Results tagged “housingpreservation”

The Gowanus Canal Conservancy held a public meeting in Carroll Gardens this week to unveil renderings for a park and esplanade that would run along the Gowanus canal. The project’s dubbed Sponge Park because planners hope it will help absorb some of the raw sewage that currently contaminates the canal during heavy rainfall. (Brownstoner believes oily runoff from the nearby Gowanus Expressway is another big problem.) The idea is that when the canal is finally cleaned up sometime after 2020, Sponge Park will help keep it clean, or at least clean-ish.

The Department of Buildings commissioner admitted her agency knew a Harlem building was in danger of collapse but somehow it got lost in the shuffle and collapsed on its own. On Tuesday, bricks fell off 102 East 124th Street, a vacant building, and a few hours later, the roof and top floor collapsed. Its neighboring building was compromised and authorities moved to demolish it, asking the MTA to suspend all train activity near by in fear the trains' vibrations would cause more problems.

Some good news in the ongoing saga to save 1520 Sedgwick, better known as the Birthplace of Hip Hop. Today Senator Schumer, who has been lobbying on behalf of the tenants to preserve the building's affordability, announced that "the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development rejected the proposed sale to developer Mark Karasick because current rents could not be sustained if the sale had gone through." The move doesn't insure that the building’s owner won't still opt out of the Mitchell-Lama program, however.

Earlier in the week, the department of Housing Preservation and Development [HPD] revealed renderings for a proposed housing development and park on 5.8 acres of heavily polluted land by the toxic Gowanus canal. Located on the site of a former manufactured gas plant, the city has owned the land, which stretches from Smith Street to the canal, for two decades. National Grid, who took over the site from KeySpan Energy, would need at least two years to decontaminate the area, called Public Place.

The Department of Housing Preservation and Development has compiled a list of the city's 200 most poorly maintained buildings and has told the owners they must be repaired in 4 months. Or else, the NY Times reports, the city will be able to overhaul them and force the owners to pay. On November 11, a Local Law No. 29, the Alternative Enforcement Program, went into affect to help the HPD to "enforce the correction of...

With the buzz about the 248 McKibbin Street MySpace page organizing comments about its bedbug infestation, we thought it would be a good time to visit the Bedbug City Map. The map relies on reported bedbug incidents, which are mapped by the intensity of the infestation as well - and 248 McKibbin is at the red "Help!" level.

Did you hear about the new arts and music venue opening in Fort Greene? Well, chances are that all of the blood, sweat, tears and money (over $1M) that went into it may have been for nothing. Amber Art and Music Space was being built out of an old liquor store at Fulton Street and Ashland Place by three friends who are now being told they can no longer develop the space.

Yesterday, East Harlem residents protested "greedy landlords" to raise concerns about gentrification. One resident, Otoniel Santiago, told amNew York that his $1,100 rent for his family's two-bedroom has zoomed up to $3,000 because of extra charges his landlord has added, "They said I had to pay or they would take legal action. I think they want us to get tired and move out, then they will bring in people who will pay $1,700 a month."

It's been three months since the tragic fire in a Bronx family home that claimed the lives of one adult and nine children. Mamadou Soumare, who lost his wife and four children in the blaze, has filed a notice of claim, with the FDNY, Department of Buildings, Department of Housing Preservation and even his cousin, Moussa Magassa, who owned the building, as possible defendants.

Two separate initiatives were highlighted yesterday: one to crack down on New York slumlords and another to cut property taxes paid by New York property owners. The City Council passed a bill called the Safe Housing Act that targets landlords with multiple building code violations. It requires the Dept. of Housing Preservation and Development to target 200 buildings annually with repeated code violations and in need of emergency repairs and force their owners to make necessary corrections. If the landlord fails to do so in a timely manner, the city will have the work done itself, and then bill the building's owner. Council Speaker Christine Quinn was vehment in calling out landlords whose buildings are not up to code, saying "“I hope the message this bill sends is that if you’re a slumlord, your days are numbered. If you’re a slumlord, you’d better get your building up to code. If you don’t, we’re going to go out there and bring your building to code for you, and we’re going to charge you for it.” This seems like a good initiative. We just hope the city isn't as lax at bill collecting from deadbeat landlords as it is with deadbeat water customers, because then it sounds like taxpayers will just be paying for renovating slumlords' properties.

