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.

After being opaque about the cause of Saturday's blackout, Con Ed is being glib about potential blackouts

NY Post


Con Edison warned Monday that New Yorkers may have to endure another blackout this weekend, when the temperature is expected to reach a sweltering 97 degrees — and feel like 106.

“We expect that there could be service outages — those things happen during heat waves,” company spokesman Mike Clendenin said.

Later in the day, Con Ed further fueled fears of a potential power outage when it completely backtracked and blamed a fault in a 13,000-volt power cable that caught fire for triggering Saturday’s blackout.

On Sunday, company President Timothy Cawley had called the idea of tying the incident to the failed cable “sort of a non-starter.”

AccuWeather predicted four straight days of 90-plus degree temperatures beginning Friday, with a 97-degree peak on Saturday, when humidity and other factors will make it feel even worse.

Surely, these things happen and will continue to happen when you have energy devouring billboards like the new ones in Times Square that are about 3, 5 and 20 stories and are a block wide. And also deriving from massive tower development by the Hudson, particularly the brand new Hudson Yards.

How is Con Ed going to handle Google's expansion and Disney's new studios on Soho's west side?

Maybe this is why they are being glib. Con Ed's VP for "government relations" used to work for the city's Economic Development Coporation. (Thanks to Kristin Theodos)

House in Howard Beach is teetering into the drink

News 4 New York

You know what is also horrible about this story, when the anchorman says "Look at this". Well what do you think we are doing you moron?

Tiffany Caban has her own machine to help with the recount

THE CITY

Tiffany Cabán has marshalled a volunteer army of attorneys to fight for votes in the Queens district attorney Democratic primary recount.

The insurgent candidate has actively recruited helpers to monitor the tallying of some 91,000 votes. 

The process officially began earlier this week at a Board of Elections voting machine facility in Middle Village after a paper ballot count left Borough President Melinda Katz holding a razor-thin lead of 16 — triggering a full recount.

The Cabán campaign on Thursday said about 165 lawyers have enrolled pro bono to aid the ballot review. That’s on top of more than 200 volunteers charged with providing administrative support.

Meanwhile, Katz bolstered her legal team by hiring top election lawyer Martin Connor, a former Brooklyn state senator.

“I’m joining their legal team, but 99 other people aren’t,” Connor said, taking a shot at Cabán’s swelling volunteer ranks.

Experts noted the size of Cabán’s volunteer legal squad is unusual.

“I can see having shifts of watchers,” said Sarah Steiner, a former chair of the Election Law Committee for the New York City Bar Association. “But it’s the having that many that is impressive. I’ve never heard of that many volunteer lawyers for a recount… You’d normally be lucky to get a single volunteer lawyer.”

Steiner said the volunteers could come in handy with counting sessions as long as 12 hours a day, giving the lead campaign lawyers a chance to take breaks and rest their eyes

.“In that position, they can be very helpful,” she said of the volunteers. “They are getting a crash course on the short list of legal objections and how to spot them. They don’t need to know any other election law.”

Former Belt Parkway toxic dump mountain is now a state park

Curbed New York

After 70 years of promises, Brooklyn’s newest waterfront park is finally open for visitors.

The first section of Shirley Chisholm State Park recently made its official debut on a site that was previously known as the 110-acre Pennsylvania Avenue Landfill. Situated on the northern coast of Jamaica Bay in East New York, near Starrett City, this vibrant new green space has opened up the shoreline here for the first time in generations.

The words “charming” and “fun” don’t often come to mind when walking around New York City’s polluted landfills. Yet somehow, a walk through this new park is just that—a surprisingly enjoyable ramble through a delightfully varied landscape of wildflower meadows, native grasslands, hidden beaches, and bustling fishing piers. Butterflies and songbirds fill the air, while cooling breezes waft in from Jamaica Bay.

Though it has only been open for a week, the park is already a hit with the neighborhood. During its first weekend, the parking lot was filled to capacity and every two-wheeler was checked out of its Bike Library, which is run by Recycle-A-Bicycle. Parents pushed baby strollers along meandering gravel hiking trails, while fishermen lined the piers along Jamaica Bay, happily pulling in dozens of porgies.

The second section of this park, at the adjoining Fountain Avenue Landfill, won’t be complete until 2021, but for a community that has been cut off from the waterfront for decades, any access to the water is no small thing. “I’ve been waiting for this for 20 or 30 years,” said one fisherman, as he cast out into the waters of Jamaica Bay. “I moved here in 1986, and they were working on it then, piece by piece, off and on, over the years.”

