-alone shelter in New York City .
.
Gentrifying the Old Out of Park Slope
In the eight months since the operator of the Prospect Park Residence announced it was closing, the number of residents has dwindled to eight from more than 120, and most of the staff has left or been let go.
.
Gentrification More on Gentrification
A touch of Brooklynin Queens(NYT)* Quooklyn? The Riseof Ridgewood (Everything NY)
Anyone who caresabout gentrification should stop to read @Gothamist map showing where NYC civil servants live.* Brooklyn school to getthe boot after sale (NYDN) Bushwick United Early Learning center received an eviction notice after an unnamed developer bought the Manhattan Ave. building for about $4 million.* East New York rezoning to move ahead "in next several months" per @CarlWeisbrod to @nyccouncil.* NYT brass encourages reporters to not compare everygentrifying area to Brooklyn.
Same Developer Who Wants to Gentrify Queens Took Advantage of Ratner Gentrification of Brooklyn to Raise Rents There
Protesters Link a Queens Project to BrooklynRents(NYT) Negotiations over the fate of Astoria Cove, the first new city development to opt into Mayor Bill de Blasio’s affordable housing program, have attracted no shortage of advocates and critics hoping to influence the process. Housing advocates are pushing for the developer to increase the number of cheaper affordable units. Local officials are concerned about transportation and density. Real estate executives are worried that the city’s sharpened focus on affordable housing will cut into profits. But on Sunday, the back-and-forth over the Queens project found a new set of stakeholders from another rapidly gentrifying neighborhood: Crown Heights , Brooklyn . The developer of the 1,700-unit Astoria Cove, Alma Realty, owns about 700 units around Prospect Place and is seeking to take them out of rent regulation. Mayor Bill de Blasio has vowed to increase affordable housing.New York Will Require More Builders to Add Affordable UnitsSEPT. 5, 2014 A housing lottery won Brandon Deese one of the apartments set aside for low-income tenants at the Chelsea Park, a luxury rental on West 26th Street . Mr. Deese’s rent is $540 a month.Affordable Housing in New York ’s Luxury BuildingsAUG. 29, 2014 Mayor Bill de Blasio presented his housing plan in Brooklyn on Monday.De Blasio Sets a 10-Year Plan for Housing, Putting the Focus on AffordabilityMAY 5, 2014* Council questions Astoria Cove plan(Capital)But at a Council hearing on Monday, officials disagreed with developer John Maurodis on the definition of affordability and how many housing units they are willing to build in exchange for their approval.
“Mayor de Blasio, don’t fail this test!” pleaded one sign at a rally outside one of the buildings on Prospect Place in Brooklyn on Sunday, when elected officials and tenant organizers urged the City Council not to approve the Astoria Cove project unless Alma Realty rolls back the rent increases in Crown Heights and addresses concerns about its plans in Queens.
Council Pushed Poor Door On Us
MYTH OF INCLUSION: City Council members have recently expressed outrage over “poor doors,” but the bill allowing them was approved by Mayor Bill de Blasio the Council voted unanimously to approve them in 2009, Seth Barron writes in an op-ed for City & State:
We Run A State Election and Pushing Blacks Out of Brooklyn Is A None Issue
A group of black Section 8 tenants in a rapidly gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood claim that their landlord wants to swap them for “more affluent white tenants” by opting out of the federal housing subsidy program.
Three women living at 781 Washington Ave. in Crown Heights — just steps from Prospect Park — are suing to stop real estate honcho Douglas Rosenberg from exiting the program and renting out the building’s 63 units at market rates. “The inevitable result of the landlord Defendants’ opt out from Section 8 will be the displacement of African-American families from the subject building and the Prospect Heights neighborhood, and their replacement by more affluent white tenants,” according to their suit, filed Tuesday in Brooklyn federal court. The suit claims that Rosenberg failed to properly notify startled tenants that he planned to remove the building from Section 8 status by the end of September.
True News Give You the Why the Media Gives You Filtered News About Gentrification
|
Gentrification More on Gentrification
A touch of Brooklynin Queens(NYT)* Quooklyn? The Riseof Ridgewood (Everything NY)
Anyone who caresabout gentrification should stop to read @Gothamist map showing where NYC civil servants live.* Brooklyn school to getthe boot after sale (NYDN) Bushwick United Early Learning center received an eviction notice after an unnamed developer bought the Manhattan Ave. building for about $4 million.* East New York rezoning to move ahead "in next several months" per @CarlWeisbrod to @nyccouncil.* NYT brass encourages reporters to not compare everygentrifying area to Brooklyn.
Same Developer Who Wants to Gentrify Queens Took Advantage of Ratner Gentrification of Brooklyn to Raise Rents There
Protesters Link a Queens Project to BrooklynRents(NYT) Negotiations over the fate of Astoria Cove, the first new city development to opt into Mayor Bill de Blasio’s affordable housing program, have attracted no shortage of advocates and critics hoping to influence the process. Housing advocates are pushing for the developer to increase the number of cheaper affordable units. Local officials are concerned about transportation and density. Real estate executives are worried that the city’s sharpened focus on affordable housing will cut into profits. But on Sunday, the back-and-forth over the Queens project found a new set of stakeholders from another rapidly gentrifying neighborhood: Crown Heights , Brooklyn . The developer of the 1,700-unit Astoria Cove, Alma Realty, owns about 700 units around Prospect Place and is seeking to take them out of rent regulation. Mayor Bill de Blasio has vowed to increase affordable housing.New York Will Require More Builders to Add Affordable UnitsSEPT. 5, 2014 A housing lottery won Brandon Deese one of the apartments set aside for low-income tenants at the Chelsea Park, a luxury rental on West 26th Street . Mr. Deese’s rent is $540 a month.Affordable Housing in New York ’s Luxury BuildingsAUG. 29, 2014 Mayor Bill de Blasio presented his housing plan in Brooklyn on Monday.De Blasio Sets a 10-Year Plan for Housing, Putting the Focus on AffordabilityMAY 5, 2014* Council questions Astoria Cove plan(Capital)But at a Council hearing on Monday, officials disagreed with developer John Maurodis on the definition of affordability and how many housing units they are willing to build in exchange for their approval.
“Mayor de Blasio, don’t fail this test!” pleaded one sign at a rally outside one of the buildings on Prospect Place in Brooklyn on Sunday, when elected officials and tenant organizers urged the City Council not to approve the Astoria Cove project unless Alma Realty rolls back the rent increases in Crown Heights and addresses concerns about its plans in Queens.
Council Pushed Poor Door On Us
MYTH OF INCLUSION: City Council members have recently expressed outrage over “poor doors,” but the bill allowing them was approved by Mayor Bill de Blasio the Council voted unanimously to approve them in 2009, Seth Barron writes in an op-ed for City & State:
We Run A State Election and Pushing Blacks Out of Brooklyn Is A None Issue
A group of black Section 8 tenants in a rapidly gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood claim that their landlord wants to swap them for “more affluent white tenants” by opting out of the federal housing subsidy program.
Three women living at 781 Washington Ave. in Crown Heights — just steps from Prospect Park — are suing to stop real estate honcho Douglas Rosenberg from exiting the program and renting out the building’s 63 units at market rates. “The inevitable result of the landlord Defendants’ opt out from Section 8 will be the displacement of African-American families from the subject building and the Prospect Heights neighborhood, and their replacement by more affluent white tenants,” according to their suit, filed Tuesday in Brooklyn federal court. The suit claims that Rosenberg failed to properly notify startled tenants that he planned to remove the building from Section 8 status by the end of September.
True News Give You the Why the Media Gives You Filtered News About Gentrification
NYT Reports on Gentrification In Crown Heights It Does No Report Why It is Happening So Fast?
Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Gets Its Turn(NYT) The neighborhood has finally overcome a reputation for intolerance and violence that had plagued it since the 1991 riots between blacks and Hasidic Jews. In fact, residents credit the successful post-riot reconciliation between the two communities with being one of the drivers of Crown Heights’ rapid transformation — or gentrification, depending on one’s perspective.
Along Franklin Avenue, signs saying “Moving to Flatbush” have appeared on many businesses in the last couple of years, and while longtime residents don’t tack up signs, there are indications they have also been leaving in large numbers as new arrivals replace them in this community of about 140,000 people. * Nuns raise rents at immigrant home to boot longtime residents(NYDN) They’re kicking them like a bad habit. The nuns running St. Joseph’s Immigrant Home in Hell’s Kitchen are boosting the rent on young female residents and trying to boot women..* Lawmakers call for Airbnb investigation over misleadinginsurance claim.
NYT Reports on Gentrification In Crown Heights It Does No Report Why It is Happening So Fast?
Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Gets Its Turn(NYT) The neighborhood has finally overcome a reputation for intolerance and violence that had plagued it since the 1991 riots between blacks and Hasidic Jews. In fact, residents credit the successful post-riot reconciliation between the two communities with being one of the drivers of Crown Heights’ rapid transformation — or gentrification, depending on one’s perspective.
Along Franklin Avenue, signs saying “Moving to Flatbush” have appeared on many businesses in the last couple of years, and while longtime residents don’t tack up signs, there are indications they have also been leaving in large numbers as new arrivals replace them in this community of about 140,000 people. * Nuns raise rents at immigrant home to boot longtime residents(NYDN) They’re kicking them like a bad habit. The nuns running St. Joseph’s Immigrant Home in Hell’s Kitchen are boosting the rent on young female residents and trying to boot women..* Lawmakers call for Airbnb investigation over misleadinginsurance claim.
Real Estate Market Forces: International Money, Gentrificatrion and Airbnb Are Making Affordable Housing Program into A Band-Aid on A Cancer
Is Anyone Studying the Effect of Foreign $$$ Puring Into the City
How AirBNB is Killing NYC's Neighborhoods
NY's Real Estate Has Become the New Swiss Hidden Banks Accounts to Hide Illegal Money
GILDED CITY – New York mag cover, “Stash Pad: The New York real-estate market is now the premier destination for wealthy foreigners with rubles, yuan, and dollars to hide,” by Andrew Rice: “Every year, the British real-estate brokerage Knight Frank publishes a document called ‘The Wealth Report.’ The latest edition produces the curiously precise estimate that there are 167,669 individuals in the world who are ‘ultrahigh net worth,’ with assets exceeding $30 million … forecasting that over the next decade, the ranks of the ultrarich will increase by 30 percent, with much of the growth coming in Asia and Africa. … New York is forecast to add more ultrahigh-net-worth individuals than any city outside Asia over the next decade.”“[S]ince 2008, roughly 30 percent of condo sales in large-scale Manhattan developments have been to purchasers who either listed an overseas address or bought through an entity like a limited-liability corporation, a tactic rarely employed by local homebuyers but favored by foreign investors. … Corcoran Sunshine, which markets luxury buildings, estimates that 35 percent of its sales since 2013 have been to international buyers, half from Asia, with the remainder roughly evenly split among Latin America, Europe, and the rest of the world. ‘The global elite,’ says developer Michael Stern, ‘is basically looking for a safe-deposit box.’ …* A study showed Manhattan’s apartment inventory is up after a two-year shortage, but the average price for a Manhattan apartment rose 20 percent to more than $1.6 million, the Times writes: * Hidden in Plain Sight: New York Just Another Island Haven()ICIJ) Lax U.S. rules and real estate industry’s no-questions-asked approach make it easy for dodgy characters to funnel wealth through high-end Manhattan apartments.