The Brig was built in the early 1940s and served as a naval prison. After the closing of the Brooklyn Navy Yard in 1966, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service used the Brig as a detention center until 1984 when, faced with severe overcrowding in its prisons, New York City sought ownership of the prison. The Brig served as a minimum security prison until it was closed in December, 1994. The last occupants of the Brig were volunteer workers involved in the post-September 11th cleanup effort.

New York City introduced a proposal to develop the property to provide affordable housing several years ago. The history above was excerpted from a city press release almost three years old announcing the project. The New York Times reports this week, though, that developers will be turning the former penal facility into townhouses, co-op apartments, and rental apartments for a mixed-income population.

The Department of Housing Preservation and Development announced that a partnership between the Dunn Development Corporation and L&M Equity Participants Ltd., two development companies specializing in low-priced housing, would redevelop the 103,000-square-foot site between Flushing and Park Avenues with 434 housing units.

Gothamist noted this project back in July 2004 when it was first introduced. This particular section of Brooklyn has a history with prisons dating back to the American Revolution. Until the British left New York in 1783, there was a system of prison ships and barges anchored in the bay that is now surrounded by the Navy Yard. Approximately 11,000 Americans died on these ships from disease and starvation during the war. There is a memorial in Fort Greene Park nearby called The Prison Ships Martyrs Monument, dedicated to the prisoners whose bones continued to wash ashore in Brooklyn for years afterward.

This morning, the NY Times takes a look at the Mayor's $7.5 billion affordable housing plan four years since he announced it and one year since he expanded it to 165,000 units of low- to moderate-cost housing. About one third of the projected units, or 55,000, have been financed to date, and 41,366 have been completed.

The cold wave continues! In response to the cold, which is expected to last several more days, the city has opened nine temporary warming centers and the Department of Homeless Services has doubled their outreach to the homeless in each of the boroughs. In addition the DHS has expanded their Cold Weather Emergency Procedure to operate 24 hours a day while temperatures remain below freezing.

Yay! It's Daylight Saving Time, which means at 2AM this morning, it magically went back to being 1AM. Well, it's "Yay!" for the extra hour of sleep you get, but then it's "Argh!" when you think of how dark it'll be at 5-5:30PM. The U.S. Naval Observatory explains why we fall back or spring forward, and reminds us that next year, we'll be falling back during the first Sunday of November. (The date has been changed because of Halloween and it being dark during trick-or-treating.)

- "People searching for bedbugs do not know to look along the seams of mattresses, under box springs, behind headboards and picture frames, and even inside alarm clocks and telephones"There are many more, but we were intrigued by the case of Peter Young, whose Ludlow Street apartment was infested. Young slept on an inflatable bed and then a metal cot while the landlord tried to get rid of the bugs to no avail. So Young did what any self-respecting, sick-of-bedbugs tenants would do: He stopped paying rent. A judge ruled in Young's favor, saying, "In this case, the bedbugs did not constitute mere annoyance, but constituted an intolerable condition, notwithstanding the landlord’s efforts to exterminate them," and Young got a rent abatement. Young, who now lives in Brooklyn, told the Times and sleeps on a futon, “Psychologically, I’m afraid of beds. I feel traumatized.”

Andrew Friedman is co-director of Make the Road by Walking, a Brooklyn-based community-based organization founded in 1997 on the belief that the center of leadership must be within the community. Since then, the organization has grown dramatically and now includes over 600 members, a member-elected board composed of low-income community residents, and a staff of twelve. Over the past 5 years, MRBW has achieved many improvements to the lives of Bushwick residents. They pushed New York City to conform to federal law and provide translation services to non-English speakers in food stamp, welfare, and Medicaid offices, and got dozens of neighborhood employers to pay more than $100,000 in illegally withheld wages to garment workers.

In 1979 a collective of artists occupied a vacant city- owned building on Delancey Street and mounted an exhibition. The police padlocked the show but after community and media support of the artists the city offered use of a building at 156 Rivington Street as a compromise.

