Two empty chairs sat stage left by the time New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board (NYC RGB) issued a preliminary vote allowing landlords to raise rents on rent-stabilized residential units this past Tuesday. The initial hikes were initially locked to a range of 2 to 4.5% for one-year leases and 4 to 6.5% for two-year leases beginning in October. A final vote on June 17 will determine the exact percentage for rent increases.

The vacant seats were assigned to the two tenant representatives on the board, Adán Soltren and Genesis Aquino, who walked off in protest given the seemingly inevitable rent hike despite mounting evidence of financial hardship that rent stabilized tenants already faced. They abstained from the preliminary vote, which went 5-2 in favor of the agreed upon increase; the two nays came from the owner representatives who argued the rent hike range was not high enough.

The move from the board affects nearly one million households protected by the Rent Stabilization Law, which set a legal limit to how much property owners can charge for qualifying apartments, typically those in pre-1974 buildings with six or more units. The board determines the exact limit. 

The NYC RGB’s formation came as the actual Rent Stabilization Law passed in 1969, giving the sitting mayor authority to appoint nine members—five from the general public, two representing tenants, and two representing property owners—to the board. The members are tasked with convening between March to June to review housing affordability standards for both renters and expenses for landlords, culminating in a preliminary vote with a final vote to follow. 

But the ultimate rent increase the NYC RGB agrees upon is almost guaranteed to stem from the initial range in the first vote, according to Soltren, who spoke to the Amsterdam News on the morning of the vote. In fact, Soltren said, there was a dispute among the board about whether they could even legally deviate outside the preliminary vote’s scope. 

“You’re not voting on a specific number necessarily as to what the upward or downward adjustment would be,” he said. “You’re saying what the range would be so that for the number in the final vote with land somewhere in [that] range…certainly tonight’s vote is going to set the goalposts as to what the final vote will yield.”
To be clear, the NYC RGB does not specifically vote on how much to raise rents, but whether the city should increase them at all. It can even decide on a rent rollback to reduce costs. Yet Soltren, who also works as a supervising attorney for the Legal Aid Society, pointed out the two could be conflated given the board’s recurring decision to raise rents despite data—which informs the vote—pointing to historical financial strains on tenants. 

The rent guideline board’s reports found median rents last year for rent-stabilized households made up around 28.8% of its income, and broadly reported a significant increase in non-payments and residential evictions. Homelessness within city shelters also increased, even when the newly-arrived asylum seekers were not accounted for. And under 1% of rent stabilized units, which make up 41% of rentals in 2023, remained empty.

Last year, protesters led by several progressive city council members, including Brooklyn’s Chi Ossé, took over the preliminary vote stage at Cooper Union to vocally advocate against rent increases. But a 2 to 5% increase for one-year rentals and a 4 to 7% increase for two-year rentals were agreed upon anyway. A 3% increase for one-year rentals was ultimately agreed upon. 

This time around, the board proceedings were similarly drowned out by protesters, whose boos and “shame” chants paired with orange thunderstix rivaled those of the Knicks playoff game across the East River. They only paused to cheer on Soltren and Aquino during their remarks and subsequent vote of “no confidence” in the board and the Adams administration. 

“Rent stabilization has always served more people of color than market rate apartments,” Soltren said in his remarks. “In 2023 alone, 71% of the rent-stabilized households are headed by people of color. Despite the massive displacement of Black New Yorkers in the last two decades due to gentrification and unaffordability, Black New Yorkers still comprise 23% of the rent stabilized housing stock. 

“What message are you sending to Black and brown New Yorkers when this administration and this board are calling for a third increase in three years that would likely total about 10% or more?” 

After the preliminary vote, Soltren said he cited data from the most recent New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey (NYCHVS) conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. He will still need to sit on several upcoming public board meetings before the final vote, he said. After his walk-off, he is unsure how those convenings will shake out. 

