Loopholes closed, fare jumpers on notice, lead-foots getting taxed — New York is apparently in the reform business today. Welcome to The New York Daily Fix — landlords, buses, speed cameras. Everybody's in the crosshairs this Thursday. On every one of these, I keep coming back to the same thing: who enforces it, and who actually ends up paying? Fair warning — the affordable housing loophole story is going to make you want to throw something. THE CITY, with Samantha Maldonado:
In the past two years, developers have filed permits for more than 150 residential buildings with that precise number of units, per city data. Why? Because at that size, savvy builders looking to take a major tax break for residential developments can avoid paying a higher minimum wage to construction workers — while minimizing the number of affordable apartments they must include.
THE CITY has been tracking a pattern in city building permits — more than 150 new residential buildings filed in the past two years with exactly 99 apartments. Not 100. Not 98. Ninety-nine. And I promise you, that number is not a coincidence. The second you hit 100 units, the affordability rules kick in, and developers know exactly where that line is. So they park one unit short of it every time. Credit to THE CITY for staying on this. They've been on the affordability beat long enough to notice when a number stops being a coincidence and starts being a strategy. That's years of beat reporting. Meanwhile Albany and City Hall keep rolling out housing plans like they're winning. For half these developers, the loophole is the plan. And nobody's closing it, because the people with leverage don't want it closed. NYC Mayor's Office writes:
I will cut to the chase: our buildings need serious repairs. We need new management. I have to stress: we need and want new management. But this mayor has shown that he is on the side of the tenants like us, who are fighting against bad landlords and neglect. So today, we finally have some reasons to have hope in our fight for repairs and a more stable home.
Mayor Mamdani and HPD are calling this the largest-ever penalty against negligent landlords in the Bronx. The announcement came out of Morrisania, where tenants at Robert Fulton have been fighting for basic repairs for years. 'Largest-ever penalty' makes for a great press release headline. I want to know whether the buildings actually get fixed, or the landlords just eat the fine and keep moving — because that's the housing enforcement loop in New York. Fair point. The tenant leader up there was very clear — she said they need new management, not just penalties. That's a different ask than a fine, and it's worth watching whether HPD actually pursues receivership or just takes the number and calls it a win. 6sqft, with Aaron Ginsburg:
New York City is ramping up efforts to curb bus fare evasion, with agents now using handheld devices to verify payments. During a Metropolitan Transportation Authority Board meeting last week, NYC Transit President Demetrius Crichlow said that with the adoption of the tap-and-go OMNY system, the transit system’s EAGLE fare enforcers will use “onboard validation devices” that check whether customers paid using an OMNY card or cellphone.
MTA is expanding its EAGLE fare enforcement to all bus routes — agents now carry handheld devices to check whether you actually tapped your OMNY card or phone. This has been running on Select Bus Service, where more than half of riders weren't paying. Local bus lines aren't far behind at nearly forty-nine percent. Half the riders on SBS weren't paying. Half. And the city's bus system holds the world record for fare evasion — three hundred million dollars a year walking out the back door. At some point, that's not a transit problem. That's a governance collapse. Crichlow says they're turning the tide on subway evasion with the new fare gates, but buses are a different beast. A handheld scanner is only as good as the will to actually issue a summons, and we've seen enforcement enthusiasm come and go at the MTA before. The technology isn't the variable here — the appetite to enforce it is. The minute somebody films a fare-evasion confrontation that goes sideways, watch how fast the board starts hedging. Streetsblog New York City, with Dave Colon:
Expanding the Fair Fares program, the city’s 50-percent-off transit subsidy for low-income residents, to cover another three-quarters-of-a-million people would cost just $146 million, according to an analysis by a fiscal watchdog, the latest call for the Mamdani administration to beef up the transit discount.
Citizens Budget Commission is out with a new Fair Fares analysis — raise the income threshold to 250 percent of the federal poverty level, cover 722,000 more riders, total tab: $146 million. That's the fiscal watchdog's version of 'expand it, but don't go crazy.' One-forty-six million in a city that just rubber-stamped a hundred-billion-dollar budget. If this doesn't get done, it's a choice, not a math problem. The catch is the current program only reaches people under 150 percent of poverty — pretty narrow. Push it to 250 percent and now you're covering working people who are still genuinely squeezed by a $2.90 fare. Streetsblog Empire State, with Austin C. Jefferson:
Gov. Hochul’s version of the long-stalled “Stop Super Speeders” bill will be included in the final budget, allowing New York City to require repeat reckless drivers to install devices that prevent the vehicles from being driven at excessive speeds — much like long-established technology that prevent convicted drunk drivers from firing their ignition if they’ve been drinking.
Albany is finally moving on street safety — the Stop Super Speeders Act is in the final budget. Repeat reckless drivers, sixteen or more speed-camera violations in a year, would have to install a device that physically prevents them from speeding. Streetsblog Empire State had the details first. And the real story here is Carl Heastie folding. He's been the wall blocking this for years — now he walks out of a caucus meeting and suddenly it's a done deal. Somebody leaned on him hard enough. The Senate and Hochul had already agreed on the sixteen-violation threshold, so Heastie was the last domino. Credit where it's due — but I'd still want to see the final budget language before calling it a full win. You'll find links to every story we mentioned today in the show notes, so if something caught your ear, you can dig in a little further there.
That's The New York Daily Fix for this Thursday, May 7th. This is a Lantern Podcast.