Queens is hungry

 

QNS 

A new report from the state’s Department of Health found that 30.9% of Queens adults — the second-highest percentage among the five boroughs — self-reported that they were “always, sometimes or usually worried or stressed about having enough money to buy nutritious meals in the past 12 months.”

Only the Bronx had a higher percentage among the boroughs, at 39%.

The research, conducted county-by-county throughout the state, paints a grim picture of health in New York. Within the New York City boroughs, Staten Island (Richmond County) reported the lowest percentage of food insecurity, but still came in at 22.1%. Statewide, food insecurity was reported by nearly one in four adults.

Bronx had the highest percentage among New York’s 62 counties, with Queens ranking second. Brooklyn ranked third, at 30.1%.

Lack of nutritious food can have serious health impacts.

“Hunger stresses the body and mind, and can result in malnutrition, inability to concentrate, anxiety and depression,” State Health Commissioner Dr. James McDonald said in a statement. “In addition, adults who experience food insecurity are more likely to report chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, asthma and cancer.”

The LIRR's Ides Of March

NY Post

The MTA was warned a decade ago that the Long Island Rail Road’s Jamaica hub would be overwhelmed and face frequent commute meltdowns — like the ones commuters have been forced to endure all week, The Post has learned.

The dire prediction came in an analysis of the Jamaica, Queens station’s capacity, completed in 2012, that simulated service changes nearly identical to the one launched by the MTA this week to its new $11 billion terminal on the East Side of Manhattan and found it would overwhelm operations at the station.

“Evaluation of the new operation on the existing conditions indicates an inability of the current infrastructure to accommodate the higher volume of service during the morning peak period and evening westbound direction due to cascading delays,” the analysis determined.

The simulation showed trains arriving into Jamaica on-time 93% of the time under the then-current runs, even when encountering routine service disruptions, like a medical emergency on a platform or a mechanical problem with a train.

But the on-time percentage with the new service plummeted to just 72%, a 21% point drop, the analysis prepared by San Diego-based TranSystems Corporation determined.

The prophetic study found that the operational collapse occurred even if the MTA simplified the Jamaica operation by axing one-seat service from Long Island to Brooklyn and instead ran a shuttle to Atlantic Terminal — and even if officials axed timed transfers to boost station capacity by reducing the amount of time trains spend parked at the platforms.

A key fix, the analysis determined, was to replace the low-speed switches that run through Jamaica Station — which limit trains to just 15 mph — with more modern systems that allow trains to run at 30 mph or faster.

MTA officials approved spending $85 million to do just that in 2020 — some eight years after the engineering report was completed. That project is not expected to be completed until December 2027.

It does not appear that the MTA ever made the analysis public, but it was heavily excerpted in an academic article that the firm subsequently prepared, which was published in 2014.

 

Jamaica bus lines study is FUBAR

 

Queens Chronicle

The Chronicle has obtained a letter in which eight elected officials who represent Jamaica or neighboring areas call on the city Department of Transportation to end its intended year-long study of how bus lanes are affecting Jamaica Avenue.

The letter to DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez and Queens Borough Commissioner Nicole Garcia, dated July 8, says businesses are being harmed and that residents are complaining about a lack of accessibility along the popular commercial and retail shopping corridor.

It was sent on the letterhead of Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, but also was signed by Council Speaker Adrienne Adams (D-Jamaica), Councilmembers Selvena Brooks-Powers (D-Laurelton) and Nantasha Williams (D-St. Albans); state Sens. Leroy Comrie (D-St. Albans) and James Sanders Jr. (D-South Ozone Park); and Assemblymembers Alicia Hyndman (D-Springfield Gardens) and Khaleel Anderson (South Ozone Park).

“The DOT has expressed to the community the need for a year-long study to best determine the impact of the bus lanes on Jamaica Avenue,” the letter states. “However, we believe a six-month study is enough to give the DOT sufficient ability to understand the impact these bus lanes have had on businesses and everyday residents in Jamaica.”