How AirBNB is Killing NYC's Neighborhoods
NY's Real Estate Has Become the New Swiss Hidden Banks Accounts to Hide Illegal Money
GILDED CITY – New York mag cover, “Stash Pad: The New York real-estate market is now the premier destination for wealthy foreigners with rubles, yuan, and dollars to hide,” by Andrew Rice: “Every year, the British real-estate brokerage Knight Frank publishes a document called ‘The Wealth Report.’ The latest edition produces the curiously precise estimate that there are 167,669 individuals in the world who are ‘ultrahigh net worth,’ with assets exceeding $30 million … forecasting that over the next decade, the ranks of the ultrarich will increase by 30 percent, with much of the growth coming in Asia and Africa. … New York is forecast to add more ultrahigh-net-worth individuals than any city outside Asia over the next decade.”“[S]ince 2008, roughly 30 percent of condo sales in large-scale Manhattan developments have been to purchasers who either listed an overseas address or bought through an entity like a limited-liability corporation, a tactic rarely employed by local homebuyers but favored by foreign investors. … Corcoran Sunshine, which markets luxury buildings, estimates that 35 percent of its sales since 2013 have been to international buyers, half from Asia, with the remainder roughly evenly split among Latin America, Europe, and the rest of the world. ‘The global elite,’ says developer Michael Stern, ‘is basically looking for a safe-deposit box.’ …* A study showed Manhattan’s apartment inventory is up after a two-year shortage, but the average price for a Manhattan apartment rose 20 percent to more than $1.6 million, the Times writes: * Hidden in Plain Sight: New York Just Another Island Haven()ICIJ) Lax U.S. rules and real estate industry’s no-questions-asked approach make it easy for dodgy characters to funnel wealth through high-end Manhattan apartments.
City Halls Secret Plan to Reduce Shooting In Brooklyn Gentrification
The New Secret Army of Crime Fighters
It's is Rapid Gentrification in Crown Heights that is reducing crime numbers not the "Save the Street" program that the mayor is expanding to stop the increase in gun shootings Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Gets Its Turn(NYT) In fact, residents credit the successful post-riot reconciliation between the two communities with being one of the drivers of Crown Heights’ rapid transformation — or gentrification, depending on one’s perspective.Along Franklin Avenue, signs saying “Moving to Flatbush” have appeared on many businesses in the last couple of years, and while longtime residents don’t tack up signs, there are indications they have also been leaving in large numbers as new arrivals replace them in this community of about 140,000 people.
Gentrification and Race
Welcome to Brooklyn y'all!!! Report: Brooklyn is America's most unaffordable place to buy a house http://jpupdates.com/?p=110778
Brooklyn is the least affordable housing market in the country: http://nym.ag/1w3VNOJ
Same Developer Who Wants to Gentrify Queens Took Advantage of Ratner Gentrification of Brooklyn to Raise Rents There
Protesters Link a Queens Project to BrooklynRents(NYT) Negotiations over the fate of Astoria Cove, the first new city development to opt into Mayor Bill de Blasio’s affordable housing program, have attracted no shortage of advocates and critics hoping to influence the process. Housing advocates are pushing for the developer to increase the number of cheaper affordable units. Local officials are concerned about transportation and density. Real estate executives are worried that the city’s sharpened focus on affordable housing will cut into profits. But on Sunday, the back-and-forth over the Queens project found a new set of stakeholders from another rapidly gentrifying neighborhood: Crown Heights , Brooklyn . The developer of the 1,700-unit Astoria Cove, Alma Realty, owns about 700 units around Prospect Place and is seeking to take them out of rent regulation. Mayor Bill de Blasio has vowed to increase affordable housing.New York Will Require More Builders to Add Affordable UnitsSEPT. 5, 2014 A housing lottery won Brandon Deese one of the apartments set aside for low-income tenants at the Chelsea Park, a luxury rental on West 26th Street . Mr. Deese’s rent is $540 a month.Affordable Housing in New York ’s Luxury BuildingsAUG. 29, 2014 Mayor Bill de Blasio presented his housing plan in Brooklyn on Monday.De Blasio Sets a 10-Year Plan for Housing, Putting the Focus on AffordabilityMAY 5, 2014* Council questions Astoria Cove plan(Capital)But at a Council hearing on Monday, officials disagreed with developer John Maurodis on the definition of affordability and how many housing units they are willing to build in exchange for their approval.
“Mayor de Blasio, don’t fail this test!” pleaded one sign at a rally outside one of the buildings on Prospect Place in Brooklyn on Sunday, when elected officials and tenant organizers urged the City Council not to approve the Astoria Cove project unless Alma Realty rolls back the rent increases in Crown Heights and addresses concerns about its plans in Queens.
Council Pushed Poor Door On Us
MYTH OF INCLUSION: City Council members have recently expressed outrage over “poor doors,” but the bill allowing them was approved by Mayor Bill de Blasio the Council voted unanimously to approve them in 2009, Seth Barron writes in an op-ed for City & State:
We Run A State Election and Pushing Blacks Out of Brooklyn Is A None Issue
A group of black Section 8 tenants in a rapidly gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood claim that their landlord wants to swap them for “more affluent white tenants” by opting out of the federal housing subsidy program.
Three women living at 781 Washington Ave. in Crown Heights — just steps from Prospect Park — are suing to stop real estate honcho Douglas Rosenberg from exiting the program and renting out the building’s 63 units at market rates. “The inevitable result of the landlord Defendants’ opt out from Section 8 will be the displacement of African-American families from the subject building and the Prospect Heights neighborhood, and their replacement by more affluent white tenants,” according to their suit, filed Tuesday in Brooklyn federal court. The suit claims that Rosenberg failed to properly notify startled tenants that he planned to remove the building from Section 8 status by the end of September.
True News Give You the Why the Media Gives You Filtered News About Gentrification
Welcome to Brooklyn y'all!!! Report: Brooklyn is America's most unaffordable place to buy a house http://jpupdates.com/?p=110778
Brooklyn is the least affordable housing market in the country: http://nym.ag/1w3VNOJ
Same Developer Who Wants to Gentrify Queens Took Advantage of Ratner Gentrification of Brooklyn to Raise Rents There
Protesters Link a Queens Project to BrooklynRents(NYT) Negotiations over the fate of Astoria Cove, the first new city development to opt into Mayor Bill de Blasio’s affordable housing program, have attracted no shortage of advocates and critics hoping to influence the process. Housing advocates are pushing for the developer to increase the number of cheaper affordable units. Local officials are concerned about transportation and density. Real estate executives are worried that the city’s sharpened focus on affordable housing will cut into profits. But on Sunday, the back-and-forth over the Queens project found a new set of stakeholders from another rapidly gentrifying neighborhood: Crown Heights , Brooklyn . The developer of the 1,700-unit Astoria Cove, Alma Realty, owns about 700 units around Prospect Place and is seeking to take them out of rent regulation. Mayor Bill de Blasio has vowed to increase affordable housing.New York Will Require More Builders to Add Affordable UnitsSEPT. 5, 2014 A housing lottery won Brandon Deese one of the apartments set aside for low-income tenants at the Chelsea Park, a luxury rental on West 26th Street . Mr. Deese’s rent is $540 a month.Affordable Housing in New York ’s Luxury BuildingsAUG. 29, 2014 Mayor Bill de Blasio presented his housing plan in Brooklyn on Monday.De Blasio Sets a 10-Year Plan for Housing, Putting the Focus on AffordabilityMAY 5, 2014* Council questions Astoria Cove plan(Capital)But at a Council hearing on Monday, officials disagreed with developer John Maurodis on the definition of affordability and how many housing units they are willing to build in exchange for their approval.
“Mayor de Blasio, don’t fail this test!” pleaded one sign at a rally outside one of the buildings on Prospect Place in Brooklyn on Sunday, when elected officials and tenant organizers urged the City Council not to approve the Astoria Cove project unless Alma Realty rolls back the rent increases in Crown Heights and addresses concerns about its plans in Queens.
Council Pushed Poor Door On Us
MYTH OF INCLUSION: City Council members have recently expressed outrage over “poor doors,” but the bill allowing them was approved by Mayor Bill de Blasio the Council voted unanimously to approve them in 2009, Seth Barron writes in an op-ed for City & State:
We Run A State Election and Pushing Blacks Out of Brooklyn Is A None Issue
A group of black Section 8 tenants in a rapidly gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood claim that their landlord wants to swap them for “more affluent white tenants” by opting out of the federal housing subsidy program.
Three women living at 781 Washington Ave. in Crown Heights — just steps from Prospect Park — are suing to stop real estate honcho Douglas Rosenberg from exiting the program and renting out the building’s 63 units at market rates. “The inevitable result of the landlord Defendants’ opt out from Section 8 will be the displacement of African-American families from the subject building and the Prospect Heights neighborhood, and their replacement by more affluent white tenants,” according to their suit, filed Tuesday in Brooklyn federal court. The suit claims that Rosenberg failed to properly notify startled tenants that he planned to remove the building from Section 8 status by the end of September.
True News Give You the Why the Media Gives You Filtered News About Gentrification
NYT Reports on Gentrification In Crown Heights It Does No Report Why It is Happening So Fast?
Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Gets Its Turn(NYT) The neighborhood has finally overcome a reputation for intolerance and violence that had plagued it since the 1991 riots between blacks and Hasidic Jews. In fact, residents credit the successful post-riot reconciliation between the two communities with being one of the drivers of Crown Heights’ rapid transformation — or gentrification, depending on one’s perspective.
