Artful building decorations, in chalk! Photo by nyarchivist.
September 5, 2017 Weather: Sunny with a high of 86 degrees.
Notices:
Human chess in Riverside Park and more local events are on our calendar.
Local politics is back in full force. There’s a full community board meeting on Tuesday night and a City Council debate on Wednesday. See the calendar for details.
News:
Apartments at the Douglass Houses (100th-104th Streets) are in disrepair, including a 91-year-old’s home. “Salvador Colon’s bathroom ceiling has been caving in for months now.”
Jing Fong, the new dim sum spot on 78th and Amsterdam, rivals the original one in Chinatown, aside from the lack of chicken feet, writes Eater’s Robert Sietsema. “All in all, maybe it was a good idea to combine a dim sum spot with an old-fashioned Cantonese restaurant on the Upper West Side. It’s a boon for the neighborhood.”
Why Roger Federer decided to practice in Central Park instead of at the U.S. Open courts. “‘I’ve seen the routine of normal practice sessions and matches, press, all the things we do in a row, it’s always the same. I think this was very refreshing. I hope I can do these things a bit more often.'”
Re: “Apartments at the Douglass Houses (100th-104th Streets) are in disrepair, including a 91-year-old (whose) bathroom ceiling has been caving in for months now.”
Ummm…Mr. Mayor BdB:
You originally campaigned on your Tale of Two Cities theme, and, besides universal Pre-K, exactly WHAT have you done about one of this city’s most disgraceful problems for the less affluent?
That would be NYCHA (New York City Housing Authority) which has been cited over-and-over as an inept dysfunctional agency that cannot keep its buildings repaired!
A stronger mayor would have tackled this problem by the 2nd year of his term in office; firing whomever needs to be fired and demanding accountability from all the yawning NYCHA pencil-pushers who think they have a job-for-life.
Does anyone know why the mayor was holding court in front of Fresh Direct on Labor Day weekend? The crowd holding signs with his name were blocking the sidewalk and when I asked what was going on one of his giant security guys told me to move along.
Isn’t Fresh Direct a website??
Are you honestly not aware that there is an upcoming mayoral election?
Sorry, that should have said FAIRWAY, not Fresh Direct! 😮
Campaigning, perhaps.
These aren’t condos.
Your point being? Surely you don’t mean the working poor and lower-middle-income should live in substandard housing.
Frederick Douglass Houses are 60 years old (built in 1958 IIRC), but due to hard use and lack of investment/deferred maintenance are falling apart.
This is common to most all NYCHA developments and there isn’t going to be an easy financial fix.
Federal government has long moved away from “project” type housing. This comes as many both in government and private sector believe such housing estates have become warehouses for the poor and or disenfranchised. That and or whatever their lofty goals when built, many “projects” have become worse slums than the tenement housing they often replaced.
The new model is “inclusive” mixed income. That is housing where persons from various socio-economic demographics live with the expectation it will help “lift” or whatever the poor.
Indeed elsewhere in the USA local governments have been emptying out and tearing down “project” estates.
Most famous example of this would be the Chicago Housing Authority tearing down and redevelopment of Cabrini-Green Houses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabrini%E2%80%93Green_Homes
Problem with that plan is that NYC has a huge and deep low income housing problem. NYCHA projects have become pretty much the housing of last resort for many. There simply isn’t enough available land/housing to move these people to even if the city wished to go down that path.
The only housing project in NYC that has been redeveloped in NYC IIRC was Markham Homes on Staten Island. The place was past its useful lifespan and needed a large cash infusion for repairs and so forth. Federal government told NYC it was no longer going to put money into that housing estate forcing the city’s hand.