The elected officials want the study to be concluded and the results published by the end of summer.

Numerous businesses have complained to the Chronicle since the start of the year about how the bus lanes and lack of traffic have hammered their bottom lines.

The July 8 letter’s language on that topic was diplomatic but unmistakably clear.

“Downtown Jamaica has been subject to a major transportation shift as the community has continued to grow and revitalize,” it states. “While we understand the need for improved bus service, the Jamaica Avenue bus lanes have had a significant and damaging effect on businesses along the corridor. Our offices have also received several complaints from local residents about a lack of accessibility along Jamaica Avenue.”

The signatories also would like the DOT to install signs along Jamaica Avenue with more clear and concise language to help individuals better understand the rules for things like parking, loading areas and standing zones.

Foreclosing going up in the world's borough

 

 Queens Chronicle

The latest Property Shark report, which was released last week, revealed that since the eviction moratorium came to a close in January, first-time scheduled foreclosures and preforeclosures filings have steadily made a climb in Queens.

While Brooklyn has the most foreclosures and preforeclosures in the city the first quarter of 2022, the World’s Borough is not too far behind on both fronts.

Since the end of the moratorium, there have been 87 first-time foreclosures throughout the city and lis pendens, or preforeclosure filings, have jumped by 13 percent citywide compared to the first quarter in 2020.

In Queens, there were 31 foreclosures, most of which were in the 11434 ZIP Code, which encompasses parts or all of Hollis, Jamaica, St. Albans and South Jamaica. There were also 237 preforeclosure filings — a 54 percent increase from the first quarter 2020, according to the report. Brooklyn had 35 foreclosures and 530 lis pendens filed.

There were 12 foreclosures in Manhattan, nine in the Bronx and none in Staten Island, according to Property Shark. Respectively, they also had 32, 74 and 150 preforeclosures.

The city’s homeowners have increasingly felt the economic pressures caused by the pandemic, said City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams (D-Jamaica).

“Housing is New Yorkers’ top priority for having safer neighborhoods, and our city must focus on keeping people in their homes,” said Adams via email. “We know that Black and brown homeowners in neighborhoods, like those I represent in Southeast Queens, have historically been at greatest risk of foreclosure and losing the generational wealth built over many years, which we must defend.”

Year after year, the city has funded a multimillion-dollar Foreclosure Prevention Initiative, which remains in the current budget to provide assistance to distressed homeowners, she added.

“In its Preliminary Budget Response, the Council has also proposed a property tax rebate for homeowners, which would provide overdue relief,” said Adams. “These are priorities we support to keep New Yorkers in their homes during this crisis.”

Homeowners who have fallen behind or need help navigating the complicated process or who want to avoid foreclosure can get free legal service by contacting the Center for NYC Neighborhoods network at (646) 786-0888.

Councilwoman Nantasha Williams (D-St. Albans) was disheartened that her district, 27, continues to take the brunt of the foreclosure crisis, which has become a recurring issue.

Transporation Alternatives study on open streets confirms residents don't want them

 

 

NY Daily News

Mayor de Blasio has allowed cars to conquer open streets.

The city’s “Open Streets” program, which launched in the summer of 2020 with the goal of closing streets to cars for certain parts of the day, has been mostly abandoned, said a report published Tuesday by the street safety advocacy group Transportation Alternatives.

The goal of the program was to give New Yorkers more outdoor space to social distance during the pandemic — and proved to be wildly popular in many neighborhoods.

But data from Tuesday’s report suggests the program is not so popular among de Blasio officials.

Transportation Alternatives surveyed every one of the 274 street segments listed as part of the program, and found that 54% of them did not have barriers to keep cars from rolling through during hours the city Department of Transportation permitted them to close to traffic.

It’s a damning finding for a program that de Blasio in May called “great for the neighborhood, great for tourists too.” The mayor in April 2020 said up to 100 miles of streets would be part of the program — but Transportation Alternatives found just 24 of the city’s 6,300 miles of streets actually served as car-free “open streets” over the course of 2021.

