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New York Post
30-07-2025
- Health
- New York Post
NYC risks a $7.2 billion loss — if it ignores Trump's sensible homeless orders
New Yorkers are fed up with having to climb over drug-addled zombies and avoid mentally deranged vagrants on the streets and in the subways. But the city's far-left politicians insist the homeless should be catered to on their own terms: We must care for them wherever they choose to sleep and even give them clean needles to support their addictions — the public's fears and disgust be damned. Last week President Donald Trump took the people's side. Advertisement His new executive order aims to pull federal funding from the 'failed programs' that facilitate the use of illegal drugs and permit the mentally ill to roam the streets and subways. 'The overwhelming majority' of the homeless, Trump stated, 'are addicted to drugs or have mental health disorders or both. We want to take care of them. But they have to be off our streets.' Advertisement Trump wants civility. The president can't force New York to follow his order, but his funding threat sets up a clash with city and state officials. In 2024, federal cash — $7.2 billion in all, according to NYU's Furman Center — accounted for most of the money spent by the city's two housing agencies, and a significant share of the Department of Homeless Services' budget. Under Trump's edict, federal funds will go only to housing programs that require addicts and the mentally ill to receive treatment — and can't be used to facilitate drug use. Advertisement He's boldly declaring that law-abiding people deserve safe neighborhoods and transit. Trump is discarding orthodoxies that the homelessness industrial complex and its political allies have insisted on for decades. Like 'housing first' — the ubiquitous blue-state policy that offers the homeless permanent housing without making them enroll in addiction or mental-health treatment. Advertisement Billions have been spent on 'housing first,' and yet the number of homeless people is higher than ever. And like 'harm reduction,' another orthodoxy — providing clean needles, and even supervised injection sites, to make drug addiction slightly less deadly. Gotham was the first city to open drug-use centers where addicts can shoot up under the supervision of medical personnel, who intervene in case of an overdose. The perfect addition to any neighborhood. Voters need to weigh in, making it clear they want a livable city, not sidewalks strewn with syringes and subway stations swarming with the mentally ill. Start with the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, and the stark electoral choice between Republican Maud Maron and incumbent Democrat Alvin Bragg. On a recent July day, Bragg could be seen painting watercolors in Washington Square Park, totally content with the reality his policies have allowed: The park has become a dangerous drug den, with addicts shooting up just a few feet away from his easel while social workers passed out free syringes for 'harm reduction.' Get opinions and commentary from our columnists Subscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter! Thanks for signing up! Enter your email address Please provide a valid email address. By clicking above you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Never miss a story. Check out more newsletters Maron, Bragg's November challenger, calls out harm reduction for what it is —'Orwellian doublespeak.' Advertisement 'It is harm amplification,' she told me, 'trapping addicts in their addiction and ruining public spaces for everyone else.' Even before Trump's new executive order, Mayor Eric Adams had indicated his support for involuntarily hospitalizing violently mentally ill vagrants. But in the upcoming mayoral election, leading challenger Zohran Mamdani is clearly on the side of the vagrants, not the public. Advertisement He insists the city should provide 'outreach' and services to the unhoused wherever they choose to flop, including in the subways. Mamdani wants to turn empty retail stores in subway stations into drop-in hubs for vagrants, a reckless proposal. Creating magnets that draw more homeless people into the subways would be a gut punch for New Yorkers who must ride the rails to get to work or school. Mamdani has been pushing this proposal throughout his three terms in the state Assembly — elected each time with no Republican opponent in the general election to question him. Advertisement One-party rule greased the skids for Mamdani to rise to the mayoral race. Adams succeeded in getting Gov. Kathy Hochul to include in this year's state budget a change in the state's involuntary commitment law, expanding it to apply to those incapable of meeting their own basic needs, not just those who are deemed dangerous. That's a step in the right direction — but Mamdani would take the city backward, ceding the streets to the crazies. The American Civil Liberties Union bashed Trump's proposal to hospitalize the severely mentally ill, saying it 'displays remarkable disdain' for 'vulnerable people.' The National Alliance to End Homelessness condemned it as 'undignified.' Advertisement But having to hug the subway wall for fear of getting pushed onto the tracks by a crazy person is undignified, too. Compassion for the homeless must be balanced with the safety and orderliness the rest of us deserve. Bragg and Mamdani overlook that imperative. Voters be warned. Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and co-founder of the Committee to Save Our City.
