Breaking News!

This week on FriendWithoutBenefits.com, I get to use the overworked and worn out phrase, “breaking news”!!!

Whose bright idea was this?

Leading off, an update on the ERAP program.  You remember, the Emergency Rental Assistance Program I wrote about last month.  I told you it was a bloody mess.  There was no money left in the program for rental assistance, but it was still taking applications.  And once an application was filed, a tenant could not be evicted for non-payment.  One egregious example was a guy living in a Manhattan penthouse, who not only was in arrears by hundreds of thousands of dollars, he was also renting out his place on AirBNB.  

Well, New York State announced this week that the insolvent program will close January 15.

The Real Deal real estate magazine highlighted one small landlord on Long Island who was relieved the well-intentioned but abused program is being terminated.  “My husband and I are struggling with $60,000 in debt from lost rent, legal fees and damage that has completely gutted our apartment,” the landlord said.  “The impact of New York’s relief program will take us 10 years or more to repay, that is, if we can figure out how to keep our house until it’s fixed.”

Shocked there’s gambling in Casablanca!

New York City Councilwoman Gale Brewer sent her staffers out to more than 60 so-called smoke shops on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.  She was absolutely shocked to find that almost half were illegally selling weed!

A year and a half ago, New York State approved the legal sale of marijuana, but it was just last month that a few retail licenses were awarded. 

Ms. Brewer, is your olfactory sense not functioning?  Has your nose not been violated by the pervasive smell of pot on city streets?  With the non-enforcement of so many city laws and regulations, did you really think those smoke shops were going to pass up a chance to make money on cannabis while the State and City got its act together?

And now, you’re “concerned that the free-for-all environment will become entrenched…”?

The “free-for-all environment” is already so entrenched in this city, we’ve forgotten what it was like when laws were actually enforced and obeyed.

In a big dog and pony show on Thursday, Mayor Eric Adams lit up a bunch of those illegal pot sellers and claimed to have confiscated 100,000 packages of weed and handed out more than three hundred summonses.  

But we’ll see how sustained this effort will be.  Remember the promised crackdown on those noisy and menacing dirt bikes?

We love you, we really do love you!

When he’s not busting pot dealers, Mayor Adams and his bestie, Governor Kathy Hochul, are making love to New York’s rich folks.

Speaking before the Association for a Better New York this past week, the two political lovebirds pooh-poohed the progressives that want to further tax the rich and drive them from NYC.  Adams said, “I need my high-income earners right here in this city.”  Hizzoner said, “Fifty percent of our taxes are paid by two percent of New York…it blows my mind when I hear people say, ‘leave.’ No, you leave!”

But there was ruin amongst the love.  It’s starting to dawn on everyone that office workers will never come back full time.  So now they’re talking about giving tax breaks to convert the vacant offices into housing.

Lots of taxes are paid by businesses in midtown so I get why it’s so important to think of ways to reinvent vacant office buildings. But while we’re at it, how about thinking of ways to reinvent the vacant storefronts in smaller neighborhoods all over the city.

Vacant stores are blights on communities.  They attract garbage, vermin and homeless encampments.  Vacant stores make neighborhoods less safe.  It is a plague that can only be eradicated with landlords and the City aligning with breaks on rents and taxes to keep shopping districts vibrant and thriving.  Some cities offer small businesses low cost loans for construction and renovation of storefronts.  Other cities provide incentives for turning a service business into a retail business.  All New York City does is tax and fine, fine and tax.  Too many landlords raise rents and keep stores vacant for months, even years.

So Madam Governor and Mr. Mayor, while you’re kissing up to the big real estate interests, how about spreading the love to the neighborhoods and communities where people actually live and shop? 

Wizz-ards of the MTA!

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is pissed off about the urine soaked elevators in the subway system and it can’t hold it in any longer.

The MTA is going to start testing a device that alerts its cleaners after an elevator has been used as a urinal.  Hey, when you gotta go, you gotta go.

I’m not sure how this thing works, but I can imagine an MTA supervisor getting an alert on her or his smartphone saying attention, attention, there’s a pee puddle in an elevator at the Flushing Avenue station.  Send crew with mop forthwith.

Here’s where this all shakes out.  If the MTA brass can streamline cleanups in the subways, no one will accuse them of being pea-brains.

That’s all the news I can stomach for now.  Thanking you for your time this time, until next time.