The report also found glaring inequities in what remains of the Open Streets program.

Some 84% of the street segments listed as part of the program in the Bronx had no barriers to keep cars out in 2021 — and the borough is home to just 2% of the program’s streets that are actually enforced, the report found.

“This report makes one thing clear: New Yorkers love Open Streets, and they want to see them succeed,” said Transportation Alternatives executive director Danny Harris. “However, Mayor de Blasio has broken his promise to expand the program equitably.”

This report makes it more clear that they didn't even bother to talking to the residents where these open streets are. Danny Harris is the second most deranged and delusional person in this city behind the Blaz.

The people @TransAlt surveyed for these "active" open streets,no one is identified,they are all "visitors" not residents.And most of them respond with the same talking points that jibes with every press release and social media message they put out. Including this study! pic.twitter.com/QLEYYzS3mr

— This is JQ LLC (@ImpunityCity) October 13, 2021

Current mayor's climate event and emergency plan will take 2 more years to complete

 

 NY Post

 City officials were well aware of the death traps that basement apartments would become in the event of a flash-flood emergency like the one that drowned at least eight New Yorkers living below grade Wednesday night — yet they did nothing to warn them.

Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Stormwater Resiliency Plan, released in May, includes an initiative that would “develop notifications for basement dwellings to keep residents out of harm’s way.”

The plan required the Office of Emergency Management to “pre-draft messaging regarding potential dangers for residents living in basement dwellings to be used for outreach and notification in advance of forecasted extreme rain events.”

Completion date? 2023.

“There are multiple initiatives, all that are very pressing and important, that are currently underway,” City Hall spokesman Mitch Schwartz said.

Leave it to Mayor Big Slow to draft a plan to make basement dwellings part of the city's housing program first and then come up with an emergency plan for them over a year later. What a stupid fucking idiot. 

 

Did not age well at all. https://t.co/2EuW0DMUCh

— Queens Crapper (@QueensCrapper) September 3, 2021

NYC's Night Parliament looking to legalize public drunkenness

 

 NY Post

Bar? None!

New Yorkers would be free to openly drink their cares away in public areas under a new proposal by the city’s Nightlife Advisory Board — but residents near booze-soaked Washington Square Park are already feeling green around the gills at the thought.

In a report issued last week, the NAB — established by Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2017 — offered 15 recommendations on how to boost New York’s nightlife and maintain good relationships between hot spots and their residential neighbors.

Among the NAB’s suggestions, under a section labeled “Nightlife Beyond Bars and Clubs,” was taking the party outside.

“New Yorkers need affordable options for all kinds of nightlife,” the proposal says. “In most global cities people can gather informally in squares and parks to drink with friends and even dance to the rhythm of impromptu concerts.

“Drinking in the public space and dancing anywhere in the city should be regulated but not prohibited.”

But locals near Manhattan’s Washington Square Park — where lawlessness including public drinking has reigned in recent months, garnering no more than a shrug from de Blasio — gave a thumb’s down to the idea.

 “I’m all for people to have a place to gather, but I’m not in favor of [the NAB proposal],” said Carol Meylan, a social worker and Greenwich Village resident. “Behavior gets unruly and reckless.

“I think there would be more violence,” added Meylan, 62. “We already witnessed people getting into fights, a lot of broken glass, a lot of behavior where crowds can’t be managed that well.”

Al Rosario, a doorman of Meylan’s park-adjacent building, said he’s seen booze turn the crowds in the green space belligerent.

“Even when they have good music and entertainment, once these people are drinking, they don’t want to leave, they don’t want to stop,” said Rosario, 60. “It would be so hard to control. … You’re only going to start a fire here.”

FAA gives approval for LaGuardia Air Train construction to commence

 

Queens Chronicle

An environmental study released Monday by the Federal Aviation Administration appears to have cleared the way for construction of an AirTrain route to and from LaGuardia Airport.

