Vaccine extortion mandates continue for city workers but ends for private sector workers a week before Election Day

 

NY Daily News

The city’s coronavirus vaccine mandates for private sector workers and student athletes are ending, but the inoculation requirement for municipal workers will remain — at least for the time being.

Mayor Adams announced the rollback Tuesday at a City Hall press conference, stressing the need for New Yorkers to get their COVID booster shots.

Implemented by former Mayor Bill de Blasio, the private sector and student mandates have been in effect since late last year.

The workforce rule, which was the first of its kind in the country when rolled out by de Blasio in December, required that all private sector employees in the city be fully vaccinated against COVID-19. That mandate will sunset on Nov. 1.

The second policy, which mandated high school students be vaccinated to engage in sports and other extracurricular activities, ended Tuesday.

Adams attempted to temper his announcement with another message: that New Yorkers should get new booster shots aimed at protecting against highly transmissible COVID variants. To reinforce that, he got his second booster shot from the city’s Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan in front of a roomful of reporters.

“It is time to move on to the next level of fortifying our city,” Adams said. “It’s imperative to send the right message and lead by example as I’m doing today by getting my booster shot.”

Adams framed the rescinding of the mandates as providing more “flexibility” to parents and businesses regarding vaccines.

He noted that his shot Tuesday is just the first step in a new citywide digital and print vaccination campaign to encourage booster shots.

But even as Adams and Vasan announced the new campaign and the end of the two mandates, they struggled to explain the rationale behind enacting the one rollback while continuing to keep in place the mandate that city employees must be vaccinated — a contentious rule that led to workers being fired, lawsuits and political protests.

“We’re in a steady phase of pivot and shift,” the mayor said when asked if he plans to peel back the mandate on city workers. “We do things. We roll things out slowly. Right now, that is not on the radar for us.”

When asked how he can justify his decision, Adams said: “I don’t think anything dealing with COVID makes sense, and there’s no logical pathway of [what] one can do  You make the decisions based on how to keep our city safe, how to keep our employees operating.”

Vasan responded that it’s important to not view “any of these decisions in isolation.”

“They’re all connected,” he said, referring to the city’s COVID policies. “We’re looking at all of our policies and thinking about a glide path towards normal, whatever the new normal looks like.”

Keeping the city worker vaccine extortion mandate, which looks like it's indefinite, is brazen discrimination and these two assholes are blatantly telling the public not to question it because they are not smart enough to comprehend while doing the worst gaslighting about justifying this policy that has done major damage to city services. And they did this hours after President Biden said the pandemic was over. When will the press finally question why this farcical unscientific mandate is allowed to continue and who is benefiting off it?

 

Community board profiling

NY Post 

Queens Borough President Donovan Richards is pushing a quota-like selection system for the borough’s 14 community boards in a controversial bid at gaining more diversity on the panels, which weigh in on virtually all local projects, The Post has learned.

Richards appoints half the members to the advisory boards and local council members the other half. The boards often wield influence on key land use issues as well as on locating bars and restaurants in neighborhoods and sidewalk cafe permits.

A source forwarded to The Post a recent letter that Richards sent to council members recommending new appointments based on his affirmative action plan that takes into account the current composition of the boards with regards to race, age and sexual identity as well as census data.

For Community Board 9 covering Kew Gardens, Richmond Hill, Ozone Park and Woodhaven, for example, Richards said council members appointments should be “between the ages of 16-45, 56-65, of Asian, Black and Latino/x background and female/gender non-conforming.”

The CB 9 district has a large Hispanic population and a growing south Asian and central Asian population. But Latinos, who make up 40 percent of the population, accounted for only 16 percent of the 47 community board members.

Queens Councilman Robert Holden, who makes selections to CB5, blasted the quota-type system.

“We should appoint people who are most committed to their neighborhoods and who are the best candidates. You don’t look at race, ethnicity or age,” said Holden, who served on CB 5 for 30 years before being elected to office.

He expressed concern that racial and ethnic preferences, while well-intended, could lead to accusations of discrimination.