Along Franklin Avenue, signs saying “Moving to Flatbush” have appeared on many businesses in the last couple of years, and while longtime residents don’t tack up signs, there are indications they have also been leaving in large numbers as new arrivals replace them in this community of about 140,000 people. * Nuns raise rents at immigrant home to boot longtime residents(NYDN) They’re kicking them like a bad habit. The nuns running St. Joseph’s Immigrant Home in Hell’s Kitchen are boosting the rent on young female residents and trying to boot women..* Lawmakers call for Airbnb investigation over misleadinginsurance claim.
NYT Reports on Gentrification In Crown Heights It Does No Report Why It is Happening So Fast?
Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Gets Its Turn(NYT) The neighborhood has finally overcome a reputation for intolerance and violence that had plagued it since the 1991 riots between blacks and Hasidic Jews. In fact, residents credit the successful post-riot reconciliation between the two communities with being one of the drivers of Crown Heights’ rapid transformation — or gentrification, depending on one’s perspective.
Along Franklin Avenue, signs saying “Moving to Flatbush” have appeared on many businesses in the last couple of years, and while longtime residents don’t tack up signs, there are indications they have also been leaving in large numbers as new arrivals replace them in this community of about 140,000 people. * Nuns raise rents at immigrant home to boot longtime residents(NYDN) They’re kicking them like a bad habit. The nuns running St. Joseph’s Immigrant Home in Hell’s Kitchen are boosting the rent on young female residents and trying to boot women..* Lawmakers call for Airbnb investigation over misleadinginsurance claim.
Real Estate Market Forces: International Money, Gentrificatrion and Airbnb Are Making Affordable Housing Program into A Band-Aid on A Cancer
Is Anyone Studying the Effect of Foreign $$$ Puring Into the City
How AirBNB is Killing NYC's Neighborhoods
NY's Real Estate Has Become the New Swiss Hidden Banks Accounts to Hide Illegal Money
GILDED CITY – New York mag cover, “Stash Pad: The New York real-estate market is now the premier destination for wealthy foreigners with rubles, yuan, and dollars to hide,” by Andrew Rice: “Every year, the British real-estate brokerage Knight Frank publishes a document called ‘The Wealth Report.’ The latest edition produces the curiously precise estimate that there are 167,669 individuals in the world who are ‘ultrahigh net worth,’ with assets exceeding $30 million … forecasting that over the next decade, the ranks of the ultrarich will increase by 30 percent, with much of the growth coming in Asia and Africa. … New York is forecast to add more ultrahigh-net-worth individuals than any city outside Asia over the next decade.”“[S]ince 2008, roughly 30 percent of condo sales in large-scale Manhattan developments have been to purchasers who either listed an overseas address or bought through an entity like a limited-liability corporation, a tactic rarely employed by local homebuyers but favored by foreign investors. … Corcoran Sunshine, which markets luxury buildings, estimates that 35 percent of its sales since 2013 have been to international buyers, half from Asia, with the remainder roughly evenly split among Latin America, Europe, and the rest of the world. ‘The global elite,’ says developer Michael Stern, ‘is basically looking for a safe-deposit box.’ …* A study showed Manhattan’s apartment inventory is up after a two-year shortage, but the average price for a Manhattan apartment rose 20 percent to more than $1.6 million, the Times writes: * Hidden in Plain Sight: New York Just Another Island Haven()ICIJ) Lax U.S. rules and real estate industry’s no-questions-asked approach make it easy for dodgy characters to funnel wealth through high-end Manhattan apartments.
How AirBNB is Killing NYC's Neighborhoods
NY's Real Estate Has Become the New Swiss Hidden Banks Accounts to Hide Illegal Money
GILDED CITY – New York mag cover, “Stash Pad: The New York real-estate market is now the premier destination for wealthy foreigners with rubles, yuan, and dollars to hide,” by Andrew Rice: “Every year, the British real-estate brokerage Knight Frank publishes a document called ‘The Wealth Report.’ The latest edition produces the curiously precise estimate that there are 167,669 individuals in the world who are ‘ultrahigh net worth,’ with assets exceeding $30 million … forecasting that over the next decade, the ranks of the ultrarich will increase by 30 percent, with much of the growth coming in Asia and Africa. … New York is forecast to add more ultrahigh-net-worth individuals than any city outside Asia over the next decade.”“[S]ince 2008, roughly 30 percent of condo sales in large-scale Manhattan developments have been to purchasers who either listed an overseas address or bought through an entity like a limited-liability corporation, a tactic rarely employed by local homebuyers but favored by foreign investors. … Corcoran Sunshine, which markets luxury buildings, estimates that 35 percent of its sales since 2013 have been to international buyers, half from Asia, with the remainder roughly evenly split among Latin America, Europe, and the rest of the world. ‘The global elite,’ says developer Michael Stern, ‘is basically looking for a safe-deposit box.’ …* A study showed Manhattan’s apartment inventory is up after a two-year shortage, but the average price for a Manhattan apartment rose 20 percent to more than $1.6 million, the Times writes: * Hidden in Plain Sight: New York Just Another Island Haven()ICIJ) Lax U.S. rules and real estate industry’s no-questions-asked approach make it easy for dodgy characters to funnel wealth through high-end Manhattan apartments.
City Halls Secret Plan to Reduce Shooting In Brooklyn Gentrification
The New Secret Army of Crime Fighters
It's is Rapid Gentrification in Crown Heights that is reducing crime numbers not the "Save the Street" program that the mayor is expanding to stop the increase in gun shootings Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Gets Its Turn(NYT) In fact, residents credit the successful post-riot reconciliation between the two communities with being one of the drivers of Crown Heights’ rapid transformation — or gentrification, depending on one’s perspective.Along Franklin Avenue, signs saying “Moving to Flatbush” have appeared on many businesses in the last couple of years, and while longtime residents don’t tack up signs, there are indications they have also been leaving in large numbers as new arrivals replace them in this community of about 140,000 people.
Gentrification and Race
Jobs4NY Which Failed After Spending $7 Million To Take Over the City Council Now Seeks to Keep the Dems From Taking Over the Senate
REBNY jumps into Senate battle Without the Parkside Group Which is Working for DSCC
Jobs4NY Which Failed After Spending $7 Million To Take Over the City Council Now Seeks to Keep the Dems From Taking Over the Senate
REBNY jumps into Senate battle Without the Parkside Group Which is Working for DSCC
Jobs for New York Inc., an outside spending group that poured $8 million into New York City ’s 2013 elections, is now poised to help Republicans in the high-stakes battle for the state Senate, records show, Crain’s New York reports
Awards And Media Coverage for Failed Lobbyists Parkside Group
Lobbyists Groups Parkside Spent $7.5 Million of Real Estate Developers Money and Failed to Elected A Council Speaker. . . Making Their Queens Boss Crowley Their Benefactor A Loser
But the biggest donors to council races were the city’s real estate titans, who raised nearly $7 million in a bid to influence the election of City Council members. Spending for the PAC was coordinated by the industry’s lobbying arm, the Real Estate Board of New York. But after the elections, REBNY President Steven Spinola was quick to declare victory, asserting that 18 of the 22 candidates backed by his group had won their elections. But determining just who was doling out the big bucks proved challenging, since most of the contributions to the real estate PAC, dubbed Jobs for New York, came from murky corporate entities that are otherwise ineligible to donate directly to candidates in city elections.* NY State Senate Republicans have $2.9 million in campaignaccount(NYDN)
Awards And Media Coverage for Failed Lobbyists Parkside Group
Lobbyists Groups Parkside Spent $7.5 Million of Real Estate Developers Money and Failed to Elected A Council Speaker. . . Making Their Queens Boss Crowley Their Benefactor A Loser
Lobbyists Groups Parkside Spent $7.5 Million of Real Estate Developers Money and Failed to Elected A Council Speaker. . . Making Their Queens Boss Crowley Their Benefactor A Loser
But the biggest donors to council races were the city’s real estate titans, who raised nearly $7 million in a bid to influence the election of City Council members. Spending for the PAC was coordinated by the industry’s lobbying arm, the Real Estate Board of New York. But after the elections, REBNY President Steven Spinola was quick to declare victory, asserting that 18 of the 22 candidates backed by his group had won their elections. But determining just who was doling out the big bucks proved challenging, since most of the contributions to the real estate PAC, dubbed Jobs for New York, came from murky corporate entities that are otherwise ineligible to donate directly to candidates in city elections.* NY State Senate Republicans have $2.9 million in campaignaccount(NYDN)
Daily News Ignores the Suffering Caused By Unchecked Gentrification
Oh, the horror! (NYDN Ed) Gowanus suffers an attack of the NIMBYs. NIMBYs (Not In My Backyard) and BANANAs (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone) are in a tizzy over the development of the Gowanus, the formerly industrial Brooklyn neighborhood between Park Slope and Carroll Gardens
Daily News Ignores the Suffering Caused By Unchecked Gentrification
Oh, the horror! (NYDN Ed) Gowanus suffers an attack of the NIMBYs. NIMBYs (Not In My Backyard) and BANANAs (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone) are in a tizzy over the development of the Gowanus, the formerly industrial Brooklyn neighborhood between Park Slope and Carroll Gardens
Gentrification and Race
Airbnb Housing Market
Italian Leftovers In Carroll Gardens
As Brownstone Money Rushes into Carroll Gardens,Families Fall Apart(NYO) Old-guard Italians, once the neighborhood lifeblood, now 'leftovers.' In Carroll Gardens Carroll Gardens
More on Gentrification
More on Gentrification
True News Has Reporting On The War On the Black Now Their is A Report to Back Up Our Claims
"High-income white, largely single, households moved into racially diverse neighborhoods."
Report: NYC’s black upper-middle class is fading; well-off white singles numbers surge * A report set to be released by the New York City-based Citizens Housing and Planning Council found that the city’s black upper-middle class is fading, while its populations of upper-class white singles and lower-income Hispanics are booming, The Wall Street Journal reports:
Neighborhood targeted by mayor braces for a fight
A possible rezoning in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens could add a lot of housing but community members question whether it will be affordable.
We Run A State Election and Pushing Blacks Out of Brooklyn Is A None Issue
A group of black Section 8 tenants in a rapidly gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood claim that their landlord wants to swap them for “more affluent white tenants” by opting out of the federal housing subsidy program.
Three women living at 781 Washington Ave. in Crown Heights — just steps from Prospect Park — are suing to stop real estate honcho Douglas Rosenberg from exiting the program and renting out the building’s 63 units at market rates. “The inevitable result of the landlord Defendants’ opt out from Section 8 will be the displacement of African-American families from the subject building and the Prospect Heights neighborhood, and their replacement by more affluent white tenants,” according to their suit, filed Tuesday in Brooklyn federal court. The suit claims that Rosenberg failed to properly notify startled tenants that he planned to remove the building from Section 8 status by the end of September.