In signing the document approved, David Fish, director of the Office of Airports for the FAA’s Eastern Region, wrote that “after careful and thorough consideration of the facts contained herein ... [I find] that the proposed Federal action is consistent with existing national environmental policies and objectives ... of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969.”

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which is seeking to build the link between LaGuardia and the Mets-Willets Point stop on the No. 7 subway line, needs FAA approval in order to access federal airport improvement funds.

The agency, with Gov. Cuomo’s backing, says the project is needed to decrease travel time between LaGuardia and Midtown and Downtown Manhattan.

Residents in and around East Elmhurst and environmental organizations have opposed the plan, which would construct the elevated rail along the Flushing Promenade.

Their objections include loss of parkland, the impact of noise, vibrations and traffic during construction, and the visual impact of a raised structure along the Promenade and Flushing Bay.

The FAA is expected to issue its final record of decision in 30 days. If approved, major construction is expected to begin in March 2022, with limited work beginning as early as this June. It is estimated that the system would be fully operational by December 2025.

The entire 628-page report, including a 46-page executive summary, can be read or downloaded online at lgaaccesseis.com.

Buttinski bike lobby led coalition demands more cars off the streets

 

 Gothamist

 A diverse coalition of more than 80 advocacy groups and nonprofit organizations is asking the next generation of city leaders to imagine what it would take to install 500 more miles of bike lanes, 1,000 miles of year-round open streets, and one block of car-free streets in front of every public school in New York City.

On Monday, the group Transportation Alternatives issued a challenge it calls “NYC 25x25.” The advocacy group is asking the next mayor, city council and borough presidents to commit to converting 25% of streets currently used by vehicles into other purposes, by 2025.

“This is a watershed moment for New York City,” Danny Harris, executive director of Transportation Alternatives, told Gothamist/WNYC. “We need to look at this intersection of COVID, of racial injustice, economic inequities, and ask some serious questions about the future of our city and our budget and we need a new crop of leaders who are willing to look at streets as an asset, instead of a liability.”

 

The proposals come at a time when the number of candidates running for mayor remains sprawling, and few have distinguished themselves on transportation issues. The debate over how to use street space has intensified during the pandemic after what many consider a successful run of open streets during the pandemic and a boom in cycling, but also a recent uptick in traffic deaths.

Other suggestions from the coalition include adding 19.4 million square feet of bike parking, designated locations on every block long enough for taxis to drop off passengers and for trucks to make deliveries without blocking streets or bike lanes.

The latest proposals have the backing of disparate groups in the city from the tech industry nonprofit Tech:NYC, to the New York Building Congress, and the Institute for Public Architecture.

“Lack of quality transportation options makes it difficult for many of the people in the low-income communities of color we serve to access resources, such as employment, education, good food, and health care, that are needed to be healthy and financially stable,” Tracey Capers, executive vice president and chief program officer at the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, wrote in a statement. Her group works with Citibike to get more bike shares into Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.

“Likewise, we support the re-allocation of our public spaces, including the creation of more car-free bus lanes and protected bike lanes, to better serve the majority of our residents, who don’t own cars,” Capers added.

The 127-year old advocacy group the Municipal Arts Society is another organization that backs the expansion of streets for public use. Tara Kelly, the society’s vice president of policy and programs, told Gothamist/ WNYC that her group came up with the idea of pedestrian islands in the early 1900s, calling them “isles of safety.” She said this is just the next generation of smart thinking about how to use city streets.

“This past year in particular has demonstrated that importance, our access to public space for recreation, for protests, for transportation, for getting a bit of sunshine, stepping out of our apartments,” Kelly said.

This will really make all those who bought cars last year tinkled pink at this proposal.

 

 

A percentage of babies born in the city wind up homeless in Cuomo's and de Blasio's New York

NY Daily News

One out of a hundred New York City newborns last year went “home” from the hospital to a homeless shelter, a heartbreaking new analysis by the Coalition for the Homeless revealed.