“You don’t want to be charged with racism or ageism,” Holden said.

For CB6, which takes in Forest Hills and Rego Park, Richards recommends selecting new board members who are ages 16 to 35, “of Asian ethnic background based on the latest census data” as well as women.

The neighborhoods have a growing population of Bukharan Jews from central Asian countries, particularly Uzbekistan, as well as Chinese immigrants, who combined make up about a third of the population. But only five board members of Asian descent, or 13 percent, served on the board.

The borough president also recommended younger and Asian and Latino appointees in CB5 that covers Ridgewood, Glendale, Middle Village and Maspeth.

Board of Ed vaccination retribution

NY Post 

They are unvaccinated and shunned.

New York City educators granted medical or religious exemptions from the required COVID-19 vaccination were mandated to report to school buildings Monday where some said they were treated like pariahs.

The teachers and other staffers who showed up at a building on Ocean Avenue in Flatbush were met with hostility from vaccinated DOE workers already at the site. The unjabbed were directed to one stairwell — forbidden to walk down the first-floor corridor where the vaccinated staff work, and forbidden from using their restroom.

Upstairs, those with exemptions made do with only a single toilet that flushed irregularly, or tiny children’s toilets, staffers told The Post. The kiddie commodes were replaced Wednesday night after they complained.

“The whole thing just reeks of discrimination and segregation. I never in my life have ever experienced something like this,” said a teacher who normally works on Staten Island and has a medical exemption for the vaccine.

The teacher, who had been working from her New Jersey home since October, says commuting to the Brooklyn site takes up to three hours one way.

A Staten Island administrator reporting to the building said the DOE also reassigned her from the regular duties she had performed from home since September to work remotely doing what she called busy work.

“I’m miserable because I’m not with children and I’m not with my teachers. I’m sitting here in a room not helping a soul. I feel like we’re being punished,” said the educator who has a medical exemption.

Diverse discrimination

NY Post 

A controversial new city law that will allow non-citizens to vote in local elections would unconstitutionally bolster the political clout of Hispanic and Asian New Yorkers — at the expense of African-Americans, according to a new lawsuit.

The suit, filed Wednesday in Staten Island Supreme Court by longtime political commentator Deroy Murdock and three other black New Yorkers, claims the City Council violated the 15th Amendment by approving the measure in December with the “discriminatory intent” to strengthen the voting clout of some racial groups over others.

“The Foreign Citizen Voting Bill accomplishes precisely what advocates intended: shifting the electoral power in New York City municipal elections along racial lines to Hispanic and Asian voters and reducing the power of other racial groups,” the suit says. 

J. Christian Adams, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a nonprofit representing the plaintiffs, said the process of getting the new law passed was “infested with racial motivation.”

 The suit claims former Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez (D-Manhattan), who sponsored the bill that later became law, has publicly said he drafted it with the intention of “increasing the power” of some racial groups.

This is the second suit challenging the measure, which became law last month. Last month, local Republican elected officials filed legal papers arguing that under state law only US citizens can participate in the city’s elections.

Housing while Black

  

BRKLNR

 A new report by the Black Homeownership Project highlights the alarming decline in Black homeownership in New York City over the past 20 years, and the increased costs Black homeowners face compared to their white counterparts.

The project, an initiative from the Center for NYC Neighborhoods, found Black homeownership has declined 13% since 2000 and Black homeowners pay on average $7,000 more in closing costs than white homeowners.

In Brooklyn, 1,742 loans were originated for Black households in 2007. In 2017, that number was 881.

As part of the project, dozens of Black homeowners, housing counselors and program practitioners were surveyed over the last year to address the existing systemic issues that have led to a vast racial wealth gap and decline in Black homeownership – which has only been further exacerbated by the pandemic.

The Center said in a press release the findings supported a proposed slate of pilot programs that would increase homeownership among Black communities in NYC and work to close the racial homeownership and wealth gaps. Those programs include assistance with down payments, matched savings and tenant opportunities to purchase.

