New York

The Suburbs Don’t Love New York

Published

2 years ago

June 20, 2023

Good morning. We’ll look at why New York City and the surrounding suburban jurisdictions are increasingly at odds. We’ll also follow up on the story of the famous wine store that is accused of failing to deliver more than $1 million in orders to customers.

Tensions between the city and its surrounding areas over issues like crime, immigration and congestion pricing have grown since the pandemic. My colleague Jesse McKinley writes that there’s nothing new about the friction: Ever since Long Island highways and Hudson River crossings connected the city to its surrounding counties nearly a century ago, the different sides have fought over school funding, taxes, tolls, tunnels and bridges.

But recent moves by the city to solve its pressing problems have put it in direct conflict with suburban officials and their constituents. I asked Jesse to explain what is happening to the relationship between the city and the surrounding communities.

It used to be that the suburbs depended on the city — on people who lived in the suburbs but made their money working in the city. But one Long Island legislator told you that constituents tell him over and over again: “We don’t want to be New York City.” What do people mean when they say that?

It’s a combination of confluence of two trends. The city, long the political, cultural and social lodestar of the region, is suffering from an array of challenges, including crime and the economy, while the suburbs have been attracting newcomers and increasing both their diversity and their offerings, from food and drink to arts and entertainment. (The suburbs, of course, are not exempted from crime, and deal with their own challenges, including property taxes that often provoke groans from their residents.)

That perceived decline in the city’s luster may be a side effect of the pandemic, when boarded-up storefronts and a darkened Broadway were major emotional downers and when work-from-home made commuting less of a necessity. The city’s streets are back to bustling with resurgent tourism — some 60 million visitors are expected this year — but some suburbanites have gotten very comfortable working from their kitchens, patios and couches.

Add in the current costs of New York City, and you’ve got a situation where the city looks less and less appealing to some who live just outside it. Carlos Maldonado, a digital marketer who lives in Secaucus, N.J., told us that the pandemic “really kind of lifted the veil” on the allure of the city. “It’s like the fluff is gone now,” he said. New York City residents don’t see it that way. “You’re going to have to dog me pretty hard to convince me that New York City’s dead, that it has lost its shimmer,” Ashley Alpin, who has lived in the city for six years, told us.

How has the migrant crisis raised tensions between the city and the suburbs? One of the people you talked to is the county executive in Rockland County.

Not many issues unite Republicans and Democrats right now, but Mayor Adams’s plan to send thousands of migrants to motels and hotels in suburban communities has drawn condemnation from both sides of the aisle.

The plan has been criticized for a number of reasons, but a large part of the anger stems from the seeming lack of communication between officials in the city (as well as state leaders) and the counties that surround the city, some of which have used executive orders or legal action to try to stop migrants from being dropped in their communities.

Many county executives I spoke to expressed sympathy for the migrants’ plight, but furor at the city’s methods. Stephen Acquario, the executive director of the New York State Association of Counties, referred to the city’s “self-inflicted wound” when talking about how the Adams administration had handled things.

“And the wound is getting deeper and wider,” he said.

But the migrant crisis isn’t the only issue that has pulled the city and the suburbs apart. How did crime in the city during the pandemic, or the perception of crime, affect the political calculus in the suburbs? And how strong is the fear of crime?

The Republicans ran — and won — on crime and public safety in a series of races last year, including several in suburban districts. The result was four flipped congressional seats in otherwise deep-blue New York, something some national Democratic leaders said clearly figured in losing control of the House of Representatives.

While most crime statistics have improved, the perception of the city as a dangerous place — particularly its streets and subways — has been amplified by right-wing media and a series of high-profile cases, including the chokehold killing of Jordan Neely. Those stories have seemingly penetrated the minds of suburbanites.

City Councilwoman Nantasha Williams, a Democrat from Queens, said that some of the anti-New York City feeling “might be racially and politically charged.” How widespread is that feeling?

Many city lawmakers have suggested, both sotto voce and in louder terms, that the suburban opposition to the migrants stems from an ugly racial place. Suburban officials reject this notion, often pointing to their own immigrant roots. “We are not anti-immigrant,” said Kevin McCaffrey, the presiding officer of the Suffolk County Legislature, who recommended hiring legal counsel to try to prevent migrants from being resettled in the county. “If I was in that situation, I’d pack up my belongings and I’d have my kids on my back as well. But the fact of the matter is that we need to have laws.”

