America’s persistent housing famine—now about 10 million homes short, according to the White House’s latest numbers—has conspired with rising prices and stubborn mortgage rates to price the average home at nearly double the pre-pandemic cost. Now would-be buyers reportedly need $117,000 per year to play. Washington vows regulatory fixes, but builders warn Rome was not raised in one fiscal quarter.
New York City in brief
Top five stories in the five boroughs today
Engineers are gearing up to excavate the Gateway Tunnel, a $16 billion rail link under the Hudson that aims to un-snarl commutes between New York and New Jersey. Assembly of two bespoke, 1,700-ton boring machines will start soon in North Bergen, tackling Palisades rock harder than some politicians’ heads. Legal wrangling over federal funding rumbles on, but the project’s fabled momentum gives cynics a run for their money.
Feeling the pinch from persistent inflation, many New Yorkers are setting aside restaurant menus in favor of home-cooked fare and shelving indulgences once considered routine; as the city’s famously high cost of living climbs, consumer frugality is back in style—which, for some, may be the freshest ingredient in their apartment kitchens since pre-pandemic days.
As Washington prepares to tighten Medicaid rules under President Trump’s broader policy ambitions, New York officials scramble to shield millions of residents from slipping through the cracks—plotting administrative end-runs to preserve coverage even as budgetary realities bite. Both sides seem bent on a tug-of-war, though we marvel that protecting healthcare often requires an Olympic-level contest in creative bureaucracy.
New York’s state legislature is mulling the Sunny Act, a bill poised to let apartment-dwellers hang solar panels from windows and balconies—an everyday luxury in Berlin, but presently a legal gray area in Manhattan. With Con Edison’s unexpected support and $300 panels shunting up to a quarter off electricity bills, we might soon find the city’s skyline reflecting not just ambition, but affordable pragmatism too.