Saturday, March 21, 2015
Fingerprint guidelines made stricter in wake of report
From NBC:
The New York state court system says it will tighten its fingerprinting procedures after the I-Team exposed what some believe is an organized scheme to exploit the Queens Family Court to gain faster access to green cards.
Earlier this month, the I-Team revealed that family court insiders allege a pattern in Queens in which a federal law intended to protect child victims of abuse or sex trafficking is exploited as a shortcut to legal immigration status.
Hundreds of young men from the same part of India have told strikingly similar stories in Queens Family Court, the I-Team learned from months of interviews with judges, clerks, lawyers and translators who work the cases. Judges tell the I-Team they fear these undocumented young men are illegally crossing the U.S. border with the knowledge that they can head to family court for help getting special immigration status.
As part of that process, the young men, appearing in court often with older men from the neighborhood petitioning for guardianship, recount tales of abuse they've suffered to judges. If the young men are under age 21, undocumented and unmarried, abused or abandoned by just one parent and say their lives will be better off in the United States, judges, having little recourse to verify their stories, most often approve the guardianship, paving a fast track to green cards for the men under the federal William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Act.
Potholes a-poppin'
From the Daily News:
Spring temps have sprung — and so has the city’s annual crop of bone-jarring potholes.
New Yorkers are complaining vociferously about the car-busting craters that proliferate every winter, wrecking rims and blowing out tires.
Department of Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg acknowledged repairs this year were slower than usual because of the prolonged blasts of Arctic temps.
New technology has improved the Department of Transportation’s ability to make quick-fixes to the worst potholes even in frigid temps — but serious road repairs wait until spring.
It’s not just the weather slowing things down. The city’s also hampered by a longstanding policy of laying off roughly 200 assistant highway repairers every December — and hiring them back in March when pothole season hits its peak.
Woodhaven fire caused narrow escape from illegal apartment
So there was a fire in Woodhaven recently that left a bunch of people homeless and was started by a disgruntled tenant. There was an illegal apartment in the basement since at least 2011, but DOB didn't force them to remove it.
The Queens Courier explains:
On Wednesday night the owner of the home where Lopez was living ordered him to vacate the premises, according to officals. About 10 minutes later, the landlord and her boyfriend smelled smoke. It took them several attempts to escape from their basement apartment after the door was blocked from the other side, prosecutors said. As they fled, they allegedly saw smoke and an orange glow from the first floor bedroom where Lopez lived.Perhaps Jake Dobkin might want to weigh in on this one.
Is Mark Peters conflicted?
Mark Peters, commissioner of the Department of Investigation, says his actions disprove the notion that he would treat his longtime ally Mayor Bill de Blasio with kid gloves.
"There's tons of evidence of us not being soft on the mayor," said Mr. Peters, who was treasurer of Mr. de Blasio's mayoral campaign and served on a Brooklyn school board with him in the 1990s, during a Crain's editorial board meeting Wednesday.
His agency's mission to root out waste and fraud in city government.
Critics and media accounts have periodically suggested that Mr. Peters may take a light touch with Mr. de Blasio after the mayor appointed him early last year. As Mr. de Blasio's campaign treasurer, he helped raise $20,000 for his Park Slope neighbor's bid to capture City Hall. As such, he faced harsh questioning during his confirmation hearing at the City Council, and continues to face scrutiny every time he appears before lawmakers.
Earlier this month, he endured questions as to why the department's arrests numbers have dropped 67.8% compared with the same period the previous year, under a different commissioner. Mr. Peters said the quality of arrests, as opposed to the quantity, was his focus, citing the February arrest of 50 people, including 11 Department of Buildings inspectors and the top inspection officials in Manhattan and Brooklyn, on charges and corruption.
Will Chinese investors go for a residential fantasy on Newtown Creek?
