A landlord lies on a permit, starts tearing down a building with eight kids inside, and somehow that becomes the week's clearest look at how New York's reform agenda actually hits the ground. This is New York City Politics and Urbanism Daily — I'm Cassidy, Devin's here — and today we're on the Brooklyn demolition story, the Daily News's record-low crime numbers, SEQRA reform, the MTA moving on fare enforcement, and the city quietly pulling both school proposals after the blowback. Four days of talking about announcements outrunning execution, and then the Buildings Department hands us a case study with kids in it. Let's go. Here's News 12 Brooklyn:
Bronx District Attorney Darcel D. Clark says a landlord of is accused of partially demolishing a Williamsbridge building with eight children inside after lying on a Department of Buildings permit request.
News 12 Brooklyn has the name: Joel Grunbaum, 31, indicted Wednesday. The allegation is he told the Buildings Department 716 East 215th Street was unoccupied while he started tearing it apart. Eight children were inside. And this is the same DOB Mamdani wants processing thousands of new units to hit that 200,000-homes target. If the agency can't catch a landlord lying on a single permit for an occupied building, what exactly is the accelerated approval pipeline built on? We've spent four days on that gap between announcement and execution — the $32 million DCWP hole, the OCS coordination problem. This is that gap with a face on it: a fraudulent permit, a building coming down around children, and a Buildings Department that didn't catch it in 2022 or after. Bronx DA Darcel Clark is the one with the indictment — not DOB, not the city. The criminal case exists because a prosecutor went looking. That's not an oversight system working; that's an oversight system getting bailed out. Cuddy & Feder, with Christopher B. Fisher, Maximillian Mahalek:
On May 27, 2026, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed the FY2026-2027 State Budget which includes “Let Them Build” reforms to the State Environmental Quality Review Act (“SEQRA”) (1). New York’s housing crisis has been exacerbated by development delays which can substantially add time and cost to the entitlement process as compared to other states.
Cuddy & Feder put out a practitioner breakdown of the SEQRA changes Hochul signed into the budget on May 27th. This is the 'Let Them Build' reform, and on paper it matters: housing projects under certain density thresholds now get a SEQRA exemption by statute, no extra rulemaking needed. Outside the city, the threshold is 300 units in urbanized areas — that's a real project size, not a token one. What I'm watching is whether this actually knocks out litigation, or just gives opponents a new label to litigate under. We've been tracking the Block by Block 200,000-homes target all week, and SEQRA delays were one of the named choke points. Albany just took that one piece of friction out — signed law, not a promise. Whether Council veto points and borough-president reviews take over from here is the real stress test. And DOB still has to process these projects once they clear environmental review, which, after what just happened in Brooklyn with a landlord lying on a permit application and demolishing an occupied building with eight kids inside, does not exactly scream agency firing on all cylinders. From Cronista:
The MTA will begin implementing a new fare control system that is inspired by the one used in European models. From now on, inspectors will be able to board and carry out checks while the bus continues its route.
Quick close-out on a thread from Tuesday: we have an answer on the MTA bus fare-evasion enforcement question. Cronista reported yesterday that the MTA is moving to roving inspectors who board while the bus is in motion — European-style random checks, electronic fines on the spot. That's the operational answer, and it came from the MTA, not City Hall. Which is exactly the point — the MTA is running its own enforcement agenda on its own timeline. The mayor didn't announce this. He doesn't control it. So when the crackdown works, who gets to claim the win? That's the cleaner version of the question. We'll flag it and move on. Gothamist writes:
The Mamdani administration has pulled controversial plans to open an artificial intelligence-focused high school and close or relocate middle schools on the Upper West Side. Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels helped shape the Upper West Side proposals as superintendent there before stepping into his new role in January.
Quick resolution on something we flagged earlier this week — Gothamist confirms both the AI high school proposal and the Upper West Side middle school closure plans are formally withdrawn. Community pushback won, full stop. The chancellor literally helped design those UWS closures when he was superintendent there, then got promoted and had to kill his own proposals. That's not a learning experience — that's a structural embarrassment. Samuels said he would have approached it differently if he'd known he was becoming chancellor. Which is a polite way of saying the family-engagement promise the administration made in January didn't survive contact with a policy inherited from the same guy now running the agency. This one's from New York Daily News:
Crime across the Big Apple has hit historic lows, with record reductions in murders, shooting incidents and shooting victims, according to the NYPD. Major crime across the city declined 10.6% across the five boroughs — and more than 6% in the city’s subways — in May, according to the latest Police Department figures.
Daily News has the five-month numbers, and they're real: 102 murders through May, down nearly 21% year over year, which is the lowest ever recorded for that stretch. The previous record was 113, set in 2014 and 2017. Major crime is down 10.6% citywide, and subway crime is down more than 6%. These come from NYPD, so take the sourcing for what it is, but the trend runs across multiple categories and it isn't marginal. Here's what I want to know: Mamdani's budget just added 580 new NYPD officers. The city is already at a historic floor before those officers show up. So what exactly is the headcount buying, and who's claiming credit for numbers that were moving before the ink dried on that budget line? And it sharpens the OCS question from the Tisch hearing last week. If murders are at a record low and major crime is down double digits, the political case for the Office of Community Safety as currently structured just got harder to make, not easier. Have a correction, a tip, or a story idea about New York City politics and urbanism? Send it our way at nydailyfix at lantern podcasts dot com. We read every note.
We've put links to all of today's stories in the show notes, so if one caught your ear, you can take a closer look there. Thanks for listening. That's New York City Politics and Urbanism Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.