The ruling upheld a lower court's preliminary injunction, the latest rebuke to a major shift that advocates warn would push 170,000 people in federally subsidized housing back into homelessness.
Good urbanism should transcend politics. Socialists and capitalists can walk the same neighborhood and agree it's a pleasant place to live. They can each appreciate the tree canopy, the corner café with people spilling onto the sidewalk, the mix of ages on bikes and on foot, the architectural details of older buildings, and so on.
Once she paid rent and moved in, she became a month-to-month tenant, regardless of the length of time she stayed in your house. As a month-to-month tenant, she is required to give you a 30-day written notice of termination, and she is responsible for rent during that 30-day period, whether she stayed there or not.
Under a state law called the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act, landlords can reset the starting rent price at any level once tenants move out of a unit and new residents move in. That's where things got tricky in Woo's situation. According to a lawsuit Woo filed in January, their building's property manager had Woo's partner sign the lease in March 2024. Woo, even though they were the one who'd found the apartment and would be moving in together with their then-partner, was told to sign a separate document instead.
On Friday, Summit Properties USA became the winning bidder for more than 5,000 rent-regulated units owned by bankrupt Pinnacle Development Group. The sale went through despite Mamdani's push to delay the auction of units, which were plagued by unresolved maintenance issues and a flood of tenant complaints. Mamdani's setback shows how even a mayor determined to capitalize on an affordability mandate can struggle once cases move into federal court.
My friends and I are early 30s professionals living in one of America's most expensive cities and making middle-class incomes. None of us can afford to buy or save for a home here. We all rent, but we're not broke. We save for kids and retirement and illness, but a home isn't in the cards. But recently, we think we might have found an unconventional loophole.
Sumathy Kumar and I have fought side by side in Albany to win real, transformative change for working-class families and, as we look to freeze rents and hold bad landlords accountable, the tenant movement couldn't have a more powerful champion. I'm proud to partner with Sumathy in the fight for every New Yorker to have a safe, stable, and affordable place to call home.
In his four years as director of the New York City Department of Planning, Dan Garodnick oversaw one of the most sweeping changes to the city's zoning rules in decades. The policy, called City of Yes, initiated a collection of revisions to boost housing, including updates that allow new apartment projects to add bulk used for affordable housing, homes to convert basements or add backyard cottages as accessory dwellings, and more office buildings to be converted into residential space.
What that became, in practice, was closer to psychic warfare. "We both tried to leverage the fact that we're supposed to be friends," Henry said. "I'd use it against him all the time: 'Come on, dude, what are you talking about?' And he'd do the same thing to me." Take, for example, the time Henry and his fiancé fostered a dog without asking Reid first: "I was like, 'He is not going to evict us for having a dog.'"