New York
The World Capital of Endangered Languages
Hundreds of
the world’s endangered
and threatened languages
are spoken
in and around New York City.
One project set out to document them.
The Endangered Languages of New York By Alex Carp
Dots on the maps in this piece represent, among other things, efforts to revitalize a language as well as communities of speakers.
Most people think of endangered languages as far-flung or exotic, the opposite of cosmopolitan. “You go to some distant mountain or island, and you collect stories,” the linguist Ross Perlin says, describing a typical view of how such languages are studied. But of the 700 or so speakers of Seke, most of whom can be found in a cluster of villages in Nepal, more than 150 have lived in or around two apartment buildings in Brooklyn. Bishnupriya Manipuri, a minority language of Bangladesh and India, has become a minority language of Queens.
All told, there are more endangered languages in and around New York City than have ever existed anywhere else, says Perlin, who has spent 11 years trying to document them. And because most of the world’s languages are on a path to disappear within the next century, there will likely never be this many in any single place again.
Zenaida Cantu, 38, speaks Tlapanec, also known as Me’phaa, an Indigenous language spoken in Central Mexico. She works as an interpreter in New York City.
I was born in July 1985.
When I was two months old, I was shaking terribly.
It was July of ‘85 and many people died, at that time in Mexico.
Nothing happened to me then,
but two months later I caught an illness called xingu (whooping cough).
I nearly died then. For something like two hours I wasn’t conscious.
My mom didn’t know what to do with me, so she found a healer. They took me
to the church, and there they blessed me with holy water. After that, I came to.
Ikhiil Mardakhayev, 80, speaks Juhuri, which has 100,000 to 200,000 speakers worldwide, mostly in Israel and the U.S. He teaches the language in Brooklyn.
Hope is a good thing.
Hence in this story, my mother
wished to say to us: “My children, always be patient.
Never cut out your hope.
If you cannot reach something today, wait for it.
The time will come when the goal of your heart will always be fulfilled.”
Language loss has been a natural part of human history for centuries, but it was typically small in scale and relatively confined. The lost language could sometimes leave traces in the language that overtook it, what linguists have called a “grammatical merger” of intersecting societies.
About 30 years ago, though, the linguists Ken Hale and Michael Krauss warned of a new, more dire form of loss in which a dominant language would “simply overwhelm Indigenous, local languages and cultures.” Hundreds of languages were essentially gone, Krauss noted, and others were quickly fading. Several were spoken by as few as one or two people.
As Perlin writes in his new book — “Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York,” out this month — what stands to be lost is more than mere words. “Languages represent thousands of natural experiments: ways of seeing, understanding and living that should rightly form a major part of any meaningful account of what it is to be human.”
Eleanor Castillo Bullock, 65, is a founder and the arts director of Garifuna Arts Medicine Agriculture Education International, an organization that protects and promotes Garifuna heritage in Belize and New York City.
Good day.
Eleanor Castillo Bullock is my name.
As for me,
arts and culture is my task.
What the arts-and-culture program entails
is that I teach our language
to the children.
Gloria Angeles, 47, who goes by Tadii, is the founder of Rebeldía Radio, a community radio project. She speaks Cuicatec, or Dbaku, an Indigenous Latin American language that has around 10,000 speakers worldwide.
My name is Gloria Tadii.
I am from Kukaa, in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico.
Here is where I lived my first years,
full of my grandparents’ and parents’ love,
where not all the children had toys,
but we invented our own toys, with the earth or in the trees.
In this corner of the world, where most of the people have forgotten their origins,
from where I am, even now, the echo of my grandparents speaking Cuicateco resonates in my ears.
Even though they have departed many years ago,
they bequeathed to me
my beautiful Cuicateco language.
With Daniel Kaufman, also a linguist, Perlin directs the Endangered Language Alliance, in Manhattan. When E.L.A. was founded, in 2010, Perlin lived in the Chinese Himalayas, where he studied Trung, a language with no standard writing system, dictionary or codified grammar. (His work helped establish all three.) He spent most of his time in the valley where the largest group of remaining speakers lived; the only road in or out was impassable in winter.
After three years, Perlin returned to New York City, where he had grown up. At that time, E.L.A. conducted language surveys on foot, canvassing neighborhoods and posting fliers seeking speakers of endangered languages. Most of the work was directed by the organization’s founders: two linguists, including Kaufman, and a poet.
