Opinion
Letter to the Editor: End of Middle Class Dream at Tracey?
Our landlord at Tracey Towers has notified tenants that the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) has received its application for a rent increase to go into effect in three stages over the next two years. The percentage requested for July 2011 is 25.53; for July 2012 it is 20.34; for July 2013 it is 16.9. When the math is done, we tenants will have our rents increased by a whopping 77 percent in the next two years.
Clinton Baseball Eyes Playoffs
Editorial: Some Hope Amid Housing Crisis
Over half a million people in the west Bronx live in residential apartment buildings. At least a third of these tenants pay half of their hard-earned wages on rent. Though Bronx residents are paying thousands of dollars a year on shelter, too many of these buildings are in a desperate – sometimes life-threatening — state of disrepair.
Op-ed: Show Me the Teachers!
“Mayor to Kids: Say Goodbye to Your Teacher” is the glaring headline on the front page of the Feb. 17 edition of New York Teacher, a bi-weekly periodical for teachers. Its sub-head reads “Bloomberg would rather lay off teachers than extend millionaire’s tax.” This state tax is due to expire at the end of this year, and my immediate thought on this sub-head was: I wonder if the mayor objects because he himself is a millionaire, which would mean his own taxes would be higher. It has been reported that this tax could add billions of dollars to the state budget which could prevent layoffs.
Letter: Grammy-Winner Plays at Norwood Church
Webster Ave. Rezone Now in Hands of Council
Editorial: Foodtown’s Welcome Return
The absence of Foodtown in Norwood for the last 15 months has been deeply felt by thousands of local residents. The elderly, who were able to walk to the supermarket before the store burned to the ground in December 2009, were particularly burdened by the loss.
But the store has emerged bigger and better with a much wider array of offerings and more room for residents with walkers, strollers and shopping carts to maneuver.
Editorial: The Armory Vote One Year Later
It’s the one-year anniversary of the nearly unanimous City Council vote that scuttled the mayor’s juggernaut to stuff a cookie-cutter mall inside the landmark Kingsbridge Armory.
In that time, the city’s two tabloids, the New York Post and the Daily News, have taken every opportunity to whack at Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. for his opposition to the project, which gave the necessary juice to a community and labor-backed effort to defeat it in the City Council.
Regular readers know where we stand on this, but as long as the editorial boards of the city dailies continue to harp on this, we are compelled to reiterate our position.
For more than a decade, community organizations led by the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition hammered out plans for a remake of the facility that made room for recreation, community programming, small businesses, a movie theater, etc.
Related, the city’s chosen developer, never offered details on what it was going to provide except for retail. Despite this and the clear sense that the Armory would be a mall pure and simple, the community’s only firm request in the end was that people had to be paid a living wage, particularly when the developer was going to receive over $70 million in taxpayer subsidies to remake a public landmark.
It was hardly an outlandish request. Several other municipalities have enacted wage guarantees on development projects benefiting from taxpayer subsidies.