Friend of family burns down their house after they ask him to leave

 NY Post

 A man who was taken in by a Queens family when he needed a place to stay returned the kindness with unspeakable horror — setting the home ablaze in a gasoline-fueled inferno that not only killed him but also two of his host’s family members, including a 6-year-old girl, police sources and family said Thursday.

David Abreu Nuñez, 27, went off the rails inside the Moreno family’s two-story Elmhurst home on 93rd Street Wednesday afternoon, sparking the top-floor blaze after he was asked to pack up and go.

“We were helping someone and they were asked to leave because we found out certain things about that person and he just lost it,” said homeowner Raul Moreno, referring to Nuñez. “And this is the price we pay for helping somebody.”

Moreno said that Nuñez was a friend of a family member and had been staying at the home since Monday.

“He had no place to go. He was kicked out of his room or his apartment or something like that,” Moreno said. “He had no place to go, so we were like, ‘Stay here for a couple of days, we’ll help you find a place.’”

Moreno added: “Then we found out his past and we just asked him to leave because we had kids in the house.”

Nuñez had “mental issues,” Moreno said, claiming, “He would fabricate a lot of lies … things just didn’t add up. It made us very suspicious.”

“We just asked him to leave in a nice manner. We didn’t force anybody. I just asked him, ‘It’s time for you to leave’ and he just lost it.”

After the blaze, the FDNY found a five-gallon gas can on the floor where the fire started, sources said.

The two-alarm fire left Nuñez, Emma Dominguez, 6, and her 76-year-old grandfather, Claudio Rodriguez, dead, police sources said.

Emma’s mom, 35-year-old Elizabeth Rodriguez, and Emma’s 10-month-old brother, Liam Dominguez-Rodrigo, were critically injured, the sources said.

Campaign worker's mother fraudulently voted in D.A. primary

NY Daily News

Like any good son, when Working Families Party campaign worker Rafael Shimunov found out that his mother couldn’t vote in the recent primary for the Queens district attorney, he took to Twitter to complain about voter fraud.

Shimunov, whose mother, Margarita Shimunova, is a registered nurse and immigrant from Uzbekistan, voted for insurgent candidate Tiffany Cabán by paper ballot because the Board of Elections had her registered as a Republican.

“She’s never voted GOP in her life,” he tweeted in response to an ongoing social media conversation about claims the election was rigged. He went on to describe his mother’s health issues and her struggle immigrating from the former Soviet Union as a refugee.

“It’s not right, I heard they’re going to throw my vote away,” she said.

However, BOE records reveal an awkward family secret: Margarita Shimunova is indeed a registered Republican and therefore wasn’t eligible to vote in the June 25 Democratic primary.

Shimunova confirmed to the Daily News Friday that it was, in fact, her signature and date of birth on the BOE form showing she registered to the party of Lincoln in 2008.

But she denied being a Republican and said that she voted for Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders.

Records show that the mom voted in six elections since she registered, mostly general elections in which she could vote for either party. But documents show she also voted in the 2016 Republican primary during which Donald Trump carried his home state with 59% of the vote.

Well, that was a stupid thing to do, son. 

Queens D.A. recount comes at a price for Katz and Caban

THE CITY

With the recount process set to begin Tuesday in the tense Tiffany Cabán-Melinda Katz Democratic primary battle for Queens district attorney, both campaigns are tallying more than just votes.

Insurgent candidate Cabán, with about $35,000 left to spend, is invoking the electoral stalemate in fundraising pitches. Recent emails ask supporters for contributions to ensure a fair recount against a “party machine that has ruled local politics and suppressed democracy for decades.”

Meanwhile, Queens Democratic Party stalwart and Borough President Katz has about $332,000 on hand. But that’s offset by nearly $360,000 in outstanding bills, the bulk of which she owes to consulting firm Red Horse Strategies, records show.

Katz attorneys Michael Reich and Frank Bolz are volunteering their services, said Matthew Rey, a campaign spokesperson. He added that the campaign is now “just starting to raise money” for the recount and general election.

Prominent election attorney Jerry Goldfeder and Renée Paradis, Bernie Sanders’ former voter protection director, are on Cabán’s payroll.

