NYC NOW - August 31, 2023:Evening Roundup

Episode Date: August 31, 2023

New York City Mayor Eric Adams is once again calling on the Biden administration to issue temporary work permits to migrants so they can begin legally working in the U.S. Plus, COVID-19 transmission is picking up in the New York metro area. And finally, WNYC reporters Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky and David Brand reveal the neighborhood with the highest concentration of full-time listings on Airbnb ahead of new regulations that go into effect next week.

Good evening and welcome to NYC now. I'm Jenae Pierre for WNYC. No matter who you are, where you came from, you came here to pursue the American Dream. The only country on the globe, I say over and over again, when Dream is attached to its name. New York City Mayor Eric Adams is continuing to press the Biden administration to loosen regulations around work permits for migrants. Here's the mayor at a rally Thursday in Foley Square. Just imagine where you would be right now as an individual, as a person that's standing here. Imagine where you would be when your parents, when your loved one, or you came to this country,

and you were told that you could not pursue the American dream. On average, more than 10,000 migrants are entering the city every month, and more than 100,000 have arrived in the city over the past year. The mayor says the migrant crisis is expected to cost the city $12 billion by 2025. COVID-19 is seeing a bit of a rebound as New Yorkers head into the new school year, but it's hard to know exactly how much transmission is happening in the community. Health experts say data points like case rates are less meaningful now than they were at the beginning of the pandemic. Since most people are taking COVID tests at home, the majority of cases are no longer reported.

Instead, Columbia Public Health professor, Dr. Wafa El Sador, recommends looking at the concentration of the virus and sewage samples. It's not dependent on, you know, who gets tested or where they get tested. It is really an unbiased kind of a snapshot on what's happening in the community and can give us a sense of that trend. COVID-19 hospitalizations are another more reliable metric for tracking the intensity of the late summer wave. You can find the latest COVID data on our news website, God, com. Stick around. There's more after the break.

Next week, new registration requirements will go into effect for New Yorkers who rent out their homes on Airbnb or other short-term rental platforms. The new rules are meant to crack down on listings for entire apartments or houses, which are illegal in New York City. WNYC reporters Jacqueline Jeffrey Walensky and David Brand have been digging into the neighborhood with the highest concentration of these. full-time listings. The two talks with my colleague, Michael Hill. Which neighborhood has the highest number of these full-time Airbnb listings? Well, Michael, just for some context, there are about

40,000 Airbnb listings in all of New York City. And about a quarter of those are listings where someone's renting an entire apartment or an entire house for less than 30 days, so the illegal ones. And what we found is that Bedstuy in Brooklyn has the highest concentration of these listings with more than 1,500. What exactly are these new requirements? Well, one of the concerns people have about these listings for entire homes is that they take apartments off the market that would otherwise be available for New Yorkers to rent. Bedstuy in particular is a historically black neighborhood that's experienced gentrification

at like breakneck speed. In fact, I looked at census data, which shows that it's become a lot whiter and wealthier over the last decade. Median income is up by more than 50 percent. and the number of white residents has more than tripled. City and state law actually prohibited these short-term rentals for entire homes for years, but enforcement has been very difficult for the city historically. And now, starting on Tuesday, September 5th, hosts will be required to register their homes

in order to get paid by Airbnb and other rental sites. And that just won't be possible if they're renting an entire home for less than 30 days. David, you've been out in the neighborhood talking with long-term residents. What are people saying about these changes and the fact that bedstah is home to so many of these full-time Airbnbs? Several people say they don't like the transient nature of Airbnb and other short-term rental sites. Wayne Slater is a retired schoolteacher who lives in his childhood home on Halsey Street. I think that it's good that the city's cracking down because there should be rules. I was here when all of these buildings were family homes,

and people bought these buildings to raise a family here and wanting to live. We took a close look at dozens of these properties on Airbnb to get a sense of their history and how they've changed hands over the past 15 years or so since Airbnb started operating. In several cases, the former owners were facing foreclosure or some other type of financial stress. So, for example, there's a brownstone on Madison Street and Bedstay that was owned by just two families for about a half century, but it's been bought and sold by a number of limited liability companies and renovated and flipped in recent years. Today, it's owned. owned by a tech entrepreneur, an investor from England, an apartment in the house, rents for

$379 a night on Airbnb. I spoke with a member of one of the families who'd owned it for decades, who said he doesn't agree with these homes being Airbnb'd. He remembers having cookouts with family there and putting a lot of money into renovating it himself before, he said, the house was taken by Brooklyn Hospital Center due to his mother-in-law's unpaid medical bills. The hospital didn't respond to a request for comment, but property records do show it taking ownership of the home in 2007.

A couple years later, the hospital sold it to an investor who flipped it for about eight times the amount they paid for it. So some critics in the neighborhood for sure. What about people in bedstay who rent their homes on Airbnb? What are they saying about this? Frankie Scott is a retired Parks Department worker who bought her home with her husband back in the early 80s. She says she used to have tenants who stopped paying monthly rent.

Airbnb allows her to make consistent income without a lot. worrying about the rent coming in. I've had tenants before, and it was held. It costs me a lot of money to have them evicted for non-payment of rent. I don't want to go that route anymore. This way someone comes in, and they do their thing five days, seven days, whatever it might be, and they're gone. She says she doesn't think long-term owners like her should be penalized, and that the city

should instead go after investors or big landlords who rent on Airbnb at a large scale. That's WNYC reporters David Brand and Jacqueline Jeffrey Walensky talking with my colleague Michael Hill. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WNYC. Catch us every weekday, three times a day. We'll be back tomorrow.