As with the equally polluted (give or take) Gowanus Canal, it seems like only a matter of time before the banks of Newtown Creek give way to large-scale residential development, and to get things started architectural firms Avoid Obvious Architects and Studio C Architects have designed just such a development for a currently industrial East Williamsburg site, on spec. One of the architects told NY YIMBY, "we hope to find the right investors in China." The plan consists of three glassy towers connected by planted walkways. One of the towers would be condos (naturally), one would be a hotel, and the third would be "dedicated as artist's studio." (The entire thing? Apparently.) The renderings do raise some questions, though, such as: at what point did the barren industrial wasteland of East Williamsburg turn into a lush forest?
Friday, March 20, 2015
Pink sculpture not popular
From PIX 11:
On Wednesday night, it was a packed town hall meeting at MOMA PS1 in Long Island City, Queens. The town hall addressed many topics including affordable housing for artists, and also a sculpture slated to go up on Jackson Avenue.
One speaker said, “I think it’s an amazingly interesting piece of art, I think the location should have been discussed a little more in depth before the decision was made.”
According to a spokesperson for city’s Department of Cultural Affairs, the sculpture is slated to go up on Jackson Avenue near 43rd Avenue in Long Island City, Queens, a public art project with a price tag of $515,000 funded by city capital dollars. The sculpture is called “The Sunbather.”
QB ramp housing approved
A vacant lot stuffed beside a ramp for the Queensboro Bridge will give rise to an eight-story, 21-unit building designed by Aufgang Architects. The Board of Standards and Appeals approved a variance for the site, located at 321 East 60th Street, last year, allowing the building to be 24,000 square feet.
A dream location!
LaGuardia hangars being demo'ed
It’s a sight that has probably brought a smile to the face of Vice President Joe Biden. Demolition of the historic American and United Airlines hangars are in full swing as the transformation of La Guardia Airport has begun.
According to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey the demolition of two of the six hangars, (numbers two and four), which began last week, are coming down at a cost of $22.9 million because they are very out of date and serve little function to the airport. They are also on land that could be used for airport redevelopment, namely the future Central Terminal Building. The current one is also slated for demolition.
At the time of their construction, the hangars were the largest of their kind built in the world. They are still operated by the original tenants, American Airlines and United Airlines, and are used for airfreight rather than as maintenance shops, which were their original purpose.
The facelift to the airport, which opened in December 1939, is expected to be finished by 2021.
City cold calling people to ask them to house homeless
From the Daily News:
Mayor de Blasio, desperate to reduce the city’s skyrocketing homeless problem, is making robocalls to Big Apple landlords asking them to take in families from the shelter system.
Landlords who do take up the mayor’s offer will receive a $1,000 signing bonus, which is in addition to the city funds that will pay the family’s rent, the mayor says in the 45-second taped call.
“Hi, this is Mayor Bill de Blasio,” the roughly 45-second robocall begins.
“As a landlord, you have an opportunity to fill vacancies in your building and receive a $1,000 bonus from the City of New York.”
One Queens resident and civic leader who received the robocall recorded it and posted it on her Facebook page, asking her friends if they had also got the call.
“Did anyone else receive this phone call from Bill de Blasio today asking you to shelter homeless families in your house?” Christina Wilkinson asked.
“How many homeless people is Bill de Blasio sheltering in HIS house?” one friend wrote.
The money for participating landlords is being distributed through the city’s new Living in Communities (LINC) Rental Assistance program, which aims to move families out of the strained shelter system and into homes.
Many of the families who qualify for the program have full-time jobs, but still can’t afford the costs of moving and rent. Others in the program are escaping from domestic violence, or have other special needs that has left them struggling.
The families are expected to contribute 30% of their income to rent. The amount of assistance from the city depends on the family size, and can range from $1,268 for a family of two to $2,530 for a family of 10.
A long way up to tag!
Five knuckle-headed teens were busted hanging out and doing graffiti 226 feet in the air on the observation deck of the Worlds Fair's iconic Astro Towers NYC Park Advocates had learned.
