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Since 1978 • (718) 260–2500 • Brooklyn, NY • ©2019 xx pages • Vol.Serving Brownstone Brooklyn, Sunset Park, Williamsburg & Greenpoint 42, No. xx • April 26–May 2, 2019
Photo by Kevin Duggan Close to home
Protesters rally for universal rent control
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
State politicians must enact socalled
universal rent control, protesters
demanded at a march in
Bushwick on April 18.
More than 100 demonstrators
rallied in support of a slate of bills
making their way through the Albany
legislature by Democrats
aiming to renew and expand rent
regulations, before New York’s
rent laws expire this June.
The bills aim to close loopholes
for rent-stabilized tenants
and expand their existing protections
to all private tenants in the
state, which will make housing
safer for vulnerable New Yorkers,
according to one protestor and
housing activist who received a
30-day eviction notice to leave
her Bushwick apartment by the
end of April.
“I do not understand how we
have created a system that makes
it normal to harass tenants and put
them out onto the streets. My family,
like five million other renters,
needs support in the form of legal
protection,” said Mireya Vega,
who is also a member of the tenants
rights advocacy group Make
the Road New York, which organized
the march down the north
Brooklyn neighborhood’s Knickerbocker
Avenue terminating at
her apartment building at Flushing
Avenue.
The organization is part of a
statewide coalition called the Upstate
Downstate Housing Alliance,
which lobbies politicians of
both houses to enact nine pieces
of legislation before the June 15
deadline.
The bills, which aim to bolster
protections for currently-stabilized
tenants, include laws to
stop landlords from deregulating
those apartments if the rent of a
unit surpasses $2,733 a month or
if the occupant leaves.
These tenants have several protections
under the current rent
laws, such as prohibiting evictions
without good cause and
limiting rent increases to somewhere
between 0-2.5 percent, as
determined annually by each city
board.
These regulations only apply to
buildings with six or more units,
but several gentrifying neighborhoods
– such as Bushwick and
East New York – have a housing
stock with mostly smaller
buildings, according to the Alliance.
One local state pol who has
been vocal on housing said that
L
-TERNATIVES
What you need to know about the imminent slowdown
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
Call it an L of a year.
The Metropolitan Transportation
Authority begins its extensive
L-train tunnel repairs starting
April 26 with reduced service
on the busy line expected for more
than a year.
The subway
line
was originally
supposed
to shut
down between
Bedford
Avenue
and Manhattan for 15 months, but
Gov. Andrew Cuomo called off the
L-pocalypse last minute and unveiled
a new plan that allows the
trains and its 400,000 daily passengers
to continue running, albeit
with reduced frequencies due
to repairs to the Canarsie Tunnel,
which was severely damaged during
Superstorm Sandy.
Commuters have already had
to deal with full closures on several
weekends and weeknights in
March and April but now that the
trains are slowing down for more
than a year, here’s what L-train riders
should know about their train
and what alternatives the transit
authority proposes:
What’s going to happen to
the L?
The tunnel fixes will still take
at least the same amount of time,
lasting until sometime between
June and September 2020.
The L train will continue to run
its regular schedule on weekdays
from 1:30 a.m. to 8 p.m, as well
as weekend nights.
Reduced service will kick off
the night of April 26 and continue
on weeknights from 8 p.m. to 1:30
a.m. and weekends, with service
reduced between Lorimer Street
and Canarsie-Rockaway Parkway
Protesters rallied in Bushwick on April 18 to support legislation to improve and expand
regulations for tenants in rent-stabilized apartments and all private renters.
RIVER OF TEARS
and between every three and 10
minutes on weekends.
From the Lorimer Street L stop,
straphangers can also switch to
the Kensington-bound G, which
will run every eight minutes instead
of every 10 on weeknights
and weekends, and connects to a
newly-free transfer (with a Metro-
Card) from the Broadway G stop
to the Lorimer Street or Hewes
Street J and M stops.
Within this new transfer corridor,
commuters can also take
the G to Queens and transfer to
Manhattan-bound 7 trains, which
will have five additional trips on
weeknights from 8:30 p.m. to midnight
and will continue to run
every four to seven-and-a-half
minutes on weekends.
For the stations between Graham
Avenue and DeKalb Avenue,
L-train riders will have to make
the trek to their nearest J or M
stop, or they can take the Canarsie
bound L and transfer to the
Manhattan-bound M at Myrtle-
Wyckoff Avenues station.