Center for NYC Neighborhoods CEO and Executive Director Christie Peale said in New York City, Black families made up only 18% of homeowners, yet they represented more than 60% of the Center’s clients looking for assistance in buying and keeping their homes.

“The homeownership gap is worse for Black Americans now than ever before and has only grown wider amid the pandemic,” she said.

“Through the Black Homeownership Project, we are uncovering new details of how these national trends show up locally and proposing NYC specific programs to create meaningful change so that Black homeowners can buy homes and stay in the communities they love.”

The five new pilot programs recommended by the Center include a down payment assistance navigator, with the research finding assembling a down payment was one of the greatest barriers to homeownership for Black New Yorkers; a savings accelerator, to help low- to moderate-income New Yorkers out of the feedback loop where a lack of access to safe and affordable financing can push them towards extractive financial products; and a homeowner landlord program focused on support services for mom-and-pop landlords to help preserve their source of affordable rentals, including education from City housing agencies, connecting with trusted lenders and contractors for repairs and support and more.

Apparently, this crisis has not been acknowledged by de Blasio in his recovery for all of us.

Coronavirus field hospital tents in Central Park is run by a discriminatory religious organization

Gothamist

On Tuesday morning, a makeshift tent hospital in Central Park will begin treating overflow patients from Mount Sinai, as the spread of COVID-19 begins to overwhelm local hospitals. Announcing the 68-bed respiratory unit this weekend, Mayor Bill de Blasio praised the relief organization, Samaritan's Purse, responsible for funding and erecting the facility.

The mayor did not mention that the group is led by Franklin Graham, a notorious anti-LGBTQ and Islamophobic preacher with a track record of using humanitarian missions to proselytize an evangelical agenda.

Graham, the son of prominent minister Billy Graham, has specifically sought to recruit Christian medical staff to the Central Park facility. According to the group's website, all volunteers, including health care workers, should read and adhere to a statement of faith, in which marriage is defined as "exclusively the union of one genetic male and one genetic female" and the unrighteous are sentenced to "everlasting punishment in hell."

If you are a Christian doctor, nurse, paramedic, or other medical professional interested in serving COVID-19 patients in our @SamaritansPurse Emergency Field Hospital in NYC, please visit https://t.co/EEw1jNtrrk. pic.twitter.com/5i7EeKxLDi

— Franklin Graham (@Franklin_Graham) March 29, 2020

Asked whether the Mayor's Office considers this problematic, a City Hall spokesperson said the field hospital will operate as a Mount Sinai facility, and must adhere to the hospital's policy against discrimination. The spokesperson did not say whether the city was concerned that volunteers on the project are expected to agree with the group's anti-gay faith statement.

"Our record on human rights is clear; and we are confident that the joint effort by Mt. Sinai and Samaritan’s Purse will save New Yorkers' lives while adhering to the values we hold dear by providing care to anyone who needs it, regardless of background," said Jane Meyer, the City Hall spokesperson.


What human rights record is that, Jane? Telling people they have to right to go mingle in bars and go to events as a nascent virus was spreading across the five boroughs?

Riis Park only improved the beach for the bazaar and boardwalk and not for the picnic area

 

Impunity City


Well another summer has departed and the belated autumn solstice has arrived today after the climate change influenced unusual warmth of last October, so this would be the right time to document and review this years spring and summer season spent at Riis Park. And it’s not good at all and it has not ended well, as the dramatic changes that came forth with certain and way overdue (and selective) renovations took place

 As the days of May got later, there actually was a itty bitty slither of hope for the people’s beach. The Riis Park Bathhouse renovation attracted more concessions and restaurant fare, as well as new food stands on the end of the boardwalk by the abandoned hospital and both were supplied with live laptop DJ’s. More food trucks were added to where the heart of the Brooklyn Night Bazaar Riis Park Beach Bazaar takes place, probably for people who do not care for the upscale foodie concept fare being sold in the restaurant inside and the stand by the pitch-and-putt course. There was also the return of the ludicrous high end slum camping concept Camp Rockaway in the dirty chigger infested backyard of the bathhouse. Volleyball courts were also added right in the next yard too for adventurous players and camp guests to play on the hard concrete. It was quite a sight to behold this year on every weekend, as people gathered to enjoy the summer breeze, sharing the company of diverse races and cultures, and extravagantly overpriced fast food, beer and cocktails. Vibrancy in action I believe it’s called.

