A study released yesterday showed that the elevator in the Williamsburg building where 5-year-old Jacob Neuman died last month had failed 17 of its previous 21 Housing Authority inspections. That elevator was also supposed to be renovated back in 2004, but it was put off twice due to spending cutbacks. The renovation would have provided the elevator with a door restrictor that doesn't allow doors to be opened while the elevator is in between floors,......

Yesterday, the New School held a forum to discuss how New York City will save its public housing. The New York City Housing Authority, which is the city's primary sources of affordable housing to 400,000 residents, has an annual shortfall of $225 million. The Daily News reports that Sean Moss, the Regional Director for the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the NY/NJ region, offered a suggestion that "prompted shocked murmurs." His idea: Sell......

Another noose was found Thursday afternoon - and this time, it was outside the Church Street Post Office. Um, WTF is going on? The noose was found on a lamppost, and while it was visible at street level, postal employees working on the second floor noticed it. Building management took it down. According to Newsday, there is scaffolding outside the building at 90 Church Street that "leads to the light pole, but the scaffolding is......

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn gave a speech at an Association for a Better New York event yesterday that seemed to be a preview into Quinn's 2009 mayoral campaign. According to CityRoom, the speech "seemed to be steered toward showing Ms. Quinn to be a responsible, knowledgeable fiscal heavyweight who would be an effective watchdog of New York City’s financial health." Quinn presented five ideas, including stronger oversight of independent agencies like the NYC Transit......

"Hard Times in the Projects," an in-depth review of New York City's publicly subsidized housing program, reveals how living conditions have declined over the past few decades. Federal legislators have reduced funds while operating costs have soared. As a consequence, the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) struggles to maintain its buildings, collect the trash, or respond to service calls. Residents have experienced rent hikes and service cuts, and face the possible closure of senior......

I'm writing on behalf of a special friend I met who is wanting to become a photographer in NYC. Well I have worked with her much and have landed her a few jobs, but how in the heck do you find a decent place to live on a "starving artist budget?" What if any links, resources, and/or advice would you be willing to share to help us find some low budget housing that is safe......

Sometimes people just don't like dogs, and one of those people is Jeanne Farley. Farley is suing her apartment's management company to, as she tells the Daily News, "get rid of the dogs and play by the rules." Sixty-four year old Farley has a fear of dogs (cynophobia) points out that the rules at Penn South does have a ban on dogs and her lease says "no animals of any kind" (!!) are not allowed.......

City Councilman Eric Gioia will be demanding that the NYC Housing Authority explain why over 200 registered sex offenders are living in public housing. NYCHA policy - and federal law - prohibits sex offenders from residing in Post puts it, "they are filled with children and other vulnerable targets and in the past were havens for criminals." And the Daily News notes that this past week, a registered offender attacked a woman at the Ravenswood......

The Staten Island Advance had an interesting tale of pet ownership and living in city housing. Patricia Leonardo, a tenant in the Mariners Harbor Houses, complained about roaches in her apartment, only to be evicted for owning two dogs in the apartment. A building manager also accompanied the exterminators, and since the New York City Housing Authority prohibits more than one dog or cat (though many pet owners do have more than one dog or......

City Comptroller William Thompson released a report criticizing the city's housing authority for leaving thousands of city-owned apartment vacant for too long. On average, 2107 apartments were left empty for 40 months while the Housing Authority would renovate the apartments, and Comptroller Thompson pointed out that the city could have made $4 million more in rental income if the apartments were vacant for an average of 32 months. The Housing Authority has 140,000 families......

- Yikes: the City Housing Authority wants to raise the rent on some people in the projects by more than 40%! - Sharpe James shenanigans: the retiring Newark mayor wants to keep control of $80 million or so. - Villager follows up on the squatters from "The Cave" on 8th Street: they each got only $2500 to leave. - Not surprising: Jared Paul Stern got fired from the Post over those extortion allegations. Mildly......

A Bronx woman's 2 year old daughter died in their cold apartment - and the mother is blaming it on the lack of heat. Accoding to the Daily News, Jasmine Morales says that her apartment was so cold that she wrapped her baby Jaylee in "a large, heavy fleece blanket in her bassinet," and now she thinks Jaylee suffocated. Morales says she made numerous complaints, including calling 311 and contacting Bronx borough president Adolfo Carrion's......

Huh. We knew that the main reason that the city switched all 11,000 odd traffic lights and "Walk/Don't Walk" signs was because the LEDs they used were energy efficient. But we didn't realize how much more efficient (90 percent!), nor did we fully realize that it was part of a much larger plan on the part of the City to lead by example in energy efficiency. Not only that, but apparently, according to the grey......

Goddamnit! All this time Gothamist thought that we could get to the mayor by emailing him through the city's website, but clearly, we should have just checked the phone book because the phone number at the Mayor's Upper East Side townhouse is very listed! All the papers are buzzing with how the Mayor mentioned that the niece of a constituent called to complain about her aunt's housing situation. The Daily News wrote about the Housing......

Sure, Curbed covers real estate, but it's high-falutin real estate (see $20 million loft), but Gothamist is here to tell you what real New Yorkers do for apartments: They dress up as their mothers for $170/month public housing. It's sort of like Big Momma's House meets Bosom Buddies, with a twist of Green Card. Authorities busted cross-dressing Michael Jones for impersonating his mother, who died four years ago. Other family members who lived in the......

Gothamist has been following the tempest-in-a-policeman's-coffee-mug story of Justice Laura D. Blackburne since late last week, when it turned out that Justice Blackburne let a drug dealer evade arrest. A detective was waiting to arrest Derek Sterling for a robbery case after Sterling's routine update hearing; Justice Blackburne stated:"I understand that there is a detective on the premises who has some reason to believe that he ought to arrest you...I resent the fact that a......

The design, Reflecting Absence, by Michael Arad and new collaborator, Peter Walker, was selected to be the WTC Memorial. This design incorporate two submerged pools in the space where the towers once stood. Arad, an architect with the City Housing Authority, worked with Walker, a landscape architect who formerly headed the Harvard Landscape Architect Department; the Times has more about both designers. Mayor Bloomberg is especially proud that Arad is a city employee. The......

The Daily News tours the urban apartment zoo of Antoine Yates. the man behind such escapades as "these tiger-sized bite marks are from a dog" and "teaching the NYPD how to get a tiger out of a Harlem apartment." The Housing Authority has successfully evicted Yates from his five bedroom apartment (five?) and gave him time to clear out. The DN reports that it smelled like a rancid pet store. He tells the DN......

If you have ever complained about how tiny your NYC apartment is, think about the poor, poor 400 pound tiger cooped up in a Harlem apartment building. Police removed the 400 Bengal-Siberian tiger, Ming, from the apartment of Antoine Yates yesterday, calling in a police officer who needed to be rappelled down the building, in order to shoot the tiger with a tranquilizer gun. Also found in the apartment: A caiman alligator named Al.......