Katz, who initially appeared to have lost the crowded June 25 primary race to Cabán by 1,199 votes, pulled ahead by a mere 16 last week after a count of paper ballots.

The thin margin triggered a full recount of some 91,000 votes, which is expected to take at least a week — and every day will cost the campaigns. Both candidates have already spent upwards of $450,000 each in the past month, campaign disclosure forms filed last week show.

Sarah Steiner, an election lawyer and a former chair of the New York City Bar election law committee, noted there are “almost never recounts this big.”

“Recounts are usually in a single district,” Steiner said. “Usually, they’re in the smaller races. By sheer scale of larger races, usually the gaps between voters exceed the half of one percent in a recount.”

Just before the recount begins, attorneys for Cabán and Katz are scheduled to appear in state Supreme Court. Judge Jeremy Weinstein is expected to rule on whether 114 affidavit ballots with missing information should be validated and counted.

Despite recent accusations by the Katz campaign that Cabán’s team was cherrypicking affidavits favorable to her and effectively suppressing votes, both sides agree that every valid ballot should be counted.

“More than 100 affidavit ballots from registered and eligible Democrats were wrongly invalidated by the [city Board of Elections] — and we will be in court Tuesday morning to make sure these voters are not disenfranchised,” said Monica Klein, a Cabán spokesperson.

Reminds me of a Warren Zevon song. Send lawyers, votes and money

Governor Cuomo gifting Belmont Park developers with a train station

NY Post


A controversial plan to bring a new $1.2 billion arena and entertainment venue to state-owned Belmont Park will now include a $105 million full-service stop on the Long Island Railroad, Gov. Cuomo announced Monday.

The station serving Belmont, NY, is a huge score for the New York Islanders arena project and will be situated between the Queens Village and Bellerose stations on the LIRR’s Main Line, just east of the Cross Island Parkway.

A press release put out by the governor’s office claimed it will the cost the arena developers – a partnership that includes the owners of both the Islanders and New York Mets — $97 million of the estimated $105 million price-tag.

However, state officials later clarified that the developers are only paying $30 million up front with the remaining $67 million to be covered by a no-interest, multi-decade state loan. The state will pick up the remaining $8 million.

The news didn’t sit well with project opponents.

“Obviously the State of New York wants to play hide the puck, and pretend that arena developers are paying for a massive transportation project instead of the taxpayers and commuters, and they buried that actual fact in the fine print. That is a disrespect, and cardinal breach of public trust,”said Tammie S. Williams of the Belmont Park Community Coalition.

Happy belated 243rd birthday to America

There's no way an 1100 vote lead disappeared without corruption

New York Times

The Democratic primary for district attorney in Queens, a race that drew nationwide attention, was thrown deep into uncertainty on Wednesday after a count of paper ballots flipped the primary-night result.

Tiffany Cabán, a 31-year-old public defender, saw her almost 1,100-vote lead evaporate, with 

Melinda Katz, the Queens borough president, edging out to a 20-vote lead.

The tight margin will automatically trigger a recount, according to Valerie Vazquez-Diaz, a spokeswoman for the New York City Board of Elections. It also spurred accusations from Ms. Cabán’s side that elections officials improperly invalidated more than 2,000 affidavit ballots before the paper ballots were counted.

“We are going to fight to make sure every valid vote is counted and every voter has a voice,” said Bill Lipton, the New York director of the Working Families Party, which supported Ms. Cabán. “And when all the votes are counted, we are confident Tiffany Cabán will be the next Queens district attorney.”

The primary race was cast as a battle between the traditional power bases in Queens and the progressive forces that propelled Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to her primary victory in New York last year. Ms. Katz had the backing of unions and local political leaders, while Ms. Cabán received support from prominent members of Congress, including Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.

Ms. Katz is ahead by 20 votes, 34,898 to 34,878, according to lawyers representing her. Jerry H. Goldfeder, a veteran election lawyer representing Ms. Cabán, agreed that Ms. Katz was now ahead by 20 votes.

The new vote total meant that Ms. Katz drew twice as many votes from the paper ballots as Ms. Cabán did.

Mr. Goldfeder said he intended to challenge the decision to invalidate all but 487 of the 2,816 affidavit ballots cast. Election officials said they had determined that the ballots, used when a voter’s name is not listed at the polling place, were invalid or had been cast by ineligible voters.