In 2016, E.L.A. began to map the languages spoken in the city. A vast majority were not recognized by large businesses, schools or city government. Officially, Perlin said, they were simply not there. “None of the communities with whom we planned to partner were recorded as even existing in the census,” Kaufman and Perlin later wrote.
Since their project began, Perlin and Kaufman have located speakers of more than 700 languages. Of those languages, at least 150 are listed as under significant threat in at least one of three major databases for the field. Perlin and Kaufman consider that figure to be conservative, and Perlin estimates that more than half of the languages they documented may be endangered.
In Queens, according to Perlin, more languages are spoken per square mile than anywhere else in the world.
Where Woodside, Elmhurst and Jackson Heights meet, E.L.A. has encountered dozens of South Asian languages, many of which are under some level of threat.
Among the endangered languages shown here is Seke, a language from Nepal that has only 700 or so global speakers.
Rasmina Gurung, 26, learned Seke from her grandmother. Until recently, she resided in one of two Brooklyn buildings where about a quarter of the people who speak the language worldwide have lived.
My name is Rasmina Gurung. I was born in Tshugsang.
After living in the village, I went to Kathmandu to study. I stayed at a boarding school.
After that I came to Brooklyn, New York, in America.
Safiyatou D., 44, lives on Roosevelt Island. According to E.L.A., she is the only known speaker of Kota, or Ikota, a language spoken in Gabon and the Republic of Congo, in the city. (She asked that her last name not be used, to protect her privacy.)
The elephant said: “Ha! The little tiny creature, I know you!
Why didn’t the hunter kill me?”
He, the creature, said, “I bit him.”
He, the elephant, said, “Ahh, well, you are the ant that bites!
Ahh, ihiako, you saved my life. Thanks a lot.” He, the creature, said: “No problem.
Next time you see people, you see a little person, don’t say, ‘What can you do for me?’ ”
The elephant said, “Sorry, I learned my lesson.”
“Get home safe!”
The elephant returned to the forest.
A language’s endangerment is not simply a function of its size but also a measure of its relationship to the societies around it. Sheer numbers “have always mattered less than intergenerational transmission,” Perlin writes in “Language City.” Until recently, in many regions of the world, dozens of languages lived side by side, each with no more than a few thousand speakers. Gurr-goni, an Aboriginal Australian language, had long been stable with 70. A language survives, Perlin writes, by sharing life with those who speak it: “Only in the face of intense political, economic, religious or social pressures do people stop passing on their mother tongues to children.”
When Perlin visited Seke-speaking Nepali villages in 2019 and 2023, he found that many of the people he wanted to speak with had left to find work. “Whole age groups were missing,” he says. Kaufman points to Mixtec, a group of Indigenous languages spoken in south-central Mexico, with 500,000 speakers. The differences in how the language is spoken from village to village can be “bigger than you find between French and Italian,” he said. “And there are villages where there are essentially no young people.” Their children are now born elsewhere — Culiacán, Mexico City, New York, Los Angeles. “500,000 speakers can disappear in a generation.”
Perlin writes that more than 100 West African languages are spoken in Harlem and the Bronx.
In a small slice of the South Bronx, the E.L.A. has encountered at least ten endangered or threatened West African languages.
N’Ko, a writing system developed in 1949 that unites some of these spoken languages, is also being taught.
Ibrahima Traore, 65, teaches N’Ko. The West African writing system serves to counter the dominance of colonial French and English. He lives in Montclair, N.J.
As Solomana Kante once said, “One day, sitting at the marketplace in Bouaké,
I saw a book for sale with something about “African stupidity” on it.
The writer was from Lebanon and named Kamel Mrowa.
He was saying that African ignorance never ends.
He said, First, none of their languages can be written;
they aren’t made according to any grammar.
They aren’t meant for writing; they were made for speaking only. They don’t actually have a true language,
just dialects that no intelligent person would waste their time thinking about writing.
Lots of Europeans have become interested in writing African languages,
but there is just no way.
He said that teaching us European languages is easier than teaching us our own languages.”
Husniya Khujamyorova lives in Midwood, Brooklyn, and works as a financial-software engineer. She has published children’s books in Wakhi and other endangered languages of the Pamir mountains in Central Asia.
Pamir is a very beautiful place.