 

 


But something was missing from all the free market vibrancy going on the boardwalk. Somehow all the restorations and renovations and all the upscale prices that went into providing a venue for the bazaar did not transfer to a very essential part of beach and parkland that was already a big attraction. In fact it was the only vibrant destination spot before the natural disaster of a category one hurricane and the unwelcome appearance of gentrifiers hit the people’s beach (yes, I’m aware of the irony that gentrifiers are people too) and that is the picnic and grilling area.

Before that bitch Sandy came, it was arguably the best and most spacious grilling area in the city. Despite how small it looks, it had ample space and plenty of tables and grills for anyone that showed up anytime. It also had a lot of wind swept trees from the powerful Atlantic Ocean winds that gave the picnic area a cool presence and a visual wonder of nature.

 

 



But where are the goddamn tables? This is a federally tax payer subsidized picnic area.

Affordable housing study reveals Mayor de Blasio as a segregationist

New York Times

For more than two years, lawyers for New York City have fought to keep secret a report on the city’s affordable housing lotteries, arguing that its release would insert an unfavorable and “potentially incorrect analysis into the public conversation.”

The report was finally released on Monday, following a federal court ruling, and its findings were stark: The city’s policy of giving preference to local residents for new affordable housing helps perpetuate racial segregation.

White neighborhoods stay white, black neighborhoods black, the report found.

The findings by Andrew A. Beveridge, a sociology professor at Queens College, presented a far different picture than the one offered by Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has touted his record on housing as he runs for president.

Indeed, they suggested that Mr. de Blasio’s vast expansion of affordable housing might well come with an asterisk: It is deepening entrenched racial housing patterns.

Professor Beveridge analyzed data from 7.2 million affordable housing applications for 10,245 city-subsidized apartments from 2012 to 2017. He did so on behalf of plaintiffs in a lawsuit brought by three black women from Brooklyn and Queens who said they were not given a fair chance to win affordable apartments in city-managed lotteries.

The report looked at 168 city-administered lotteries along with demographic and other information about applicants, comparing that to census data for the areas surrounding the affordable housing apartments being offered.

In each case, Professor Beveridge found that the majority group — whether white, black Hispanic or Asian — enjoyed a strong advantage over the other racial groups because of the city’s policy.

Moreover, because it is a first-come-first-served system, by the time applicants from other areas of the city might want to move into an area, the apartments that they would qualify for have sometimes already been taken by local residents, he found in the 31-page report, a preliminary version of which was first filed in 2017.

Hell's Kitchen rent-stabilized tenants experiencing discrimination and landlord intimidation by technology

NY Post

 A group of tenants in a Hell’s Kitchen apartment complex say they are being locked out — by technology.

And now they are suing their landlord for the return of their low-tech keys to the front lobby.

“It’s ridiculous that everyone is spending all this money to go to court just to get a key,” said Mary Beth McKenzie, 72, an artist who has lived in the West 45th St. building for nearly five decades. “For 45 years I’ve had a key. And now, we can’t get keys.”

Instead of keys, the building’s owners have installed a new electronic security system called Latch, which requires a smartphone app to access the building’s lobby, where a newly built elevator and the tenants’ mailboxes are located.

McKenzie’s 93-year-old husband has been a virtual shut-in since the new technology was introduced last year because he doesn’t use a cellphone and has difficulty walking up the three flights of stairs to their apartment, she said. Tenants in the complex at 517-525 West 45th St. don’t need to use the lobby to access the stairwells to the buildings, which are between four and five stories each.