The group’s annual report, to be released Wednesday, lays blame for that and scores of other sobering statistics squarely at the feet of the two most powerful men in New York — Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio.

“New York City’s homelessness crisis will not improve until Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio treat homelessness like the urgent humanitarian crisis it is and acknowledge that it is fueled by the massive lack of affordable housing," said Giselle Routhier, the coalition’s policy director.

Aside from infants, the hardest hit by the homelessness crisis in recent years are the elderly, blacks and Hispanics, according to the report.

De Blasio has made the problem worse through a policy that “exacerbates" a housing market divided between the rich and poor and that creates too many high-rent units and not enough that are affordable, the report says.

The coalition also blamed Cuomo for implementing “damaging cost-shifting practices" that lowered the amount of money the state put toward addressing homelessness, putting further financial stress on the city.

“Mayor de Blasio and Gov. Cuomo seem content with minimalist, symbolic and too-often harmful actions made under the pretense of attempting to manage the problem, rather than taking the substantive steps needed to solve it," the report states.

Immigrants have been very very good for NYC

NY Post

Immigrants love New York — they always have.
 
And they are having the greatest economic effect here, out of all the states, according to a new report.
The WalletHub study compared the economic impact of foreign-born populations on the 50 states and the District of Columbia. It used 23 indicators to determine which states benefit the most — and least — from immigration.
 
New York was No. 1 because “foreign-born population is almost 23 percent, second-highest in the country, and more than 12 percent of its households are made up of second-generation immigrants,” the report said, adding, “The percentage of income generated by immigrant households is over 25 percent, the highest in the nation.”
 
WalletHub analyst Jill Gonzalez attributed New York’s immigrant bounty to a number of factors.
 
“Some of the reasons immigrants have the highest economic impact in New York include the third-largest share of foreign-born workforce, over 27 percent, and the second-largest share of foreign-born business owners, over 25 percent,” she said. “The state also has the second-largest share of active physicians who are international medical graduates, 37 percent.”
 
In addition, New York has a large number of international students and enjoys the “brain gain” and innovation brought by immigrants.
 

City paid consulting firm to manipulate the violence statistics at Rikers Island with shady and unethical tech methods

 

Propublica

In April 2017, partners from McKinsey & Company sent a confidential final report to the New York City corrections commissioner. They had spent almost three years leading an unusual project for a white-shoe corporate consulting firm like McKinsey: Attempting to stem the tide of inmate brawls, gang slashings and assaults by guards that threatened to overwhelm the jail complex on Rikers Island.

The report recounted that McKinsey had tested its new anti-violence strategy in what the firm called “Restart” housing units at Rikers. The results were striking. Violence had dropped more than 50% in the Restart facilities, the McKinsey partners wrote.

The number was bogus. Jail officials and McKinsey consultants had jointly rigged the Restart program in its earliest phase to all but guarantee there would be few violent episodes, according to documents and interviews. They stacked the units with inmates they believed to be compliant and unlikely to get into fights or to attack staff.

Publicly, McKinsey and top corrections officials touted the drop in violence in these units as an early sign of their project’s success — without disclosing that they had tilted the scale in favor of that result. After McKinsey handed off the inmate selection process, about a year into the firm’s work at Rikers, jail officials continued to manipulate the population of the Restart units to keep their violence numbers low.

In October of this year, the New York City Council voted to approve Mayor Bill de Blasio’s proposal to close Rikers. The vote occurred during the same month that a federal monitor, appointed by a court to oversee reform at Rikers, revealed that violence by jail guards there continues to worsen. Overall, using the metrics employed by McKinsey, jailhouse violence has risen nearly 50% since the firm began its assignment.

The full story of how New York City came to pay McKinsey $27.5 million only to abandon many of the firm’s recommendations and decide to shut Rikers has never been told. A ProPublica investigation, based on interviews with 36 people, half of whom worked directly on the project, as well as more than 10,000 pages of project documents, internal emails and other records, reveals that problems dogged the project at every stage.