Its fresh air, gardens full of flowers and high mountains are always with me wherever I am.
The Pamir people are rich with culture and traditions.
Every Pamiri tries not to lose the languages and culture,
wherever they are, whether in Pamir or outside it.
We are always proud of our culture and traditions.
Perlin studies languages for what they communicate both explicitly and indirectly. A language’s lexicon is not “just one word after another,” he writes in “Language City,” but a representation of the enduring preoccupations of a culture. Its rules of grammar are held together by invisible selections of what will be conveyed and what will be overlooked. It “requires speakers to mark out certain parts of reality and not others, however unconsciously.”
When Perlin and Kaufman document a language, they work alongside native speakers to transcribe and translate video interviews that are recorded locally and during trips to a language’s home region. (Perlin and Kaufman have helped produce some of the first dictionaries and grammars of these languages.) To document Seke, for example, Perlin works with Rasmina Gurung, a 26-year-old nurse who happens to be one of the youngest Seke speakers in the world. Most Seke speakers, about 500 people, live across five neighboring villages in northern Nepal, near Tibet. Though the villages are within walking distance, each has developed its own Seke dialect. Like many of the smaller languages of “traditional face-to-face societies,” Perlin writes, Seke has no “formal, all-purpose hello,” because villagers live among the same groups of people and rarely encounter a Seke-speaking stranger. Instead, a question — Where are you going? What are you doing? — would be more common.
When E.L.A. researchers travel to interview speakers in their home regions, they may begin with a list of common questions, but the conversations are often more free-form. “Whatever the speakers want to talk about the most, we always encourage that,” Gurung says. “We always want to understand the language better, but we need to understand where it came from, how it came to be. Whatever’s close to home.”
Irwin Sanchez, 45, is a chef at a taqueria in Rockefeller Center. He speaks Nahuatl, one of the most common Indigenous Mexican languages in New York.
“If you don’t want to learn our language,”
my grandfather told me,
“your spirit is going to be lost.
You will get lost.
You must.
Let’s learn everything. That way,
we will recover again.”
Patricia Tarrant, 36, is the executive director of American Indian Community House, a Manhattan organization that serves the needs of Native Americans living in New York. She is one of about 50 speakers of Hidatsa.
Hello. I am Patricia Tarrant, a Hidatsa woman of the Knife Clan.
As E.L.A. produced its first language maps, the institute’s work caught the eye of Thelma Carrillo, a research scientist in the city’s Health Department. Carrillo, who is part Zapotec, was working on a Latino health initiative, but the city had what Perlin and Kaufman found to be “no basic demographic information” on New Yorkers from Indigenous communities in Latin America, even though they have been migrating here in large numbers since the 1990s.
“We found ourselves in this odd position of being a conduit between the Indigenous Latin Americans of the city and the city agencies, because other organizations that work with them see them as Mexican or Guatemalan,” Kaufman says. “We’re working with their languages, which becomes extremely important when you need to communicate something to them.”
Uttam Singha, 53, founded the first publishing company to release books in Bishnupriya Manipuri in the United States. Singha lives in Jamaica Estates, Queens.
Once upon a time,
there was an old couple in a land.
They went out to plant taro.
Then, a fox saw them and said,
“Oh, grandma, what are you doing?”
“We are planting taro, dear.”
“Oh, no, not like that. Let me give you some advice.”
“If you take my advice,”
“by tomorrow,”
“your taro potato will grow and you can cook a curry with it.”
Jean James, 39, knew some Lummi from her childhood and began to learn the language more seriously during the pandemic. She works for the Staten Island Ferry.
Hello, my respected friends and relatives.
My name is Jean.
My father is Kwina.
I’m from the Lummi Nation.
By the start of the pandemic, the city had begun official outreach in nine Indigenous languages and recorded videos in several other endangered languages. By reaching these communities in their own languages, New York City offered what is almost certainly the first official recognition that they exist.
Still, Perlin and Kaufman are keenly aware that the corpus they are building — word by word and sometimes syllable by syllable — might someday turn out to be a kind of fossil record.
Outside of the office, Gurung mostly speaks Seke in voice notes to elders overseas or to tell her mother a secret she doesn’t want her sister to hear. On her first trip to Nepal with E.L.A., she ended every interview with the same question: “Do you think our language will survive?”
