Issue #21
My colleague Sam Rabiyah had a phenomenal series of stories this week at THE CITY on the thousands of empty rent-controlled apartments across New York City.
He writes:
An internal state housing agency memo obtained by THE CITY shows that the number of rent-stabilized homes reported vacant on annual apartment registrations rose to over 61,000 in 2021 — nearly doubling from less than 34,000 in just a year as the city emerged from COVID lockdown.
The next day, he wrote a follow-up with more data that showed the number of empty units could actually be more than 88,000.
Sam spoke about his reporting on NY1 this week, too.
READ
LES and Chinatown Residents Sue To Halt New Towers in Two Bridges, Citing New NY Constitutional Right to Clean Air [THE CITY]
On Innovation QNS [THE CITY]
LISTEN
New York has an election coming up next month, and this week we had Jimmy Vielkind of the Wall Street Journal on the FAQ podcast to talk about the governor's race. He does an excellent job of explaining the dynamics of Gov. Hochul’s shrinking lead in the polls and where Republican Lee Zeldin can chip away to win.
‘Politics is Tidal’ [FAQNYC]
And I’ve been listening to this song on repeat because it sounds like they sampled the music from the “turn off your cell phones” video played before every film at IFC
“5 Dollars” by Dan & Drum
I headed to Queens housing court this week for a story, which meant I also got to visit one of my favorite lunch spots – Beijing Dumpling House. For years, this place has been my reward after what used to be twice-monthly visits to the surrogate's court and the room with all the computers to look up cases, and I justified my 11:15 a.m. visit by reminding myself I’d already been up for hours.
I usually get two orders of dumplings but this week felt fancy and got the sesame pancake with peking duck. The pancake is perfect, both airy and chewy and flavorful, and paired well with the duck.
I also got the soup.
Beijing Dumpling has bubble tea in the front and is usually bumping on lunch breaks, filled with lawyers and court officers and jurors and everyone else who finds themselves on Sutphin Boulevard, in good times and bad.
Beijing Dumpling, 88-38 Sutphin Blvd, Jamaica, Queens
Thanks for reading!