True News Give You the Why the Media Gives You Filtered News About Gentrification
How Albany's Manhattan Real Estate Tax Breaks Are Pushing Blacks and the Poor Out of Brooklyn
Buyouts have long been part of New York City’s real estate lore, but as offers have become more common, buyouts have become instruments of illegal harassment and a growing threat to the stock of affordable housing, The New York Times writes Tenant groups cite illegal harassment and a growing threat to affordable housing, while landlords say buying out longtime tenants in low-rent apartments is lawful.* SWEATING IT OUT: Brownsville tenants live without hot water and electricity (NYDN)
NYT Reports on Gentrification In Crown Heights It Does No Report Why It is Happening So Fast?
Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Gets Its Turn(NYT) The neighborhood has finally overcome a reputation for intolerance and violence that had plagued it since the 1991 riots between blacks and Hasidic Jews. In fact, residents credit the successful post-riot reconciliation between the two communities with being one of the drivers of Crown Heights’ rapid transformation — or gentrification, depending on one’s perspective.
Along Franklin Avenue, signs saying “Moving to Flatbush” have appeared on many businesses in the last couple of years, and while longtime residents don’t tack up signs, there are indications they have also been leaving in large numbers as new arrivals replace them in this community of about 140,000 people. * Nuns raise rents at immigrant home to boot longtime residents(NYDN) They’re kicking them like a bad habit. The nuns running St. Joseph’s Immigrant Home in Hell’s Kitchen are boosting the rent on young female residents and trying to boot women..* Lawmakers call for Airbnb investigation over misleadinginsurance claim.
Daily News is Blaming Bed Stuy Gentrification on A Man Who Died 40 Years Ago . . . Are They on Crack?
Or is the Daily News Protecting the Developers and Elected Officials Who Gave the New Residence Tax Breaks to Push the Blacks Out
BYE-BYE, BED-STUY: How gentrification in one Brooklyn nabe is marginalizing a population and making theharsh fantasy of a hateful Robert Moses come true(NYDN) The legendary urban planner Robert Moses once said he'd like to - quite literally - rip America 's ghettos and their residents from the map. "The first prescription for slum dwellers in the ghettos of the big cities is total, immediate, uncompromising surgical removal," he wrote in his 1970 book "Public Works: A Dangerous Trade." At the top of his list of tumors was Bedford-Stuyvesant. "I have recently seriously proposed a workable, uncompromising plan, involving at the start 160,000 people, to raze the central Brooklyn slums [and] move residents" to the Rockaway peninsula in Queens , he wrote. Wow. Sadly for him, happily for my family of Bed-Stuy natives, Moses's idea went nowhere, and he died leaving behind the public perception presented in Robert Caro's classic book, "The Power Broker," of a man contemptuous of blacks, and all those without political clout.
How Albany's Manhattan Real Estate Tax Breaks Are Pushing Blacks and the Poor Out of Brooklyn
Buyouts have long been part of New York City’s real estate lore, but as offers have become more common, buyouts have become instruments of illegal harassment and a growing threat to the stock of affordable housing, The New York Times writes Tenant groups cite illegal harassment and a growing threat to affordable housing, while landlords say buying out longtime tenants in low-rent apartments is lawful.* SWEATING IT OUT: Brownsville tenants live without hot water and electricity (NYDN)
NYT Reports on Gentrification In Crown Heights It Does No Report Why It is Happening So Fast?
Along Franklin Avenue, signs saying “Moving to Flatbush” have appeared on many businesses in the last couple of years, and while longtime residents don’t tack up signs, there are indications they have also been leaving in large numbers as new arrivals replace them in this community of about 140,000 people. * Nuns raise rents at immigrant home to boot longtime residents(NYDN) They’re kicking them like a bad habit. The nuns running St. Joseph’s Immigrant Home in Hell’s Kitchen are boosting the rent on young female residents and trying to boot women..* Lawmakers call for Airbnb investigation over misleadinginsurance claim.
Daily News is Blaming Bed Stuy Gentrification on A Man Who Died 40 Years Ago . . . Are They on Crack?
Daily News is Blaming Bed Stuy Gentrification on A Man Who Died 40 Years Ago . . . Are They on Crack?
Or is the Daily News Protecting the Developers and Elected Officials Who Gave the New Residence Tax Breaks to Push the Blacks Out
BYE-BYE, BED-STUY: How gentrification in one Brooklyn nabe is marginalizing a population and making theharsh fantasy of a hateful Robert Moses come true(NYDN) The legendary urban planner Robert Moses once said he'd like to - quite literally - rip America 's ghettos and their residents from the map. "The first prescription for slum dwellers in the ghettos of the big cities is total, immediate, uncompromising surgical removal," he wrote in his 1970 book "Public Works: A Dangerous Trade." At the top of his list of tumors was Bedford-Stuyvesant. "I have recently seriously proposed a workable, uncompromising plan, involving at the start 160,000 people, to raze the central Brooklyn slums [and] move residents" to the Rockaway peninsula in Queens , he wrote. Wow. Sadly for him, happily for my family of Bed-Stuy natives, Moses's idea went nowhere, and he died leaving behind the public perception presented in Robert Caro's classic book, "The Power Broker," of a man contemptuous of blacks, and all those without political clout.
Real Estate Market Forces: International Money, Gentrificatrion and Airbnb Are Making Affordable Housing Program into A Band-Aid on A Cancer
Is Anyone Studing the Effect of Foreign $$$ Puring Into the City
NY's Real Estate Has Become the New Swiss Hidden Banks Accounts to Hide Illegal Money
GILDED CITY – New York mag cover, “Stash Pad: The New York real-estate market is now the premier destination for wealthy foreigners with rubles, yuan, and dollars to hide,” by Andrew Rice: “Every year, the British real-estate brokerage Knight Frank publishes a document called ‘The Wealth Report.’ The latest edition produces the curiously precise estimate that there are 167,669 individuals in the world who are ‘ultrahigh net worth,’ with assets exceeding $30 million … forecasting that over the next decade, the ranks of the ultrarich will increase by 30 percent, with much of the growth coming in Asia and Africa. … New York is forecast to add more ultrahigh-net-worth individuals than any city outside Asia over the next decade.”“[S]ince 2008, roughly 30 percent of condo sales in large-scale Manhattan developments have been to purchasers who either listed an overseas address or bought through an entity like a limited-liability corporation, a tactic rarely employed by local homebuyers but favored by foreign investors. … Corcoran Sunshine, which markets luxury buildings, estimates that 35 percent of its sales since 2013 have been to international buyers, half from Asia, with the remainder roughly evenly split among Latin America, Europe, and the rest of the world. ‘The global elite,’ says developer Michael Stern, ‘is basically looking for a safe-deposit box.’ …* A study showed Manhattan’s apartment inventory is up after a two-year shortage, but the average price for a Manhattan apartment rose 20 percent to more than $1.6 million, the Times writes: * Hidden in Plain Sight: New York Just Another Island Haven()ICIJ) Lax U.S. rules and real estate industry’s no-questions-asked approach make it easy for dodgy characters to funnel wealth through high-end Manhattan apartments.
NY's Real Estate Has Become the New Swiss Hidden Banks Accounts to Hide Illegal Money
GILDED CITY – New York mag cover, “Stash Pad: The New York real-estate market is now the premier destination for wealthy foreigners with rubles, yuan, and dollars to hide,” by Andrew Rice: “Every year, the British real-estate brokerage Knight Frank publishes a document called ‘The Wealth Report.’ The latest edition produces the curiously precise estimate that there are 167,669 individuals in the world who are ‘ultrahigh net worth,’ with assets exceeding $30 million … forecasting that over the next decade, the ranks of the ultrarich will increase by 30 percent, with much of the growth coming in Asia and Africa. … New York is forecast to add more ultrahigh-net-worth individuals than any city outside Asia over the next decade.”“[S]ince 2008, roughly 30 percent of condo sales in large-scale Manhattan developments have been to purchasers who either listed an overseas address or bought through an entity like a limited-liability corporation, a tactic rarely employed by local homebuyers but favored by foreign investors. … Corcoran Sunshine, which markets luxury buildings, estimates that 35 percent of its sales since 2013 have been to international buyers, half from Asia, with the remainder roughly evenly split among Latin America, Europe, and the rest of the world. ‘The global elite,’ says developer Michael Stern, ‘is basically looking for a safe-deposit box.’ …* A study showed Manhattan’s apartment inventory is up after a two-year shortage, but the average price for a Manhattan apartment rose 20 percent to more than $1.6 million, the Times writes: * Hidden in Plain Sight: New York Just Another Island Haven()ICIJ) Lax U.S. rules and real estate industry’s no-questions-asked approach make it easy for dodgy characters to funnel wealth through high-end Manhattan apartments.
Gentrification and Race
Why is the NYP Trying to Stop Gentrification by Using Shooting Scare Tactics?
NYP Attacks Mayor's Anti-Violence Plan is Right But for the Wrong Reason
Backdoor NYPD Support?
If Vogue is calling Bushwick the 7th coolest neighborhood in the world, then of course lots of newcomers are going to look for apartments. But as real estate prices rise there and in Bed-Stuy, the Post warns that gentrifiers are getting attacked, mugged, and burglarized. The Post's police sources tell them, "All I can say is there should be a sign that reads, ‘Buyer beware,’ " and "A lot of the white folks moving into these areas are from out of state. They walk around as if they own the place... then they get robbed… The problem is they’re moving into their beautiful home with all these housing projects around them. That’s where the crime comes from." The paper hit the streets to scaremonger IRL, and found 29-year-old Paulina Jamet, who was checking out an open house on Quincy Street going for $1.3 million. She told them, “I’ve seen how fast the new neighbors are moving in. More people like me are moving in and changing the neighborhood. So that’s comforting.” Oh really Paulina? The Post countered her search for comfort with a report about a 35-year-old gunned down just a block away from her would-be dream home. The paper also mapped out crimes, million-dollar listings, and expensive rentals. One real estate agent admitted, "People still have to be really careful. I want to call it a neighborhood in transition," while a longtime-resident said, "At night, the freaks come out." So… we should all move to Jersey City ?