Methodology The maps showing endangered languages in New York City are based on a map provided by the Endangered Language Alliance. We cross-referenced E.L.A.’s New York City language list with three independent databases that track the threat level of languages around the world: Ethnologue, which catalogs all known living languages in the world; UNESCO’s World Atlas of Languages, a survey of all the languages spoken in UNESCO member states; and the Endangered Languages Project, a site to which the public can contribute content, managed by the First Peoples’ Cultural Council and the Endangered Languages Catalogue (ELCat) project at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Each of these projects determines how threatened a language is in a slightly different way. Criteria include the number of global speakers and whether multiple generations speak the language and are passing it on to the next. Additional languages were added in consultation with E.L.A.
The audio clips are excerpts from audio provided by E.L.A., which also provided the translations. In one instance, small adjustments to the translation were made to provide context that would have been clear to the speaker. The translation for Ibrahima Traore’s remarks comes from Coleman Donaldson.
Graphics by Francesco Muzzi.
Ruven Afanador is a Colombian-born photographer based in New York. He has worked on numerous portraits for the magazine, including Viola Davis, Denzel Washington, Jane Campion and Sharon Olds.
Alex Carp is a research editor at the magazine. He last wrote for the magazine about Steven Banks, the former Legal Aid lawyer who indirectly built much of New York City’s system of homeless shelters and services.
Note: Map shows the area with a shake intensity of 3 or greater, which U.S.G.S. defines as “weak,” though the earthquake may be felt outside the areas shown. The New York Times
A minor, 2.3-magnitude earthquake struck in Connecticut on Wednesday, according to the United States Geological Survey.
The temblor happened at 7:33 p.m. Eastern about 1 mile northwest of Moodus, Conn., data from the agency shows.
As seismologists review available data, they may revise the earthquake’s reported magnitude. Additional information collected about the earthquake may also prompt U.S.G.S. scientists to update the shake-severity map.
Aftershocks in the region
An aftershock is usually a smaller earthquake that follows a larger one in the same general area. Aftershocks are typically minor adjustments along the portion of a fault that slipped at the time of the initial earthquake.
Quakes and aftershocks within 100 miles
Aftershocks can occur days, weeks or even years after the first earthquake. These events can be of equal or larger magnitude to the initial earthquake, and they can continue to affect already damaged locations.
Source: United States Geological Survey | Notes: Shaking categories are based on the Modified Mercalli Intensity scale. When aftershock data is available, the corresponding maps and charts include earthquakes within 100 miles and seven days of the initial quake. All times above are Eastern. Shake data is as of Wednesday, Nov. 20 at 7:41 p.m. Eastern. Aftershocks data is as of Wednesday, Nov. 20 at 11:34 p.m. Eastern.
It is an idea that many point to as a solution for New York City’s worst housing shortage in over 50 years: Build more homes.
More people keep deciding they want to live in the city — and the number of new homes hasn’t kept pace. Residents compete over the limited number of apartments, which pushes rents up to stratospheric levels. Many people then choose to leave instead of pay those prices.
So why is it so hard to build more housing?
The answer involves a tangled set of financial challenges and bitter political fights.
We looked at two developments that provided a unique window into the crisis across the city, and the United States, where there aren’t enough homes people can actually afford.
Both developments — 962 Pacific Street in Crown Heights in Brooklyn, and 145 West 108th Street on the Upper West Side in Manhattan — might have appeared similar. Both were more than eight stories, with plans for dozens of units of affordable housing. And each had a viable chance of being built.
But only one was.
Here’s how their fates diverged, from the zoning to the money and the politics.
The Neighborhood
The lack of housing options across the region makes high-demand areas particularly expensive.
Homes are built in Westchester County and the Long Island suburbs, for example, at some of the slowest rates in the country. In New York City, only 1.4 percent of apartments were available to rent in 2023, according to a key city survey.
And median rent in the city has risen significantly over the past few decades.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau
That leaves neighborhoods like the Upper West Side and Crown Heights sought after by people of all income levels. Both neighborhoods have good access to parks, subways and job centers in Brooklyn and Manhattan.
The pressures are immense, even as each neighborhood has added some new housing to try to match the demand, though at different rates.
Crown Heights has become one of the most striking emblems of gentrification in the city, with new residents, who tend to be white and wealthy, pushing out people who can no longer afford to live there. Low-rise rowhouses line many streets, just blocks from Prospect Park. But there are also shiny new high-rises.