There’s already something of a border war between the city and New Jersey over congestion pricing. What’s behind the enmity?

One thing: cars.

Suburbanites need them; city dwellers don’t. And suburbanites — already facing high tolls on bridges and garages or parking lots that charge ransomlike rates — feel that it’s unfair that they could be dinged yet again for driving into Midtown Manhattan.

A lot of this seems emotional, too, doesn’t it?

For sure. In talking to residents outside the city, there seems to be a real schism between the priorities — and thus the policies that find favor.

Outside an American Legion Hall in West Islip, N.Y., Billy Survilla — who has lived in Suffolk County for years — put it like this. “They’re trying to make the suburbs the city. If we wanted to live in the city, we’d live in the city. But we don’t.”

As he said that, several friends who were standing around nodded approval.

Weather

Enjoy a partly sunny day near the high 70s. The evening is mostly cloudy, with temps around 60.

ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING

In effect until June 28 (Eid al-Adha).

A federal grand jury in Manhattan is scheduled to hear evidence about Sherry-Lehmann Wine & Spirits, the venerable wine purveyor whose customers and former employees have complained about missing wine.

My colleague James B. Stewart writes that the proceeding is part of a criminal investigation into Sherry-Lehmann, which he reported last month had failed to deliver more than $1 million of wine to customers who had paid in advance. He also quoted former Sherry-Lehmann employees who said they believed the company was improperly selling wine that belonged to clients from a storage facility called Wine Caves.

The investigation is focused, at least in part, on Sherry-Lehmann’s owners, Shyda Gilmer and Kris Green, according to former employees who said they had been questioned about their dealings with the two men. The former employees said witnesses have been asked to appear before a federal grand jury later this month.

The investigation is being conducted by agencies including the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, the Postal Service and the Police Department. The F.B.I.’s art crime team is also involved. Some of the wines handled by Sherry-Lehmann — whose Park Avenue store has been closed for months — sold for thousands of dollars a bottle.

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment. Representatives of the other agencies did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Neither did Eric Andrus, a spokesman for Sherry-Lehmann, nor Gilmer and Green.

New York

Large Blaze Ravages Bronx Apartment Building, Leaving Many Displaced

Published

7 hours ago

January 10, 2025

Press Room

Large Blaze Ravages Bronx Apartment Building, Leaving Many Displaced

Dozens of families were looking for shelter after a large fire broke out at an apartment building in the Bronx early Friday, injuring at least seven people, the Fire Department said. There were no fatalities or life-threatening injuries, according to officials.

About 250 firefighters and emergency medical responders rushed to a six-story residential building on Wallace Avenue near Arnow Avenue after a fire was reported there just before 2 a.m., the Fire Department said. The blaze on the top floor was elevated to a five-alarm fire about an hour later, it said.

Several dozen firefighters were still gathered outside the building at around 10 a.m. Many windows on the top floor were blown out and some had shards of glass hanging in place that resembled jagged teeth. Smoke continued to climb from the building as a firefighter on a ladder hosed the roof.

The fire was brought under control shortly before 2 p.m., according to fire officials.

The seven people who were injured included five firefighters, the department said in an email. One person was treated at the scene but declined to be taken to a hospital.

A spokeswoman for the Police Department said earlier that some people had suffered smoke inhalation injuries.

Robert S. Tucker, the fire commissioner, said during a news conference that it was a miracle that there had been no serious injuries or fatalities. Officials said that all of the apartments on the building’s top floor were destroyed.

Firefighters blasted water at the smoke and flames pouring out of the upper floors and roof, according to videos posted online by the Fire Department and television news outlets. Heavy winds had fueled the blaze, the department said.

The cause of the fire was under investigation, officials said.

The Red Cross was at the scene helping residents that were displaced by the fire, and a temporary shelter had been set up at the Bennington School on Adee Avenue nearby. Doreen Thomann-Howe, the chief executive of the American Red Cross Greater New York Region, said during the news conference that 66 families had already registered to receive assistance, including lodging. She said she expected that number to increase.