Civil rights attorney Robert Desir, who works at Legal Aid Society with Soltren, pointed to rent-stabilized housing as key to keeping longtime residents in majority Black and brown communities. He says fair market housing, which is not stabilized, is often out of reach for such renters, preventing them from remaining in the neighborhood if a rent increase leads to eviction over non-payment. Median rent for a rent stabilized unit was $1,500 a month last year, according to the NYCHVS. Comparatively, the median fair market rental asked for $2,000.

“Part of the rent stabilization system serves a good purpose preventing these runaway rents that result in displacement,” Desir said. “And where that’s not guarded, people fall behind, unable to afford the rent and are evicted, [meaning] those folks don’t stand a good chance to be able to stay in that neighborhood, particularly in Harlem. We’ve seen how that area has undergone significant change in the last couple of decades, and [it is] still happening.”

One protester, Ann Marie Grant, says she attended to support her fellow renters despite living in NYCHA rather than a rent stabilized unit because she fears New York City will be only for the ultrawealthy if middle-class and low-income families can’t afford rent. She says she’s seeing segregation play out in real time in her neighborhood of East Harlem due to cost of living increases and gentrification.

“I see more of my neighbors leaving and new faces taking over,” Grant said. “Gentrification is there and it’s not right. As I said, everybody should be allowed to live together, it’s not about Black versus white.”

But real estate developer Joshua Brown says “mom-and-pop” Black property owners with rent-stabilized units like himself are feeling the squeeze that come from high repair costs. While he says those issues need to be addressed by tweaking legislation, the Brookynite says a higher rent increase would help him recoup the roughly $70,000 needed to fix up his building in Bed-Stuy. Brown adds that without those costs, he would not need to raise rent lockstep with the NYC RGB’s increase cap. 

“There is an incentive to keep someone who has been there a long time paying your rent on time to not raise their price just so you could possibly get a new one who could flake out within one year or two years,” he said. “However, there are root causes, there’s no incentive to do it now…what this does sadly is incentivize owners [and] developers to just keep the building vacant so that they can fully renovate the building and now you turn all these rent stabilized units into market rate units [through] something that’s called a substantial rehab…so essentially, it’s taking rent stabilized units off the market.”

The Rent Stabilization Law itself recently weathered several legal challenges, including in a case heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. In March, Mayor Eric Adams signed an extension into law, maintaining rent stabilization in the city until at least April 27. One of those organizations challenging the law, the Community Housing Improvement Program (CHIP), also objected to the preliminary vote for not raising the range high enough.

“It should not solely be the responsibility of the RGB to keep these buildings solvent,” said CHIP Executive Director Jay Martin in a statement. “Elected officials need to find ways to reduce the costs of operating housing and provide more financial assistance to vulnerable tenants. But until that happens, the RGB is faced with the Herculean task of protecting this housing stock and must step up to make the unpopular decision to increase rents.”

Mayor Adams also responded to the vote, fearing the range’s two-year cap could seriously hurt renters, but advocated for a middle ground. 

“Tenants are feeling the squeeze of a decades-long affordability crisis, which has been accelerated by restrictive zoning laws and inadequate tools that have made it harder and harder to build housing,” he said in an emailed statement. “Our team is taking a close look at the preliminary ranges voted on by the Rent Guidelines Board this evening and while the Board has the challenging task of striking a balance between protecting tenants from infeasible rent increases and ensuring property owners can maintain their buildings as costs continue to rise, I must be clear that a 6.5 percent increase goes far beyond what is reasonable to ask tenants to take on at this time.” 

Tandy Lau is a Report for America corps member and writes about public safety for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.

The post Tenant reps walk out of Rent Guidelines Board vote as stage is set for raising rents on stabilized units again appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.

* This article was originally published here

Two empty chairs sat stage left by the time New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board (NYC RGB) issued a preliminary vote allowing landlords to raise rents on rent-stabilized residential units this past Tuesday. The initial hikes were initially locked to a range of 2 to 4.5% for one-year leases and 4 to 6.5% for two-year leases beginning in October. A final vote on June 17 will determine the exact percentage for rent increases.

