Category: Uncategorized

By JACK DELANEY | jdelaney@queensledger.com

In just over a month, the city is relaunching a program that will increase tax revenue, but may put some New Yorkers — especially older adults — at risk of losing their homes. Here’s what you need to know.

What is a tax lien sale? 

When the pandemic hit, the amount of overdue property taxes in New York City began to skyrocket. Last year, it reached an all-time high of over $880 million — more than doubling since 2019. That poses a major threat to the city budget, given that the property tax is its single largest source of revenue, but officials think they have a solution. They’ve pointed the finger at a practice that expired several years ago: the tax lien sale. 

A lien is a legal claim on an asset — essentially, it’s the right to collect a debt. Before 1996, homeowners who were significantly behind on their bills would deal directly with the city, which if not paid could eventually foreclose on a property. But managing those confiscated properties was a headache; by the early 90s, the city was spending millions of dollars repairing houses, and getting stuck with them for an average of 19 years. 

In 1993, the city stopped foreclosing on houses for unpaid taxes entirely. It still needed to collect them somehow, though, so then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani decided in 1996 to sell the liens to private investors — let them deal with it, the rationale went, and the city would reap at least a portion of the money owed without shouldering any burden.

The upside was clear, but tax liens sales also had a murky history. The practice emerged during the Great Depression, writes Margaret Newkirk of Bloomberg, and later spread to cities where speculators often targeted poor minority neighborhoods, stripping residents of their land or extorting them through exorbitant interest payments. 

Today’s tax lien system has grown even larger, but it’s also more regulated than its earlier incarnations. While investors buy up to $5 billion worth of tax liens across thirty states each year, typically through a trust, less than 1% of those liens now lead to foreclosure. Lawmakers have been actively tweaking the specifics, too. When New York folded water bills into the program in 2007, it also included a range of reforms to improve outreach and minimize impacts on low-income residents, and it has added new protections every few years, including its latest bill.

The bottom line: on May 20, the city will be auctioning off property tax liens to private investors for the first time since 2021, along with the rights to unpaid water and sewage bills. (During deliberations in 2024, the City Council considered permanently scrapping the sale, but anxieties over the recent trend of unpaid property taxes won out.) However, there’s still time for New Yorkers to find out whether their debt is being sold, and to take preventative measures if so.

Who is at risk? 

In technical terms, commercial properties, larger residential rentals, and other vacant land are eligible for a lien if bills are 1 year overdue; for Housing Development Fund Corporations (HDFCs), a class of affordable housing co-ops, that number is 2 years; and for smaller properties, the liens becomes possible for debts older than 3 years.

For the average New Yorker, the good news is that many buildings won’t be included in the tax lien sale. Homeowners with mortgages generally have escrow accounts which preclude overdue payments, for example. And even if you’re behind on your bills amid an affordability crisis of staggering proportions, applying for a property tax exemption could remove you from the auction. 

The city offers four main types of exemptions: the Senior Citizen Homeowners’ Exemption (SCHE), the Disabled Homeowners’ Exemption (DHE), a range of Veterans Exemptions, and the Not-for-Profit Exemption. While the deadline has technically passed to receive discounts for next year, the Department of Finance will work with eligible residents who reach out now. To learn more, visit nyc.gov/site/finance/property/property-lien-sales.page# — each exemption expires at a different rate, so it’s important to keep abreast of the details.

But the fact that the exemptions exist doesn’t necessarily mean that administrators will guide homeowners to them without prompting. Rachel Geballe, deputy director for the Brooklyn office of Legal Services NYC, recalls one horror story in particular.

“I had a client who was elderly and blind, so she was guided by her daughter, and she was definitely eligible for both a senior citizen and a disability exemption. She got up to the desk and she said, ‘I’m on the lien sale.’ And they said, ‘Okay, well, sign this payment plan.’ So they put her right away into a payment plan that she actually couldn’t afford, whereas they could have given her the exception that would have also gotten her off the lien. Instead, she defaulted on the payment plan and her lien was sold.”

For seniors without support, the story might end there. Thankfully, Geballe’s team was able to secure a retroactive exemption for that client, which has been a focus of recent reforms. 