Juan Cabrera and his family were among those seeking help at the Bennington School. Mr. Cabrera said that he and his family had not heard a fire alarm but had instead heard glass breaking as residents climbed out of windows. He said he had also heard people race across the hall one flight above him while others screamed “Get out!”

Mr. Cabrera, 47, said he had smelled smoke and woke up his daughter, Rose, 13. He and his wife, Aurora Tavera, grabbed their IDs, passports and cellphones, and the family left the building.

“I felt desperate,” Ms. Taverna, 32, said.

“Thank God we are still alive,” said Mr. Cabrera, who works as a school aide and custodian and has lived in the building for five years. “The material stuff you can get back, but we have our family,” he said.

Louis Montalvo, 55, was also among those seeking help. He said firefighters banged on his door at around 3 a.m. and that he had smelled smoke.

“I am grateful to be around,” Mr. Montalvo said, as he stood outside of the temporary shelter. He was still wearing his felt pajama pants, which had snowmen printed on them.

Vanessa L. Gibson, the Bronx borough president, said she was “so grateful” there had been no fatalities from the fire.

The last major apartment fire in the Bronx occurred in 2022, and resulted in 17 deaths, which experts said were entirely preventable. Self-closing doors in the building did not work properly, allowing smoke to escape the apartment where the fire started and rapidly fill the structure’s 19 stories.

New York

New York’s Chinese Dissidents Thought He Was an Ally. He Was a Spy.

Published

16 hours ago

January 10, 2025

Press Room

New York’s Chinese Dissidents Thought He Was an Ally. He Was a Spy.

The Chinese government’s paranoia about overseas dissidents can seem strange, considering the enormous differences in power between exiled protesters who organize marches in America and their mighty homeland, a geopolitical and economic superpower whose citizens they have almost no ability to mobilize. But to those familiar with the Chinese Communist Party, the government’s obsession with dissidents, no matter where in the world they are, is unsurprising. “Regardless of how the overseas dissident community is dismissed outside of China, its very existence represents a symbol of hope for many within China,” Wang Dan, a leader of the Tiananmen Square protests who spent years in prison before being exiled to the United States in 1998, told me. “For the Chinese Communist Party, the hope for change among the people is itself a threat. Therefore, they spare no effort in suppressing and discrediting the overseas dissident community — to extinguish this hope in the hearts of people at home.”

To understand the party’s fears about the risks posed by dissidents abroad, it helps to know the history of revolutions in China. “Historically, the groups that have overthrown the incumbent government or regime in China have often spent a lot of time overseas and organized there,” says Jessica Chen Weiss, a professor of China studies at Johns Hopkins University. The leader Sun Yat-sen, who played an important role in the 1911 revolution that dethroned the Qing dynasty and led eventually to the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, spent several periods of his life abroad, during which he engaged in effective fund-raising and political coordination. The Communist Party’s own rise to power in 1949 was partly advanced by contributions from leaders who were living overseas. “They are very sensitive to that potential,” Weiss says.

“What the Chinese government and the circle of elites that are running China right now fear the most is not the United States, with all of its military power, but elements of unrest within their own society that could potentially topple the Chinese Communist Party,” says Adam Kozy, a cybersecurity consultant who worked on Chinese cyberespionage cases when he was at the F.B.I. Specifically, Chinese authorities worry about a list of threats — collectively referred to as the “five poisons” — that pose a risk to the stability of Communist rule: the Uyghurs, the Tibetans, followers of the Falun Gong movement, supporters of Taiwanese independence and those who advocate for democracy in China. As a result, the Chinese government invests great effort in combating these threats, which involves collecting intelligence about overseas dissident groups and dampening their influence both within China and on the international stage.

Controlling dissidents, regardless of where they are, is essential to China’s goal of projecting power to its own citizens and to the world, according to Charles Kable, who served as an assistant director in the F.B.I.’s national security branch before retiring from the bureau at the end of 2022. “If you have a dissident out there who is looking back at China and pointing out problems that make the entire Chinese political apparatus look bad, it will not stand,” Kable says.

The leadership’s worries about such individuals were evident to the F.B.I. right before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Kable told me, describing how the Chinese worked to ensure that the running of the Olympic flame through San Francisco would not be disrupted by protesters. “And so, you had the M.S.S. and its collaborators deployed in San Francisco just to make sure that the five poisons didn’t get in there and disrupt the optic of what was to be the best Olympics in history,” Kable says. During the run, whose route was changed at the last minute to avoid protesters, Chinese authorities “had their proxies in the community line the streets and also stand back from the streets, looking around to see who might be looking to cause trouble.”