The vacant seats were assigned to the two tenant representatives on the board, Adán Soltren and Genesis Aquino, who walked off in protest given the seemingly inevitable rent hike despite mounting evidence of financial hardship that rent stabilized tenants already faced. They abstained from the preliminary vote, which went 5-2 in favor of the agreed upon increase; the two nays came from the owner representatives who argued the rent hike range was not high enough.

The move from the board affects nearly one million households protected by the Rent Stabilization Law, which set a legal limit to how much property owners can charge for qualifying apartments, typically those in pre-1974 buildings with six or more units. The board determines the exact limit. 

The NYC RGB’s formation came as the actual Rent Stabilization Law passed in 1969, giving the sitting mayor authority to appoint nine members—five from the general public, two representing tenants, and two representing property owners—to the board. The members are tasked with convening between March to June to review housing affordability standards for both renters and expenses for landlords, culminating in a preliminary vote with a final vote to follow. 

But the ultimate rent increase the NYC RGB agrees upon is almost guaranteed to stem from the initial range in the first vote, according to Soltren, who spoke to the Amsterdam News on the morning of the vote. In fact, Soltren said, there was a dispute among the board about whether they could even legally deviate outside the preliminary vote’s scope. 

“You’re not voting on a specific number necessarily as to what the upward or downward adjustment would be,” he said. “You’re saying what the range would be so that for the number in the final vote with land somewhere in [that] range…certainly tonight’s vote is going to set the goalposts as to what the final vote will yield.”
To be clear, the NYC RGB does not specifically vote on how much to raise rents, but whether the city should increase them at all. It can even decide on a rent rollback to reduce costs. Yet Soltren, who also works as a supervising attorney for the Legal Aid Society, pointed out the two could be conflated given the board’s recurring decision to raise rents despite data—which informs the vote—pointing to historical financial strains on tenants. 

The rent guideline board’s reports found median rents last year for rent-stabilized households made up around 28.8% of its income, and broadly reported a significant increase in non-payments and residential evictions. Homelessness within city shelters also increased, even when the newly-arrived asylum seekers were not accounted for. And under 1% of rent stabilized units, which make up 41% of rentals in 2023, remained empty.

Last year, protesters led by several progressive city council members, including Brooklyn’s Chi Ossé, took over the preliminary vote stage at Cooper Union to vocally advocate against rent increases. But a 2 to 5% increase for one-year rentals and a 4 to 7% increase for two-year rentals were agreed upon anyway. A 3% increase for one-year rentals was ultimately agreed upon. 

This time around, the board proceedings were similarly drowned out by protesters, whose boos and “shame” chants paired with orange thunderstix rivaled those of the Knicks playoff game across the East River. They only paused to cheer on Soltren and Aquino during their remarks and subsequent vote of “no confidence” in the board and the Adams administration. 

“Rent stabilization has always served more people of color than market rate apartments,” Soltren said in his remarks. “In 2023 alone, 71% of the rent-stabilized households are headed by people of color. Despite the massive displacement of Black New Yorkers in the last two decades due to gentrification and unaffordability, Black New Yorkers still comprise 23% of the rent stabilized housing stock. 

“What message are you sending to Black and brown New Yorkers when this administration and this board are calling for a third increase in three years that would likely total about 10% or more?” 

After the preliminary vote, Soltren said he cited data from the most recent New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey (NYCHVS) conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. He will still need to sit on several upcoming public board meetings before the final vote, he said. After his walk-off, he is unsure how those convenings will shake out. 

Civil rights attorney Robert Desir, who works at Legal Aid Society with Soltren, pointed to rent-stabilized housing as key to keeping longtime residents in majority Black and brown communities. He says fair market housing, which is not stabilized, is often out of reach for such renters, preventing them from remaining in the neighborhood if a rent increase leads to eviction over non-payment. Median rent for a rent stabilized unit was $1,500 a month last year, according to the NYCHVS. Comparatively, the median fair market rental asked for $2,000.