McKenzie and some of the other rent-regulated tenants who are suing for the return of their keys say Latch also includes a GPS function that allows the building’s owners to monitor their movements and even their social media.

The app, which is currently in use in more than 1,000 residential buildings in the city, also comes with an 84-page contract which states that any information collected through the Latch system goes to the building owner, the tenants say.

 “It’s a form of harassment,” said McKenzie, whose paintings hang in The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian. “What happens if your phone dies? I don’t want to be stuck on the street and I don’t want to be surveilled.”

 The owners — a limited liability company controlled by Offir Naim and Shai Bernstein — said they installed Latch to provide tenants greater security following a burglary in August 2018, according to court papers. And the GPS function is optional, they said.

  The Latch system also allows tenants to buzz someone, such as a courier, into the building without having to be at home, court papers say.

Yeah, this is a phenomenal idea. Especially with the rise of cellphone, mail and package delivery theft going around.

Elizabeth Crowley is a rather piss-poor feminist

Folks, this blog has been following politics and those running for office for a long time. We (and the internet) also have a LONG memory. So it really gives us the jollies when we get to call out the tweeders for their hypocrisy.

Let's take this for example:

A July 31 Crowley for NYC press release announcing Gov. Cuomo’s endorsement of the incumbent went even further, saying Holden has a “record of taking strong anti-woman, anti-LGBTQ and conservative stances.” When pressed for examples of those stances, Crowley simply cited his quarterly production of the Juniper Park Civic Association’s magazine, which sometimes features right-wing commentary.

After thorough search of the Juniper Park Civic Association's website, which features the articles from the magazine, we found no "anti-woman" commentary. Unless you consider this editorial about an unqualified female firefighter (which was written by a woman) to be anti-woman. Regardless, Holden didn't write it and we could find nothing he authored for the magazine that addressed women's issues in a negative light.

**********************************

Now let's look at just how "pro-women" Crowley's record is...

Crowley's campaign hurled sexually explicit and abusive language toward her opponent's volunteers on Primary Day, as per Progress Queens:

Other alleged irregularities in this year's election cycle in Queens involved the cousin of the chair of the Queens Democratic County Committee. Progress Queens has received credible information from various sources that representatives of the committee to reelect Councilmember Elizabeth Crowley (D-Maspeth) acted to intimidate the campaign volunteers of Councilmember Crowley's primary challenger, Robert Holden, sometimes by invoking violent language. One Holden campaign volunteer said that she was yelled at and disparaged by representatives of Councilmember Crowley's campaign, including by Councilmember Crowley and her son, Owen O'Hara. In one instance, the source said that Mr. O'Hara told the Holden campaign volunteer to perform a sex act on him and made a corresponding rude sexual gesture by grabbing his loins, according to information received by Progress Queens.

Wow, great parenting job there, Liz! You must be so proud.

Similar accusations of intimidation were also made by a second Holden campaign volunteer, revealing a possible pattern. The second Holden campaign volunteer informed Progress Queens that she was similarly yelled at when she was trying to inform voters about Councilmember Crowley's record and policy positions, and, in response, one male Crowley campaign representative came up to the second Holden campaign volunteer and threatened to silence her by shoving his penis into her mouth. Both Holden campaign volunteers told Progress Queens that they were called "white trash" by Councilmember Crowley herself or by other Crowley campaign representatives. Other forms of possible misconduct by the Crowley campaign including the spreading or mailing of false information about Mr. Holden ; engaging in ageism ; and allegations that Councilmember Crowley used her official capacity as an elected official to gain entry into private apartment buildings to distribute campaign literature, opportunities that were denied to Mr. Holden's campaign. For this report, Councilmember Crowley did not answer an interview request.

In a wide-ranging interview with Progress Queens, Mr. Holden questioned the personal character of Councilmember Crowley over the allegations of misconduct by her and her campaign representatives, saying, in part, that, "It's one thing to give out literature, but it's another thing to be harassing," he said, referring to the treatment his campaign volunteers received from the Crowley campaign. Of the sexually-violent use of language against his campaign volunteers, Mr. Holden said, "It's disgraceful."