“While we have made significant reforms to the lien sale, there will still be those owners who fall into arrears when they could and should be benefiting from property tax exemptions,” said City Councilwoman Sandy Nurse, introducing a bill at a hearing this January. “By allowing eligible homeowners to have these exemptions applied retroactively, we can bring at-risk households into compliance, save people’s homes, and stabilize neighborhoods.”

As with any situation involving both an information gap and large sums of money, scams abound. “Because the list of people who are subject to the tax lien sale is public,” said Geballe, “we do see scammers just go down the list.” Those named are “nervous that their liens are going to be sold, they’re in distress, and they are vulnerable,” she noted. “Many of them are elderly or disabled. And heirs are particularly vulnerable because there might be 20 heirs [to a property], ultimately, and you can scam one or two of them.”

Lastly, the tax lien sale doesn’t only affect homeowners. “In any given year more than 85% of residential units in lien sale properties with residential units are rental units,” a 2024 report by East New York Community Land Trust found, and “the vast majority of these properties are owned by absentee landlords.” The report cited a case in which dozens of Queens residents were evicted from their apartments without advance notice, after the owner of the lien arrived to claim the property — the landlord had been deep in debt, but none of the tenants had realized the building was on the lien sale list. 

What should I do? 

The first step is to get informed. Under the latest iteration of the program, if you are at risk of being included in the lien sale, you will receive warning notices in the mail 90, 60, 30, and 10 days before the sale. You can also read the full list on the Department of Finance website (see above). 

If you receive a warning notice, you will have to either (1) apply for one of the various exemptions, (2) enter into a payment plan, which could entail reduced interest rates, or (3) simply pay the bills, if you’re able.

Although this process can be confusing and stressful, there are systems in place to help. “There are free legal services available,” stressed Geballe. “The number one thing [to remember] if somebody is calling or door-knocking you, is, ‘Hey, that’s not the person to trust.’ You can call 311 and be connected to nonprofits that have been vetted and funded for this purpose, and they will never charge you. And they’ll help you navigate it all.”

 

By Jean Brannum | jbrannum@queensledger.com

New York City Department of Transportation Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez announced Sept 10 that construction would begin this week on a new protected bicycle lane and other major safety improvements planned for Bedford Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant. 

Improvements include a 1.5-mile protected bike lane and the addition of pedestrian islands to reduce crossing distance. There will also be new loading zones to maintain curbside access for delivery vehicles. 

The DOT noted that the City has seen a 15% decrease in crashes with injuries and a 21% decline in injuries after similar redesigns. 

“The addition of a parking-protected bike lane on Bedford Avenue will create a critical cycling link in an area where bicycle ridership is booming, while making the road safer for everyone—whether you’re walking, biking, or traveling by car,” said NYC DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez. 

Rodriguez mentioned that the decision came after outreach along the street. 

The northern part of Bedford Ave between Dean St and Flushing Ave is known for speeding, and five pedestrian deaths since 2020. 

“Biking along Bedford Avenue in Bed Stuy has been unsafe for too many years,” said Councilmember Lincoln Restler. “I’m elated that DOT has embraced a sustained campaign from community members and elected officials to install a protected bike lane on Bedford Avenue.”

At the same time, more people in the surrounding neighborhoods are cycling. Community Board 3 district is home to more than 4,000 Citi Bike annual members. In 2022, 494,000 trips began within the district’s boundaries. 

During outreach over the past two years, the DOT identified and spoke with stakeholders along the corridor. The agency hosted several meetings, walkthroughs, and site visits to ensure that the Bedford Avenue project accommodates the street’s diverse needs. 

DOT workers will begin removing the top road surface, a process called milling, of Bedford Avenue between Dean St and Lafayette Avenue this week. Streets typically remain milled for two to three weeks before being paved, a period in which utilities are strongly encouraged to do work that would otherwise require digging up the pavement. The DOT expects the entire redesign process along Bedford Avenue to be completed by the end of the year. 

At more than 10 miles, Bedford Avenue is Brooklyn’s longest street, stretching from Sheepshead Bay to Williamsburg.

