NYC NOW - April 26, 2024: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: April 26, 2024

Beginning Friday, May 3, Newark, New Jersey will start its curfew for minors. Plus, WNYC's Nancy Solomon reports on the challenges to fill the empty seat of Rep. Donald Payne Jr., who died this week. And, WNYC’s Arun Venugopal looks into a measure designed to turn empty New York City hotels into affordable housing. And finally, WNYC’s Sean Carlson and James Ramsay discuss sidewalk etiquette for New Yorkers on the go.

Welcome to NYC now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. I'm Gene A Pierre. We'll kick things off in New Jersey. Beginning next Friday, the city of Newark will start its curfew for minors. Starting May 3rd, anyone under 18 must be with an adult if they're out after 11 at night, with some exceptions, like teens coming home from work. Mayor Ross Baraka says police will stop young people who are out past, to curfew and connect them with social workers who will try to reach out to their guardians.

Some of these kids may have other issues. It gives us an opportunity to begin to address those issues straight ahead with young people who may not come in for help. Parents may not bring them in for help. We get a chance to engage them right there on the street. If their parents aren't home or can't be reached, the young people will go to a city-run youth center or a hospital if needed. Also in New Jersey, there are some challenges ahead to fill the empty seat of late congressman Donald Payne Jr. who died this week. WNYC's Nancy Solomon has more. Unlike a Senate seat, Governor Murphy can't appoint someone to fill a vacancy in the House. Murphy could call a special primary in general election, but that would only fill the seat until Payne's term ends in January, and it would take until sometime this fall to complete the election. And Congress is notoriously inactive. during the fall election season. Payne was also supposed to be up for re-election this year, but it's too late to add candidates to the June primary. So Payne will almost certainly win that race posthumously. Then Democratic Committee members in the 10th District will choose someone

to replace him on the November general ballot. The district is overwhelmingly Democratic. Three years ago during the pandemic, New York State lawmakers passed a measure designed to turn empty hotels into affordable housing. That law is finally bearing fruit. But WMYC's Arun Venigapal says for many housing advocates, it's far less than what they'd hoped for and envisioned. The area around 135th Avenue in Jamaica, Queens, has the placid feel of suburbia. There are houses with green lawns and white picket fences. The sidewalks are noticeably clean. There are also hotels and one former hotel, the JFK Hilton, a 13-story building that will soon be rebranded

Basley Pond Park Residences. They'll have 318 apartments housing formerly homeless New Yorkers and low-income families. They'll have access to community rooms, on-site case managers, and a fitness center. Ariel Alfgang is the architect of this project. This particular hotel had a covered pool off of the lobby, so that space is going to become a garden.

It's going to be a lovely garden. Thanks to nearly $48 million in state funding, Basley Pond Park is the first and so far only product of the Housing Our Neighbors with Dignity Act, or Honda. The 2021 law emerged from the depths of the pandemic when the bottom fell out from the city's tourism industry. And it felt like a real opportunity that we had to convert all of these empty hotels into real affordable housing for homeless New Yorkers. Amy Blumsack is the director of organizing and policy at neighbor. together, a group that advocates for homeless and low-income residents in Brooklyn. It was hugely exciting, and it had incredible potential.

But that's not how things worked out. Developers and real estate lawyers say there were too many hurdles to turn hotels into housing. Zoning restrictions prevented some hotels from becoming residential buildings, and hotel unions blocked other efforts. And then there's the issue of funding. Vijay Dundapani is the president of the Hotel Association of New York City. He says the $200 million to the state provided. for the program could cover, at best, two or three hotel conversions.

It was not enough to move the needle. And then there were shifting market forces. As the pandemic subsided, the city's tourism industry came roaring back. Hotels were no longer empty. We had had this massive window of opportunity, and I think in some ways it missed. Not everyone is so skeptical. David Schwartz is the co-founder of Slate Property Group, the developer of Basley Pond Park. He says there are dozens of hotels across

a city that would be good candidates for conversion. And he thinks new laws often take time to kick in. In a year from now, we'll see more of these. In a statement, a spokesman for Mayor Eric Adams, William Fowler, said the city is working to get rid of outdated zoning law so that it can encourage more hotel and office conversions and help solve the housing crisis. And the state's affordable housing agency, New York State Homes and Community Renewal, says at least two more hotels are likely to become residential buildings. At the very least, Ariel Alfgang, the architect of Basley Pond Park, hopes the people who eventually move into this building find something special. He recounted an earlier housing project he designed in East New York. One of the new residents

was an older man who'd spent years in substandard public housing. I was giving him a tour of his new apartment, and he had never seen a thermostat before. And he asked him, what is that for? Alfgang explained what a thermostat was. And he almost came to tears thinking about the fact that he can control his own heat after living in public housing where it was just always overheated or no heat at all and throwing the window open and not having control. And that for me is the reason why you go through the years of work to make these buildings happen. Basley Pond Park is set to open in October of 2025. That's WMYC's Arun Vanekapal. Hey, I'm walking here.

It's a common phrase among New Yorkers on the go. We recently set out to define New York City sidewalk etiquette. After the break, we'll share what we heard. Stay close, and most importantly, stay out of the way. We'll be right back. New Yorkers are an opinionated bunch, and nothing rouse up a local on the go more than people clogging up the sidewalk.