“Part of the rent stabilization system serves a good purpose preventing these runaway rents that result in displacement,” Desir said. “And where that’s not guarded, people fall behind, unable to afford the rent and are evicted, [meaning] those folks don’t stand a good chance to be able to stay in that neighborhood, particularly in Harlem. We’ve seen how that area has undergone significant change in the last couple of decades, and [it is] still happening.”

One protester, Ann Marie Grant, says she attended to support her fellow renters despite living in NYCHA rather than a rent stabilized unit because she fears New York City will be only for the ultrawealthy if middle-class and low-income families can’t afford rent. She says she’s seeing segregation play out in real time in her neighborhood of East Harlem due to cost of living increases and gentrification.

“I see more of my neighbors leaving and new faces taking over,” Grant said. “Gentrification is there and it’s not right. As I said, everybody should be allowed to live together, it’s not about Black versus white.”

But real estate developer Joshua Brown says “mom-and-pop” Black property owners with rent-stabilized units like himself are feeling the squeeze that come from high repair costs. While he says those issues need to be addressed by tweaking legislation, the Brookynite says a higher rent increase would help him recoup the roughly $70,000 needed to fix up his building in Bed-Stuy. Brown adds that without those costs, he would not need to raise rent lockstep with the NYC RGB’s increase cap. 

“There is an incentive to keep someone who has been there a long time paying your rent on time to not raise their price just so you could possibly get a new one who could flake out within one year or two years,” he said. “However, there are root causes, there’s no incentive to do it now…what this does sadly is incentivize owners [and] developers to just keep the building vacant so that they can fully renovate the building and now you turn all these rent stabilized units into market rate units [through] something that’s called a substantial rehab…so essentially, it’s taking rent stabilized units off the market.”

The Rent Stabilization Law itself recently weathered several legal challenges, including in a case heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. In March, Mayor Eric Adams signed an extension into law, maintaining rent stabilization in the city until at least April 27. One of those organizations challenging the law, the Community Housing Improvement Program (CHIP), also objected to the preliminary vote for not raising the range high enough.

“It should not solely be the responsibility of the RGB to keep these buildings solvent,” said CHIP Executive Director Jay Martin in a statement. “Elected officials need to find ways to reduce the costs of operating housing and provide more financial assistance to vulnerable tenants. But until that happens, the RGB is faced with the Herculean task of protecting this housing stock and must step up to make the unpopular decision to increase rents.”

Mayor Adams also responded to the vote, fearing the range’s two-year cap could seriously hurt renters, but advocated for a middle ground. 

“Tenants are feeling the squeeze of a decades-long affordability crisis, which has been accelerated by restrictive zoning laws and inadequate tools that have made it harder and harder to build housing,” he said in an emailed statement. “Our team is taking a close look at the preliminary ranges voted on by the Rent Guidelines Board this evening and while the Board has the challenging task of striking a balance between protecting tenants from infeasible rent increases and ensuring property owners can maintain their buildings as costs continue to rise, I must be clear that a 6.5 percent increase goes far beyond what is reasonable to ask tenants to take on at this time.” 

Tandy Lau is a Report for America corps member and writes about public safety for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.

The post Stage is set for another increase to rent stabilized units  appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.

* This article was originally published here

Are these otherworldly sculptures emerging from the depths of the earth or returning to the underworld? That’s the question Huma Bhabha hopes visitors will ponder as they explore her monumental new bronze artworks in Brooklyn. 

Titled “Before the End,” the installation of four, eight-foot tall bronze sculptures topped with animal skull fragments is now on view through March 9, 2025. Find it at the Pier 3 Greenway Terrace in Brooklyn Bridge Park.