The Board of Elections would not release any information until the election results were certified but confirmed that there would be a recount. The board has a policy of conducting a manual recount when the victory is by less than 0.5 percent, Ms. Vazquez-Diaz said.

Crappy emailed me this bizarre (although expected) turn of events and wrote in the subject line and I am inclined to agree. Something like this happened in a district in Florida that the notorious Debbie-Wasserman Schultz represents. And of course there was the incident where 200,000 votes in Brooklyn vanished during the 2016 presidential primary. Go figure this would happen on the eve of the day of the birth of this nation. Apparently, the Queens Machine will stop at nothing to keep their crappy patronage jalopy running.

Update: I found a more appropriate picture.

Three-bedroom apartments in this city are like an endangered species

 City Limits

Christina Saldana’s 9-year-old daughter Hailey plays with a brown doll in the crawl space between the family’s sofa and the wall. She has a small pink box of toys crammed in the corner, and another next to the hot pink twin bed that the family of three shares most nights.
 
Saldana and her two daughters are cramped for space in their 650-square-foot studio apartment in the Bronx.

“The only door that I have right now is the bathroom,” Saldana, 27, says. “If I want to have a few minutes to myself, I would have to take a bubble bath.”
 
Saldana pays $1,100 for the studio in Parkchester, where the family has lived for four years. With her salary of $40,000, she wants to buy her girls more space as they get older. But she says there’s nothing she can find on the market that fits her needs.

New Yorkers have long lived in cramped quarters, from multiple generations of immigrants to large Orthodox families. But the rising rents that accompany gentrification in certain neighborhoods has caused even four-person families to squeeze into small spaces.

The price of a two-bedroom apartment in historically poor neighborhoods like Mott Haven in the Bronx has jumped 14 percent in the last year to a median of $1,850. Many working-class families are forced to make do in one bedrooms and studios. The city’s affordable housing program has tried to compensate for this in the last five years, building far more one bedroom and two bedroom affordable apartments than larger units. But some advocates say this in turn leaves larger families without options.

Of the 156,000 units of affordable housing built or preserved since 2014, over 100,000 units had two or fewer bedrooms, according to New York City’s OpenData. Almost 43,000 were two bedrooms. In comparison, only 14,700 three-bedrooms were built or preserved in the same timeframe, as were only 1,500 four bedrooms.

Developers in the city tend to favor studios and one-bedrooms, with over 25,000 units newly built since 2014, compared to just over 2,000 three-bedroom units built and only 88 four-bedrooms. On the other side, the city preserved over 30,000 two-bedroom units, over 27,000 one-bedrooms and only about 12,000 three-bedrooms.

In a neighborhood like the South Bronx, once known for its row houses that hosted generations of families, there are now predominantly apartments with two or fewer bedrooms. Data from the American Community Survey shows that the neighborhood lost about 400 units from with three or more bedrooms 2010 to 2017. It gained 4,311 with two or fewer bedrooms. And over a thousand of those were studios.

Overall, the city lost over 23,000 apartments with four bedrooms or more.

Mayor Bill de Blasio’s affordable housing plan, Housing New York, largely mirrors the trends in the market when it comes to apartment size. The plan, which was released in 2014, focuses on housing needed by a growing demographic of one to two person households.  The report cites 1.9 million one- and two-person households residing in the city in 2012 (more than 60 percent of all the city’s households), but only 1.25 million studios and one-bedroom apartments.

Mayor Big Slow de Blasio, who wants to run this nation, can't set the timer on his alarm clock

NY Post


Hail to the sleep!

Mayor de Blasio showed up 41 minutes late for a live TV interview Tuesday morning — and blamed the delay on having slept in because his alarm clock wasn’t set properly.

“Says he set his alarm for the wrong time,” PIX11 Morning News co-host Dan Mannarino tweeted following de Blasio’s appearance.

The Big Apple’s habitually tardy mayor forced Mannarino to repeatedly make excuses when he failed to appear as scheduled for a 7:30 a.m. sit-down at the station’s East 42nd Street studio, just three miles from Gracie Mansion.

Mannarino began covering for Hizzoner at 7:33, telling viewers: “I know we teased Mayor de Blasio at 7:30. He is running late. We will have the interview coming up shortly.”
In a 7:45 update, Mannarino said that “we’re being told by the mayor’s detail that he is still coming to our studios” and noted de Blasio’s side-hustle campaign for the White House.