There were more than 50,000 housing units in the Crown Heights area, according to a 2022 U.S. Census Bureau estimate, a roughly 13 percent jump over the past decade.
The Upper West Side has long been one of the city’s more exclusive enclaves with many brownstone homes. Next to Central Park and Riverside Park, with easy access to downtown, the neighborhood is home to many of the city’s affluent residents.
There were 129,000 housing units on the Upper West Side according to the 2022 Census Bureau data, an increase of roughly 5 percent over the same time period.
The Lot
There isn’t as much empty land left in New York City compared with places like Phoenix or Atlanta, which can expand outward. City developers have to look hard to find properties with potential, and then they have to acquire the money to buy them.
The empty lot in May 2021. Google Street View
Between the two proposals, the Crown Heights site seemed to be more promising at first glance. Until 2018, it was just vacant land that local businesses sometimes used as a parking lot. The developer, Nadine Oelsner, already owned it, removing a potential roadblock that can often tie up projects or make them financially unworkable.
One of three aging parking garages in September 2015.
Google Street View
On the Upper West Side, though, the site was already occupied by three aging parking garages with a shelter and a playground in between. The garages would need to be demolished if the developer, a nonprofit known as the West Side Federation for Senior and Supportive Housing that operated the shelter, succeeded in its plan to build apartments on either side of the playground.
The new development, which was floated to the community in 2015, would also include a renovated and expanded shelter. And the nonprofit did not own the garages or the land — the city did.
One thing working in the group’s favor, though, was that the city had wanted to build housing on the site since at least the mid-2000s, according to planning documents.
Source: West Side Federation for Senior and Supportive Housing
The Zoning
But something invisible can matter more than a plot’s physical characteristics: zoning.
That governs how every piece of land in New York City can be used. Zoning determines, for example, whether homes or warehouses are allowed in a particular area, how much parking is needed and how tall a building can be.
It also aims to prevent growth in haphazard ways, with schools next to factories next to office buildings.
The city’s modern zoning code does not leave much room for growth, which means that a bigger building often requires a zoning change. One 2020 study by the nonprofit Citizens Budget Commission found that only about one residentially zoned plot in five would allow for that kind of additional housing. A zoning change triggers a lengthy, unpredictable bureaucratic process.
The site Ms. Oelsner owned was zoned for industrial, not residential use, a throwback to a time when that part of Brooklyn was dominated by businesses supported by the nearby railroad line.
Community leaders were frustrated by one-off changes to individual lots — there had been at least five zoning changes within a two-block radius of Ms. Oelsner’s site in recent years. To counter the trend, the community decided to come up with a bigger rezoning plan for the area. Ms. Oelsner saw an opportunity for her lot in that idea.
But she would need a zoning change, too.
Sources: OpenStreetMap, New York City Department of City Planning
The site on the Upper West Side had a slight edge: It was zoned for residential use.
As the project began to move forward, the city also sought a slight zoning change to allow for a bigger structure with more homes.
Sources: OpenStreetMap, New York City Department of City Planning
The Proposal
U.S. housing is mostly built and run by the private sector. If developers and owners can’t cover their costs with income from rents and sales — and make a profit — they most likely won’t build.
This can make it hard to keep rents affordable to potential tenants without big subsidies from the government, such as money a developer receives directly or tax breaks in exchange for making some units affordable for people at specified income levels.
Here are more details of what the two developers planned.
The proposal for the Crown Heights lot was by Ms. Oelsner and her company, HSN Realty, who were private developers working without city support.
Ms. Oelsner also made the case that her family had been part of the community for years, operating a Pontiac dealership.
Most of the apartments she proposed would rent at market rates, meaning the rents could be set as high as the landlord thought tenants could pay. This was similar to other new buildings in the area.
In Ms. Oelsner’s case, a government subsidy would likely come in the form of a decades-long property tax exemption.
In exchange, several apartments would be made “affordable” — in this case, rents would be capped at a certain percentage of gross household income for particular groups.
Under one plan, for example, 38 units would be restricted in this way. Of those, 15 might rent for around $1,165 for a one-bedroom apartment, or $1,398 for a two-bedroom.
Source: West Side Federation for Senior and Supportive Housing
The proposal from the West Side Federation had a much stronger case because of the city’s support. The group wanted to construct a building where all the apartments would rent below market rates and be targeted to some of the city’s poorest residents.