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Bhabha is known for reimagining the figure in her sculptures and drawings. In this case, she did that by casting carved cork and skull fragments in a piece that interrogates the intersections of art, science fiction, horror, and mythology. The artist collected the skull fragments while working as an artisan in a taxidermist’s studio. She also used a horseshoe crab exoskeleton in the artwork.

The mysterious figures recall ancient effigies cut into tombstones. Each of the four figures has a different name. There’s Feel the Hammer, Member, Mr. Stone, and Nothing Falls. Bhabha drew upon classic cult horror films like Destroy All Monsters, H.R. Giger’s designs for the Alien franchise, and the work of artists including Giacometti, Marisol, and Basquiat.

Situated at Brooklyn Bridge Park, the pieces are surrounded by other formidable landmarks, like bridges, waterways, and even the Statue of Liberty and One World Trade. That makes for a powerful juxtaposition, especially given the long history of the park itself in New York City. Once a deteriorated stretch of waterfront, the park now offers lush lawns, waterfront promenades, and expansive skyline views.  

After growing up in Pakistan, Bhabha moved to the United States for college, and she now lives in Poughkeepsie. 

“Huma Bhabha’s eccentric characters captivate through contradiction, seemingly forged in geological time yet animated with a visceral sense of immediacy,” Public Art Fund Executive & Artistic Director Nicholas Baume said in a press release. “Before The End is set amidst the expansive landscape of Brooklyn Bridge Park, a site where natural and man-made elements converge, allowing the works to take on a profound sense of connection to the earth.”

Huma Bhabha: Before The End is presented by Public Art Fund. It’s the latest outdoor artwork to appear in NYC, joining an eclectic collection of pieces to see this spring, including a hot dog in Times Square, a massive tire labyrinth in the Garment District, and a subway serpent in the Rockaways.

* This article was originally published here

Screaming and crying girls. Innumerable hotel rooms. Nonstop camera flashes. A group of four Liverpudlian guys in the middle of it all. We’ve all seen the photos and videos documenting the insanity of Beatlemania, the obsession over the Beatles from 1963 to 1966.

But it turns out that the Beatles’ bassist and singer, Sir Paul McCartney, actually turned the lens on the crowds, the paparazzi and the cities that hosted them in the early days.

McCartney and the Brooklyn Museum are showcasing more than 250 of the icon’s personal photographs that illustrate the intensity of this historical moment, but also the quiet moments unseen by millions of fans in “Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm.”

The exhibit gives new insight into the demands of touring, the constant media attention as well as McCartney’s band members, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, who were undergoing an extremely life-changing era.

The show opens on May 3 and we got a sneak peek at it beforehand!

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First on view at the National Portrait Gallery in London, the exhibition is made up of photography, video clips and archival material between The Beatles’ concert hall performances in Liverpool and London to their international tour, first to Paris and then to the United States. From hotel to hotel and from venue to venue, McCartney was taking portraits, landscapes and documentary shots all along the way. The museum says you can see references to New Wave, documentary filmmaking and photojournalism across the exhibition.

As a massive Beatles fan, access to these personal photos is a gift. Seeing the rabid fans and the insane moments from McCartney’s perspective, especially from his time here in NYC, is something I never thought I’d get to see. It’s easy to build the group up as icons—each individually and together—but this showcase breaks down that perspective because it is like looking at a family photo album.

The galleries are filled with close-up portraits of the guys in various situations—waiting for rehearsals to start, fiddling around on their instruments, interacting with fans and even taking a day off and swimming in Miami! Fans already know that the foursome were close, but seeing these behind-closed-doors images offers a new insight into their humor, individuality and humanity, which can often be forgotten about.

We’ve seen them in so many black and white photos on stage, in the studio and making public appearances, but these quiet moments (and some in bright beautiful color) shift the eye away from ‘icon’ to ‘individual.’

