The plutocrats of poverty

The weather is getting colder in #NYC. Today, over 350,000 NYC residents experience homelessness, while only 130,000 find space in insecure and overcrowded city shelters. 1 in 9 NYC students are homeless, and yet our city ONLY prioritizes migrant shelters.

That’s why we need… pic.twitter.com/5lhCXZa72J

— Curtis Sliwa (@CurtisSliwa) October 18, 2024

Gothamist 

Nepotism. Self-dealing. Executive salaries in the high six figures.

These are some of the allegations leveled in a new report on New York City’s multibillion-dollar shelter system released by city investigators on Thursday.

The review, which began in 2021, found a range of potential improprieties at 51 nonprofits that receive taxpayer funds to provide shelter and services for clients of the city Department of Homeless Services, which manages the biggest municipal shelter system in the United States. On an average night, over 87,000 people stay at the more than 500 New York City shelters funded by the department.

The city’s Department of Investigation found multiple instances of apparent conflicts of interest, potential nepotism and failure to comply with competitive bidding requirements on the part of shelter providers, according to the nearly 100-page report.

“City-funded nonprofit service providers pose unique compliance and governance risks, and comprehensive city oversight is the best way to stop corruption, fraud, and waste before it starts,” Department of Investigation Commissioner Jocelyn Strauber said in a statement. “Today’s report provides ample evidence of the risks specific to nonprofits and shortcomings in city oversight and makes 32 recommendations to strengthen controls around this essential network.”

In some cases, insiders were paid outside of their normal compensation through personal business interests involving the shelter where they worked, such as security companies that staffed those shelters — and were owned by the nonprofits they served. In other cases, shelter providers told investigators they did not employ any immediate relatives of senior employees or board members, which would violate their city contracts — but the investigators later found that adult children of shelter executives had been employed by the nonprofits for years.

 Multiple nonprofit executives received more than $500,000 annually, and in some cases more than $700,000 annually, in compensation from the shelter providers and related organizations. Investigators emphasized these salaries were funded largely or in part by taxpayer dollars and said the city lacks sufficient rules to guard against excessive compensation.

Many of the groups have annual revenues in the tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars. More than 90 nonprofit contractors now provide shelter services for the city, up from at least 70 just a few years ago, according to the report. New York City has a decades-old legal right to shelter that generally requires that a bed be provided to anyone who needs one — though this right was curtailed for migrants earlier this year.

The report comes as the city faces a stubborn housing and homelessness crisis exacerbated by the migrant influx since the spring of 2022. The homeless services department’s budget for shelters rose to $4 billion in fiscal year 2024, up from $2.7 billion two years earlier, according to the report. Migrant shelters run by NYC Health and Hospitals — called humanitarian relief centers — were not covered by the review and are being separately monitored by city investigators and a major accounting firm.

A spokesperson for the city’s Department of Social Services, which oversees the shelters, said it has “completely stopped doing business with a number of providers highlighted in the report,” and taken other steps to strengthen accountability for the nonprofit contractors.

“To be clear, this report does not reflect our current contracting and oversight processes given that the review began years ago prior to the current administration, but we look forward to continuing on these improvements to better serve New Yorkers,” the agency said in a statement.

421A-holes

 

THE CITY 

The clock is ticking on the final days of a likely-to-expire tax break real estate developers rely on to build new apartments — and the rush is on to get foundations in the ground before June 15, when 421-a will end unless the state legislature passes an extension.

In Astoria, Queens, the second phase of the Durst Organization’s massive Hallett’s Point development will have laid all its foundations by the middle of next month — allowing those buildings to qualify for the lucrative property tax incentive. But Phase 3 and its 800 more apartments will be shelved if 421-a expires, says the developer.

“The only place we could build a market rate apartment building without 421-a is near Union Square or maybe in a few other slices of Manhattan,” said Jordan Barowitz, a company vice-president.

In Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Two Trees Management Co. has begun constructing 350 Kent as part of its equally massive Domino development, which will add 400 units — 30% of them designated as affordable, or rented to households earning specific incomes, under the city’s inclusionary housing program. But a rep for the developer says the future is “cloudy” for another planned building at Domino and the first two structures planned at its newly approved River Ring site because they may not be able to pour their foundations before the deadline.

New units issued permits soared to 4,091 in March, according to Census Bureau’s building permits survey data analyzed by THE CITY, compared with 2,678 in January and February combined. Sources who have seen preliminary data for April and early May say the surge has continued.

Museum executives still mooching off 9/11 and laid off staffers

  

NY Post

After closing for six months during the pandemic and laying off or furloughing 60 percent of its staff, the cash-starved 9/11 Memorial and Museum gave $1,000 bonuses to each of its 12 highest paid execs, The Post has learned.

The bonus brought the total compensation in 2020 for CEO Alice Greenwald, who recently announced she is stepping down, to $564,500, according to the organization’s latest IRS filing.

Built to remember the September 11, 2001, terror attacks and to honor the 2,958 people murdered, the memorial and museum took a big financial hit during the pandemic and is still struggling to recover.

The bonuses were funded by an anonymous donor and restricted to that purpose, said spokeswoman Lee Cochran.

“The donation was intended to recognize the exceptional dedication of a very hard-working staff” who ran the organization after COVID-19 forced a shutdown in March 2020 and produced virtual education programs during the closure, Cochran said.

Besides Greenwald, 11 top staffers who each collected $187,000 to $347,000 in 2020 also got the $1,000 bonus. Another 155 remaining employees received unspecified bonuses “based on duration of employment.” Cochran said. She would not disclose the amounts or total spent on bonuses. “Everyone got something.”

The salaries anger an advocacy group, 9/11 Parents & Families of Firefighters and World Trade Center Victims, which wants the National Park Service to run the site.

“This is a cash cow for the executives running the museum. Their salaries are exorbitant,” said retired FDNY Deputy Chief Jim Riches, the group’s chairman, whose firefighter son Jimmy Riches was killed on 9/11.

The Grinch that killed a pizzeria

 

QNS

 
A longtime Bay Terrace pizza shop is closing its doors after nearly 50 years in business.

Earlier this week, it was reported that Jack’s Pizza and Pasta would be going out of business amid a dispute between the restaurant’s owners and Cord Meyer, the development company that owns the Bay Terrace Shopping Center where Jack’s is located.

The owners of Jack’s Pizza posted a sign outside of the establishment at the shopping center claiming that Cord Meyer’s CEO Matthew Whalen refused to renew the restaurant’s lease, effectively forcing them out after decades of business. The sign also stated that Jack’s had stayed open “at the height of the COVID pandemic.”

But Cord Meyer issued a statement saying that the restaurant’s lease had expired in September 2020 and they had failed to renew it.

“Their lease expired in September 2020, but in acknowledgment of their long history, we agreed to let them stay until the end of 2021 and offered them generous rent concessions. We are disappointed that our relationship with Jack’s has been mischaracterized. If a tenant refuses to meet agreed-upon obligations, we need to focus on ensuring that the Bay Terrace remains a vibrant shopping center,” said a Cord Meyer spokesperson.

Laura, the daughter of Anna and Jack Sapienza who opened the business in 1972, told Patch that finances were tight when they ran a takeout-only operation during the pandemic. During that time, Laura claimed that the Sapienzas paid Cord Meyer “as much as we could” from March through December 2020 but had their rent check returned in January 2021 followed by a 30-day eviction notice.

Several reports claimed that the owners of the pizzeria were planning to pay back Cord Meyer for the missing rent, which the company allegedly approved during COVID.

Cord Meyer said that they will allow Jack’s Pizza to stay in its current location until Jan. 15 before shutting down the operation for good.