Secret Plan to Lower Shooting in Brooklyn Gentrification
NYP Attacks Mayor's Anti-Violence Plan is Right But for the Wrong Reason
The New Secret Army of Crime Fighters
It's is Rapid Gentrification in Crown Heights that is reducing crime numbers not the "Save the Street" program that the mayor is expanding to stop the increase in gun shootings Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Gets Its Turn(NYT) In fact, residents credit the successful post-riot reconciliation between the two communities with being one of the drivers of Crown Heights’ rapid transformation — or gentrification, depending on one’s perspective.Along Franklin Avenue, signs saying “Moving to Flatbush” have appeared on many businesses in the last couple of years, and while longtime residents don’t tack up signs, there are indications they have also been leaving in large numbers as new arrivals replace them in this community of about 140,000 people.
Gentrification and Race
de Blasio Push Lux Housing Which Creates Gentrification and More Homeless
John Surico in the Gotham Gazette takes a look at the first seven months of the de Blasio administration’s push to reduce record-high homelessness in New York City:
CMs Constantieides and Vallone That Putting Out A Gun Database Onling Will Not Stop the Increase in Shootings
Politicans pushing for public gun crime database(NYP)
City Council members Costa Constantinides and Paul Vallone, along with Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr., are calling for the database created in 2006 — currently available only to law enforcement — to be searchable online.
Gentrification Taking Over NYC Eliminating Tale of Two City's Problems?
Census Estimates Show Another Increase in New York City’s Non-Hispanic White Population(NYT) * Brooklyn's Second Coming: Borough of churches now borough of condos. At least (most) of the bars are safe. @Dnainfo
http://www.bkmag.com/2014/09/11/rents-up-25-percent-in-crown-heights-23-percent-in-bushwick/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
Council Speaker Delivers to Gentrifying Developers
Melissa’s tall tale(NYDN)
Melissa’s tall tale (NYDN Ed)
If the City Council speaker really wants more affordable housing, why isn't she supporting a new Harlem development?
If you’re Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, how do you respond to plans for hundreds of new affordable apartments in your East Harlem district? Do you thank the developers for setting aside 25% of a luxury project for the needy, going beyond what city housing programs require? Do you offer constructive thoughts about a plan that could help Mayor de Blasio meet his goal of building 80,000 reduced-rent apartments like these? Not a chance. Instead, the woman with the power to make or break big projects griped to the Daily News’ Juan Gonzalez about the “lack of affordable units” and the height of the towers that will contain them.
NYT Pushes Mayor's Housing Ideology Plan Because He Means It
From the NYTs: Can New York Be Affordable Again?(NYT Ed) "Mayor Bill de Blasio’s mission to create housing for all, including working- and middle-class families, is timely and exciting. Albany ,” sounds vague and impossible. But Mr. de Blasio seems to mean it."
Fact and Reality: Stop the Gentrification Push Out In Crown Heights Before Promising to Do it City-Wide Hundreds of Black Residence Are Being Push Out of Crown Heights and the City Has Nothing to Stop It. Why doesn't the NYT demand the mayor stop the push out in Crown Heights to demonstrate that it is possible to stop gentrification push out with his increased development that he promised in his Stat of the City speech.
Raging Gentrification is Creating A New Racial Divide in Crown Heights
Racially Charged Shouting Match Heats Up Crown Heights Rezoning Debate (DNAINFO) CROWN HEIGHTS — An already heated debate over possible new development rules in Crown Heightsturned into a racially charged shouting match Wednesday night. * The Community Board 9meeting — which was supposed to give the public a chance to discuss the shaping of a City Planning Department study about how the neighborhood should be rezoned —devolved into arguments after a local rabbi urged the community to leave race out of the conversation. Rabbi Eli Cohen of the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council condemned “the rhetoric that’s gone out trying to [set] one neighbor against the other, one race against another, one religion against another," alluding to recent brochures and emails distributed by the activist groupMovement to Protect the People.
The NYT calls de Blasio's housing plan timely and exciting mission. His plan is to build aggressively and densely, and demand that a significant portion of new units be permanently affordable. Use all means possible to protect what’s there, including strengthening rent regulations and tripling, to $36 million a year, the amount the city spends to protect tenants from greedy landlords in housing court.
Mr. de Blasio’s skeptics are right about some real estate truisms; the people with lots of money are poised to win no matter what — they will get their water views and dog salons — and developers will profit mightily. And in parts of the city on the churning edge of the gentrification wave, as in stretches of Franklin Avenue in Crown Heights Barclays Center Manhattan , giant luxury towers still sprout skyward, while rich foreigners park their money in luxe apartments that stay empty.
NYT Reports About the Young Whites Moving Into Crown Heights But Not the Black Tenants Being Harassed Out of Their Homes to Make Room for the Young Whites Moving In
How Albany's Manhattan Real Estate Tax Breaks Are Pushing Blacks and the Poor Out of Brooklyn
Buyouts
have long been part of New York City’s real estate lore, but as offers
have become more common, buyouts have become instruments of illegal
harassment and a growing threat to the stock of affordable housing, The New York Times writes Tenant
groups cite illegal harassment and a growing threat to affordable
housing, while landlords say buying out longtime tenants in low-rent
apartments is lawful.* SWEATING IT OUT: Brownsville tenants live without hot water and electricity (NYDN)
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Development and rising rent has people wondering where exactly where #Brooklyn is headed: http://bkbureau.org/2014/09/23/where-will-the-brooklyn-boom-go-next/ … -- .
From the Borough of Churchs to the Borough of Condos
Developers Closing Down Black and Hispanic Churches and Nobody Notices
Tom Robbins
NYT Reports on Gentrification In Crown Heights It Does No Report Why It is Happening So Fast?
Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Gets Its Turn(NYT)
The neighborhood has finally overcome a reputation for intolerance and
violence that had plagued it since the 1991 riots between blacks and
Hasidic Jews. In fact, residents credit the successful post-riot
reconciliation between the two communities with being one of the drivers
of Crown Heights’ rapid transformation — or gentrification, depending
on one’s perspective.
Along
Franklin Avenue, signs saying “Moving to Flatbush” have appeared on
many businesses in the last couple of years, and while longtime
residents don’t tack up signs, there are indications they have also been
leaving in large numbers as new arrivals replace them in this community
of about 140,000 people. 
Gentrification Taking Over NYC Eliminating Tale of Two City's Problems?
In
a city that had experienced decades of white flight, a tiny shift
toward racial equilibrium is seen.* A new report shows Manhattan’s
white-collar workers make more than double what its non-office workers
do, there are proportionately fewer blacks and Hispanics than 20 years
ago in the professional ranks and a persistent wage gap between men and
women, the Journal reports A report from New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer shows
an increasingly polarized workforce over the past two decades. In 2012,
Manhattan's white-collar workers made an average annual salary of $100,900,
more than double what nonoffice workers made. In 1990, office workers made 75%
more than nonoffice workers. There are also proportionally fewer blacks and
Hispanics than 20 years ago within the professional ran
A Lot of Tenants in Janet Gamble's Neighborhood Crown Heights are Being Pushed Out of Their Homes
NYC's War On Tenants
EXCLUSIVE: Attorney General goes after ex-cop accused of harassing tenants in rent-stabilized apartments(NYDN) Attorney General Eric Schneiderman charges Anthony Falconite has forced his way into apartments, threatened tenants with eviction and offered them ‘buyouts’ so their landlords can charge market rent.
REPLACING 5 POINTZ -- DNAinfo’s JeanMarie Evelly: “The owner of the warehouse that once housed graffiti mecca 5Pointz says he's hoping to start tearing down the property as soon as next month. Though demolition permits have yet to be issued at the project site — which is bound by Davis Street, Jackson Avenue and Crane Street — owner Jerry Wolkoff of G&M Realty said he's looking to start razing the buildings around mid-August to make way for construction of two residential towers. ‘It cannot be soon enough for me,’ said Wolkoff, who is planning to build two high-rise luxury apartment towers at the site, containing around 1,000 apartments.” http://goo.gl/djr6Qz
A Tale of Two Brooklyn Job Reports
How Much of Brooklyn's Job Growth Are Gentrification Construction Jobs Pushing the Unemployed Out of Bed-Stuy and Bushwick?
City Leaders Use Gentrification to Solver Problems
Brooklyn leads the five boroughs for job growth: study(NYP)The unemployment rate was still 8.9 percent, nearly 50 percent over the national average of 6.3 percent. The unemployment rate was highest in areas such as Brownsville, Bushwick, Bedford-Stuyvesant and East New York. The comptroller said areas such as Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill and Greenpoint had unemployment rates that were 50 percent lower than the boroughwide rate. Despite a 42 percent wage growth over the past decade, the average salary for a Brooklyn worker was a citywide low $38,550 in 2012.* While many neighborhoods in Brooklyn are thriving, others are struggling with the lowest private sector salaries in New York City according to an analysis by state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, City & State reports: * Upstate unemployment dropped, but not because people found jobs. It dropped because fewer people were looking.
“Designer Who Trademarked 'Lower East Side' Forced Out by Rising Rent,” by DNAinfo’s Lisha Arino: “Local designer Robert Lopez has successfully battled national brands for infringing on his trademark of the words ‘Lower East Side’ — but the one fight he couldn't win was against the neighborhood's hot real estate market. Lopez, whose LES Clothing Co. has been making T-shirts and caps emblazoned with ‘Lower East Side’ and ‘LES’ since 1999, was recently forced to shutter his 43 Clinton St. shop because of a $2,000 rent hike.” http://goo.gl/GS0ywW
Assemblyman Keith Wright on gentrification: Whites not moving to Harlem because they love Blacks: http://youtu.be/YetKxAIXxVs via
REAL ESTATE - “Brooklyn's Historic Churches Disappear to Make Way for Condos,” by DNAinfo’s Janet Upadhye, Paul DeBenedetto and Nikhita Venugopal: “In Brooklyn’s ‘brownstone belt,’ which stretches from Bedford-Stuyvesant to Carroll Gardens, more than 20 historic churches and church buildings have been converted for residential use in the past two decades. Some preservationists and historians say the loss of churches is changing the face of some of borough's most historic neighborhoods.” See the list of churches. http://goo.gl/HY98io
EAT BEAT -- “Polish Deli Closing in East Village as Owner Retires After 30 Years,” by DNAinfo’s Lisha Arino: “Wieslawa Kurowycky has run First Avenue Pierogi & Deli, 130 First Ave. near St. Mark's Place, for more than 30 years. But as business declined and she grew older, she decided that she was done. … The to-go shop will sell its last pierogi, blintzes and cabbage rolls on July 2, she said. The closure was first reported by EV Grieve. Kurowycky opened the shop just before Easter in 1984.” http://goo.gl/4ROjD6
A Brooklyn Nets Fan Responds to "Gentrification's Team" Label http://bit.ly/1h1zstW
Here Comes East NY Gentification
A hardscrabble Brooklyn neighborhood will be ground zero for Mayor de Blasio’s massive affordable housing plan.
