Tweed Courthouse. Image credit: CityLaw
New York City has a long and rich history of scandal and corruption. Here are three examples from favorite books that visit past scandals in complete and revealing detail.
Tweed Courthouse. Image credit: CityLaw
New York City has a long and rich history of scandal and corruption. Here are three examples from favorite books that visit past scandals in complete and revealing detail.
New York City Public Advocate Letitia James. Image credit: The Office of the New York City Public Advocate
Investigation uncovers HPD’s 13 years of failing to enforce housing program requirements against developers and depriving the City of affordable housing and resources. On February 29, 2016, New York City Public Advocate Letitia James released a report on an investigation conducted by her office into 26 residential properties in Brooklyn. The 26 properties had been given to a nonprofit developer to be rehabilitated and resold, subject to affordable housing income restrictions, as part of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development’s Neighborhood Homes program. The report uncovers how HPD’s failure to adequately supervise the progression of these residential properties caused the City to lose over 40 units of affordable housing and waste a considerable amount of the City’s resources, and left prospective homebuyers waiting for apartments they placed deposits on for more than a decade.
Health and Hospital Corporation General Counsel Salvatore J. Russo. Image credit: HHC
Salvatore J. Russo is the senior vice president, general counsel, secretary to the board of directors, and a corporate officer at the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation. HHC is the public benefit corporation responsible for administering the City’s municipal health care system, which involves the operation of eleven acute-care hospitals, four long-term-care facilities, and six diagnostic treatment centers. HHC functions like a voluntary, not-for-profit hospital with an $8 billion budget and approximately 36,000 direct employees, including 5,000 doctors.
Court agreed DHS met their burden under the Fair Share Criteria. In 2012 the Department of Homeless Services opened Freedom House, a 200-family homeless shelter at 316-330 West 95th Street in Manhattan’s Upper West Side on an emergency contract. When the emergency contract expired, then-Comptroller John C. Liu declined to register the permanent contract. A community group, Neighborhood In The Nineties, filed an Article 78 petition to enjoin the Comptroller from registering the contract. Neighborhood argued their area, located in Manhattan Community Board 7, was over-saturated with support housing and to add more would violate the Fair Share Criteria.
Conceptual rendering of the North site view of the New York Wheel and New York Harbor. Image credit: NYCEDC
The modifications would alter the parking garage, restaurant, and other amenities. On October 22, 2015, the City Council Committee on Land Use unanimously approved New York Wheel LLC’s application to modify the previously-approved special permit for the construction of the New York Wheel, located on the St. George Waterfront in Staten Island. The New York Wheel originally succeeded through the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure process in 2013, but is now seeking approval for a redesigned parking garage and several other modifications.
In a Reader
