News and Media

BROOKLYN — Three days before they face off in a gubernatorial debate on Wednesday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and actress-turned-political-candidate Cynthia Nixon talked to potential voters about affordable housing.

Sit back for a moment and imagine not being able to breathe in your own home. Imagine waking up in the middle of the night gasping for air or, worse, hearing your child, at any hour, wheezing, coughing, unable to fill her lungs. Imagine medications and breathing machines, emergency room visits, hospitalizations—all stemming from a menace in your own home that no one is willing to address.

A community-organizing group led tours of crumbling NYCHA apartments for local councilmembers across the city in May, to point out the deplorable conditions. For Bronx tenants, the tour yielded quick attention from the Housing Authority.

THE BRONX - Frustrated NYCHA tenants held a rally Monday, asking Mayor Bill de Blasio for billions of dollars in funding due to apartment problems that include mold and cracked ceilings.

City housing residents will lead council members on an “inspection tour” of NYCHA properties to show them the “dangerous conditions” of their homes and hold a rally on the steps of City Hall, according to a network of citizens organizations.

El Concejo Municipal sutuvo una audiencia sobre la administración de la Autoridad de Vivienda, la agencia al frente de la vivienda pública en la ciudad y cuya Presidenta renunció en medio del escándalo a principios de mes por la presencia de plomo, falta de calefacción y múltiples demandas de sus residentes.

Ms. Awilda Garcia has been fighting NYCHA to fix the mold problem in her bathroom of the East Village’s Wald Houses for 11 years. She suffers from asthma, and her illness is exacerbated by it. She has consistently put in work order requests, and NYCHA has made 10 maintenance visits to her apartment so far. But instead of fixing the underlying moisture problem fueling the mold, each time they’ve taken superficial steps to merely mask it—cleaning the ceiling and painting over it. And, inevitably, it returns in short order

Four years after promising but failing to clean up festering mold in its apartments, NYCHA Friday agreed to the appointment of an independent ombudsman who can penalize the authority for future failures.

Gun violence is not an abstract concept for Rabbi Joel Mosbacher. His father, Lester, was shot dead in 1999 as he opened up his check-cashing business on Chicago’s South Side. Rabbi Mosbacher, who had been ordained just six months earlier, struggled to make sense of the murder, even as well-meaning friends struggled to find words of comfort and support.

It was a striking sight: Four of New York City’s five district attorneys gathered earlier this month at a forum sponsored by the Daily News, Greenburger Center and Metro-IAF to discuss their approaches to stemming the mass incarceration of people with mental illness and substance use disorders, in light of plans to shrink and eventually close jails on Rikers Island.

Knock, knock. Who’s there? Opportunity right under Mayor de Blasio’s nose, to unlock thousands of apartments for New York’s neediest in the middle of a housing crisis, on land the city already owns.

Drenched and determined, from a multitude of neighborhoods and faiths, they massed by the thousands Monday on the sidewalks outside City Hall — from East Brooklyn, from the South Bronx, from southeast Queens, from Manhattan up and down.

Thousands of senior citizens, NYCHA residents, teachers and church parishioners turned out in the pouring rain Monday to call out Mayor de Blasio for falling short on his pledge to make housing in the city affordable to New Yorkers.

Thousands of New Yorkers rallied in the rain outside City Hall Monday afternoon calling for more affordable housing for senior citizens. The protest was coordinated by Metro Industrial Areas Foundation, a coalition of city churches. Metro IAF says they suggested a plan to Mayor Bill de Blasio that would transform underutilized public housing areas into 15,000 affordable apartments for senior citizens - but the mayor would not consider the plan.