City Planning chairman Carl Weisbrod said Thursday the city will target
15 areas of the city for new building — and East New York will be first
up. The housing blueprint calls for building 80,000 new affordable
apartments and preserving another 120,000 over 10 years.
Lights Camera Action Brooklyn
Half of the 29 television series shot in New York City last year were based in Brooklyn, as were many of this year’s new TV pilots.
* With Brooklyn neighborhoods growing and few other viable transit options, the MTA announced that it will add trips on the L train this fall to help relieve overcrowding, the Times reports: http://goo.gl/IRT76K
New Rowhouses Fill a Hole in Brooklyn(NYT)
The 23 houses in Boerum Hill were designed for a neighborly feel; 16 of them have stoops, and lindens provide a lush canopy.
BK real estate "feels like 2005 a little bit”; new hotels TK on Schermerhorn & nr BAM http://atlanticyardsreport.blogspot.com/2014/05/brooklyn-real-estate-update-it-feels.html … "Brooklyn" surges as baby name
Scandal-Plagued Pols Battle for Queens Congressional Seat
Harlem Gentification and the Mayor
More on Gentrification and Race
Williamsburg Photos: Now And Then
When Google launched a time lapse in late April of images captured over the last seven years by Google Street View, the Journal looked to images of Williamsburg to illustrate one neighborhood's “development explosion.”
Videographer Keith Feldman
Landlords Always Pushing People Out in Changing Neighborhoods
Brooklyn lawmakers push to criminalize ‘rent sabotage’(Capital)Tenants who've spent many years in the same apartments without problems
have accused landlords of sending in men with sledgehammers and power
saws to make the properties unliveable. “It's a situation that's ongoing within my district, where we have
landlords that are basically destroying their properties so they can get
rent-regulated tenants out of their apartments so they can get
increased rents,” state Senator Martin Dilan, a Democrat, said of the
practice. In many Brooklyn neighborhoods, market prices can be several times what some rent-regulated apartments cost.* Brooklyn landlords pushing black tenants out for whites: suit(NYP) * Rent-stabilized black tenants in Prospect Lefferts Gardens sue landlord, claim racial cleanse bid (Brooklyn Paper)
Renovator of Victorian Beauties Profits From Preservation(NYT)
What About Racial Segregation in NYC Neighborhood and Gentrification Patterns?
Thanks to real estate developers and the hipsters gentrification creates integrated for a while
Another view of diverse, progressive NY.
8 Google Street View GIFs That Show How Much NYC Has Changed Since 2007(NY Mag)
Flipping Out: Renovated Bushwick House Back On Market, Costs 390% More: A southeast Bushwick townhouse that sold... http://dlvr.it/5WQk97
Is the Above-Market-Rate Affordable Housing in Brooklyn Fueling Gentrification
Progressive groups are calling on Mayor Bill de Blasio to create more affordable housing in Brooklyn after only five of 61 buildings built in the borough from 2008 to 2012 that will receive tax breaks included below-market-rate apartments, the Daily News reports:
More on Gentrification
Renovator of Victorian Beauties Profits From Preservation(NYT)
Azad Ali has turned around more than two dozen faded homes in Victorian
Flatbush and helped revive what was once the “wrong” side of Prospect
Park.
What About Racial Segregation in NYC Neighborhood and Gentrification Patterns?
Another view of diverse, progressive NY.
8 Google Street View GIFs That Show How Much NYC Has Changed Since 2007(NY Mag)
Flipping Out: Renovated Bushwick House Back On Market, Costs 390% More: A southeast Bushwick townhouse that sold... http://dlvr.it/5WQk97
Is the Above-Market-Rate Affordable Housing in Brooklyn Fueling Gentrification
Progressive groups are calling on Mayor Bill de Blasio to create more affordable housing in Brooklyn after only five of 61 buildings built in the borough from 2008 to 2012 that will receive tax breaks included below-market-rate apartments, the Daily News reports:
More on Gentrification
NYC Is Even More Unaffordable Than You Think, In 6 Charts(Huff Post) Rents in New York City have skyrocketed over the past decade while New Yorkers' incomes have fallen, creating a dearth of affordable housing for the people that need it most. That's the takeaway from a disheartening report released by city Comptroller Scott Stringer this week. “Some of the data is obviously chilling,” Stringer told The New York Observer.For example, while the median rent in New York City rose 75 percent between 2000 and 2012-- an increase 30 percent higher than in the rest of the country-- the median household income in the city fell about 5 percent. This has created a dire situation for those in the lower income brackets.
Flatbush Avenue resident: Dollar van crackdown is "Gentrification 101"(Brooklyn Paper)
It’s Leaving 57th Street, but Rizzoli Bookstore Vows Sequel(NYT)
Friday was the bookstore’s last day, and the closing came at the end of a painful week for shoppers who value a particular kind of New York store.
There Goes the Neighborhood(NYT)
Are there ways to curb the effects of gentrification?
It is Not Our Brooklyn Anymore
Whose Brooklyn Is It, Anyway?(NYT) Tracing Urban Change in Brooklyn From ‘Kotter’ to ‘Girls’ "The old Bkln was a place ambitious young people set out from, not one they flocked toward"-Smart@aoscott on changes
It is Not Our Brooklyn Anymore
Whose Brooklyn Is It, Anyway?(NYT) Tracing Urban Change in Brooklyn From ‘Kotter’ to ‘Girls’ "The old Bkln was a place ambitious young people set out from, not one they flocked toward"-Smart
Patrons Ponder Neighborhoods Without J & R and Pearl Paint(NYT)
New York Developers Can Gentrify Anything(NY Mag)
Bushwick Gentrification Watch: Massive Development Site on the Market in Bushwick: A 2.3-acre site between Seigel... http://dlvr.it/5SLsfbShoe repair shop owner laces into Landmarks panel in suit: The owners of a long-standing Midtown East shoe repair... http://dlvr.it/5MmbdV
JOIN THE GENTRIFICATION: Bushwick warehouse owner fans flames in hood
Rising Rents and Changing Demographics Rubbing Out Little Italy
Watch NYC Gentrify Right Before Your Eyes
In an article titled “Brooklyn’s Hipster Economy Challenges Manhattan Supremacy,” Bloomberg News found ex-Borough President Marty Markowitz still boosting Brooklyn: “Marty Markowitz was strolling in Vienna when he noticed mannequins in a shop window wearing hats emblazoned with Paris, London and Brooklyn. The store had plenty of London and Paris models. Brooklyn was sold out.”Gentrification in Progress
Giant 'Gentrification In Progress' Banner Draped Over Graffiti Mecca(Huff Post)
The Gentrification of Crooklyn
The gentrification of Spike Lee (Lewis, NYDN) He marketed Brooklyn, cashed out and now complains. Before leaving Brooklyn, Lee did more did more than his share when it came to goosing the changes to Fort Greene he now laments. According to the Wall Street Journal, Lee bought a townhouse on Washington Park for $650,000 in 1990, around the time he was soaring to stardom, cranking out films like “Malcolm X” and “Clockers.”
In 1999, he sold the place to a couple (a banker married to an attorney) for about $1 million and moved to the Upper East Side. A decade later, the house was back on the market with a $2.75 million asking price, more than quadruple what Lee paid in 1990. And why not? Fort Greene started sizzling in the 1990s and never stopped, thanks in no small part to the area’s international reputation as a mini-bohemia, home to a colony of talented, ambitious black artists. * Blogfest meets Shillfest, as Spike Lee declares "This is to celebrate Absolut, so we're not going to get into gentrification"(AYR)* Spike Lee's Former Brooklyn Block Vandalized After Rant(WCBSTV) * Late gentrification stories
*Considering Spike Lee’s Contribution to the World of Movie-Director Booze (Slate)
NYC Population Up
Population Growth in New York City Is Reversing Decades-Old Trend, Estimates Show(NYT)
For the third consecutive year, the city last year gained more people than it lost, turning around a course that stretched to the mid-20th century, the Census Bureau said. NYC's population grew a 3rd straight year, to 8.4 million people * Brooklyn's population is up 3.5% over three years: Census(NYDN)
“Top Cities NYC residents come from: 1. Washington D.C., 2. San Francisco, 3. L.A., 4. Chicago, 5. Jersey City, N.J., 6. Hoboken, 7. Newark, 8. Montclair, 9. Teaneck, 10. Fort Lee, N.J., 11. Philadelphia, 12. Fort Lauderdale, FL, 13. Miami, FL, 14. Pompano Beach, FL, 15. Boaca Raton, FL, 16. Hollwood, FL, 17. Boston, 18. Atlanta, 19. Houston, 20. Westport, CT” http://goo.gl/UXIZHc
Sunset Park Gentrification Ignited by Section 8 Cuts
More on Gentrification
How can anyone afford to live in Brooklyn?
ForgetAbouttheRent
Brooklyn’s Median Household Income Is Less Than $45,000(Slate) There are two overlapping refrains
in coverage of the trendiest boroughs of America’s largest city:
“Neighborhood reaches new level of twee luxury” and “Real estate prices
reach new level of absurdity.” Stories falling into those two categories
account for a good chunk of the New York Times, New York magazine, and the New York Observer.
And it’s true that parts of Manhattan can feel like a museum preserved
for tourists or an upscale outdoor shopping mall, while “Brooklyn” has
become a misused byword for moneyed hipster affectation. Yet recently released census data
paints a different portrait. Measured by median income, Manhattan and
(especially) Brooklyn are much poorer than you think. Manhattan’s median
annual household income is $66,739, while Brooklyn’s is a mere $44,850.
Landlords Greed Driving Out Businesses
The Gentrification Train
Few transit topics can inspire the passion of a review of the L train,
which is considered at turns the creative id of a new Brooklyn and a
rumbling monument to gentrification’s curse.
About that NYT gentrification story…(The Brooklyn Politics)
Where are our New (immigrant) New Yorkers coming from?
Graffiti artwork at Long Island City's 5Pointz was whitewashed in preparation for the building's demolition—soon, it will become a $400 million residential and retail development.
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Gentrification
Some
locals are for it, and others are against it. But residents of
Gowanus, Brooklyn, generally agree on one thing: The Whole Foods market
will irrevocably change the neighbo
South Bronx Advocates Tackle Gentrification Fears in Conference(DNAINFO)
NYC’s immigration population soars(NYP)
NYC’s immigration population soars(NYP)
.