The city’s Department of Transportation
is adding some new Citibike
stations in Bushwick to make
it easier for L train riders in that
neighborhood.
Riders between DeKalb Avenue
and Bushwick Avenue-Aberdeen
Street station should still use the L
— which will run every 10 minutes
— and transfer to the M at
Myrtle-Wyckoff Avenues.
Between Bushwick Avenue-Aberdeen
Street and Canarsie-Rockaway
Parkway, straphangers can
either transfer at Broadway Junction
to the A, C, and J, or make the
new free transfer and two-block
walk from Livonia Avenue to the
Junius Street 3-train station.
For more information on the
L train construction project and
to find out how to get around
in Manhattan, visit the MTA’s
website .
Photo by Paul Martinka
Straphangers can expect delays in their commute as the L
train is set to reduce service for repairs starting April 26.
to every 10 minutes and only every
other train crossing the East
River from Bedford Avenue to
Manhattan every 20 minutes, due
to the repairs.
But straphangers looking to
travel between the boroughs
may have to wait even longer because
the trains could be too full
to board the first time around, the
city’s transit authority said on social
media Tuesday, which could
leave people stranded for 40 minutes
or more if they don’t seek out
other routes.
“In Manhattan and at Bedford
Ave, the L will arrive every ~20
minutes, but at certain times, it
may be too crowded to board the
first train,” the transit authority
tweeted.
For this reason, transit honchos
recommend commuters use alternative
lines — some of which they
said will have increased service
during the slowdown, with different
options available depending
on where they currently get
on and off the L train.
The L-ternatives
For Bedford Avenue and Lorimer
Street stations, commuters
should head either to the Marcy
Avenue and Hewes Street J and M
stations, the latter of which will
run every eight minutes instead
of 10 during the day.
The authority has introduced
new free bus services —
the clockwise B91 and counterclockwise
B92, known collectively
as the Williamsburg Link —
which connect these four stations
and will run between every
five to 10 minutes between
8 p.m. and 5 a.m. on weeknights
CB2 agrees to demolish House of D for bigger jail
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
Members of Community Board
2’s Land Use Committee voted in
favor of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s
plan to tear down Atlantic Avenue’s
House of Detention to make
way for a larger jail in order to
close down Rikers Island.
The committee issued its recommendation
at an April 16 meeting
to accept the city’s proposal to
close the beleaguered jail complex
by 2027 and move its incarcerated
people to four borough-based jails
with several conditions, including
lowering the city’s target population
and cutting the building’s
proposed size by almost half.
The group’s conditions came
from a list of amendments which
the influential civic group Brooklyn
Heights Association distributed as
a leaflet at the meeting and which
a member of both the association
and the committee voted to include
in the recommendation.
The conditions are that the city
construct a building slightly more
than half the floor area ratio compared
to the city’s proposal, with no
more than 875 incarcerated people
in it, as opposed to 1,437.
The community board also said
that the city must expand its alternative
sentencing programs, create
a new and improved training
facility for guards, and build a
jail on Staten Island — the only
borough exempt from the mayor’s
plan.
Several representatives from the
mayor’s office and the Department
of Correction presented their plans
for the new jail between Boerum
Place and Smith Street to the
committee, similarly to the community
board’s packed public
hearing on April 11.
Many committee members
asked the bureaucrats why they
didn’t readjust their proposal in
light of recent legislative changes
in Albany with one civic guru
accusing the city of trying to
strong-arm the local community
into accepting larger jails in
order to close Rikers.
“You’re proposing a building
that — I think by-and-large you’ve
heard from everyone that testified
— is too big,” said Irene Janner.
“You’re trying to fast-track this
and you leave us in a quandary
of do we vote yes and hope you
shrink it, or do we insist you shrink
it now because we know it is not
acceptable as presented.”
State legislators passed a sweeping
package of reforms on April 1,
which will end cash bail and pretrial
detention for almost all misdemeanor
and nonviolent felony
defendants, among other reforms,
and which will reduce the amount
of people awaiting trial in jail because
they can’t afford bail.
The legislation will not come
into effect until Jan. 1, 2020, but a
recent study by the criminal justice
reform advocacy group the Center
for Court Innovation found that
more than two out of five people
detained pretrial in the five boroughs
would have been released
under the new laws.