“He was in Chicago last night, so this was an early wake-up,” Mannarino said. “Cutting him some slack this morning.”

At the top of the hour, Mannarino said de Blasio had “just left Gracie Mansion,” and later marked his 8:11 arrival. 

 After de Blasio finally got seated during a commercial break, Mannarino welcomed back his audience by saying: “Better late than never. 8:14, here we go.”
Mannarino even graciously blamed himself when the interview wrapped up, telling de Blasio, “We dragged you out of bed early, I appreciate it.”

“Thank you, man,” de Blasio replied.

The mayor never explained on-air why he kept everyone waiting so long, but mayoral spokeswoman Freddi Goldstein confirmed the excuse he privately gave Mannarino.

 Either hizzzzzzoner has just run out of excuses to use for his notorious tardiness or he's just comfortable telling cliched ones like this because he's been getting away with so much shit for the past 5 years. What a dick.

Woodside Ave Summer Camp for Rats

My dearest Crappy,
 
Behold, Mount Craphurst! It gets bigger by the minute. Wanna see it in person? Come to Woodside Avenue and 73rd Street.
 
This pile has been here for at least a month! The city gives zero fucks. Seriously, Sanitation collects from this same block twice a week and the DSNY inspectors drive around constantly.
 
Last week, a city employee lady was actually walking up and down Woodside Avenue (this very block), inspecting properties for adequate garbage containment measures to prevent RATS?!?!? 

Some neighbors who met this lady actually escorted her to the pile, and she declared that yes indeed, rats might be drawn to such a mess. But why bother dealing with it?
 
Guess what? I myself have spotted 3 rats running down Woodside Ave near the pile since it started forming. Isn’t that surprising? No??
 
Originally it started as a bag or two, on the railroad overpass. Then, it migrated a few feet over to the current location, a construction site. And it grew and grew and grew....
 
 Notice the green bags (with rat holes) that encapsulate some of the litter. These bags are a new (~a week) development. I guess someone bagged up the trash, hoping to make it easier for collection.
 
What did we Queens residents do to deserve this treatment?
 
Again, a pile of lose garbage untouched for a month..... growing and growing and providing a playground for rats and a steamy olfactory playground for humans.
 
Welcome to Queens, the borough of nobody-gives-a-fuck.
 
Anonymous Crazy Lady

Cell tower being placed at abandoned hospital for Riis Park and Fort Tilden visitors phone habits is rattling Neponsit residents

Rockaway Times

What’s the topic of conversation in Neponsit? Something to help make conversations easier—a cell phone tower. But at a recent Neponsit Property Owners Association meeting, the tower got bad reception from neighbors.

Residents of Neponsit were on alert this week when they noticed construction crews staging an area at the old Neponsit Health Care Center on Beach 149th Street, in preparation of installing a cellphone tower, which parts of were left on a flatbed trailer. This became the top topic of discussion at Tuesday’s meeting held at West End Temple.

Not too much has taken place at the old Neponsit Home since it was evacuated and shut down in 1998. The property is currently maintained by NYC Health and Hospitals Corporation, which according to a report from 2015, pays about $266,000 annually just on security and basic repairs for the decaying building. However, something may be happening that could potentially help HHC recoup some of those costs.

According to HHC, a cell phone tower is coming to the property as part of a three-month pilot program. The tower belongs to telephone provider T-Mobile and is being erected in response to complaints about poor coverage in Riis Park and Fort Tilden. The tower is expected to bring improved service for T-Mobile customers in the area. As it is a pilot, the company says it will take public opinion into consideration to determine if the tower will stay beyond three months.

However, early opinions show that some neighbors are not very receptive to the idea, nor have they been in Neponsit for several years when it comes to the subject of cell towers. Cell phone towers are not absent in Rockaway, with towers that operate at Beach 108th Street, Beach 116th Street, Beach 121st Street, and Beach 135th Street among others. However, in Neponsit, the backlash has been consistent. In 2008 there were plans to put a cell tower on top of West End Temple, where Tuesday’s meeting was held, but this plan was eventually halted due to the community's concerns about health issues, especially because West End Temple houses a religious school, day camps, and nursery school.

Those same health concerns and others were repeated this week with the new tower. At a sparsely attended meeting, which was competing with an important community board meeting and the District Attorney election, the Neponsit property owners discussed the tower and posed questions to Councilman Eric Ulrich representative Robby Schwach. The majority of the attendees were opposed to the tower, citing either possible health concerns, or the unsightliness of the tower itself.