Among the issues that plagued the project: McKinsey, which had never before advised a jail or prison system, made data errors that further undercut the results it reported from Restart units. The firm also persuaded the Department of Correction to spend millions on the sorts of advanced data analytics favored by McKinsey’s corporate clients. The department never ended up using many of the those data products, some of which simply did not work very well.

What happened at Rikers is a cautionary tale of a public-sector consulting boom that has emerged over the past decade. In recent years, government agencies across the United States have entrusted management consultants with more and more facets of public administration, from designing school systems to shaping Medicaid policy. Public-sector consulting in North America is a more than $9 billion industry, with an average yearly growth rate of about half a billion dollars, according to ALM Intelligence, which monitors the consulting business. McKinsey was anxious to expand into a potentially lucrative branch of public-sector work, corrections consulting, according to a former McKinsey consultant who worked on the project.

As I am sure you all are aware, and this is mostly directed to the residents of Kew Gardens, Mott Haven, Boerum Hill and Chinatown, this report was used to justify closing Rikers. 

In the future, who will they contract to study and manipulate the data after the four borough tower jails get built?

MTA to finally relase study for reactiviating Rockaway Rail

THE CITY

A long-delayed study into whether it’s possible to reactivate a dormant Queens rail spur is finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel, THE CITY has learned.

The MTA in 2016 committed to a planning and feasibility study looking at the potential use of the Long Island Rail Road’s former Rockaway Beach Branch, a 3.5-mile stretch of railway between 

Ozone Park and Rego Park that has been out of service since 1962.

The results of the study — for which the MTA awarded an $864,000 contract to Systra Engineering in October 2017 — were supposed to be made public last year. But MTA spokesperson Aaron Donovan told THE CITY the findings now will be released by the end of 2019.

“It’s like a national secret of some sort,” said Rick Horan, director of the Queens RAIL and WAY Task Force, which wants the space used for transit and parkland purposes. “Why is it delayed?”

Part of a larger MTA and Port Authority analysis about Kennedy Airport “one-seat ride” service, the study is examining “the operational and physical feasibility” of having commuter rail or subway trains run on the old Rockaway Beach Branch.

 The MTA wouldn’t say what has delayed the process.

“They’ve gone sort of radio silent and it’s very disappointing,” said Phillip Goldfeder, a former Queens assemblymember who pushed for reactivation of the line during his three terms in Albany. 

“This is something that is completely underutilized, something which could transform how people in some parts of Queens commute.”

Since Rockaway Beach Branch service ended 57 years ago, concepts for restoring the railway have been floated in different forms. Much of the space under what was once the LIRR’s Ozone Park station is now filled by small auto-related and scrap businesses.

“Seems like a waste of space up there,” said Barry Williams, 34, who works near the elevated structure. “Why not do something with it?”

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.

Another report on how unaffordable it is to buy a home in New York City

Patch

Many New Yorkers may dream of buying a home, whether it's a Brooklyn Heights brownstone or an almost suburban house in eastern Queens. But a new report suggests housing is unaffordable for the typical worker in all five boroughs.

In the report published Thursday, ATTOM Data Solutions crunched housing and wage numbers for 473 of the nation's more than 3,000 counties nationwide. It determined affordability by assuming a 28 percent maximum "front-end" debt-to-income ratio. That means a buyer purchasing an affordable home would not be spending more than 28 percent of their income on house payments including insurance, mortgage and property taxes.

Every New York City borough is considered unaffordable, meaning median home prices in the first quarter of this year were too expensive for average wage earners. That was the case in 71 percent of the counties that were analyzed.

 The city's highest shares of income needed to purchase a median home were seen in Brooklyn and Manhattan, where a buyer needs 115.9 and 115 percent of the average annual earnings, respectively, the report shows.