The mayor’s office launched a
feasibility study to explore moving
mentally ill inmates to hospitals,
which could further reduce the
population in the borough jails, as
first reported by The City.
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric
Gonzalez also announced that his
office would reduce excessive
incarceration under his Justice
2020 plan in March.
A senior representative for the
mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice
Initiatives told the committee
that her team wanted to guarantee
that no one would be left behind on
Rikers Island if the new facilities
ended up being too small, which
led them to aim for 5,000 incarcerated
people in accordance with
the 2017 findings of the independent
commission on the city’s incarceration
reform led by Judge
Jonathan Lippman.
“We are committed to not leaving
anyone on Rikers Island. So
what we don’t want to do is in trying
to plan for what is not reasonable
for us to achieve while we continue
to push in every way, shape,
and form that we can to make sure
that everybody we can get out of
detention is in community-based
supervision or not in the justice
system,” said Dana Kaplan.
The official said that the city
could, however, adjust its plans
during or after the ongoing Uniform
Land Use Review Process,
which it must pass before it can
break ground, depending on the
impacts of these reforms.
“We’re not fixed on 5,000. We
believed that was the most prudent
way to plan at the time and that
is the capacity that we’re proposing,”
she said. “As we are able to
see what the impacts are of these
legislative reforms, we can adjust
that number. That number can be
adjusted both during ULURP and it
can be adjusted after ULURP.”
Community Board 2’s Land
Use Committee issued its
recommendation to accept
the city’s proposal to close
Rikers Island, which will mean
changes for the Brooklyn
House of Detention.
Photo by Zoe Freilich
See RENT on page 13
Score one for the horticulturists!
Judge halts controversial C’Heights project near garden amid legal battle
By Colin Mixson
Brooklyn Paper
A Kings County Supreme
Court judge slapped a controversial
mixed-use development
with a temporary restraining
order on April 17, after local antigentrification
advocates claimed
the developer used every trick
in the book to avoid having to
perform a state-mandated
environmental-review process,
while the city let them get away
with it to pave the way for more
affordable housing.
“We fought the Department of
City Planning, and watched our
elected officials allow the developer
to lie on their applications,
so they did not have to be held accountable
for creating the largest
residential complexes in Brooklyn,”
said Alicia Boyd, founder of antigentrification
group Movement to
Protect the People.
The city awarded developers
Cornell Realty and Carmel Partners
the rights to build two 16-story
towers near Franklin Avenue
and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden
at 40 Crown St. and 931 Carroll
St. following a rezoning process
that capped off with a December
Council vote, where Crown Heights
Majority Leader Laurie Cumbo
wielded her key vote as the area’s
representative to green-light the
project , in exchange for the developer’s
promise to expand the project’s
affordable-housing component
from 140 to 258 units.
But Boyd’s suit — which names
the Department of City Planning
and Cumbo as co-defendants, in
addition to Cornell — alleges that
the developers lied on re-zoning
and building documents to underplay
the scope of their proposed
mixed-use project, misstating the
amount of new residential units
included in the development and
ignoring vast swaths of affected
land in a preliminary assessment
of the project.
And fudging the numbers allowed
the developers to illegally
circumvent a much more thorough
environmental review of
the project, which the advocates
claim would have demonstrated
a serious strain on local sewers,
roads, and schools as a result of
the towers and the influx of new
Crown Heights residents they
would attract.
Lawyers for the city, meanwhile,
claim that their rezoning process
was conducted by the books, and
that the new temporary restraining
order will not prevent the project
from moving forward.
“This suit seeks to block over
a hundred units of permanently
affordable housing for the community.
We stand by the city’s review
and will thoroughly defend
it in court,” said Nick Paolucci, a
spokesman for the city’s Law Department.
“This very limited TRO
enjoins the pouring of concrete,
which is many months away. Soil
tests are proceeding at the site.”
Lawsuits alleging illegal or
inappropriate action amid the
city’s public review process for
rezoning applications are not uncommon,
and a similar suit was
filed by the Legal Aid Society in
an effort to block the extremely
controversial Bedford-Union
Armory development.
Boyd and the city are expected
to appear before Kings County Supreme
Court justice Johnny Lee
Baynes for a hearing on May 5.
Developers Cornell Realty and Carmel Partners’ proposed
16-story towers near the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
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