It's the walker's equivalent of a car doing the posted speed limit in the left lane. Sure, we're all going in the same direction. But come on, seriously? My colleague Sean Carlson talked with WNYC's James Ramsey, who tried to take New Yorkers temperature on this very topic to put together the ultimate guide to New York City sidewalk etiquette. Okay, James, so what made you want to ask New Yorkers to define the city sidewalk etiquette? Hey, I'm walking here as a tale as old as time. I also think that there's been some things that changed. I mean, I think maybe 15 years ago, the iPhone was not ubiquitous in everyone's hand. Ten years ago, I don't think you had e-bikes jumping the curb to make deliveries. During the pandemic,

everybody got a dog, and now they all have to walk across the entire sidewalk to use the bathroom. So, you know, there are new things to be angry at. At the same time, you know, we had a little bit of a hypothesis of like maybe coming out of the pandemic, there would be a mood shift, and we might have a little more of a generous attitude towards sidewalk shenanigans. I mean, there's not as many office workers. Tourists, if you think they're annoying, they're also essential to the city. So I thought, you know, maybe we would have a different attitude about, you know, do we just gripe about everything and is everything an inconvenience? Guess what we found, Sean? Oh, man, I'm so curious to hear what you found. People are not generous. People are still angry. That's what we found. Classic, sure. And,

you know, this was a survey. It's a self-selecting bunch. People did not volunteer to say, oh, I love everyone. We got 412 responses. Almost every single one of them said, the sidewalk is a two-way street, keep to the right, and if you need to slow down for any reason, move all the way over to the far and get out of the way. A lot of people complained about groups that walk, you know, more than two people side by side. A lot of people complained about dogs dragging their leash across the sidewalk and creating, you know, a trip hazard. We also, we created a March Madness-style bracket here with different sidewalk characters wondering, you know, all things being equal, are there certain people who get the right of way? Do you let

a parent with a stroller get a pass? Or do you let teens who don't know any better who are standing in the middle of sidewalk screaming at each other? Do they, you know, get a pass? And it turns out the readers kind of hated everybody except for seniors. If you were a senior and you're moving slow in the middle of the sidewalk, you earned it and no one has the right to gripe about you. So a lot of this sounds familiar, right? People holding hands, as long as it sounds like a grin saying this, people blocking the sidewalk while they're holding hands as one of my personal ones. But is there anything that surprised you from the responses you got or mentioned an etiquette rule that you hadn't thought of? You know, Sean, I think a lot of the etiquette stuff in people's mind has to do with

this person who's doing something wrong needs to take it upon themselves to be better, to get out of my way, to follow the rules. The flip side of the etiquette thing is if somebody is in my way, what is the polite way, if you care about being polite, what is the polite way to ask them to out of the way because even sometimes saying, excuse me, can sound a little harsh. And so if I'm trying to tone it down, what do I do? And there was one woman who reached out. Her name is Cynthia Blumberg. She's 34. And she told me that during the pandemic, she had started to lose mobility due to a spinal issue. And she wound up in a wheelchair. And now that she's in her current state, she started to think a lot differently about how she treats people who are moving slow for whatever

reason, whether it's something like a disability or if they're old or if they're just a slower mover. You don't know everybody's story. And so I asked her, I said, you know, how would you like to be addressed by somebody if somebody wants you to get out of their way? And this is what she said. If they could say, ma'am, and, you know, I'm so sorry, I have to get by you, or I apologize, I'm in a rush. You know, when they say that, you know, it's like, well, at least they've expressed their need too because others also legitimately do need to get where they're going. Yeah, I think that's fair. So, James, we got to ask, do you have a sidewalk etiquette rule that people should follow? You know, what I've been thinking about, you know, especially in post-pandemic

Manhattan walking around, is that not all times and locations are created equal. If it's rush hour and you have an army of office workers trying to get down the sidewalk, probably have the awareness to not let a dog block the whole thing. But there have been times where I've been walking around, say, like Central Park, on a Saturday or on a beautiful afternoon, and I'm trying to weave around people and people are in my way. And it occurs to me that everybody else is having a leisurely stroll. They're chatting with friends. They're moving slow. They're doing their thing. I'm the only one who's getting worked up. I'm the only one whose heart rate is exploding. Maybe I'm the chump here. Like maybe I need to teach myself to calm down.

I think that's what I'm working with right now. That's WMYC's James Ramsey, talking with my colleague, Sean Carlson. You can read his guide to New York City sidewalk etiquette on our news website, Gothamist. Before we go, we want to make a correction on a story we ran regarding the House race in New Jersey between incumbent Rob Menendez and Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bala. In one poll, it's Senator Bob Menendez, the indenting. father of the congressman who has single-digit favorability ratings, which some political analysts say is hurting his son's race. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WMYC.

Shout out to our production team. It includes Sean Boutage, Amber Bruce, Ave Carreou, Audrey Cooper, Owen Kaplan, Leora Noam Kravitz, Jared Marselle, and Wayne Schoemeister, with help from all of the great folks in the WMYC Newsroom. Our show art was designed by the folks at Buck, and our music was composed by Alexis Quadrano. I'm Jenae Pierre. Have a lovely weekend. We'll be back on Monday.