Most units would rent to people who were formerly homeless, often referred from shelters and typically relying on government-funded voucher programs to pay almost all of their rent. The remaining apartments would rent for between $865 and $1,321.
The West Side Federation said it had slowly built trust in the community over decades, in part because of the shelter it already operated on the street and was now expanding, as well as two dozen other area buildings it ran.
Because of that track record, and the need for affordable housing, the city decided to do several things. It essentially gave the developer the land — appraised at about $55 million — for free, a typical government practice in such a scenario.
It also chipped in $9 million to help pay for construction and another $33 million through a federal tax credit program. The West Side Federation would not have to pay property taxes on the development.
The Politics
Both projects met immediate opposition as they began to wade through a bureaucratic city process in which housing proposals often run into challenges from community members and politicians. It’s not unusual for this process to be costly and time-consuming, often taking more than two years.
In fact, this is where Ms. Oelsner’s project in Crown Heights met its end.
Informal project discussions
These discussions between the developer, the community and the government about the project can determine its fate early. They helped shape both the Crown Heights and the Upper West Side proposals.
Application filed with the city
An application is filed with the City Planning Department and is considered certified if it properly describes the proposal and any zoning change. Over 60 days, the community board holds a public hearing. The Upper West Side project was recommended for approval while the Crown Heights project wasn’t. This isn’t binding so the Crown Heights proposal still moved ahead.
Over 30 days, the borough president’s office might hold another public hearing and issue its own recommendation. Both projects were recommended for approval.
City Planning Commission review
Over 60 days, the commission may hold another public hearing and vote on whether to allow the project to move forward. Both projects were approved.
Here’s where things ended for the Crown Heights project, which was rejected by the council member from the area. The Upper West Side project was approved. The mayor has the option to veto a project, and the City Council can override that veto. In this case, the Upper West Side project was not vetoed.
Informal project discussions
These discussions between the developer, the community and the government about the project can determine its fate early. They helped shape both the Crown Heights and the Upper West Side proposals.
Application filed with the city An application is filed with the City Planning Department and is considered certified if it properly describes the proposal and any zoning change.
Over 60 days, the community board holds a public hearing. The Upper West Side project was recommended for approval while the Crown Heights project wasn’t. This isn’t binding so the Crown Heights proposal still moved ahead.
Over 30 days, the borough president’s office might hold another public hearing and issue its own recommendation. Both projects were recommended for approval.
City Planning Commission review
Over 60 days, the commission may hold another public hearing and vote on whether to allow the project to move forward. Both projects were approved. Here’s where things ended for the Crown Heights project, which was rejected by the council member from the area. The Upper West Side project was approved.
The mayor has the option to veto a project, and the City Council can override that veto. In this case, the Upper West Side project was not vetoed.
Informal project discussions
These discussions between the developer, the community and the government about the project can determine its fate early. They helped shape both the Crown Heights and the Upper West Side proposals. Application filed with the city
An application is filed with the City Planning Department and is considered certified if it properly describes the proposal and any zoning change.
Over 60 days, the community board holds a public hearing. The Upper West Side project was recommended for approval while the Crown Heights project wasn’t. This isn’t binding so the Crown Heights proposal still moved ahead.
Over 30 days, the borough president’s office might hold another public hearing and issue its own recommendation. Both projects were recommended for approval.
City Planning Commission review Over 60 days, the commission may hold another public hearing and
vote on whether to allow the project to move forward. Both projects
were approved.
Here’s where things ended for the Crown Heights project, which was rejected by the council member from the area. The Upper West Side project was approved.
The mayor has the option to veto a project, and the City Council can override that veto. In this case, the Upper West Side project was not vetoed.
In Crown Heights, neighbors wanted more apartments to be available at lower rents and were concerned about parking. Ms. Oelsner worried the bigger rezoning plan of the area would take too long and, if she waited, would run up the costs of her project, which she said she had designed to be consistent with the broader efforts.
In the end, Crystal Hudson, who held the power to approve or reject the development as the local council member, voted against Ms. Oelsner’s proposal last year, effectively killing the project. Ms. Hudson said she would not back individual developments until the bigger neighborhood rezoning was finished.