 

de Blasio's HPD incompetence gives greedy developer millions of dollars in subsidies he won't give back

 

NY Post

A city bureaucrat made a $6 million mistake in preparing documents for a deal with a developer — and it could jack up the intended rents on more than 100 “affordable” apartments, one of Mayor de Blasio’s signature issues.

The city included the wrong document in an agreement with a developer on a massive, $386 million waterfront development in Brooklyn, according to court records. And now he has a legal loophole he can drive a truck through.

Developer David Bistricer, who is building 770 apartments in three towers on Commercial Street in Greenpoint, has allegedly refused to let the clerical error be corrected, forcing the city to file a Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit to fix it.

The project, part of a building boom in Greenpoint, was announced nearly a decade ago but only recently broke ground.

The city claims it negotiated the inclusion of 200 permanent affordable housing units in exchange for $2 million in taxpayer cash and $8 million worth of air rights from a city-owned plot adjacent to Bistricer’s Waterview at Greenpoint LLC site. The developer is slated to build Box Street Park on the plot, which is currently used by the MTA.

The deal was supposed to give the city housing with “deeper affordability,” and allowed Waterview to more than double the square footage. That increased affordability is “valued at more than $6 million,” the city said in its legal filing.

 As the city and Waterview hashed out final details of the agreement in May, a staffer with the Department of Housing and Preservation Development included an incorrect list of affordable rents and qualifying incomes to be offered to tenants.

For example, the city intended for at least 10 of the affordable units to rent for as little as $732 to $1,067 depending on size. But the lowest rent listed in the faulty document is $1,529, court records show.

Eligible incomes also drastically changed. The city wanted incomes ranging from $40,000 and up for a family of three to qualify. The lowest eligible earnings for a family of three listed on the erroneous paperwork is about $81,000.

If the mistake goes uncorrected, “134 of the 200 affordable housing units would be offered at different (and significantly higher) rents with different (and significantly higher) income restrictions,” the city claims.

 Possibly the biggest joke about this scandal is that the greedhead got away with only offering 10 apartments for lower income earners (and not specifically low income earners)

Stingy Schneps Media stiffs Metro employees of their severence pay

NY Post

Freebie daily paper Metro Boston folded Wednesday while the ex-staffers of Metros in Boston, Philadelphia and New York learned this week they’re getting no severance whatsoever from their now-former employer.
Two of the papers — Metro New York and Metro Philadelphia — were sold last week to Schneps Media, which is keeping the Philly paper alive while merging the Gotham edition into amNewYork, which it already owns.
The new NY paper was renamed amNewYork Metro for the Jan. 6 edition.
Staffers at all three Metro publications were laid off on Jan. 3 by owner Metro US — only to learn this week they are getting stiffed on severance.
“I found out that I was out of a job by a two-sentence email this past Friday,” lamented a former Metro employee who worked there eight years. “I was expecting severance pay due … but when I got my separation letter from the company, it said I was getting a grand total of $0 in severance.”
Newsday, the former owner of amNewYork, laid off all its workers as well prior to its sale to Schneps. But it at least gave staffers three weeks’ severance for each year of work when the freebie daily was sold in October.
Only three staffers were offered jobs with the new owner. Schneps said this time it expects to make job offers to about 20 former staffers of the Metro papers it purchased.

Gothamist

 Earlier this month, Schneps Media announced that it had acquired Metro New York, the city's long-running freebie newspaper, along with its counterparts in Philadelphia and Boston. It was the latest in a string of purchases for the emerging local news behemoth, which recently snapped up amNewYork, then promptly gutted nearly the entire staff.

As of this week, the two ubiquitous subway papers—once competitors—have now been bundled into a single print product, dubbed amNewYork Metro. Two former editorial staffers from Metro, and none from the pre-Schneps amNewYork, remain employed at the new title. Daily content comes from both dedicated employees and stories published on Schneps' network of other hyperlocal sites, including its flagship Queens Courier, and other fairly recent additions to its portfolio like Brooklyn Paper, Downtown Express, the Bronx Times, and The Villager.