Things weren't as bad — though still pretty dismal — on Staten Island, where the costs of buying a home eats up 72.4 percent of the average annual wages of $51,337, according to the report.


ATTOM's affordability index took median home prices from public sales deed data. Average wage figures came from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In all, 231 million people live in the counties analyzed by the company.

 Here's what the researchers found for each New York City borough.
Manhattan

• Affordability index (Under 100 is less affordable than historic average): 76
• Median sales price: $1,862,500
• Year over year annualized wage growth: 6.8 percent
• Year over year median home price growth: 33 percent

Brooklyn

• Affordability index (Under 100 is less affordable than historic average): 92
• Median sales price: $760,000
• Year over year annualized wage growth: 5.8 percent
• Year over year median home price growth: 0 percent

Queens

• Affordability index (Under 100 is less affordable than historic average): 91
• Median sales price: $630,000
• Year over year annualized wage growth: 6.9 percent
• Year over year median home price growth: 7.7 percent

The Bronx

• Affordability index (Under 100 is less affordable than historic average): 91
• Median sales price: $445,000
• Year over year annualized wage growth: 5.7 percent
• Year over year median home price growth: 11 percent

Staten Island

• Affordability index (Under 100 is less affordable than historic average): 101
• Median sales price: $490,000
• Year over year annualized wage growth: 7.3 percent
• Year over year median home price growth: 1 percent

Where the most street homeless are

From RealtyHop:

As shown on the map, homeless encampments are mostly concentrated in Manhattan, with Midtown-Midtown South being the worst of all neighborhoods. The good news? So far, only 402 encampments have reported in the neighborhood, 201 fewer than 2017. West Village is another neighborhood that has seen more homeless encampments than others, with 275 reported in 2017 and 260 reported in 2018 as of October 31st, 2018. The number goes down as the neighborhoods get farther away from the city center. In Brooklyn, however, things seem to be worsening in Stuyvesant Heights, with 56 homeless encampments reported in 2017 and 130 reported in 2018. Other neighborhoods that have seen an increase in the number of encampments include East Williamsburg, Dumbo-Vinegar Hill-Downtown Brooklyn-Boerum Hill, and Prospect Heights.

So this study, using 311 call data regarding homeless encampments, seems to show that while Manhattan numbers are skyrocketing, Queens homeless numbers are on a steep decline. (They cut up and mashed together neighborhoods in a weird way, though.)

More affordable housing but less affordability

From Crains:

The city is building and preserving more affordable housing than ever, but federal programs remain the most effective tool for supporting the poorest households, according to a report released Thursday.

The Citizens Budget Commission analyzed a recent housing survey and found that around 44% of households pay more than 30% of their income in rent—after accounting for government subsidies such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Section 8 housing vouchers.

The 30% rule, the federal standard for being rent-burdened, is an imperfect measurement. High earners could spend a third of their income on rent and still have money left over for luxuries; but some low-income residents, who make up the lion's share of the rent-burdened, can be hard-pressed to pay for necessities if 30% of their earnings go toward rent.

As the report notes, many of the poorest residents spend an even higher percentage of income on housing. About 22% of city households, predominantly made up of low-income senior citizens and single parents, were found to be severely rent-burdened, meaning they devote more than half of every paycheck to rent.

Bill would require market feasibility study before hotel building

From SI Live:

After plans surfaced for two boutique hotels on Port Richmond Avenue, Senator Diane Savino (D-Staten Island/Brooklyn) has introduced legislation to combat the increasing number of hotels across the city in neighborhoods that don't have a market need.

The recent outcry against hotels planned for Port Richmond on Staten Island inspired the bill to ensure there is a need for hotels before they are approved.

"It's clear that the city has failed New Yorkers with its indiscretion when it comes to allowing hotels and motels in areas that simply don't need them," said Savino.

The main concern within the Port Richmond community is that the hotels would not generate legitimate business, instead being turned into de facto homeless shelters.