Can the New Mayor Stop Higher Rents?
____________________________________________
Gentrification
Some
locals are for it, and others are against it. But residents of
Gowanus, Brooklyn, generally agree on one thing: The Whole Foods market
will irrevocably change the neighbo
South Bronx Advocates Tackle Gentrification Fears in Conference(DNAINFO)
NYC’s immigration population soars(NYP)
NYC’s immigration population soars(NYP)
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More Luxury Development 4 Bklyn
A plan for luxury towers at the old
Domino Sugar refinery in Brooklyn may signal a final goodbye to the
gritty neighborhood some residents once knew.
Bedford-Stuyvesant Always Changing
Greetings from Macon St.” – A picture postcard from 1911 (22 years after MACON MANOR was built), showing the type of large family for whom these homes were designed…
Today
In Effort to Preserve Bedford-Stuyvesant, Some Ask: For Whom?(NYT)Some residents of Bedford-Stuyvesant are challenging a proposed historic district, saying it would impose so many regulatory burdens that the very people who had held the blocks together would be the first to go.
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Hipster Trust Fund Gentrification
More on Gentrification
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Another Co-Op
5 Pointz Officially Set For Demolition(Huff Post)
Brooklyn Gentrification: The Map! (Gothamist)
The gentrification of Brooklyn is oh so very real. And just in case you wanted to see where it was happening, well, Property Shark has a map for you. It looks almost exactly the way you expect it to. What is really interesting in the map (which covers property prices change between 2004 and 2012), however, is just how localized things are. While some neighborhoods are seeing cah-razy growth (Williamsburg, Lefferts Garden, Gowanus, Fort Greene) others are really, really not. Head a bit deeper in and you see some serious declines in places you might expect (poor Cypress Hills) and some you might not (what's up with Fort Hamilton/Bay Ridge?).
Bedford-Stuyvesant Always Changing
Greetings from Macon St.” – A picture postcard from 1911 (22 years after MACON MANOR was built), showing the type of large family for whom these homes were designed…
Today
In Effort to Preserve Bedford-Stuyvesant, Some Ask: For Whom?(NYT)Some residents of Bedford-Stuyvesant are challenging a proposed historic district, saying it would impose so many regulatory burdens that the very people who had held the blocks together would be the first to go.
Victim of success: Brooklyn activist can’t afford nabe she improved(NYP)She’s paying the price for making her Brooklyn neighborhood an
incredibly desirable place to live. Cecilia Maniero Cacace, 76, a
lifelong resident of Carroll Gardens best known for hosting
problem-solving “sit-downs” inside local eateries* UES deaf to plan for blind crosswalk help(NYP)___________________________________________________________________________________
Chinese Move to Harlem
Chinese Moving to East Harlem in a Quiet Shift From Downtown(NYT)
A Lunar New Year celebration in East Harlem, top, held at the Union Settlement Association, is one sign of the area’s growing Chinese presence in the neighborhood. \A robbery string that focused on Chinese residents thrust into violent relief a demographic trend in the last decade.
Latino Williamsburg's Struggle Against Hipsterville(Huff Post)
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The Bronx is No Longer Burning
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Bushwick A Tourist Spot
Come see exciting – er, Bushwick?
(NYP) Forget Times Square and the Empire State Building. For a real New York
experience, tourists should hop on the J, M, Z or L train — to
Bushwick! The city yesterday unveiled a new push to get tourists to
visit “outer-borough destinations,”Greenpoint Joins Bushwick With 20 Percent Rent Leap As Williamsburg Drops(DNAINFO)
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Gentification
Brooklyn hipsters vs. Brooklyn Puerto Ricans?(NY Talking)
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Times Jumps Gun of Willets Clear Out
The End of Willets Point (NYT) An earlier version of this article and its accompanying slide show
misstated how the city has acquired land in Willets Point. It could
invoke eminent domain. It has not done so yet.
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Times Jumps Gun of Willets Clear Out
Bedford-Stuyvesant white residents gentrifying even more striking than in Harlem
Striking Change in Bedford-Stuyvesant as the White Population Soars The neighborhood is now barely 60 percent black — down from 75 percent a decade ago. In one section, blacks have become a minority for the first time in 50 years.
Sunset Park Brooklyn Now the Largest Asian Community in the City
Chinese population in Manhattan's Chinatown has dropped 17 percent in a decade, making it the city's third-largest Chinese neighborhood behind Sunset Park in Brooklyn and Flushing in Queens, the Daily News says:
About that NYT gentrification story…(The Brooklyn Politics)
Gentrificating Crown Heights
Crown Heights Deal Puts Blogger to Test(WSJ) Brooklyn entrepreneur Jonathan Butler specializes on chronicling the ins and outs of the borough's residential and commercial real-estate market on his blog Brownstoner.com. Now Mr. Butler is trying his hand at a large commercial real-estate project of his own in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Plans to renovate the buildings and make them into mixed-use office space to house a mix of small businesses like Internet start-ups, food makers ...
--"Rents Rising Faster in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens Than Williamsburg," by DNAinfo's Rachel Holliday Smith: “Renters looking to Prospect-Lefferts Gardens for a relatively affordable apartment in north Brooklyn should hurry. Rents in the family-friendly area east of Prospect Park rose more in the last month than any other neighborhood included in a new Brooklyn real estate report. Combining studios, one-bedrooms and two-bedrooms, average rents in Prospect-Lefferts increased from $1,751 to $1,864 per month between May and June of this year, a 6.43 percent increase according to a report by MNS Real Estate… The report did not include all of Brooklyn, instead focusing on the northern neighborhoods from Park Slope to Greenpoint. Despite the upward trend in the past month, Prospect-Lefferts is still in many ways cheaper than its neighbors.” http://dnain.fo/1kb3uYp
Gentrification of Brooklyn Juries
Brooklyn ‘gentrification’ is changing juries who decide cases(NYP)
Brooklyn’s courthouses are being rocked by the “Williamsburg Effect.” The influx of well-off and educated white people to trendy neighborhoods such as Williamsburg is rapidly “gentrifying’’ the borough’s jury pool...When Brooklyn juries gentrify, defendants lose(NYP)
What About the Govt Funded Gentrification Ratner Created?
Does Giving Govt $ Ratner Create Homelessness? Push Out Business Creating Unemployment . . . People on Welfare?
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — The severe housing crunch in New York City is causing rent to skyrocket, but on Saturday protesters took to the streets in Brooklyn in an attempt to push back.
Hundreds of tenants joined forces with the Crown Heights Tenant Union to call for strengthened tenant protections in order to end displacement and what they call systematic rent overcharges, CBS 2 reported.
“Salaries have not gone up. Prices for everything else have gone up and we need our rents to remain the same. We have no problem with gentrification because we love the beautification of the neighborhood, but we also have the right to remain in our apartments,” one woman said. The tenant union is calling on BCB Capital Management, Pinnacle Realty and others to comply with their demands through a legally binding agreement.* Pressured to Move, Low-Income Tenants Resist Buyout The Brooklyn Bureau* Expensive Affordable Housing Riveting piece by@jbarro on #NYC's extraordinarily expensive affordable housing program * Foreclosure Nearly 30,000 city homeowners could lose home to foreclosure.
What About the Govt Funded Gentrification Ratner Created?
Does Giving Govt $ Ratner Create Homelessness? Push Out Business Creating Unemployment . . . People on Welfare?
Brooklyn Tenants Protest, Demand More Protections To End Displacement
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — The severe housing crunch in New York City is causing rent to skyrocket, but on Saturday protesters took to the streets in Brooklyn in an attempt to push back.
Hundreds of tenants joined forces with the Crown Heights Tenant Union to call for strengthened tenant protections in order to end displacement and what they call systematic rent overcharges, CBS 2 reported.
“Salaries have not gone up. Prices for everything else have gone up and we need our rents to remain the same. We have no problem with gentrification because we love the beautification of the neighborhood, but we also have the right to remain in our apartments,” one woman said. The tenant union is calling on BCB Capital Management, Pinnacle Realty and others to comply with their demands through a legally binding agreement.* Pressured to Move, Low-Income Tenants Resist Buyout The Brooklyn Bureau* Expensive Affordable Housing Riveting piece by
From the Borough of Churchs to the Borough of Condos
Developers Closing Down Black and Hispanic Churches and Nobody Notices
--“Starbucks to Open First Crown Heights Location This Fall,” by DNAinfo’s Rachel Holliday Smith: “The coffee franchise will open its first Crown Heights location on the northeast corner of Franklin Avenue and Eastern Parkway this fall, the company said, snatching up ground-floor space at 341 Eastern Parkway, the newly built, eight-story residential building set to begin leasing in July. … The new shop will have a fair amount of competition, including from the Franklin Avenue spots The Breukelen Coffee House, The Pulp and The Bean and Little Zelda, all located within three blocks of the planned Starbucks site.” http://goo.gl/XAp3CF
NAMED FOR BROOKYLN: Is Brooklyn the new Emma? Maybe, but not in NYC,” by AP’s Michael R. Sisak: “Over the past two decades, Brooklyn as a name for girls has surged from No. 912 to the top 30 in each of the last three years. Some credit soccer star David Beckham and his wife, Victoria, for naming their son Brooklyn. Some cite model and actress Brooklyn Decker. Others point to ‘Girls’ and the many other TV shows and movies that tap into the borough's gritty, cool vibe. …
“Of the 41 states where Brooklyn is now the most popular girl's name beginning with B, New York is not among them. Real Brooklynites say naming your child Brooklyn is strictly for out-of towners.”
