Thursday Is for Contemplating NYC’s Housing Crisis

As the number of eviction cases continues to rise, the City's much-vaunted "right to counsel" for low-income tenants facing eviction continues to be, like most "rights" in this country, one in name only. 

Updated numbers obtained by the CITY paint a picture of how the City is continuing to fail on its promise to provide free legal representation to qualifying tenants: Last month, "fewer than 10 percent of new cases got assigned a lawyer," even as the vast majority of tenants whose landlords take them to housing court qualify for a free attorney. 

More, via the CITY:

As Hell Gate reported recently, the failures of right to counsel stem in part from staffing shortages at legal service providers—but much of the blame can be pinned squarely on housing court officials and the Office of Court Administration, which has refused calls from tenant advocates to slow the pace of eviction cases. As OCA spokesperson Lucian Chalfen told us, a request "to discriminate" the timing of eviction cases to allow tenants time to line up a lawyer is "potentially unconstitutional.” 

In other housing news that has YIMBYs upset, a city council committee recently approved, per New York Focus and the CITY, a "last-minute change to a proposed rezoning of a block in Gowanus, Brooklyn, that will slash new buildings' maximum size to half of the original proposal, at the request of local Councilmember Shahana Hanif." This change might mean that there won't be any below-market rate housing built by the developer of the site at all. 

More, via New York Focus and the CITY: 

Wouldn't it be nice if we had a unified housing movement in this city, one that could collectively push for more housing creation (maybe even…social housing?) and stronger tenant protections? (Remember Good Cause Eviction, anyone?) And maybe do something about all of those vacant rent-stabilized apartments that landlords are holding hostage? One can dream. 

Here're some more uplifting links for your day:

• Mayor Adams's Randalls Island tent city for recently arrived asylum seekers is currently housing…fewer than 50 people. 
• Perhaps as a recognition that assigning nine-year-olds value based on their grades is kind of fucked up, the vast majority of middle schools—about 88 percent—are declining to use any sort of screening methods for incoming students, even after DOE Chancellor David Banks's recent changes allowing middle schools to once again reinstate selective admissions.  
• A New York Focus analysis found that the state's "gas tax holiday" isn't exactly benefitting those it's meant to: "Nearly a third of the tax benefits are retained by fossil fuel companies, the analysis found. Another 22 percent are going to out-of-state residents, and 6 percent are going to New York's richest 5 percent of households. That leaves just 42 percent of the tax benefits going to the remaining 95 percent of New Yorkers—the ostensible target of the subsidy."
• Bikers rejoice—we can now legally pedal over the Cross Bay and Henry Hudson bridges, though not on the latter for what seems like a couple more years. 
• After delaying for months to appoint someone to the position, the Adams administration has finally made acting FDNY commissioner Laura Kavanaugh the permanent head of the agency, making Kavanaugh the first woman to lead the FDNY. Cool for feminism I guess, but will she mandate all firefighters start their day by blasting Ginuwine’s "Pony"???
• Landlords continue to be terrible. 
• Please join the Hell Gate bowling league.
• And finally, happy birthday to the MTA.