Two girls and three boys broke into the towers and made their way to the very top, spray painting tags along the way.
Two eagle-eyed park cops on patrol in Flushing Meadows Corona Park spotted several figures from about a half mile away walking around the rusted flying saucer-like structures at approximately at 3:30pm on Sunday.
Officers had to use a make-shift ladder made of electrical cords in order to reach the highest peak of observation deck to reach the teens.
Thursday, March 19, 2015
We spend way too much time commuting
New Yorkers aren’t just workaholics - they spend more time working and commuting than residents of any other big city.
The city’s work week and commute together average 49.1 hours - beating the 29 other largest cities in the country, according to an analysis by City Controller Scott Stringer.
“Our transportation network is grinding us down,” Stringer said. “It’s a one-two punch for lower wage workers, who get paid less and travel longer to get to work.”
New Yorkers work only slightly longer hours - with an average work week of 42.4 hours, compared to 42.5 in the other cities - and rank 12th of the 30 spots surveyed.
But with commute factored in, the city’s combined work week of 49.08 outstripped other cities’ average of 46.48 by two and a half hours.
Workers in the finance industry log the longest work weeks, at 47 hours on average. But security guards have the longest commutes, at eight hours a week, Stringer found. Low wage workers tend to have the longest travel times because they can’t afford to live close to work.
This is why it makes me laugh when commenters say that people should live near subways to reduce carbon footprint, not own a car, blah, blah, blah.
Construction fence kills pedestrian at former St. Vincent's site
A real estate agent was killed in a freak accident as she was walking down a Manhattan street — when a gust of wind dislodged a piece of plywood at a nearby construction site and it struck her, authorities said.
The construction site is the former home of the now-shuttered St. Vincent’s Hospital, which is in the process of being converted into a luxury condominium complex called The Greenwich Lane.
The Department of Building issued a stop work order for the site following the accident. The site has racked up several complaints complaints and currently has 11 open violations.
More hotels coming to Fresh Meadows
Fresh Meadows is seriously becoming a destination.
Two six-story hotels under the Marriott brand are being built in the neighborhood, marking another big hotel chain coming to the mostly residential area.
The Courier recently reported about the Mayflower Business Group’s 11-story Hilton hotel under construction in Fresh Meadows on 186th Street, which will target students and immigrants from China.
East West United Realty Development is working on this double Marriott project, which is on the other side of the Long Island Expressway, at 183-31 Horace Harding Expwy. The right building will be a Courtyard Hotel and the left will be Fairfield Inn and Suites, which are brands of Marriott hotels.
The hotels will offer a combined 218 rooms and underground parking.
Unlike Mayflower’s Hilton building, this double Marriott brand project will target all tourists coming to New York City, according to the developer representatives.
Pre-K done backwards
Mayor Bill de Blasio held a press conference today to announce that nearly 22,000 families had signed up for universal pre-kindergarten on the first registration day—but had to confess that his administration had yet to find all the space it wants, or to vet contracts with all the necessary providers with the comptroller’s office.
Convening with top Manhattan elected officials at the Boys and Girls Harbor program in East Harlem, Mr. de Blasio trumpeted that his flagship initiative had attracted 21,938 applicants through yesterday, up from roughly 6,500 last year. The mayor, joined by Deputy Mayor for Education Richard Buery, said the program would increase by almost 20,000—from roughly 53,000 to 70,000—and add 18,000 new seats, even though it still was working to find locations for pre-K programs across the city.
“Do we have all the space we’re looking for? No. We’re still looking. We have a lot of space, but we’re continuing to look for space,” he said.
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
Citywide rezoning will screw us all
A citywide rezoning proposal quietly released by the de Blasio administration last month has begun the public review process. 'Zoning for Quality and Affordability' sounds like mom and apple pie, as it purports to make new housing less costly and meet higher standards. But a closer examination calls these premises into question. Big real estate, not average New Yorkers, would be the main beneficiary of some of the plan's key provisions, and its cost would be the undoing of neighborhood zoning protections years in the making.
