The Nunez Federal Court Decree; Keep the Focus on Curing Violations

This issue of CityLaw contains an assessment of the 2015 Nunez consent decree aimed at curing excessive use of force at the City prisons. The City deserves credit for developing appropriate plans, rather than defending indefensible conditions in the jails. Yet the method adopted by the City – consenting to supervision by judges, outside experts and attorneys – harbors dangers: rigidity and loss of managerial flexibility that can interfere with achievement of the decree’s salutary … <Read More>


Say Hello to Mandatory Inclusionary Housing!

Almost 55 percent of all renter households in New York City now pay more than 30 percent of their income towards housing costs, an increase of 11 percent since 2000. As a consequence, the City Planning Commission found that “many of the city’s neighborhoods are becoming less economically diverse, which poses a threat to the city’s economic competitiveness as well as to the opportunities available to lower-income New Yorkers.”

Mandatory Inclusionary Housing is one of … <Read More>


NYC Landmarks Law and Regulation of Open Space

The Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) has jurisdiction over both buildings and landscape features on landmarks sites.   But the Commission rarely directly regulates changes to landscape features. For routine landscaping changes and in urban contexts, the landscape features are rarely a concern. In other cases the landscape takes on central importance. This is especially true where there where the existing landscaping and natural land features figure prominently in the beauty and importance of the site. In … <Read More>


Airbnb Opposition Makes for Strange Bedfellows

There are some things you can always count on here in New York: alternate side of the street parking, the subways always running (except when they’re not, like late nights and weekends), the Yankees making the playoffs (except when the Mets do) and landlords and tenants being diametrically opposed. Like Superman and Kryptonite, oil and water, landlords and tenants have always had one thing in common – a mutual distrust of one another.

That is … <Read More>


A Property Tax Cap – What It Would Do and What It Would Not Do

Last month, at a State Legislature hearing in Albany on the Governor’s proposed budget, Mayor de Blasio faced repeated questions about why New York City is exempt from the cap on property tax increases that applies elsewhere in the state. The legislators cited a variety of reasons why the city should accept a cap, although few hold up to scrutiny – most notably the assertion that a cap was a “fix” for the city’s broken … <Read More>


Judge Kaye’s Vision for Consolidation and Simplification of the Trial Courts

Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye, who passed away at age 77 on January 6, 2016, left us some unfinished business to do: court reform. In 1998 Judge Kaye lobbied for a constitutional amendment that would have consolidated and simplified the New York trial court system. She hoped to get the legislative approval for a constitutional amendment and the required referendum during the 1998 and 1999 legislative sessions, followed by a vote on the referendum at … <Read More>