It’s also made more personal with McCartney’s actual pencil marks on the images he selected from his various contact sheets and his quotes about certain images and times during this era. There’s also a camera on display that is the same model that he and his fellow bandmembers used—the 35mm Pentax SLR. Plus, McCartney comments on some of the photos along the way, which you can read on the wall next to them.

“The crowds chasing us in A Hard Day’s Night were based on moments like this,” McCartney said, referencing the photo below. It was taken in New York City during the same trip they went on the Ed Sullivan Show.

There’s an entire gallery about when the Beatles first came to New York City in 1964, in fact, and it’s incredibly cool not only to see New York City in that era with its giant yellow cabs and smaller skyline, but from McCartney’s point of view—through car windows, in crowds that swarmed the group and even from outside the Plaza Hotel. 

“We were staying at the Plaza Hotel, who were pretty horrified by all the hullabaloo,” McCartney is quoted as saying about that time.

The exhibit comes to a climax with the band’s time in Miami. The museum says McCartney shifted from shooting in black and white film to brilliant color to capture the vivacity of the city and beach—a far departure from the snowy, gray they experienced in NYC and D.C. beforehand. The gallery literally reflects this with bright yellow and blue walls. The photos depict a much more relaxed band, who had some time off to swim and enjoy the sun. Seeing a photo of John Lennon swimming in the ocean excitedly was heartwarming to say the least.

“Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm,” supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies, opens May 3 and will be on at Brooklyn Museum through August 18.

* This article was originally published here

The queen of hip hop, Mary J. Blige, is about to host her third annual “Strength of a Woman Festival and Summit” throughout New York City and you might want to get the whole crew together for this electrifying family affair.

The three-day festival will include concerts, comedy shows, panels and female empowerment sessions curated by an all-Black and all-women team.

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Mary J. Blige created the multi-day festival in partnership with Live Nation Urban to empower and give resources to women of color across the music, wellness, tech, beauty and financial literacy sectors.

“I’m so excited to bring our Strength of a Woman Festival and Summit to my hometown, New York City, a place that has always been a huge source of inspiration for me,” the artist said in an official statement. “Having the opportunity to continue to uplift, inspire and build within my community is the reason I created this festival. […] Nobody does it like New York, so get ready.”

The festival is going to kick off on Friday, May 10, with a comedy show called “Don’t Call me White Girl” starring Tiffany Haddish and Paris Sashay at the Apollo Theater in Harlem and a jazz concert starring Robert Glasper at Blue Note in Greenwich Village.

The programming will continue on Saturday, May 11, with the Strength of a Woman Summit, an all day affair hosted by Angie Martinez and featuring keynote speakers, panels, workshops and more.

The Saturday will close out with a Coachella-level concert at Barclays Center on May 11 where Blige will perform alongside special guests 50 Cent, Jill Scott, Fat Joe, Jadakiss, Muni Long, Lola Brooke and Funk Flex.

On Sunday, May 12, a gospel brunch hosted by Blige at the Brooklyn Chophouse in Times Square and a gospel concert featuring The Clark Sisters at the recently renovated Brooklyn Paramount will wrap up the extravagant affair.

You can get your tickets to the festival here.

* This article was originally published here

The Schomburg Center’s annual Black Comic Book Festival recently returned for its 12th year and united Black comic book enthusiasts for a celebration of creativity, diversity, and empowerment. The event was held April 26-27.

From vibrant comic-filled booths and engaging panels to thrilling cosplay showcases, the festival offered an immersive experience for fans of Black comics, while advancing the careers of Black and POC creators. 

Leah Mallory photos

This year, attendees saw the addition of new elements such as a musical, alongside long-standing favorites like the cosplay showcase and drawing workshops.  

While preserving its legacy of authentic Black representation, the festival highlighted more voices within the community including LGBTQ+ and Black women’s voices.  

Watch the video by Leah Mallory for more on the 2024 Schomburg Black Comic Book Festival.

The post The Schomburg Center’s annual Black Comic Book Fest returns to Harlem appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.

* This article was originally published here