NYC NOW - April 25, 2024: Midday News

Episode Date: April 25, 2024

New York’s Court of Appeals has overturned the 2020 rape conviction of former movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, finding that the trial judge improperly allowed testimony from women not involved in the case. Meanwhile, former Instagram fraudster Jebara Igbara aka "Jay Mazini" has been sentenced to seven years in prison for swindling millions from Muslims online. Additionally, New York City’s annual Pay Disparity Report reveals that workers of color earn only 84 cents for every dollar paid to white employees. Also, Governor Hochul’s newly signed state budget includes a measure called the ‘good cause’ eviction law, which extends eviction protections by requiring landlords to show ‘good cause’ for non-renewal of leases or evictions. However, the law has various exceptions, excluding hundreds of thousands of renters statewide. WNYC’s David Brand discusses the details with Sean Carlson. Finally, as National Poetry Month concludes, we are featuring poems from our listeners. Here’s one from Ksenia Novikova of Gravesend, Brooklyn.

Welcome to NYC Now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Thursday, April 25th. Here's the midday news from Kerry Nolan. New York's highest court has overturned the 2020 rape conviction of former movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. The state court of appeals ruled 4 to 3 to call for a new trial, saying the previous judge who presided over the Mark trial improperly allowed women to testify about allegations that weren't part of the case. The 2017 trial against Weinstein Broaden what's known as the Me Too movement, as the United States reckoned with patterns of sexual misconduct by powerful figures.

Weinstein will remain imprisoned because he was convicted in Los Angeles in 2022 of another rape and sentenced there to 16 years in prison. A former Instagram fraudster is being sentenced to 17. years in prison for swindling millions from Muslims on the internet. Jabara Igbara of New Jersey, known as J. Manzini online, has pleaded guilty to fraud charges after using a cryptocurrency scam to finance his lavish lifestyle. Igbara, who is Muslim himself, solicited money from people in his community for his investment firm Halal Capital. At least four people say they sent Igbara tens of thousands of dollars expecting wire transfers back, but the money never came.

Igbara's sentence runs concurrently with a five-year sentence for kidnapping, allegedly linked to his fraud that he's already serving. New York City pays municipal workers of color just 84 cents for every dollar it pays white employees. Female workers get 83 cents for every dollar men make, and women of color persistently are paid less than others. Those are the findings from the city's annual pay disparity report, which looks at data from 2021. The report blames the disparity on job segregation. It found people with the same job title earn about the same. However, across agencies, as the share of female workers of color rises, the median salary decreases. A city council subcommittee

will hold a hearing this afternoon to look into the report's findings. And is back to work tonight for the sizzling New York Knicks. They're up to nothing in their first round series against the Philadelphia 76ers after two gritty wins at the garden. Game three is tonight at 7.30 in Philadelphia. In hockey, the New York Islanders hope some home cooking turns their fortunes around. They trail the Carolina hurricanes to nothing, but their series shifts to UBS Arena for tonight's game as well as Saturdays. We'll see mostly sunny skies for the rest of the afternoon with highs in the upper 50s, clear and chilly tonight with low, low, in the lower 40s, and right now it's 50 degrees. This is WNYC.

Stay close. There's more after the break. On WNYC, I'm Sean Carlson. The new state budget signed by Governor Hokel over the weekend includes a new measure extending eviction protections to more renters in the five boroughs. It's called the good cause eviction law because landlords are supposed to show a good cause for refusing to renew a tenant's lease or issuing an eviction notice. It also prevents some landlords from dramatically raising rents. But the new rule comes with various carveouts, including hundreds of thousands of renters in the state. WIC's David Brand is here to help break down what the law means and who exactly

qualifies. So David, we've been hearing about this push for good cause eviction protections for about five years now, right? But it seems like the measure that made it into the new state budget isn't quite what tenant groups had in mind or what landlords feared might happen, right? That's right. So the new law allows tenants to challenge rent increases over 10% or 5% plus the consumer price index. That's a measure of inflation. So basically, if someone's paying $2,000 a month for an apartment, the landlord says, I'm raising the rent to $2,500, the tenant could go to court and force the owner to prove why they're raising rent beyond that 10%. So around $2,200 in that case. It also requires owners to offer a lease rate. renewal to tenants who pay the rent on time and who follow the rules of their initial lease. So this means those tenants are now going to have a right to remain in place even after their lease expires. It's similar to some of the protections tenants in rent-stabilized apartments have. But as you mentioned, it's weaker than the initial proposals we've been hearing about.