In contrast to the amNewYork acquisition, employees at Metro say they were informed this week that they will not receive any severance pay. Adding to their frustration, staffers said, they were told immediately following the sale that their jobs were likely safe.

"They completely misled us," said one employee, who asked for anonymity so they could speak freely. 

"To be working there for as long as a lot of us had—some people for nearly a decade—and to be treated with this level of disrespect is so unjustified and sickening."

Metro publishers Ed Abrams and Susan Peiffer did not respond to a request for comment. The owners announced just prior to the sale that Metro Boston would cease publishing after nearly two decades, while Metro Philadelphia will continue publishing under Schneps ownership.

“This is an exciting next step for our entire organization offering a unique opportunity to strengthen our position in the daily newspaper market and increase our readership to over 2.5 million readers in print each week and many more online,” Schneps Media CEO Joshua Schneps, a former investment banker who runs the publisher with his mother, Victoria Schneps-Yunis, said in a statement.

Exciting enough to hoard people's hard earned money for oneself too Josh. Yeesh.

Neir's: It ain't over yet

Well folks, it takes a lot for me to come out of semi-retirement to weigh in on current events, but this whole Neir’s Tavern situation became such an unnecessary debacle that I can’t sit idly by and not call attention to some things.

Yesterday, Mayor de Blasio - himself a millionaire landlord and facilitator of citywide hotel-shelter slumlordship - decided to tell the owner of Neir’s that greedy building owners are awful. Where the hell was he when the LPC denied the landmarking bid for it back in 2016? A lot of the worry over the bar's fate could have been avoided if the LPC stopped doing what it always does to Queens history. And he can request that the “new” LPC (minus Meenakshi Srinivasan) take a second look at it.

Now, Loycent Gordon is not only an immigrant but also the black owner of a small business. This is EXACTLY the type of entrepreneur that fauxgressives want to be seen helping. But perhaps because Loy is also a lover of Queens history, and therefore a threat to development, he was totally disregarded for years. Except, that is, after he became so desperate that he felt forced to plead with the mayor on his radio program. How utterly sickening.

How the hell did we as a society get to this point?

And another question for those of you out there in Crapland… did you hear those January crickets yesterday? That sound was coming from every borough president candidate out there as an establishment dating back to 1829 almost went dark.

And why did the owner really have a change of heart? The NY Times explains:

Mr. Holden, a Democrat who represents the area, said the negotiations were tense until it became clear that a major problem for Mr. Shi was that he could not get a mortgage because the building lacked a proper certificate of occupancy and did not meet current zoning rules.

Mr. Holden said an agreement was reached under which his office would work to ensure that the building met all requirements; the city would make a small business grant available to improve the property; and Mr. Shi would raise the rent much less than he had proposed.

So while we can all celebrate that a piece of Queens history has been temporarily spared, keep in mind that the lease is only for 5 years and in 2026 this might happen all over again. And in the meantime, it's very likely that the next piece of Queens history that gets threatened won't have the stars align for it the way this one did. Because we keep electing the same lame tweeders over and over and over again and the rare ones who actually give a damn like Holden will be gone. (Why the hell did Michael Gianaris show up to the victory party when he did absolutely nothing?)

A big thank you and shout out to the media who realized the significance of this story and what it would have meant to lose Neir's and used the power of the press to call attention to it. All of the stories were pretty good (and I read or watched them all), but 2 really stood out to me: Corey Kilgannon's original NY Times piece and PIX11's story. Check out the reaction of the news anchor at the end. He totally gets it.



It's 2020, people. Wake up already, heh?

- QC

I like to add (again) that de Blasio's Landmark Preservation Committee refused to give Loycent and Neir's landmark status because they felt that a bar that has existed 190 years was not historically significant enough.

