Housing focus (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)

Affordable housing construction in New York has declined significantly in the last few years in the wake of COVID-19 through a combination of factors including higher interest rates, inflation and supply chain instability resulting from the overall disruption of the pandemic. But a key factor that real estate developers, city and state government officials, and many housing advocates cite is the expiration of the state’s 421-a property tax exemption for the construction of affordable housing as part of larger rental housing developments.

City Planning Head Dan Garodnick (photo: William Alatriste/City Council)

The acute staffing crisis at city agencies threatens to undo the many ambitious plans announced by Mayor Eric Adams, and has become the central concern for the City Council as it examines the mayor’s proposed $102.7 billion preliminary budget for next fiscal year.

On Thursday, at a Council hearing focused on the Department of City Planning, a similar refrain emerged as the agency currently faces a 18%

Governor Hochul, Mayor Adams & others at ground-breaking (photo: Kevin P. Coughlin/Governor's Office)

Last month, in herState of the State address, Governor Kathy Hochul proposed a “Housing Compact” to build 800,000 units of housing across the state over the next ten years. It is an ambitious plan that aims to tackle the state’s dire housing shortage by leveraging private

A ground-breaking (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)

New York City has an acute housing shortage, with emergency-level lows in apartment vacancies, especially for units affordable to most New Yorkers, and astronomical rents, a homelessness crisis, and halting recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the core of the city’s housing supply deficit is a lengthy and cumbersome land use decision-making process, a bureaucratic maze of local and state regulations combined with political dynamics that have often

Mayor Adams and others at a development ground-breaking (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)

Mayor Eric Adams promised on Thursday that in the coming week, he will release a comprehensive housing plan to address New York City’s affordable housing crisis and rebuild its crumbling public housing stock. Adams spoke at the annual conference of the New York State Association for Affordable Housing (NYSAFAH), where officials from his administration appeared on expert panels to discuss the challenges of building affordable housing in the city and further preview some of the strategies that

City Planning Chief Dan Garodnick (photo: Joanna Graham/Mayoral Photography Office)

In a presentation to the New York City Council Wednesday, newly-appointed Department of City Planning Commissioner Dan Garodnick discussed the Adams administration's proposed budget and values for how land should be used to shape the city's future.

The Department of City Planning, which helps craft proposed changes to land use rules, including zoning regulations and applications, is working towards some of the pillars of inclusive economic growth and crisis adaptability contained in Mayor Eric Adams’ economic recovery

Another chapter between Mayor de Blasio and the NYPD (photo: Edwin J. Torres/Mayor's Office)

A long-stalled bill meant to shed light on the surveillance equipment used by the NYPD has suddenly moved through the City Council with the support of Mayor Bill de Blasio, despite being virtually unchanged since the mayor and NYPD leaders raised dire alarms about it in recent years. Now de Blasio is breaking with his own police department, which he has maintained has been on board with a slew of recent changes to NYPD oversight and discipline in the wake of national

Announcing the Amazon deal (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)

Amazon’s decision to abandon its planned construction of a major campus in Long Island City has revealed deep fissures among New Yorkers. Typical of news coverage and commentary in these highly-polarized times, discussion of the issue has been framed in largely win/lose terms, both from the perspective of politics (progressives versus pragmatics) and the impact on the New York economy and lifestyle (“more jobs is always better” versus “union-busting vulture capitalist

De Blasio at a public hearing (photo: Ed Reed/Mayor's Office)

Four government transparency bills that were passed by the City Council on October 31 aged into law on Friday, having gone 30 days without any action in favor or against them by Mayor Bill de Blasio. The bills all relate to increased disclosure by the administration of billions in city government spending and have been praised by good government advocates.

Among the bills was one that ...

What's The Data Point? Episode 20 -- 44, with City Council Member Dan Garodnick [You can download What's The [Data] Point? wherever you get your podcasts, including on iTunes]

City Council Member Dan Garodnick has represented his Manhattan district for the past 12 years. At the end of this year, he's leaving the Council due to term limits. He joined

Comptroller Scott Stringer (photo courtesy of Comptroller's office)

Just four days before voters head to the polls on Tuesday, November 7, New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer released a damning report highlighting the dysfunctional election operations of the New York City Board of Elections, a quasi-city agency that administers elections in the city.

Stringer’s audit was launched in response to the BOE’s purge of more than 117,000 voters from the rolls in Brooklyn last year, ahead of the April presidential primary. The purge prompted widespread outrage, triggering an investigation by the

CM Garodnick speaks at a groundbreaking ceremony (photo via @DanGarodnick)

[editor's note: the bills discussed in this story have passed the Council since its publish; the headline has been tweaked to indicate that fact, but the story remains unchanged from its publish]

The New York City Council is set to pass a package of three bills that will expand its oversight of the New York City Economic Development Corporation, a city-affiliated non-profit that is instrumental in the city’s efforts to stimulate business and create jobs.