New York

Hochul Seeks to Limit Private-Equity Ownership of Homes in New York

Published

1 day ago

January 9, 2025

Press Room

Hochul Seeks to Limit Private-Equity Ownership of Homes in New York

Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York on Thursday proposed several measures that would restrict hedge funds and private-equity firms from buying up large numbers of single-family homes, the latest in a string of populist proposals she intends to include in her State of the State address next week.

The governor wants to prevent institutional investors from bidding on properties in the first 75 days that they are on the market. Her plan would also remove certain tax benefits, such as interest deductions, when the homes are purchased.

The proposals reflect a nationwide effort by mostly Democratic lawmakers to discourage large firms from crowding out individuals or families from the housing market by paying far above market rate and in cash, and then leasing the homes or turning them into short-term rentals.

Activists and some politicians have argued that this trend has played a role in soaring prices and low vacancy rates — though low housing production is widely viewed as the main driver of those problems.

If Ms. Hochul was inviting a fight with the real estate interests who have backed her in the past, she did not seem concerned. She even borrowed a line from Jimmy McMillan, who ran long-shot candidacies for governor and mayor as the founder of the Rent Is Too Damn High Party.

“The cost of living is just too damn high — especially when it comes to the sky-high rents and mortgages New Yorkers pay every month,” Ms. Hochul said in a written statement.

James Whelan, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, said his team would review the proposal, but characterized it as “another example of policy that will stifle investment in housing in New York.”

The plan — the specifics of which will be negotiated with the Legislature — is one of several recent proposals the governor has made with the goal of addressing the state’s affordability crisis. Voters have expressed frustration about the high costs of housing and basic goods in the state. This discontent has led to political challenges for Ms. Hochul, who is likely to face rivals in the 2026 Democratic primary and in the general election.

In 2022, five of the largest investors in the United States owned 2 percent of the country’s single-family rental homes, most of them in Sun Belt and Southern states, according to a recent report from the federal Government Accountability Office. The report stated that it was “unclear how these investors affected homeownership opportunities or tenants because many related factors affect homeownership — e.g., market conditions, demographic factors and lending conditions.”

Researchers at Harvard University found that “a growing share of rental properties are owned by business entities and medium- and large-scale rental operators.”

State officials were not able to offer a complete picture of how widespread the practice was in New York. They said local officials in several upstate cities had told them about investors buying up dozens of homes at a time and turning them into rentals.

The New York Times reported in 2023 that investment firms were buying smaller buildings in places like Brooklyn and Queens from families and smaller landlords.

Ms. Hochul’s concern is that these purchases make it harder for first-time home buyers to gain a foothold in the market and can lead to more rental price gouging.

“Shadowy private-equity giants are buying up the housing supply in communities across New York, leaving everyday homeowners with nowhere to turn,” she said in a statement on Thursday. “I’m proposing new laws and policy changes to put the American dream of owning a home within reach for more New Yorkers than ever before.”

Cracking down on corporate landlords became a prominent talking point in last year’s presidential election. On the campaign trail, Vice President Kamala Harris called on Congress to pass previously introduced legislation eliminating tax benefits for large investors that purchase large numbers of homes.

“It can make it impossible then for regular people to be able to buy or even rent a home,” Ms. Harris said last summer.

In August, Representative Pat Ryan, Democrat of New York, called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate price gouging by private-equity firms in the housing market. He cited a study that estimated that private-equity firms “are expected to control 40 percent of the U.S. single-family rental market by 2030.”

Statehouses across the country have recently looked at ways to tackle corporate homeownership. One effort in Nevada, which passed the Legislature but was vetoed by Gov. Joe Lombardo, proposed capping the number of units a corporation could buy in a calendar year. It was opposed by local chambers of commerce and the state’s homebuilders association.

A bill was introduced in the Minnesota State Legislature that would ban the conversion of homes owned by corporations into rentals. It has yet to come up for a vote.

At the federal level, Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, and Representative Adam Smith, Democrat of Washington, introduced joint legislation that would force hedge funds to sell all the single-family homes they own over 10 years.