So back in 2019, the first iteration in this bill would have allowed tenants to challenge rent increases above just 3% if they live in buildings with more than four units. So there's a lot of carve-outs and exceptions to the new rule. Yeah, can we talk more about those? Who does not qualify for good cause? And how can someone find out if they're covered? Let's start with who most easily can tell if they're covered. So that would be people who are renting in buildings with more than 10 units who pay rent below

$6,000 more or less. They're covered as long as their apartment was built before. for 2009. So if you're renting in a big older apartment building, thinking of places like Forest Hills or Crown Heights, you should now have some additional protections. But it's going to get a lot trickier for renters in smaller buildings to find out if they're covered. And that's because the law is based on landlord portfolio size, not building size. So how many buildings the landlord owns total in New York City and New York State? So the owner has more than 10 units, across multiple properties, then you'll probably be covered.

But it can be really hard to know that. So many apartments in New York City are owned by limited liability companies or LLCs that masks the true people behind them. Lawmakers are trying to get at that by requiring landlords to inform tenants in their leases if they're covered by good cause. But we'll see how that plays out. They have a few months before they have to comply with that. So folks who wanted this law on the books, tenant groups, what do they think of it?

They're not happy with all the carve outs. So in addition to the ones we mentioned, there's a 30-year exemption for buildings that were constructed since 2009. And I was talking to someone just earlier today who thought they may be covered based on their building size and how many apartments their landlord owns. But it turns out their apartment was built in 2012. So they're not covered by this. You know, those kind of bizarre portfolio rules are just making it hard to know. And that's getting a lot of anger from tenants and tenant groups. And they're also really upset that the law excludes every town outside of New York City unless they specifically opt in through their own legislation.

So that's going to be a separate process. What about landlord groups? What are they saying about the law? Well, any new rules that tell landlords what they can and can't do with their properties is going to get some pushback. Owners I've talked to want to want to want to set rents however they want. But I think the bigger issue I'm hearing is that they don't like the lease renewal requirement. They say they want to have the power to deny someone at least. Again, though, this is a lot weaker than what was on the table originally and that I think a lot of landlords and people in the real estate industry were worried about.

So progressive lawmakers have been calling for a good cause eviction law for years. Now that it is here, what will you be looking out for? I ask listeners and readers to contact me about their situations, whether they're tenants or landlords. And I'm getting a lot of feedback already from people who are facing increases above 10%. or they're dealing with owners who are trying to deny a lease renewal. And now they're wondering, are they covered by the new rule? At the same time, I'm hearing from landlords who say they're confused or the case of smaller property owners who maybe own just above 10 units. And so they're still going to have to extend these good cause eviction protections to tenants that they're angry that they still have to do it.

But owners of brand new buildings are getting excluded because of the 30 year exemption. So I'm going to be looking ahead to just how this plays out generally, how people are actually going to challenge rent increases if they get them from the landlord. Are they going to actually go to court and say, okay, prove why you have to do this? Going to be looking at if landlords are disclosing their ownership stakes in other buildings. You talk about the LLC issue. Like, are people going to be forthcoming about that? And then just how housing court and judges are going to handle this new rule. That's W&MIC's David Brand.

Thanks for coming on. Thanks, Sean. WNYC on Michael Hill. It's Poetry Month, and we're playing your poems on WNYC. Our theme this year is local, the nearby places that matter to you, and what's happening there. Listen to Kassena Nobikova from Graves in Brooklyn centers this poem about her neighborhood. Streets in Paris can be nice, but where's Uncle Luigi's ice? Hopped on the detrain near, looking around, there's nobody here. Gravesend mornings can be quiet, nothing like your city nights. How about coffee at the bakery? There's the crossing guard that raised me. Grandma's sharing all the gossip and I get it, you would too.

Underrated parks galore, no one comes here anymore. Pizza smell just within reach and then we'll head down to the beach. Coney Island waves nearby. Let's get closer to July. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WNYC. Be sure to catch us every weekday, three times a day, for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives. Also subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We'll be back this evening.