 

By Alexander Bernhardt Bloom | alex@queensledger.com

 

Natural light comes streaming in through the ceiling windows by day at 34 Norman Avenue. The newly minted commercial space was once a zipper factory, more recently a warehouse for a private owner’s hoards of scraps and refuse. When Caitlin Maestrini, whose Scandinavian furniture showroom opened to the public there on Friday, first took over the lease on the space it had dirt floors.

These have been paved over with smooth, gray cement now, to give a stable setting for the feet of the sofas and coffee tables and storage shelves that populate the 4,000 square feet of store and cafe within 34 Norman Avenue’s walls, the realization of a personal dream for Maestrini.

Now the space beneath the address’s vaulted ceilings is full of soft light and soft furniture, objects that are easy on the eyes and which sit gently in a visitor’s hands. A space as such doesn’t naturally suggest the descriptor cozy, but that is the feeling, more than any other, that Maestrini has achieved there.

A major part of that achievement is in the lighting, and the natural bits of it that spill in through the skylights and broad windows are supported by lamps set up in exhibition about the store, essential to Scandinavian interior decor as they are.

Before she was a furniture store owner Maestrini was a product specialist and education manager with an Italian designer lighting company, and traveled the US teaching sales representatives about the installations they sold. Before that, Maestrini was an educator who taught high school students about the fine arts and expression. In each of these varied stations there seems to have been something central in common: Ms. Maestrini wants to help people better understand how to use design to enhance their lives.

* * *

The Danish concept called hygge (hooe-gah) had its moment of popularity in the US in the 2010’s, and a fair amount of ink had been spilled and a fair number of marketing campaigns mounted, with hygge their focus, long before anyone had uttered the words covid and nineteen together.

The pandemic changed the situation some. Hygge is all about creating cozy spaces and cozy moments, burrowing in with the ones that you love and a glass of wine or hot cocoa under the flicker of candlelight while darkness and terrorizing storms haunt the world outside.

After March, 2020 that sounded just about right. People started investing more in their homes as they increasingly confined in them and many spent the contents of their stimulus checks on carefully selected objects that they hoped would brighten their lives inside and under quarantine.

It was a couple of years before all of this that Maestrini had traveled the constellation of Scandinavian countries north of Europe where she was studying a part of her master’s program in interior design. Her base was London, but she became fixed on the design principles and styles she began to discover further north, – later she would also discover Scandinavian ancestry in her family – and when she made her return to the US the images of Mid-Century Modern furniture and fixtures made it with her.

She founded Teak in 2021, to begin with, in order to bring Scandinavian home furnishings to the US that she hadn’t been able to find here since her return.

* * *

On the afternoon of the day before Teak would first welcome visitors inside its new location the sound of pneumatic drills pierced the interior air. There was the smell of fresh paint and a frenzy of activity as Maestrini and the ten employees who make up her team and a host of others sought to finish stocking shelves and straightening wall hangings and all of the other big and small details that go into making a new place feel like a new home.

She made her way to a quiet corner and put her phone face down on a coffee table, empty otherwise save for a simple vase with a buoyant bouquet of flowers, and sat on the sofa beside it, one among the models recognizable from the company’s website.

Once a pop-up shop, she’d moved the business to a little storefront space in Greenpoint about a year ago and now in the new, expanded space, – which will include a cafe and Scandinavian-styled deli run by her friend and collaborator Leah Flannigan – Maestrini felt Teak could finally set down and realize its real purpose.

“There are two main missions:” she explained, looking out into the room heaped with imported domestic products, “Educate people on hygge and Scandinavian lifestyle, and inspire them to create a beautiful space at home.”

“This place, New York, is chaotic,” she went on, “we’re always in a rush, we’re always in chaos – when I come home I just want a place to decompress.”

It was a notion not incongruous with the New Yorker mentality, Maestrini argued, even if the focus on minimalist, utilitarian living often called for in hygge seems to be at odds with New York’s striving, competitive, race-to-the-top attitude.

“When you’re trying to survive in this city you still need a place to land at the end of the day.”

Her project, she would allow, does in any case present some quietly transgressive ideas. To begin with, it is a physical showroom in the digital age, a brick and mortar store to which people are invited to come to touch and spend time with the things they might otherwise click on and have delivered.

