New York City in brief

The Trump administration, showing a peculiar fondness for surprise, will now force New York’s counties to implement stricter SNAP work requirements by November, not March, risking abrupt benefit losses for hundreds of thousands. This abrupt timeline leaves already overstretched local agencies scrambling to process paperwork—never a famously swift sport—just as winter aid requests pile up. We expect plenty of heat, though perhaps not where it’s most needed.

With just weeks until New York’s election, sparring over three housing ballot measures has grown fierce—unions and City Council leaders decry changes that would “fast track” affordable housing and curb public oversight, while pro-reform groups, cash-flush with $3 million, push back. The city’s Charter Commission finds itself fending off lawsuits as politicians and labor vie for turf—proving again that in Gotham, even ballot measures need bodyguards.

Two New York City Council committees have unanimously greenlit the Jamaica Neighborhood Plan, an ambitious rezoning scheme to upzone 230 blocks of Queens that would allow roughly 11,800 new homes—over a third deemed permanently affordable—and 7,000 jobs, with $413 million earmarked for infrastructure. Council Speaker Adrienne Adams hails it as a generational leap; now for the full Council to remember which way is up on October 29th.

New York’s City Council committees have unanimously advanced the Jamaica Neighborhood Plan, pledging to rezone over 300 blocks of southeast Queens and, on paper, deliver nearly 12,000 new homes—about a third of them “permanently affordable”—plus $413 million in infrastructure and public space upgrades. The 15-year blueprint promises 7,000 new jobs and the city’s largest ever Inclusionary Housing zone; true to form, completion will be fashionably late.

Donald Trump announced that the US will slap 100% tariffs on Chinese goods from November 1st, citing Beijing’s “hostile” push for rare earth export controls—a move echoed by China’s threats to restrict exports on almost everything, even some products it doesn’t produce. Stocks promptly tumbled over 3%, and a planned Trump-Xi summit is off; for now, it’s tariffs, not handshakes, that are in fashion.