So instead of either denying these things happened or apologizing and saying it would never happen again, Crowley decided to say nothing. It's hard to fathom how the Democratic, Working Families and Women's Equality Parties' candidate tolerates threats of sexual violence against women, but then again she also featured her sibling who was convicted of sexual assault in her "family values" mailers to Dem primary voters...

There's also only one candidate in the race for the 30th District that is running on a feminist platform who had a "personal relationship" with a married assembly member in return for money and gifts. She's even featured on Brian McLaughlin's Wikipedia page.

Liz Crowley: A proud role model for Queens women!

It's becoming more clear that Maspeth High School discriminated

The principal

From the NY Post:

A Queens public high-school principal excluded 500 Catholic-school kids from a list of 4,000 students applying to get into his school, raising cries from furious parents of foul play.

While more than 4,000 eighth-graders applied for a seat in the school, its principal failed to forward all 500 applications from Catholic-school kids to the Department of Education for possible placement.

Maspeth HS is a “limited unscreened” school — one of 225 in the city — which gives admission priority to students who live nearby and attend its information sessions or open houses.

These schools send a list of those applicants to the DOE, which gives them priority in a “random” lottery.

The system is ripe for abuse by principals who want to exclude certain students or favor others, critics say.

Principal Khurshid Abdul-Mutakabbir told parents at a Juniper Park Civic Association meeting on March 16 he made a “clerical error” in omitting all Catholic-school kids from the list.

But Abdul-Mutakabbir told civic leaders in a prior phone call that parochial applicants pose a “problem,” Juniper Hill president Bob Holden told The Post.

“He said, ‘In all honesty parochial schools are a problem because many of the students opt out and don’t go to my school. That leaves a seat [empty] and it costs the school funding,’” said Holden, who called for an investigation.

Employees say Mark-Viverito demanded discrimination at NYCHA

From the Daily News:

City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito pressured the Housing Authority to remove the black manager of a Bronx housing development and replace her with a “Spanish manager,” former and current NYCHA workers told the Daily News.

Officials were so eager to make the Speaker’s wish come true that they turned to the city Department of Investigation to help “find something” on the manager.

Mark-Viverito made her ethnic-specific demand during a July 30, 2015, emergency meeting with several NYCHA officials held in her Bronx office, one of the meeting’s participants told the Daily News.

One of NYCHA’s top executives, Senior Vice President for Operations Brian Clarke, participated in that meeting via speakerphone — and later pressured subordinates to address Mark-Viverito’s demand because of the “cultural sensitivity” of the development’s tenants.

The Speaker began the meeting by asking how NYCHA dealt with Spanish-speaking tenants at the Mill Brook Houses in Mott Haven, according to the participants.

Mark-Viverito then confronted Allison Williams, the black manager of Mill Brook who is not fluent in Spanish, according to Williams and her boss, Sibyl Colon, NYCHA’s then-director of Optimal Property Management Department.

Williams says she told Mark-Viverito that — per NYCHA policy — she would rely on a “language bank” of on-call translators when dealing with non-English-speaking tenants.

Colon and Williams say Mark-Viverito responded with anger.

“She started asking me: ‘What do you do when you have to deal with the Spanish residents?’ I don’t speak Spanish. I said I used the language bank. She said — in her words — ‘That's unacceptable.’ I just sat silent.”

Colon, who was also at the meeting, says Mark-Viverito turned to her and stated, “You’re not hearing me. I want a Spanish manager.”

Housing lotteries discriminatory: lawsuit

From the NY Times:

A federal lawsuit filed on Tuesday 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.

The city doles out new affordable housing to low- and moderate-income households through lotteries that have been drawing tens of thousands of applications in the tight housing market. Applicants must meet strict income requirements, and, in addition to income, the new buildings look for tenants with preferential status under lottery rules, including residents in the community district where the new housing will go.