Got a feeling that this "pilot" program is going to lead to T-Mobile splaying their ugly ads all over the park area too. But lots of people today, especially all these visitors for the "Beach Bazaar", gotta have reception at all times because cellphones, texting and instagramming are as addictive as crack and smack.

Another interesting thing is that HHC is spending over 250 grand a year to guard and repair the building. But clearly mostly to guard it, the only visible repairs there are the cemented windows and the creepy tower lights that are on at night.

Entire Liberty Avenue bank solely used for money withdrawal

Impunity City

Richmond Hill, Queens, N.Y.

 What the hell is up with this bank? For some peculiar reason, NYCB decided to end human interaction customer and teller service at this Liberty Ave. branch back in April and has only made this bank available for ATM service. But only for withdrawals and not deposits. It’s like one of those crappy looking machines you see by bodegas or barstaurants except it’s an entire commercial storefront version of it.

 

The Kew Gardens Crap Mahal is late for opening

The building of this 8-story monstrosity on the steep hill of 116th St. in Kew Gardens was permitted by the city back in 2016 and expected to open for sales this year.

Apparently, something got in the way of it's completion and now it's just sitting in parasitic development limbo. And from the looks of it, probably for a while now...

...and definitely for a while longer.

No wonder they gave themselves a two year window for completion (May 2017-May 2019!)

See ya later.

Crappers in Queens parks are the filthiest or not even available at all

LIC Post


Public bathrooms in Sunnyside, Woodside and Long Island City are among the worst in New York City, according to a report released Thursday by the Comptroller’s office.

The report, titled Dis-comfort Stations: The Conditions and Availability of NYC Parks Bathrooms, found that 25 percent of the bathrooms at City parks in Community District 2—which covers Sunnyside, Woodside and Long Island City– were in an “unacceptable” condition.

The report, which reviewed the state of bathrooms at City parks, defined a bathroom as unacceptable if it had deficiencies such as broken toilets or sinks; damaged walls or ceilings; or broken soap dispensers.

Community District 2 ranked as the ninth worst of New York’s 59 community districts. It also ranked last of the 14 community districts in Queens.

 Meanwhile, in Jackson Heights and North Corona, there are hardly any public bathrooms at City parks at all, according to the report.

Queens Community District 3, which covers Jackson Heights and North Corona, was found to have just 12 public bathrooms, equating to 7 bathrooms per 100,000 residents. The district was the eighth worst in the City on a per capita basis, according to the report.

Brooklyn moped share is being used by reckless drivers

Greenpoint Post


North Brooklyn residents are speaking out about the dangerous misuse of a recently deployed fleet of rent-by-the-minute mopeds in the area.

The mopeds, put on the streets last month by tech startup company Revel, are reportedly being driven through local parks at high speeds, used without helmets, and taken on the highway.

Revel released its fleet of 1,000 mopeds across more than 20 neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens on May 29 after a successful test run in the Greenpoint, Williamsburg and Bushwick neighborhoods. 

Residents in North Brooklyn, however, have taken to social media and spoken to the Greenpoint Post about their apparent misuse since the official launch last month.

One resident, Angie Bee, says she witnessed two boys riding a Revel moped on the shoulder of the southbound BQE near the Metropolitan/Marcy entrance. Neither boy was wearing a helmet, Bee said, and both were laughing.

“My boyfriend pulled up next to them, shouted something about them being stupid for not wearing helmets and we took off,” Bee said. “They didn’t reply, they just stopped smiling.”

Revel mopeds max out at 29 miles per hour and users must agree to not drive them on the highway, bridges, or through tunnels, and to use the helmets provided with each bike, before being allowed to create an account on the company’s mobile app.

When signing up, applicants must provide a picture of their driver’s license, which the company uses to check the applicant’s driving record, as well as a selfie to prove that the license is their’s. Applicants must be 21 years of age and older.

Greenpoint resident Haley Papageorge, who lives across the street from McGolrick Park, says she recently observed a group of young men riding the mopeds through the park around 9 p.m. at night, honking their horns and yelling at pedestrians to “get out of the f***ing way.”

“I went to the window and saw about five scooters flying through the park from the Nassau and Russell entrance,” Papageorge said. “There were definitely people out walking.”