Congratulations to Mr. Gordon and the staff at Neir's and a great job done by Councilmember Holden and Assemblyman Miller (leave it to de Blasio to try to bigfoot credit for it). Here's to five more years, hopefully there will be better and moral officials running this city in the future.  

JQ LLC

Goodnight Neir's Tavern

Friends,

Yesterday I was forced to make one of the hardest decisions I’ve had to make.

Sunday January 12th I will have to step down as owner of Neirs Tavern and I have no one available to replace me.

I’ve been unable to obtain an affordable long term lease to reach our goal of the 200th anniversary in 2029.

I’m operating month to month with an unaffordable rent and insufficient sales to overcome a year of losing money every month.

Due to increase personal obligations I’m unable to put in the time necessary to overcome increase business challenges I’m faced.

Everyday I pray I would find a way to dedicate more time to overcome these challenges until yesterday I had to face the truth.

Neirs Tavern is losing money and I don’t have the time to help to overcome it. I want to be a good father and husband.

I hope my Neirs Team will be here until Sunday in the event a miracle happens.

But I have no more money after Sunday.

I’m sorry i let you down.
I’m sorry I couldn’t get landmark status.
 I’m sorry I couldn’t buy the building.

but I’m grateful for all the memories we’ve created together saving Neirs Tavern the last 11 years I’ve been here.
Thanks to everyone past and present who made Neirs Tavern our 2nd living room for the past 190 years.

With gratitude,

Loycent, Neirs Tavern and the entire team


Even the late great Anthony Bourdain couldn't save it.
The city landmarks a Pepsi ad and they wouldn't give Neir's one.  

Greed is killing this city.

Update:

As everyone has seen, a miracle has happened and Neir's Tavern lives another day.

And greed is still killing this city

Amazon paid no taxes and got hundreds of millions of dollars in rebates in the last two years.

Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy

Amazon, the ubiquitous purveyor of two-day delivery of just about everything, nearly doubled its profits to $11.2 billion in 2018 from $5.6 billion the previous year and, once again, didn’t pay a single cent of federal income taxes.
The company’s newest corporate filing reveals that, far from paying the statutory 21 percent income tax rate on its U.S. income in 2018, Amazon reported a federal income tax rebate of $129 million. For those who don’t have a pocket calculator handy, that works out to a tax rate of negative 1 percent. 

The fine print of Amazon’s income tax disclosure shows that this achievement is partly due to various unspecified “tax credits” as well as a tax break for executive stock options.
This isn’t the first year that the cyber-retailing giant has avoided federal taxes. Last year, the company paid no federal corporate income taxes on $5.6 billion in U.S. income.
ITEP has examined the tax-paying habits of corporations for nearly 40 years and has long advocated for closing loopholes and special breaks that allow many profitable corporations to pay zero or single-digit effective tax rates. When Congress in 2017 enacted the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and substantially cut the statutory corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, proponents claimed the rate cut would incentivize better corporate citizenship. However, the tax law failed to broaden the tax base or close a slew of tax loopholes that allow profitable companies to routinely avoid paying federal and state income taxes on almost half of their profits.

 In fact, the Trump Administration and its congressional allies included lavish new giveaways such as immediate expensing of capital investments. Multiple analysts scored the tax law as a huge revenue loser, giving away far more to big corporations in rate cuts than it takes in loophole-closers.

 Amazon is no stranger to tax controversies. Last year the company, in a staggering act of hubris, engaged in a year-long aggressive push for huge new relocation subsidies for its “HQ2” headquarters. A year later, Amazon appears to have won its two-front battle against fair taxes by continuing to altogether avoid federal taxes and obtaining lucrative packages of local tax breaks for not one but two new HQ2 locations, in New York and Virginia as well breaks for an operations center in Nashville, Tenn.

And #PoorBezos has the unmitigated gall to demand subsidies from this state and city and to go after Trump with the national/his personal newspaper that he owns. What a insecure and sad greedy little miser.