New York Post
10-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Post
How single room occupancies could be the answer to NYC's housing crisis
It was another local tragedy attracting passing notice before being overtaken for our attention by the latest stray bullet homicides and subway assaults. But those concerned with 'affordable housing' have much to learn from the Easter morning deaths of three Queens residents and the displacement of perhaps a dozen others in a fire in an illegal Jamaica Estates rooming house. The fact that so many were willing to pay $700 to $1,000 a month to cram into small, subdivided bedrooms with shared bath and kitchen tells us not that we need to ban such 'single room occupancy' housing but that they should be a safe, legal and not rare part of our housing market. Advertisement 5 Mayor Eric Adams has recently pushed for policy changes that would allow for the development of SROs — single-room occupancy residences aimed at lower-income New Yorkers. Paul Martinka Mayor Adams has tried to do just that in his City of Yes housing plan, but key legal obstacles remain. There was a time when SROs were an extensive and crucial part of the city's residential infrastructure, providing housing that was cheap because it was small. Advertisement At their height, there were hundreds of thousands such rooms, offering shelter for those who might otherwise be on the street. But the same crowd that saw any modest housing as slums, and deinstitutionalized the mentally ill, declared war on SROs, phasing them out by law starting in 1954, to the point that the Furman Center at NYU has estimated only 30,000 such rooms remain, even as the homeless dot our street corners. 5 The Hotel Jefferson, a typical SRO — this one in San Francisco used to house the homeless. David G. McIntyre To his credit, Eric Adams, in his housing proposal, has described the virtues of SROs well: 'Allowing more small and shared apartments will create a wider variety of housing options, and open larger, family-sized apartments that would otherwise be occupied by roommates.' Advertisement The proposal is attentive to the fact that this need not be 'flophouse' housing for the desperate; it cites the legendary Barbizon Hotel that provided a safe place for single women. Typical SROs include a front desk requiring ID and check-in. SROs would be an especially good use for under-utilized office buildings, thanks to long hallways that could offer single rooms that share a kitchen and bath, rather than providing those for each unit. 5 Intelligently developed SROs could be a solution for the vast amount of office space now empty as a result of pandemic-era work-from-home edicts. AFP via Getty Images There are, unfortunately, good reasons those who want to convert homes or buildings to SROs now do so illegally. The owner/operator of a 20-room SRO on West 23rd Street, for instance, laments that the law subjects SRO buildings to rent stabilization. Advertisement 'We'd like to renovate the bathrooms, hallways, and intercoms, but since our rental income is extremely limited, we do not have enough income to invest in the building to make it more attractive,' he said. What's more, if a roomer moves out in less than six months, owners must pay the 5.8% hotel tax. An illegal operator avoids all the rent control red tape and any taxes, as well as, tragically, smoke detector laws, as was the case in the Queens fire. The City Council, per Adams, took crucial first steps this past December toward bringing back SROs. They amended the city's zoning law to make possible units smaller than 400 square feet, without individual kitchens or baths, as well as relaxing parking requirements. Sounds a lot like the dorms that affluent college students don't mind living in. Unfortunately, however, the right zoning is not enough; as the city's Housing and Preservation Department puts it: 'The Housing Maintenance Code does not allow housing with shared facilities as-of-right.' As attorney Patrick Sullivan, who follows housing law for the law firm Kramer, Levin, Natalie's and Frankel, explains: 'Only specialized developers,' such as those for supportive housing, can take advantage of the new law. 'Other legal changes are still needed for more widespread adoption of SROs.' 5 The former Hotel Barbizon on the Upper East Side, an iconic post-War era SRO. Google Maps 5 In many ways, SROs resemble college dormitories, which are an accepted form of housing for millions of young people nationwide. Seventyfour – Advertisement We need to make it easier to build SROs 'as of right.' For newcomers to the city, they can serve as a way station before trading up to a long-term apartment. For those who would rather not share their space with roommates, yet not live truly alone, SROs are also an option. Let's hope the Adams administration continues to push for further legal changes so that SROs can become a more widespread and easy-to-realize housing option. Advertisement It's a better approach than pushing, as per Democratic mayoral candidates, for still more subsidized 'affordable' housing in a city that has more of it than anyplace else in the US — yet remains stuck in a perennial housing crisis. Howard Husock is a senior fellow for domestic policy at the American Enterprise Institute
Yahoo
14-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Rent-stabilized shortfalls may grow 'exponentially,' new data shows
It's no longer just landlords and their advocates screaming into the void about the ruination of rent-stabilized housing — NYU's Furman Center has joined the din. At the Rent Guidelines Board's second meeting of 2025, New York University's center for housing research presented data showing that older, entirely rent-stabilized buildings — particularly those in the Bronx — are grappling with revenue shortfalls caused by the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019. The HSTPA made it impossible to substantially raise rents outside of the annual adjustments approved by the RGB annually. which have historically failed to keep pace with inflation. 'The rent shortfall has likely grown since HSTPA passed and will continue to grow, potentially exponentially, in 100 percent rent-stabilized buildings,' a presentation delivered by Furman Center Senior Policy Director Mark Willis concluded. The New York Apartment Association, which represents rent-stabilized landlords, said the commentary marked the first time the Furman Center had expressed concern about the future of rent-stabilized housing. The center did release an initial analysis of HSTPA in 2021, but it found little evidence of falling values or disinvestment. 'Their [recent] findings paint a sobering picture: a growing number of rent-stabilized buildings, especially in the outer boroughs, are on the brink,' NYAA CEO Kenny Burgos said. The center's data shows older rent-stabilized buildings in the Bronx that were just breaking even before HSTPA have fallen farther into the red every year since it passed. In 2024, the average unit was operating at an annual shortfall of $1,444. Per the research, absent alternate routes to raise revenue, the RGB's rent adjustments aren't cutting it. The Furman Center seized on the findings to make a case for intervention — something both sides of the landlord-tenant divide have broached in recent years. 'To preserve the long-term viability of the most vulnerable sub-segments of this stock, the shortfall may need to be dealt with outside of the RGB process,' the center's presentation reads. Landlords have long claimed that the board's data-based rent adjustments don't account for all of their expenses — debt service is notably missing — and that public members are swayed by tenant interests. Renters, meanwhile, claim the mayor-appointed board bends to real estate's asks. But each year, conversations around shifting the system fail to progress past finger-pointing. Willis' presentation did not propose specific solutions either, but it did warn that the city alone couldn't plug the hole created by the HSTPA for many building owners. The problem, he said, was too great. 'Unless we vastly increase the amount of budget for subsidized housing, almost all of it is going to have to go to rescuing these buildings,' Willis said. 'So we won't be building any new ones in the future either,' he added. 'That would be the risk.' Landlords refute rent board's report on rising profits Rent board approves 2.75% hike as landlords, tenants take aim at broken process Rent board is worst show on Broadway This article originally appeared on The Real Deal. Click here to read the full story.
