A parking lot at the Cooper Park Houses is set to be replaced by a high-rise building, and residents of the East Williamsburg housing development aren’t happy about it. Several dozen people showed up to express their outrage Tuesday at a meeting where the New York City Housing Authority unveiled its plans.
(Photo: Citi Bike on Instagram)
The operators of Citi Bike are set to open facilities in the Jacob Riis Houses in Alphabet City, a move that they hope will bring more low-income riders to the bike-share program and make it easier for existing users to score a ride.
The new base of operations is located in what the New York City Housing Authority describes as “an existing facility in an underutilized space,” at 152-154 Avenue D. Motivate, the operators of Citi Bike, hope it will lead to a more balanced system, meaning no more showing up to stations to find there are no bikes to rent. Citi Bike general manager Kris Sandor also hopes it will help with community outreach. “We are again looking to support and engage with everybody, especially for ridership, but then also for our hiring practices,” Sandor said. “We’re really looking to make sure that we’re engaging with lower-income communities.”
Cooper Park residents Guillermo Nunez and Maria Albarado enjoying a free meal © Kasper van Laarhoven
A $340,000 “Angelmobile” has started cruising the streets of North Brooklyn, handing out free meals in Williamsburg, Greenpoint and Bushwick. The state-of-the-art food truck– funded in part by Norman Brodsky, the entrepreneur who drew ire from community activists when he held out on selling his valuable waterfront property for parkland— is more than just a mobile soup kitchen. Inside, it has an office space where a rotating array of neighborhood organizations can dole out social services.
(Photo: Nicole Disser)
In case you haven’t noticed the litany of passive aggressive, condescending, or otherwise ignorant status updates flooding your Facebook feed, it’s voting day for the New York primaries y’all! And the questions on everyone’s mind remain: Are we Cruzin’ for a Trump bruisin’? And, as Carolyn Hines, a poll station volunteer at Cooper Park Houses joked, “You wanna know if we feelin the Bern or if we Hillary Clinton? Because we can’t really say that.”
But not everyone who visited the East Williamsburg polling station today was in such high spirits, and that’s actually why we showed up on the scene. As we found out on Twitter this morning, some local voters arrived at their designated voting site at the crack of dawn (no doubt some of them hoping to cast their vote before work started this morning) only to find that they were SOL.
(Photo: Nicole Disser)
After a hopeful move to a new location, the beleaguered St. Mark’s Bookshop is once again in danger of closing due to a dispute with its landlord. This time, it’s facing possible eviction by the New York City Housing Authority, which alleges that the beloved bookshop owes over $62,000 in rent.
Brian Honan, director of governmental relations for NCYCA, address CB 3’s Public Housing Committee (Photo: Jaime Cone)
Mayor de Blasio still hasn’t identified the public housing projects that will be targeted for private development under a controversial new plan, but after a meeting last night, it’s clear that the Lower East Side is a strong candidate for the mix of affordable and market-rate housing.
Dorothea Knox, President of the Tenant Association at Berry Street- South 9th Street Houses (photo: Nicole Disser)
Last month the city finally allocated $50 million to security upgrades and “anti-violence initiatives” in its ailing public housing complexes. But of the 15 developments that will see the long called-for funding, just one (Bushwick Houses) is in the Bedford + Bowery coverage area. Meanwhile, several developments in downtown Manhattan and North Brooklyn remain without any security cameras at all.
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A trail of self-praise has followed Citi Bike over the last week. Over 6,000 Citi Bikers pedaled through the city against the Polar Vortex and just yesterday the program announced that it had signed up its 97,000th member. So why is the docking station outside of the Lillian Wald Houses on Avenue D and East 5th Street so often chock full of bright blue bikes?