Also, the products Maestrini and her team sell are meant to last, nothing of the turn-and-burn of conspicuous consumption of goods Americans generally use in their households and otherwise.

“In Scandy countries you would save for the pieces that you knew that you wanted to have in your home,” finally buying them with purpose and treating them with care. “You would have people passing down furniture to you, and you would also be buying your chairs and your tables and things to ultimately pass down to someone else as well.”

Maestrini’s is a woman-owned and led business focused on equitable pay and direct-sourcing from other small business manufacturers and artisans. The furniture and products her shop sells in turn are far from cheap, but they’re meant to be used a great deal and to last and each has a story to tell.

More important than anything, she explained, is the importance of changing peoples’ perspective on domestic life. Hygge encourages simple comforts and physical togetherness which are often missing in the age of increased isolation and virtual narcissism and vicarious living through screens and headsets. A home shouldn’t be just for crashing, a home shouldn’t be a lonely place, according to the hygge principles.

Ever the educator, Maestrini returned the meandering conversation to its origin question, objective: “I’m here to talk to New Yorkers about small space solutions, to talk to New Yorkers about Hygge. I want people to create a home that they’re happy with, where they feel cozy, where they feel calm.”

We might yet see our domestic space in a different light.

 

 

 

Courtesy New York City Fire Department

Firefighters battled a five-alarm fire at Our Lady of the Rosary Pompeii Church in Williamsburg on Easter Sunday, March 31, as heavy smoke billows from the building

By MOHAMED FARGHALY

mfarghaly@queensledger.com

Firefighters battle a five-alarm fire at Our Lady of the Rosary Pompeii Church in Williamsburg on Easter Sunday, March 31, as heavy smoke billows from the building

A five-alarm fire broke out at a Catholic church in Williamsburg on Easter Sunday on March 31, causing injuries to multiple individuals within the vicinity.

The blaze ignited at approximately 1:45 p.m. at Our Lady of the Rosary Pompeii, situated at 225 Siegel St. in Williamsburg, engulfing the church’s second floor.

According to the New York City Fire Department (FDNY), the inferno led to minor injuries for three civilians and three firefighters. Heavy smoke billowed across the vicinity for several blocks, with flames fiercely consuming the church’s rooftop.

Efforts to quell the flames persisted into the late afternoon, with firefighters finally gaining control of the situation at around 5:18 p.m. However, the cause of the fire remains undetermined, prompting an investigation by the fire marshal.

The incident disrupted Easter services, triggering a substantial FDNY response. Emergency crews swiftly descended upon the scene, cordoning off Seigel Street to facilitate firefighting operations.

Eyewitnesses recounted the harrowing scene, noting the presence of individuals within the church celebrating the Easter holiday as the fire erupted. Reportedly, approximately 100 worshippers had gathered for the afternoon mass.

Despite the ferocity of the blaze, FDNY officials commendably managed to salvage the church structure. However, a section of the second floor collapsed during the ordeal, resulting in a minor injury for one firefighter.

Tragically, the church’s rectory suffered extensive damage, with investigations underway to ascertain the cause of the conflagration.

 

Courtesy Our Lady of the Rosary Pompeii Church Facebook page

Amid Easter celebrations, firefighters battled a fierce blaze at Our Lady of the Rosary Pompeii Church in Williamsburg.

 

By Oona Milliken | omilliken@queensledger.com

Bikers can pedal easier knowing that new bike lanes are coming to the city faster than before. On Dec. 6th, Councilmember Lincoln Restler, alongside Borough President Antonio Reynoso, passed legislation that would eliminate the three month waiting period before bike lanes can be put in. The legislation, Intro 417, cuts that waiting period down to 14 days instead of 90. 

Aside from the 90 day waiting period, the Department of Transportation also had to wait 20-15 days for approval from Major Transportation Projects before beginning construction of bike lanes. Now, that waiting time is also repealed. In a statement from Restler, the Councilmember said that the new legislation would go toward building infrastructure for protected bike lanes, reduce cars on the road and aid in preventing the climate crisis. 

“Every day, New Yorkers make more than 550,000 bike trips,” Restler said in a press release. “Each trip helps us reduce the number of cars on the road and combat the climate crisis. The best way to encourage more biking is to make it safer by building a truly protected network of bike lanes.” 