On the Upper West Side, a vocal resident group had several complaints: that the loss of the parking garages could lead to an uptick in traffic, greenhouse gas emissions and accidents; that the development could disturb students at a nearby middle school; and that it could reduce the amount of sunlight in nearby parks.
The councilman who represented the neighborhood at the time, Mark Levine, initially said he would hold off on supporting the plan until he better understood the effects of more cars on the street.
Eventually, though, the project gave the community enough of what it wanted, the group behind the project said, and government officials came around. The project was split into two phases, keeping one garage running for a few years after the first two were demolished.
The Results
One key to successful development is buy-in from the government and local politicians. The Upper West Side plan had that, despite the opposition it faced, while the Crown Heights project did not.
That’s in part because the Upper West Side lots were owned by the city, which was ready and willing to chip in lots of money to create a deeply needed housing project in the area that would most likely not have been built otherwise. The Crown Heights lot, on the other hand, is privately owned and mostly out of the city’s control — which made the project potentially very lucrative for the owners, even if it added some benefit to the community.
Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
The dirt lot in Crown Heights remains a dirt lot. The broader plan Ms. Hudson pushed is underway, set to be completed next year.
Ms. Oelsner, however, has said that she’s not sure whether it still makes financial sense to build her project, so its fate remains uncertain.
Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
The Upper West Side building has been open for about two years. It is full and has a long waiting list.
And the amount tenants pay in rent remains low. That’s because the government sends the West Side Federation about $1 million annually to help cover the rent.
and committed out of the jurisdiction of any particular State or district of the United States,
FARHAD SHAKERI, CARLISLE RIVERA, a/k/a “Pop,” and JONATHAN LOADHOLT, the
defendants, and others known and unknown, at least one of whom is expected to be first brought
to and arrested in the Southern District of New York, knowingly and willfully did combine,
conspire, confederate, and agree together and with each other to commit murder-for-hire, in
violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1958.
6. It was a part and an object of the conspiracy that FARHAD SHAKERI,
CARLISLE RIVERA, a/k/a “Pop,” and JONATHAN LOADHOLT, and others known and
unknown, would and did knowingly travel in and cause others to travel in interstate and foreign
commerce, and would and did use and cause another to use a facility of interstate and foreign
commerce, with intent that a murder be committed in violation of the laws of the State of New
York or the United States as consideration for the receipt of and as consideration for a promise or
agreement to pay anything of pecuniary value, to wit, SHAKERI, RIVERA, and LOADHOLT
participated in an agreement whereby RIVERA and LOADHOLT would kill Victim-1 in exchange
for payment, and used cellphones and electronic messaging applications to communicate in
furtherance of the scheme.
(Title 18, United States Code, Sections 1958 and 3238.)
COUNT FIVE
(MONEY LAUNDERING CONSPIRACY)
7. From at least in or about December 2023, up to and including the date of
this Complaint, in Iran, the Southern District of New York, and elsewhere, and in an offense begun
and committed out of the jurisdiction of any particular State or district of the United States,
FARHAD SHAKERI, CARLISLE RIVERA, a/k/a “Pop,” and JONATHAN LOADHOLT, the
defendants, and others known and unknown, at least one of whom is expected to be first brought
to and arrested in the Southern District of New York, knowingly and willfully did combine,
conspire, confederate, and agree together and with each other to commit money laundering, in
violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1956.
8. It was further a part and an object of the conspiracy that FARHAD
SHAKERI, CARLISLE RIVERA, a/k/a “Pop,” and JONATHAN LOADHOLT, the defendants,
and others known and unknown, in an offense involving and affecting interstate and foreign
commerce, knowing that the property involved in certain financial transactions represented the
proceeds of some form of unlawful activity, would and did conduct and attempt to conduct such
financial transactions which in fact involved the proceeds of specified unlawful activity, to wit,
the proceeds of the murder-for-hire offenses charged in Counts Three and Four of this Complaint,
knowing that the transactions were designed in whole and in part to conceal and disguise the
nature, location, source, ownership, and control of the proceeds of said specified unlawful activity,
in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1956(a)(1)(B)(i).
9. It was further a part and an object of the conspiracy that FARHAD
SHAKERI, CARLISLE RIVERA, a/k/a “Pop,” and JONATHAN LOADHOLT, the defendants,
and others known and unknown, would and did transport, transmit, and transfer, and attempt to
transport, transmit, and transfer, monetary instruments and funds to a place in the United States
3
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