- Some Greenwich Village residents are worried that plans for 36-40 Gansevoort Street will mean sleepless nights. Fashion brand Theory (Angelina Jolie wears it!) is converting a five-story building into offices, complete with a rooftop garden, which conjured up Hotel Gansevoort nightmares for people living on Horatio Street. Theory has met with residents and Theory's president Andrew Rosen told the Times, "We're not a bar. We're a day business. Our only objective is to be a credible, positive influence in the community. We intend to be there for a long time, so our commitment to the neighborhood is significant." Or form a group of fashionistas who really want the Theory store in the neighborhood.

As World Cup fever slowly infects its way across the five boroughs (we can't be the only ones who've found ourselves standing for hours in bodegas staring at soccer matches when we've already bought the beer we came for) the city has announced its own new competition, and we're pretty pumped for it, too! Using one of the few remaining large vacant properties in the city's portfolio, the Bloomberg administration and an architects' group are announcing today "a competition to pick an architect and a developer to build an apartment complex on vacant city-owned land in the South Bronx." (specifically on Brook Avenue and East 156th)

The criteria to be used by the jury of architects, developers and city officials that will select the winning plan will put a premium on design quality, affordability and factors like energy efficiency and the use of renewable resources. Then the city will give the winning team the site, a 40,000-square-foot former railyard, for about a dollar a lot for the two lots involved.

Continue reading "A Development Competition Grows in the Bronx"

Rent stabilized tenants are bracing themselves for tonight's Rent Guidelines Board meeting where the board will most likely vote for a hike. Expect things to get incredibly noisy tonight! Actually, we imagine the basement of Cooper Union might implode from the feelings of self-pity, anger, and entitlement from both sides. The rent increases owners are asking for is 8%, because of higher gas prices and real estate taxes. And not only that, owners may also ask that rates remain only for one year leases - no more two year leases the tenants can lock into. Newsday says that 9,200 apartments left rent stabilization last year, the biggest number ever. The commissioner of Housing Preservation and Development Shaun Donovan added that though rent stabilization is one important part of affordable housing, "it's not as effectively targeted or as affordable as other units that we're doing in the mayor's plan and a lot of units that we're trying to preserve because it's not targeted to the people who need it the most, and the rents aren't set in any way that aligns to the income levels of the people who are living there." Which can be a valid argument, because there are some people who live in rent-stabilized apartments but don't really need them. At the same time, the rental market overall is crazy, and who can blame people for get their best deal?

This past February Mayor Bloomberg announced an expansion of the city's five-year housing plan to a ten-year plan that will create and preserve 165,000 units of affordable housing by the end of 2013. The two lead agencies in the housing initiative are the Housing Development Corporation (HDC) and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD). Recently, Gothamist had the opportunity to take a walking tour of the neighborhood around Marcus Garvey Park led by HDC's Aaron Donovan, who also publishes Starts and Fits. In addition to showing us HDC buildings, Aaron also pointed out several notable market-rate developments in the neighborhood as well as new commercial buildings. (Disclosure: Gothamist lives in an HDC-financed building that was mentioned on the tour.)

The City's Department of Housing Preservation and Development yesterday released their triennial report on New York City Housing and Vacancies. Most of the information that comes across in an initial looksie seems pretty common sense. The gist? While the household income of average New Yorkers has fallen, the price of living in the city has done anything but.

Now that the monsoon rains have dissipated, our shoes dried and the skies cleared, the autumn chill seems to be more apparent. Just last night, Gothamist was awakened by a strange but familiar noise – the gentle clang of the year’s first radiator heat.

Julie Miles, Housing Here and Now

Call 311 if there are problems, and here's more information about what to do with your building's heat from the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. The Red Cross suggests that if your home loses heat, seal the doors and windows and keep everyone in the same room; plus, they recommend to dress in layers and wear boots, gloves and a hat. Gothamist heartily agrees and says your fears of looking like a shapeless blob with later hat-head are small next to the possibility of frostbite.

Information from the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. And if you're in an illegal sublet or your landlord is of the slumlord variety, you can look into buying space heaters or blankets at Bed Bath & Beyond. And see what Gothamist Weather says about the weather.

Jane, Astora