City officials have said the preference helps preserve neighborhoods. But the lawsuit, filed by the New York nonprofit Anti-Discrimination Center in United States District Court, alleges that the preference also denies equal access and serves to keep racial and ethnic minorities out of mostly white areas in violation of the federal Fair Housing Act and the city’s Human Rights Law.

Something else to dislike about Astoria Cove

From the Daily News:

The development group seeking city approvals to build a luxury housing complex on the Astoria waterfront has come under fire because one of its principals hired a firm connected to a scandal-scarred contractor to do work on another Queens site, the Daily News has learned.

Alma Realty, the lead builder behind the Astoria Cove project, hired the company, SSC High Rise Construction, to do foundation work at another project it is developing nearby, on Vernon Blvd.

“This contractor may be working for Alma but will not be employed at the Astoria Cove site,” said a spokesman for the Astoria Cove developers. “In light of allegations that have been brought to our attention, we are asking Alma to investigate these claims further and take the appropriate action.”

SSC High Rise Construction is run in part by Michael Mahoney, according to court filings and a signed affidavit by a former employee.

Mahoney and six companies he controlled were ordered by a state Supreme Court judge to pay $1.6 million in back wages in 2011, in regards to a suit brought by then-Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

Cuomo charged them with withholding millions of dollars in employees’ overtime and creating a racially tiered hierarchy of wages on construction sites, where white Irish employees were paid $25 an hour, black employees received $18 and Latino employees, $15.

Mahoney also pled guilty to felony tax evasion in 2011 in a suit brought by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, and was sentenced to two years’ probation.

Luxury condo developers discriminate against disabled

From Capital New York:

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara today filed suit against Related Companies, one of Manhattan's most prominent developers, and two of its star architects, for violating the Fair Housing Act by designing buildings that are inaccessible to the disabled.

In the suit against the Hudson Yards developer, Robert A.M. Stern Architects and Ismael Leyva Architects, Bharara alleges that Related Companies "discriminated" against people with disabilities thanks to its "pattern or practice of failing to design and construct dwellings" and accompanying common areas that are accessible to people with disabilities.

The suit, in particular, focuses on One Carnegie Hill and Tribeca Green, two high-end Related rental buildings with a total of more than 750 units.

Among other flaws cited in the suit, the U.S. Attorney's office claims that at the Upper East Side's One Carnegie Hill, where "alcove studios" rent for $3,095, the mailboxes are out of reach to people in wheelchairs, the kitchens in some units are too narrow to accommodate people in wheelchairs, and the bathrooms in some units aren't accessible. The suit makes similar complaints about Tribeca Green, where "alcove studios" rent for $3,425.

Be careful whose version of events you believe

Last weekend, there was an alleged hate crime reported at the restaurant Shi in LIC. A husband and wife and their gay friend had just left the restaurant when they were allegedly pounced on by a bunch of goons yelling racial and gay slurs. The couple then tried to get back inside the restaurant they just pleasantly dined at and the doorman/management refused to allow them back inside or call 911. That was the victims' story last week, anyway.

This sounded kind of bogus to me, so I decided to wait before posting anything about it. And my intuition was correct. The Queens Courier is now reporting that surveillance video shows that the attack happened down the street and no such refusal to help happened, and the owner says the couple had been thrown out for bad behavior. The NYPD is not charging anyone with a hate crime, and there is at least one report that they provoked the attack.

I've been duped by stories before as well, but the media did a real hatchet job on this restaurant which went viral. Social media lit up with condemnation of Shi based on lies, which is likely to affect their bottom line. I hope the restaurant sues the pants off them all. It seems all people have to do these days is cry discrimination and they are automatically believed, no matter how fishy their story sounds.

Second class citizens?

From the Village Voice:

Dear big developers: Not every tax break is worth a bad headline. Extell Development Company is building a 274-unit luxury condo building in the Upper West Side, with plans to put in a separate door for people living in its planned below-market-rate units. The reason? It's a workaround enabled by the city's Inclusionary Housing law to help Extel collect on some major tax breaks and building allowances. Local residents are upset and have gotten their elected officials to jump into the ring.