Her legislation would require business owners perform a market feasibility study to ensure that there is a need for a hotel in a specific neighborhood. If the owner can't show that there is a market for the hotel, they wouldn't receive approval to build.

Who is lying when it comes to supply & demand?

From Crains:

New York City and the surrounding area, including northern New Jersey, the Hudson Valley and southwest Connecticut, is home to 22.8 million people working at 10.4 million jobs, the Metro Economic Snapshot released Tuesday by the Department of City Planning found. Since the last recession, the region has added around 708,000 new jobs—much more than anywhere else in the country in terms of raw numbers—but at a growth rate of just .9%, which is about half that of other metros and roughly on par with the country as a whole.

Over the same time period, the New York area added just 378,000 new housing units, far fewer than the number of jobs created and not nearly enough to meet demand. The mismatch was centered in the five boroughs and helped drive around 100,000 people to the suburbs each year between 2012 and 2016.

The metro area also lost a significant number of recent college graduates to lower-cost cities elsewhere in the country—something Glen has experienced personally.

"I just moved my daughter to Minneapolis," she said. "It was great, but it was also really sad."

From Forbes:

Researchers at the Fed found there were no "direct estimates of the rent elasticity with respect to new housing supply in the literature." No one knows how much housing you'd have to add to have any significant impact on costs. So, the researchers built a simulation to estimate, directly from data, the elasticity of rent with respect to housing supply.

They wanted to know how much rents might change if there was an influx of new housing. Given metropolitan housing crises and a lack of other data, it was an important study.

However, elasticity isn't a simple phenomenon. There are products where changing the price doesn't necessarily result in big shifts of demand. Look at the Apple iPhone X: $1,000 for the device and tens of millions purchased it.

The Fed report suggests that housing will be much the same:

The implication of this finding is that even if a city were able to ease some supply constraints to achieve a marginal increase in its housing stock, the city will not experience a meaningful reduction in rental burdens.

Add 5% more housing to the most expensive neighborhoods and the rents would drop only by 0.5%.

The reason is that people like the amenities in given neighborhoods and want to live there, so will continue to pay higher prices. Amenities can include shopping, schools, and ease of access to public transportation.

Cathy Nolan calls for moratorium on building throughout her district

From LIC Post:

Assemblymember Catherine Nolan is demanding that the city put a stop on new building construction in Long Island City following recent news of a developer securing a half-billion-dollar loan to build what will stand as Queens’ largest tower to date.

The proposed 67-story condo-project at 23-14 44th Dr., in the works since 2016 and with construction beginning last year, came into the spotlight yet again just last week, when the Wall Street Journal reported that the developer had secured a $502 million construction loan for the massive $700 million project.

With the loan, Chris Jiashu Xu, the developer, will be able to build out the 780 foot, 802-unit “Court Square City View Tower” by 2022, the WSJ reported, with LIC’s Modern Spaces in charge of marketing.

But Nolan, who released a statement on the project this afternoon, said the tower is “another illustration of the inadequacy of the current zoning in Long Island City.”

“I have written numerous letters opposing such large towers and asked for changes in zoning,” Nolan said.

She claims that City Planning’s LIC Core Study, a neighborhood study that could lead to a rezoning, has been “put on hold,” while as of right towers continue to spring up in the community.

The Department of City Planning, however, said the city is working on the core study.

From QNS:

Two elected officials representing Queens have joined Community Board 5 and concerned local residents in the fight against a controversial new housing development in Ridgewood.

Assembly Members Catherine Nolan and Mike Miller took their complaints straight to the top on July 13 when they sent a letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio to draw his attention to 1664 Woodbine St., where construction is about to begin. Listed among the nearly 3,000 Ridgewood structures on the National and State Registers of Historic Places, the building is set for a vertical expansion that could “speed up the potential for additional high-rise developments” in the neighborhood, the letter stated.

More importantly to the lawmakers’ constituents, however, is the feeling that such developments are “destroying the integrity and character of the block,” according to the letter.