--“When Brooklyn juries gentrify, defendants lose,” by Post’s Josh Saul: “Brooklyn’s courthouses are being rocked by the ‘Williamsburg Effect.’ The influx of well-off and educated white people to trendy neighborhoods such as Williamsburg is rapidly ‘gentrifying’ the borough’s jury pool — and transforming verdicts, lawyers and judges told The Post. It’s good news for prosecutors in criminal cases — and bad news for plaintiffs in civil lawsuits …
“‘The jurors are becoming more like Manhattan — which is not good for defendants,’ noted veteran defense lawyer Julie Clark. ‘They are much more trusting of police,’ Clark said of the jurors. ‘I’m not sure people from the University of Vermont would believe that a police officer would [plant] a gun.’” http://goo.gl/RCG99C
But recent economic trends have been doing what Moses could
not do. The 2010 Census showed a 700% increase over the previous decade
(astounding even in these gentrifying times) in the number of whites moving
into Bedford-Stuyvesant. One thing that those of us who feel this way about
Bed-Stuy have agreed upon of late is this: The gentrification war waged by
realtors and their silent backers in politics and at the banks is over. The
natives have lost. It is right and proper to bemoan the death of a place that
once loomed so large in our minds. For we in Bed-Stuy survived through a
northern version of the pre-civil rights era, when murders or rapes didn't
warrant coverage in the local newspapers unless a white person was the victim. And
so, you see, this gentrification scenario is provoking a righteous anger,
having to do with the thousands of black longtime tenants in Bed-Stuy who have
been seeing their rents rising beyond their capacity to pay; and, worst of all,
they are continually being hit with schemes of greedy new landlords using any
means to get them out of the buildings. Richard Flateau, raised in Bed-Stuy and
now the owner of Flateau Realty Corporation, notes that many of the renters in
the neighborhood live in brownstone houses with fewer than six units, which
means they don't have rent stabilization protections. What's more, says
Flateau, who is also is chair of the Economic Development Committee of
Community Board 3 that covers Bed-Stuy, such renters are especially in trouble
when such a property changes hands.
"Any remaining dese, dose and dem bums nostalgia aside, Brooklyn has always been, at heart, a place to escape from or be trapped in — defined by its nearness to, and distance from, the city, which in the outer boroughs still means Manhattan. But now, Brooklyn has become a potent urban brand — quite the Madison Avenue word, that — in its own right, with just the right mix of new money and remaining grit to cross over. Mayor de Blasio, who proudly reps Park Slope, aims to cap Kings County’s upgrade from place to idea by having the borough’s Barclays Center host the 2016 Democratic convention. There are some ironies here... Maybe Brooklyn is the perfect place for de Blasio to wave his flag after all."
What Watch leased 2,500 square feet on North Sixth Street for about $150 per square foot, more than double what some spots in the neighborhood were fetching last year.
New York Magazine
Chinatown’s new immigrants: Why easternmost Canal St. is feeling more and more like Brooklyn http://grb.st/1l0EKFv pic.twitter.com/2YB72NfTmO
Hey Manhattan Who is A Bum Now
“The competition is very tough out there,” said Douglas Patrick, a principal atHeatherwood, who sat on the “Brooklyn Unveiled” panel with a number of developers with up-and-coming residential projects across the borough. “Invest the extra money and you will get the return on your investment.”
Heatherwood developed 568 Union in Williamsburg, which features a concierge, fitness center, roof terrace, parking and outdoor pool, much like the other projects discussed. Panelists noted that Brooklyn is no longer just a value play for those moving into the neighborhood. The borough has some of the best schools in the city and more people working in Manhattan are living in Brooklyn, meaning that neighborhoods with the best access to transportation (and waterfront access) have been among the quickest to evolve.
Saying so long to the Empire State's high taxes, stagnant economy and problematic schools isn't just for rich white folks anymore
Gentrification
--"Rents Rising Faster in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens Than Williamsburg," by DNAinfo's Rachel Holliday Smith: “Renters looking to Prospect-Lefferts Gardens for a relatively affordable apartment in north Brooklyn should hurry. Rents in the family-friendly area east of Prospect Park rose more in the last month than any other neighborhood included in a new Brooklyn real estate report. Combining studios, one-bedrooms and two-bedrooms, average rents in Prospect-Lefferts increased from $1,751 to $1,864 per month between May and June of this year, a 6.43 percent increase according to a report by MNS Real Estate… The report did not include all of Brooklyn, instead focusing on the northern neighborhoods from Park Slope to Greenpoint. Despite the upward trend in the past month, Prospect-Lefferts is still in many ways cheaper than its neighbors.” http://dnain.fo/1kb3uYp
Gentrification of Brooklyn Juries
Brooklyn’s courthouses are being rocked by the “Williamsburg Effect.” The influx of well-off and educated white people to trendy neighborhoods such as Williamsburg is rapidly “gentrifying’’ the borough’s jury pool...When Brooklyn juries gentrify, defendants lose(NYP)
What About the Govt Funded Gentrification Ratner Created?
Does Giving Govt $ Ratner Create Homelessness? Push Out Business Creating Unemployment . . . People on Welfare?
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — The severe housing crunch in New York City is causing rent to skyrocket, but on Saturday protesters took to the streets in Brooklyn in an attempt to push back.
Hundreds of tenants joined forces with the Crown Heights Tenant Union to call for strengthened tenant protections in order to end displacement and what they call systematic rent overcharges, CBS 2 reported.
“Salaries have not gone up. Prices for everything else have gone up and we need our rents to remain the same. We have no problem with gentrification because we love the beautification of the neighborhood, but we also have the right to remain in our apartments,” one woman said. The tenant union is calling on BCB Capital Management, Pinnacle Realty and others to comply with their demands through a legally binding agreement.* Pressured to Move, Low-Income Tenants Resist Buyout The Brooklyn Bureau* Expensive Affordable Housing Riveting piece by@jbarro on #NYC's extraordinarily expensive affordable housing program * Foreclosure Nearly 30,000 city homeowners could lose home to foreclosure.
What About the Govt Funded Gentrification Ratner Created?
Does Giving Govt $ Ratner Create Homelessness? Push Out Business Creating Unemployment . . . People on Welfare?
Brooklyn Tenants Protest, Demand More Protections To End Displacement
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — The severe housing crunch in New York City is causing rent to skyrocket, but on Saturday protesters took to the streets in Brooklyn in an attempt to push back.
Hundreds of tenants joined forces with the Crown Heights Tenant Union to call for strengthened tenant protections in order to end displacement and what they call systematic rent overcharges, CBS 2 reported.
“Salaries have not gone up. Prices for everything else have gone up and we need our rents to remain the same. We have no problem with gentrification because we love the beautification of the neighborhood, but we also have the right to remain in our apartments,” one woman said. The tenant union is calling on BCB Capital Management, Pinnacle Realty and others to comply with their demands through a legally binding agreement.* Pressured to Move, Low-Income Tenants Resist Buyout The Brooklyn Bureau* Expensive Affordable Housing Riveting piece by
From the Borough of Churchs to the Borough of Condos
Developers Closing Down Black and Hispanic Churches and Nobody Notices
--“Starbucks to Open First Crown Heights Location This Fall,” by DNAinfo’s Rachel Holliday Smith: “The coffee franchise will open its first Crown Heights location on the northeast corner of Franklin Avenue and Eastern Parkway this fall, the company said, snatching up ground-floor space at 341 Eastern Parkway, the newly built, eight-story residential building set to begin leasing in July. … The new shop will have a fair amount of competition, including from the Franklin Avenue spots The Breukelen Coffee House, The Pulp and The Bean and Little Zelda, all located within three blocks of the planned Starbucks site.” http://goo.gl/XAp3CF
NAMED FOR BROOKYLN: Is Brooklyn the new Emma? Maybe, but not in NYC,” by AP’s Michael R. Sisak: “Over the past two decades, Brooklyn as a name for girls has surged from No. 912 to the top 30 in each of the last three years. Some credit soccer star David Beckham and his wife, Victoria, for naming their son Brooklyn. Some cite model and actress Brooklyn Decker. Others point to ‘Girls’ and the many other TV shows and movies that tap into the borough's gritty, cool vibe. …
“Of the 41 states where Brooklyn is now the most popular girl's name beginning with B, New York is not among them. Real Brooklynites say naming your child Brooklyn is strictly for out-of towners.”
--“When Brooklyn juries gentrify, defendants lose,” by Post’s Josh Saul: “Brooklyn’s courthouses are being rocked by the ‘Williamsburg Effect.’ The influx of well-off and educated white people to trendy neighborhoods such as Williamsburg is rapidly ‘gentrifying’ the borough’s jury pool — and transforming verdicts, lawyers and judges told The Post. It’s good news for prosecutors in criminal cases — and bad news for plaintiffs in civil lawsuits …
“‘The jurors are becoming more like Manhattan — which is not good for defendants,’ noted veteran defense lawyer Julie Clark. ‘They are much more trusting of police,’ Clark said of the jurors. ‘I’m not sure people from the University of Vermont would believe that a police officer would [plant] a gun.’” http://goo.gl/RCG99C
Our Harry Siegel's column:(NYDN)
"Any remaining dese, dose and dem bums nostalgia aside, Brooklyn has always been, at heart, a place to escape from or be trapped in — defined by its nearness to, and distance from, the city, which in the outer boroughs still means Manhattan. But now, Brooklyn has become a potent urban brand — quite the Madison Avenue word, that — in its own right, with just the right mix of new money and remaining grit to cross over. Mayor de Blasio, who proudly reps Park Slope, aims to cap Kings County’s upgrade from place to idea by having the borough’s Barclays Center host the 2016 Democratic convention. There are some ironies here... Maybe Brooklyn is the perfect place for de Blasio to wave his flag after all."
What Watch leased 2,500 square feet on North Sixth Street for about $150 per square foot, more than double what some spots in the neighborhood were fetching last year.
Chinatown’s new immigrants: Why easternmost Canal St. is feeling more and more like Brooklyn http://grb.st/1l0EKFv pic.twitter.com/2YB72NfTmO
Hey Manhattan Who is A Bum Now
BK real estate "feels like 2005 a little bit”; new hotels TK on Schermerhorn & nr BAM "Brooklyn" surges as baby name. The residential developers offered their views and advice on the future of Brooklyn’s commercial real estate landscape at theBrooklyn Academy of Music in Brooklyn, stressing the importance of a careful plan and high-end amenity package in commanding higher pricing and rents.
“The competition is very tough out there,” said Douglas Patrick, a principal atHeatherwood, who sat on the “Brooklyn Unveiled” panel with a number of developers with up-and-coming residential projects across the borough. “Invest the extra money and you will get the return on your investment.”
Heatherwood developed 568 Union in Williamsburg, which features a concierge, fitness center, roof terrace, parking and outdoor pool, much like the other projects discussed. Panelists noted that Brooklyn is no longer just a value play for those moving into the neighborhood. The borough has some of the best schools in the city and more people working in Manhattan are living in Brooklyn, meaning that neighborhoods with the best access to transportation (and waterfront access) have been among the quickest to evolve.
Former Parks Commissioner Henry Stern Fights NYU Park Expansion
The city should fight to preserve precious Manhattan
Saying so long to the Empire State's high taxes, stagnant economy and problematic schools isn't just for rich white folks anymore
As the Times reports, about 17 percent of the African-Americans who headed to Atlanta and other southern destinations over the last decade came from New York -- the most of any state. Georgia on my mind(NYP)
Gentrification
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