Of the 274 units in the building, 55 will be below-market-rate housing, meaning only those earning less than 60 percent of the neighborhood's median income will be eligible for leases. That's about $51,000 for a family of four for the Upper West Side--about the same as the median income for the city as a whole.

The building's affordable units would occupy floors two through six, attached to the building but legally as a separate entity. That separate entity allows Extell to cash in millions in affordances for technically having an entire building devoted to affordable housing. To add insult to injury, zoning law requires that a separate building have a separate entrance.

Neighbors are crying wolf when it comes to Extell's blueprints, accusing the developer of demeaning potential tenants with the second entrance.

Sunnyside building screening out Blacks?

From the NY Times:

In February, according to a lawsuit, when Lisa Darden went to a building in Sunnyside, Queens, and inquired about a one-bedroom apartment, the superintendent told her there were none available, and that he did not know when one might be.

Just over an hour later, the lawsuit states, another woman made the same inquiry. This time, the superintendent showed her a vacant apartment, told her he’d knock $100 off the rent because she was “nice people,” and handed her a rental application, according to the suit.

Ms. Darden is African-American, the other woman is white. The race-dependent availability of apartments was a pattern at the 107-unit apartment building at 41-41 46th Street, according to the Fair Housing Justice Center, a nonprofit group that sent both women out as discrimination “testers.”

The justice center and three African-American testers filed a federal lawsuit on Wednesday against the building’s owner, the Nasa Real Estate Corporation, and the building’s superintendent, Irfan Bekdemir, who the suit said acted as Nasa’s agent.

According to the complaint, filed in federal court for the Eastern District in Brooklyn, the three African-American testers were prevented from viewing apartments on separate occasions in February.

Mr. Bekdemir also quoted higher rents to the African-American testers, the complaint states, telling Ms. Darden that rents were generally between $1,500 and $1,700, while telling the white tester who followed her that he could rent her the apartment for $1,400.

Non-Asians need not apply?

From the Queens Courier:

An Asian supermarket chain is under fire from a trio of picketers who say the company is not colorblind in its hiring practices.

Jim MacDonald and his two pals, Craig Kinsey and Vincent Middleton, say H-Mart only employs Korean or Chinese cashiers and Hispanic backroom workers at its northeast Queens and Long Island stores. The threesome has been picketing outside the location on Union Street in Flushing since late August.

“It’s unfair to block out other ethnic backgrounds and only hire specific ones,” Kinsey said. “Flushing is a diverse community. If you want to show diversity, put your money where your mouth is. Have some diversity in employment.”

The activists say they’ve toured three H-Mart locations in Flushing and two in Nassau County, only to find a disparity in store workers’ ethnicities.

“We saw no African Americans or white Americans working there,” said Kinsey, who is African-American and lives in Flushing. “It’s not fair because of the consistency of this type of trend in those stores.”

MacDonald, 63, of Flushing — who is white — said H-Mart is considered a standard supermarket and should be held to fair hiring procedures.

Call boxes are here to stay

From the NY Times:

A federal judge in Manhattan has refused to allow the Bloomberg administration to eliminate 15,000 emergency-help boxes from New York’s streets, saying the city’s proposed alternative involving public pay phones is not adequate because it would discriminate against the deaf and hearing-impaired.

The Bloomberg administration last year asked the judge, Robert W. Sweet of Federal District Court, to lift a 1996 injunction that blocked a similar attempt by the city to remove its existing street alarm boxes.

In its request, the city estimated that deactivation of the street-box system would save $6.3 million a year. It also argued that use of the boxes had declined substantially because of cellphones, and that about 85 percent of calls were false alarms. The city proposed an alternative of public pay phones combined with a tapping protocol that would allow deaf and hearing-impaired callers to signal whether they needed police or fire services.

But Judge Sweet, in a decision filed Monday, said that the number of pay phones had declined substantially, that they were not always well maintained, and that the tapping protocol had not been tested with the pay-phone system. “The injunction remains an equitable solution,” he wrote.