Jon Orcutt, Director of Advocacy for Bike New York, an organization that seeks to empower New Yorkers through bicycling, said the bill removes an extra burden on creating new bike networks throughout the city. Orcutt said the 90-day waiting period was initially put in place in 2011 during a period bicycle activists call the “Bike Lash,” when community members were reacting to the Bloomberg administration implementing a lot of protected bike lanes at a fast pace. The 2011 legislation, Intro 412, required the DOT to give due notice to community boards when any bike lanes were constructed or removed. 

“They tried to slow bike lane development down with this additional set of rules for notifying community boards about the project,” Orcutt said. “The legislation that Councilmember Restler put together basically repealed that and so now bike lanes are treated like any other change in street configuration.” 

Though Orcutt said the bill was a win for bike advocates across the city, he said the current mayoral administration has been opposed to creation of new bike infrastructure in places like Grenpoint, Fort Greene, Clinton Hill and Prospect Heights. 

“The most bittersweet part of it is that now that we sort of have this streamlined bike lane production in terms of the procedural part, we have an administration who’s been intervening in bike lane development in a bad way,” Orcutt said. “It’s fantastic that Lincoln was able to push this through. But, now it’s sort of back in the city administration’s court to use this new procedure to get more done.” 

Elizabeth Adams, Deputy Executive Director for Public Affairs at Transportation Alternatives, also gave her support for the bill. Transportation Alternatives is a New York based organization that seeks to prioritize walking, biking and public transportation for the city, rather than relying on cars. In a press release, Adams said that the bill would go towards helping bikers stay safe in New York. 

“To combat the rising levels of bike riders killed in traffic crashes, achieve the legal mandates of the NYC Streets Plan, and meet our climate goals, New York City needs to build more protected bike lanes. Yet, current law makes it harder to build a protected bike lane than other street safety projects. New Yorkers cannot afford delays,” Adams said. “We applaud Council Member Restler and the City Council for passing Intro 417 so bike lane projects are no longer singled out with arbitrary delays and waiting periods that other street projects don’t face.” 

Curbside Composting is coming to Brooklyn stoops Oct. 2, according to a schedule released by the Mayor’s Office. The program, which includes free bins for all Brooklynites who sign up before Oct. 13, is a part of a larger rollout to make composting mandatory across all five boroughs. 

Gil Lopez, an urban ecologist, compost applicator and educator for Big Reuse, said the program is important in making composting accessible to all New York residents. 

“The great thing about the brown bin, and the reason that I’ve been wanting to mandate compost forever, is until everyone in New York City, undocumented or documented, has access [to composting] and they don’t have to do anything special to get it, there is inequity built into our system,” Lopez said. 

The program began Oct. 2022 in Queens and resumed services in the borough in March after a winter hiatus. In 2024, brown bins will start to appear regularly in Manhattan, Staten Island and the Bronx. The Curbside Composting initiative, sponsored by Park Slope Councilmember Shahana Hanif, is just one part of the Zero Waste Act initiative passed by the City Council in June of this year. 

The Zero Waste Act is a five-bill initiative that also includes annual reporting measures on the 11,000 tons of waste created in New York daily, community food scrap collecting centers, new construction of recycling facilities, as well as the city’s general efforts to withstand climate change. Under the new legislation, composting will be compulsory by the year 2025, when fines will be imposed on NYC residents who decline to sort out their organic waste. The fines will increase after each violation, starting at $25, then $50, and finally $100 for every following fine. According to Michael Whitesides, the communications director for Councilmember Hanif, the plan is to reduce the carbon footprint of the city and expand composting access to a broader range of people. 

“We’ve also really been focusing on getting multilingual outreach. A lot of the areas that we have composting right now tend to be white, wealthier, mostly English speaking communities,” Whitesides said. “The Councilmember has been really involved in trying to get some translated materials, not only about what is composting but also how to sign up for brown bin. We’re not just going to communities that already have access to curbside compost but really doing our work to expand it citywide.” 

The composting collection will be handled by the Department of Sanitation of New York and will be picked up on the same day that recycling is gathered. According to Whitesides, DSNY is putting in the work to let Brooklanites know about the brown bin rollout, including putting up flyers, doing social media outreach, and knocking on people’s doors. On Twitter, DSNY shared that more than 23,000 people have signed up for a brown bin in Brooklyn, and urged more people to participate in the program. 

