The Jane Hotel can't seem to keep anyone happy! The neighbors have already led a crusade to get their club shut down, and now a recent paying customer at the hotel has quite a story about his stay there—which he tells on his blog, in a post titled I Smell Dead People. more ›

Sorry, poor elderly, disabled and/or blind legal residents of New York State; the Court of Appeals has ruled that you're still limited to $352 a month in public aid, about half of what lower courts ruled you should get. Of course, since many of you have died since lawyers filed the class action lawsuit in 2004, Tuesday's decision might not matter much. But thousands of poor legal immigrants desperate for public assistance are shattered by the 5-2 ruling, which held that the state had no duty to fill in for a federal program that ended benefits to most disabled legal immigrants in 1996. Since the early '50s, legal NY residents who fell on hard times were entitled to a higher level of aid if they were elderly, blind or disabled, but when D.C. took over the program in the '70s, the state supplemented the benefit to reach the higher level it had set earlier. That's over now. The NY Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance applauded the ruling, saying it could save the state and local governments $100-270 million. But in a strongly worded dissent, two judges wrote that "the majority today has turned its back on the history of New York’s commitment to protect its most fragile and vulnerable populations." more ›

Rent-controlled tenants living in the artist studios above Carnegie Hall received eviction letters last week from the state, but at least one of the six remaining holdouts remains defiant. 96-year-old Editta Sherman has been fighting to stay in her $530/month rent-controlled, 800 square foot studio apartment ever since the concert hall announced its expansion/renovation plans last year. The Carnegie Corporation has offered to relocate the remaining tenants "to equivalent or superior apartments in the neighborhood, paying any differential in rent for the remainder of their lives," but Sherman tells the Post, "They'll have to drag me out. They'll have to use their bare hands." Unless, of course, the corporation can come up with the $10 million figure she floated in October as the price of her evacuation. more ›