Apartment City

Courtesy of Mayor’s office/Edwin J. Torres Onlookers applaud after Mayor Bill de Blasio signs legislation that makes New York the first city in the nation to provide lawyers for low- income tenants facing wrongful evictions . By Bill Parry TimesLedger Newspapers Share on Twitter Tweet Share on Facebook Subscribe Get our stories in your inbox, free. Like TimesLedger on Facebook. Low-income New Yorkers facing wrongful eviction will be guaranteed legal representation in Housing Court after Mayor Bill de Blasio signed legislation into law last Friday. The program, which is overseen by the Civil Justice Coordinator at the Human Services Administration , will serve 400,000 tenants when it is fully implemented in five years. “New York City will be the first city in the country to ensure anyone facing an eviction case can access legal assistance thanks to this new law,” de Blasio said. “New Yorkers should not lose their homes because they cannot afford a lawyer, and stopping wrongful evi...

How the fight against displacement calls for New York City’s Asian immigrant communities to defect from the “ model minority ” narrative. Media Gallery When NYU sophomore Sam Kim attended a rally outside Manhattan’s City Hall in March, he didn’t think that he would be ushered into the spotlight. Kim had learned of the rally through the local housing organization CAAAV (Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence), which called on New Yorkers to oppose President Trump ’s proposed $6.2 billion cut to the 2018 budget of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). This cut would dramatically reduce federal funding for New York City public housing , which currently provides rent-subsidized homes to 600,000 New Yorkers. Along the City Hall steps , Kim and two fellow student organizers joined a rare gathering of tenants from otherwise disparate peripheries of the city. Asian immigrants from Chinatown and Queens stood alongside Black and Latino residents of Brooklyn and the Bronx...

Rent-burdened tenants with a household income of less than $125,000 will be eligible for tax credits, if a new federal bill proposed by Joseph Crowley, chairman of the Democratic Caucus and Queens County Democratic Party , is signed into law. The Rent Relief Act would make individuals across the country with a household income of less than $125,000 whose primary residence is rental housing, and who pay more than 30 percent of their income in rent, eligible for one of two kinds of tax credits. The first would be a refundable tax credit for those living in non-subsidized housing within the fair market value for rentals. The size of the credit would be determined by taking into account the household’s annual income, the total amount spent annually on rent, and a stimulated rate of the federal government’s established fair market annual rent caps . The second would be available for individuals who live in government- subsidized rental housing like Section 8 or NYCHA, and allow them ...

It’s hard to stand out in New York’s microcosm of over-the- top real estate , where eight-figure listings are a dime a dozen and co-op boards are as steely as they come. One building, however, has managed to take the cake year after year as one of the city’s most exclusive addresses: 834 Fifth Avenue. The co-op, which sits on Fifth Avenue between 64th and 65th streets overlooking the Central Park zoo , was once described by the New York Observer as “the most pedigreed building on the snobbiest street in the country’s most real estate–obsessed city.” How does a building in a city of millions of buildings get this distinction? As one of its units continues to hold the distinction of most expensive apartment for sale in New York, we thought it was time to understand why. An living area photographed shortly after the building was constructed in 1931. Photo: MCNY/Gottscho-Schleisner / Getty Images Background Designed by Sicilian- American architect Rosario Candela , 834 Fifth was built ...

Phil Luciano Journal Star columnist @lucianophil Wanted: Doorman. That’s one of the employment opportunities arising at Stonewood Luxury Apartments , the planned 20- unit transformation of the old Julian Hotel, 724 SW Adams St . But the position might be hard to fill, if one of the requirements is experience, especially locally. Doormen, once an elegant staple of Peoria’s hotels and movie houses, became extinct here decades ago. “It’s something long forgotten,” says Kelly Petersen , who with his wife, Ashley, is developing Stonewood. I couldn’t helped but notice the news in this paper that the complex “will include a doorman.” I’m not the only one intrigued about that notion: Petersen (who with his wife owns ARMS/Absolute Risk Management Solutions, an East Peoria- based investment development company ) says he has been peppered with questions about the novelty. A doorman isn’t quite as anachronistic as, say, an ice man or milkman. But it’s certainly a throwback to Peoria’s...

Amazon’s extraordinary growth has turned Seattle into the biggest company town in America. Amazon now occupies a mind-boggling 19 percent of all prime office space in the city, the most for any employer in a major U.S. city, according to a new analysis conducted for The Seattle Times. Amazon’s footprint in Seattle is more than twice as large as any other company in any other big U.S. city, and the e-commerce giant’s expansion here is just getting started. The swarms of 20-somethings crowding into South Lake Union every morning represent an urban campus that is unparalleled in the United States — and they have helped transform Seattle , for better or worse. Amazon’s rapid rise has fueled an economy that has driven up wages and lowered unemployment, but also produced gridlock on the roads and sky- high housing prices . And while Seattle’s booming economy is often attributed to a wide variety of factors, increasingly, it’s all about one company. Amazon now occupies more office space t...

Last month, we reported on how much the apartments in some of your favorite movies —  When Harry Met Sally , Pretty Woman, Sleepless In Seattle — would rent for in today's market. (Yes, Carrie and Mr. Big's pre-war penthouse on Fifth Avenue is as exorbitantly expensive as it looked in the Sex and the City films.) Recently, ForRent.com, the same real estate website that ran the stats on movie homes, compiled the same type of analysis for the most popular Netflix Original series . From Kimmy Schmidt and Titus Andromedon's familiarly seedy New York basement to the D.C. townhouse in House of Cards , to the dilapidated mansion on Arrested Development , see how much Netflix' most-watched homes actually cost, ahead. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt : $1,300 While the apartment costs $475 a month on the show, in the current market the median rental price is about $1,300 a month, or $650 for each roommate. Kimmy's garden-level (a nice way of saying "basement, likely roach...

MUSKEGON, MI - Part of the old Shaw Walker factory downtown Muskegon are coming down.  Demolition has begun on sections of the 1-million- square foot building . So far, a large portion facing Division Street has been reduced to piles of bricks.  An agreement with the city of Muskegon in January gave the building's owner, P&G Holdings of New York, two years to develop the sprawling building into apartments and an entertainment complex.  Watermark Center plans at old Shaw Walker topic of public hearing The former furniture factory consists of multiple additions. "In order to allow our contractors to get a good handle on the overall scope of the proposed redevelopment, as well as support them in their efforts to provide realistic bid pricing , we began some selective demolition last week at the site," said Sarah Sass, president of the Watermark Center. "The demo is consistent with the scope originally contemplated and it also removes some structural concerns t...

96 Baxter Street via Google Street View The 13-story, 88- unit rental building for low- income seniors at 96 Baxter Street in Chinatown has opened its waiting list to new applicants this week for the first time in 25 years (h/t Lo-Down). Only people aged 62 and older (over 18 if they are mobility impaired) can apply. The units rent for  30 percent of one’s annual income ; studios are available to those earning less than $33,400 a year and one-bedroom to those earning less than $38,200. The waitlist originally contained over 3,000 names, a number which now stands at only a handful. Among the building’s current tenants, two are reportedly 108 years old. The youngest residents are about 85. Joining Chung Pak as they re-open their wait list for low income senior housing . The need for quality sen housing is more pressing than ever pic.twitter.com/ggZPntfeW1 — Margaret S. Chin (@CM_MargaretChin) August 22, 2017 Chung Pak Local Development Corp . held a news conference to announce the re...