The proposal is quite broad in its scope. But a central element is raising the allowable height of new development in "contextual zoning districts" -- areas where specific height limits and streetwall requirements help ensure that new buildings fit their context. These rules are meant to keep much of the "sore thumb" development we see around the city from cropping up in residential neighborhoods with strongly defined character, from the Lower East Side to Harlem, Crown Heights to Jackson Heights, the Village to Sunset Park.
Many of these height limits took years of effort by local communities to secure, and often involved compromises and trade-offs with the city and real estate interests to attain modest controls.
Now those rules would be upended, with the height caps lifted by as much as 20 to 30 percent, across the board.
Schneiderman unveils anti-corruption plan
Attorney General Eric Schneiderman proposed an ethics reform agenda Monday to address what he called “a golden age of graft” among legislators.
Schneiderman called for barring lawmakers from making outside income, saying measures to force greater disclosure don’t go far enough.
Instead, Schneiderman would raise the current $79,500 base pay for lawmakers to between the $112,500 paid to New York City Council members and the $174,000 those in Congress receive.
He’d also do away with the flat $172 daily travel expense state lawmakers are paid. Instead, lawmakers would be reimbursed for expenses they actually incurred.
Hoping to stop “non-stop re-election fund-raising and campaigning,” Schneiderman pushed to change the state Constitution to make legislative terms four years, instead of the current two.
He’s also calling for campaign finance reform that would include the public financing of campaigns, “dramatically reduced” contribution limits and closing of loopholes that allow some donors to give basically unlimited amounts.
Developers sweating over possible loss of tax break
From the Crains:
Nearly 5,500 affordable apartments in just nine projects would never have been planned if not for a four-decade-old tax break due to end in three months, according to a report by the Real Estate Board of New York.
The 421a abatement, which lowers property taxes on new apartments for up to 25 years, expires June 15. The REBNY report is intended to counter critics who say 421a mainly subsidizes luxury apartments and should be left to die. Developers are rushing to lay foundations for projects across the city before they lose the benefit, which is already going to 71,950 dwellings.
REBNY analyzed a sampling of nine large residential projects, including the Pacific Park (formerly Atlantic Yards) and Domino Sugar developments in Brooklyn and Astoria Cove in Queens, at various stages of development. The group determined that the tax break is responsible for 5,484 below-market-rate apartments and 13,801 market-rate units in those projects.
"The renewal of 421a is one critical element of the city's plan to address our housing shortage," said Steven Spinola, president of REBNY, in a statement. "Without 421a, our housing crisis will take an immediate turn for the worse."
The 40-year-old program, which forgave $1.1 billion in city property taxes in the year ending June 30, 2014, will likely be renewed but made less generous to builders. Even some supporters agree it needs to be revised to require projects in more of the city to include affordable housing in order to receive the tax break. Mayor Bill de Blasio has yet to reveal his position on 421a, although his aides have praised it for producing affordable apartments in affluent neighborhoods.
Illegal curb cuts need to be curbed
A Queens neighborhood is the king of illegal curb cut complaints.
South Richmond Hill logged more than 200 complaints of illegal curb cuts or driveways, double the amount from last year, and far higher than any other neighborhood in New York, according to an analysis of 311 data.
Illegal curb cuts often arise in neighborhoods far from Manhattan where many homeowners have cars. Rather than trying to find street parking every day, some residents opt to cut the curb, remove lawns and create their own driveway — without getting permission from the city.
Brooklyn residents recorded the highest number of complaints this year, with 822 — nearly 10 percent of them logged in Bath Beach and Bensonhurst. Queens, which has about 300,000 fewer residents than Brooklyn, came in as a close second citywide, with 760 complaints.
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