The

City Council candidate Keith Powers (photo: @KeithPowersNYC)

Candidates across the city this year are running for City Council on all sorts of issues, but only one has released a detailed list of government, campaign finance, and voting reform proposals. That agenda, called “

Crowded Field Competes to Represent Manhattan City Council District

Council Member Helen Rosenthal (photo: William Alatriste/New York City Council)

The City Council’s Committee on Economic Development and the Committee on Contracts held a joint hearing on Thursday to discuss proposed legislation that would create a bill of rights for subcontractors working with the city.

Intro.1615, sponsored by Council Members Laurie Cumbo,

Mayor de Blasio in the Bronx (photo: Ed Reed/Mayor's Office)

Kicking off his week in the Bronx, Mayor Bill de Blasio said May 22 that his administration’s efforts to fight inequality are working and that while unemployment has dropped significantly in the borough, there is more work to be done. “The Bronx has borne the brunt of that inequality crisis in many ways,” the mayor said, but what his administration is doing is “disproportionately benefiting the Bronx.”

The mayor told those sitting with him -- senior administration officials and

Council Member Dan Garodnick, the author (photo: William Alatriste)

For decades, the New York City Police Department has had an early intervention system to identify officers prone to violence, based on their discipline and complaint history. Yet through leaks last month, we learned that the officers who killed Eric Garner and Ramarley Graham had extensive records of complaints against them. Despite so many documented

City Council Member Garodnick, in NYPD hat, & colleagues (photo: William Alatriste)

A bill introduced by City Council Member Dan Garodnick to require the NYPD to publish its patrol guide online will be heard for the first time by the City Council’s Committee on Public Safety next week. The hearing, set for Thursday, September 15, follows shortly on the recent controversy over the Right to Know Act, a package of police reform legislation that Council Speaker Melissa

The "On Diversity" panel; photo via William Alatriste for the City Council

What are "women’s issues"? When should men recognize their privilege and stand down? Speak up? How do women in public life talk about everyday sexism and engage men in that dialogue?

These were just a few of the questions asked on Tuesday during one panel discussion at City & State NY’s annual “On Diversity” conference. Elected officials, business professionals, journalists, members of academia, and others gathered to discuss issues of race and gender in

photo via @NYPDNews

NOTE: this article was originally published June 7, but the hearing discussed was postponed to June 28; it has been edited to refllect the new date and other recent news

Following on the heels of passing the Criminal Justice Reform Act, which diverts the prosecution of a number of low-level nonviolent offenses to civil rather than criminal avenues, the City Council will hear a bill on Tuesday that also addresses criminal justice reform, but this time by targeting bad actors within

The Mayor & the City Council (photo: William Alatriste)

The City Council chambers at City Hall were filled with grief on Tuesday. Before the Council would conduct its business for the day -- approving an $82.1 billion budget for the city’s 2017 fiscal year -- members first paid their respects to the 49 people killed by a terrorist who shot patrons at a gay nightclub in Orlando on Sunday. One by one, Council members read out the names of victims and placed small electric candles on the dais at the front of the chamber. Almost every Council member

(photo via @nystateparks)

Mayor Bill de Blasio recently faced an embarrassing situation and had to act quickly to remedy it. Seemingly out of nowhere, there was a lack of clarity around the city’s investment, or apparent lack thereof, in water infrastructure - namely the long-under-construction third water tunnel. The tunnel, along with other elements of the city’s water system are nearer the top of the Spring political agenda. City Council members want answers about what the city is doing to protect and ensure its clean water supply, and will

Council Member Elizabeth Crowley and colleagues (photo: William Alatriste) 

On Thursday, the City Council approved a bill requiring the Department of Small Business Services to survey and study the gender, ethnic, and racial makeup of executive-level staff and board members of companies that contract with the city. The bill, co-sponsored by Council Members Elizabeth

Homelessness town hall on the East Side (photo via @RosieMendez)

At a Tuesday night town hall hosted by City Council Members Dan Garodnick and Rosie Mendez at Gramercy’s Church of the Epiphany, stakeholders voiced concerns about problems related to homelessness, an increasingly controversial issue facing the East Side of Manhattan.

After

New York City Hall

Happy New Year!

So far, New York politics in 2016 looks a lot like 2015. On Sunday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced a new Executive Order related to homelessness that appears to be the opening salvo in his plan to take aim at the issue, most pressingly in New York City, where he's criticized Mayor Bill de Blasio's handling of the crisis that includes about 60,000 homeless people. Cuomo's order notes that homelessness is a problem around the state and says that when