A report from the New York Housing Conference found that owners of subsidised housing filed over 43,000 eviction suits—more than a third of New York City’s total in 2024—despite rents technically being capped for low- and middle-income tenants. Whil…
Mayor Zohran Mamdani is flirting with a 9.5% property tax hike to plug New York City’s $5.4 billion budget gap, thanks to a patchwork tax code that, since 1981, has oddly pampered brownstones and luxury condos while stiffing renters and less tony boroughs. Reform has repeatedly outfoxed City Hall’s best, but if ever a challenge could unite Brooklyn brownstone owners and Bronx renters in shared bewilderment, this is it.
New York’s budget chief, Blake Washington, told a Citizens Budget Commission crowd that Governor Kathy Hochul aims to soften climate requirements, hinting at tweaks to the 2019 emissions law as New Yorkers face $3,000 bills for greening the grid. With the state missing ambitious targets and eyeing more natural gas, we’ll see whether adaptation trumps aspiration—or if the weather proves less flexible than Albany’s rulebook.
Yet again, New York City’s byzantine property tax regime is drawing ire, as homeowners from Laurelton to Hollis confront tax bills that eclipse those levied on costlier abodes in wealthier enclaves. With market values outpacing capped assessments and condo valuations based on rental analogies, officials like Zohran Mamdani vow reform—though if history is any guide, the process may generate more commissions than solutions.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani has appointed Erin Dalton—fresh from running Allegheny County’s human services—to rescue New York’s Department of Social Services after a deadly cold snap and policy U-turns over homeless sweeps left the city frostbitten. With Dalton overseeing $19 billion in aid for 3 million residents, we await to see whether steel-city tinkering can fix Gotham’s notoriously leaky social safety nets, or just move the draft.
In Brooklyn, New York officials have kicked off the city’s first “Rental Ripoff” hearing, part of a series aimed at deciphering the rent-gouging woes relayed daily to the Met Council on Housing’s busy tenant hotline, where volunteers offer both advice and therapy. City plans and a much-anticipated recommendations report now hang on the callers’ tales—proof, perhaps, that misery does love company, at least in committee.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani has tapped Erin Dalton, fresh from Pittsburgh’s Allegheny County, to helm New York City’s vast Department of Social Services as homelessness nears historic highs and another frigid winter bites. Dalton replaces Molly Wasow Park, inheriting oversight of 14,000 staff, 90,000 nightly shelter dwellers, and a famously patchwork right-to-shelter system—proof that in New York, fresh eyes are the city’s least renewable resource.
New York families with three- and four-year-olds have until February 27th to apply for the city’s free 3-K and Pre-K programs—a rare bureaucratic deadline that, if met, could yield $26,000 in average annual childcare savings. Outreach under Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez targets all, regardless of immigration status or language—an admirable attempt to ensure everyone’s toddler has a fair shot at finger paints and snack time.
Following a return by nearly 15,000 striking nurses at Montefiore, Mount Sinai, and New York-Presbyterian, New York’s safe staffing law—hailed as a post-pandemic salve—remains more patch than cure. Of 13,000 staffing complaints, regulatory slap-downs have been rare, leaving enforcement largely up to individual hospitals’ honor systems and arbitration. We await the day understaffed wards become the stuff of medical folklore.