According to an email response by Vincent Gragnagi, the DSNY press secretary, the compost will be sent to one of five locations across the city: the DSNY’s Staten Island composting facility, the Department of Environmental Protection’s waste management location in Newton Creek, an organic processing facility in Massachusetts, and Nature’s Choice composting plant in New Jersey. Gragnagi said the curbside composting initiative makes it easier for residents in the city to do their part in combating climate change, and in turn, also allows the city to reuse the organic material collected from community members. 

“We all share the goal of making it easy for New Yorkers to do the right thing and compost — and that is exactly what universal curbside composting does,” Gragnagi said in an email. “The goal of the procurement is to ensure that material collected in our curbside composting program goes to a variety of facilities, each of which will process the material and turn it into something beneficial, either renewable energy and fertilizer, or compost for parks and gardens” 

Whitesides said that composting organic material alone can reduce the city’s environmental impact by a third of its current carbon footprint. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, composting will reduce the amount of organic waste going to landfills, which produce a significant amount of harmful methane gas. Pilot composting programs in cities such as San Francisco have managed to reduce the amount of trash going to landfills by 80 percent, where the municipality has managed to compost 255,500 tons of organic waste each year, according to the Public Interest Network. According to Lopez, though the fight to increase composting has been active amongst grass-roots environmental circles in the area since the 1990s, this is NYC’s first large-scale initiative to enact mandatory food waste processing. 

Katie Cunningham, a Park Slope resident, said she wanted her neighbors to do their part to reduce methane gas from landfills by composting their organic material, and hopes that the brown bin program will increase the number of people who take the time to do so. After 15 years of living in the area, she said she has just started composting because of the readily available service, and in part, she said because the sign-up process to get a brown bin delivered to her home was so simple. 

“I’ve only been composting recently, I hate to admit. I’m excited that they’re invested in expanding this program and bringing it to Brooklyn,” Cunningham said. “The sign-up process is straightforward, you just go online and order the bin that you need. I’m hoping it will motivate more people in the neighborhood and more people in Brooklyn to start composting.” 

Lopez said many residents in cities assume that they are far away from the harm occurring to forests, oceans and other ecosystems and that New Yorkers should do anything they can to reduce their environmental impact. According to Lopez, composting is a big part of that. 

“We are part of the ecosystem. Period. We never separated from the ecosystem,” Lopez said. “People assume that they are not a part of the natural world. If that were true, we wouldn’t be experiencing the tripartite climate catastrophe that we’re in right now … We live in a world where everything is connected, and there’s no way you can sever that connection, no matter how big, bad, rich or elected you are.”

Thomas Leeser, a Park Slope resident, said he is glad that composting is coming to Brooklyn, and that he has been composting since he moved to the area three years ago. Leeser said that he had no issue with the program being mandatory, as composting is good for the environment. 

“It’s a good thing, you know, I’m happy that it’s happening,” Leeser said. “We should all do our part for the environment.”

By Oona Milliken | omilliken@queensledger.com

Despite the gray weather in Downtown Brooklyn, Halil Kaya was smiling inside the ice cream truck parked outside Albee Square. After selling five strawberry smoothies to a large family and one rainbow sprinkled cone to a mother-daughter duo, Kaya stopped serving and said he loves selling ice cream because of how happy it makes people. 

“I just love to make people happy, you know? To see the kids happy. That’s the best job I want to do,” Kaya said. 

Kaya, whose favorite ice cream flavor is chocolate vanilla twist, said it can sometimes be hard to stay positive in such a hectic area. According to Kaya, Albee Square is bustling with people from all over Brooklyn, and people can be rude and abrasive when he’s working the window. 

“Sometimes people like to give you a hard time about the ice cream, or the prices, but otherwise I like it,” Kaya said. 

Because of this, Kaya said he wanted people to spread positivity, and remind people to stay polite during ice cream rush hours. 

“Just be polite to others with whatever you do. You should just try to make people happy everyday. Yeah, just be polite,” Kaya said. “Share the happiness.”