NYC NOW - Evening Roundup: Rent Guidelines Board to Re-vote on Hike, “Train Daddy” Tapped for Penn Station Redevelopment, Beach Drones Join Rescue Crews, Adrienne Adams Reflects on Personal COVID Loss, and Queens Co-op Faces Steep Fee Increase

Episode Date: May 23, 2025

New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board will hold a re-vote next week after internal disagreements over proposed rent hikes for stabilized two-year leases. Meanwhile, The White House says Andy Byford AKA “Train Daddy”, who ran the city's subways and buses from 2018 until early 2020, has been tapped by President Trump to lead the redevelopment of Penn Station. Also, the city will deploy drones with life-saving equipment and speakers to assist lifeguards at public beaches this summer. Plus, mayoral candidate Adrienne Adams delivered an emotional speech marking the anniversary of her father’s death and linked it to former Governor Andrew Cuomo’s handling of the pandemic. Finally, residents at Rochdale Village, a co-op complex in Southeast Queens, are bracing for steep increases in monthly maintenance fees to cover repairs, mortgage debt, and an unpaid water bill.

Rent guidelines board to revote on hikes, quote unquote, train daddy, tap for Penn Station redevelopment, beach drones, join rescue crews, Adrian Adams reflects on personal COVID loss, and Queens co-op faces steep fee increase. From WNYC, this is NYC Now. I'm Sean Carlson. In an unusual move, the panel that sets the rent for New York City's rent-stabilized tenants will hold a rare revote next week. That's according to three people directly familiar with the matter who spoke with WNIC, but who asked not to be named discussing confidential information. The Rent Guidelines Board will consider a lower range of rent increases for two-year leases. Last month, the Board approved a preliminary increase of anywhere from 4.75% to 7.75% on new two-year leases. But according to the three sources, the Board members had originally agreed to approve a lower range.

The Board will hold a final vote on the rent increases in late June. Roughly a million apartments in New York City are rent-stabilized. Train Daddy is coming back to New York City. The White House says Andy Biford, who ran the city's subways and buses from 2018 until early 2020, has been tapped by President Trump to lead the long-stalled redevelopment of Penn Station. Bifert has been working for Amtrak, which owns Penn Station for the last two years. He was credited with improving city subway service, which earned him the nickname Train Daddy by riders. The redevelopment of Penn Station was previously overseen by MTA chair, Jan O'Leber.

But Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy kicked Lieber off the project last month, saying Amtrak will take over the work. Biford did not respond to a request for comment. It's a bird. It's a plane. It's actually a drone with a life raft. That could be the scene at New York City beaches this summer as swimming season gets underway. Mayor Eric Adams says first responders will use drones along the waterfront. They can drop self-inflinfliform. floating floats to swimmers in distress and use onboard speakers to talk directly to people in the water.

Deputy Mayor for Public Safety, Cass Dautry says the drones are there to support lifeguards, not replace them. Can you imagine when the drone operated a pilot is communicating through the voice app, like talking through the drone to the actual swimmer saying that you are caught in a riptide. We need you to swim diagonally. The city tested out some of the drones at beaches last summer. The tech has been used all over Europe. In 2022, a drone was credited with saving the life of a 14-year-old boy in Valencia, Spain. Coming up, a mayoral candidate reflects on a personal loss and connects it to Andrew Cuomo's leadership during the pandemic. Stick around. City Council Speaker and mayoral candidate Adrian Adams is reflecting on one of the most painful moments of her life and linking it to how then-Governor Andrew Cuomo handled the pandemic.

Adams gave an emotional speech Thursday marking five years since her father's death. She pointed to Cuomo's leadership during COVID-19 as a factor in how her family was affected. WNIC's Bridget Bergen has more. Let me tell you about a story about a New Yorker. Standing next to a portrait of her father, Irvin, counsel speaker Adrian Adams, recalled the last moments she saw him. Her father was in his Jackson Heights apartment, struggling to put on a shirt and unable to breathe.

She took him to a hospital on Long Island because nearby Elmer's hospital was capacity. They said what would be their final goodbyes in a parking lot. I remember standing over him in that parking lot. Looking down at the face that looked so much like mine, I saw a fear in him. I'd never seen before. His eyes said, please don't leave me. Mixing anger and grief, Adams made the case that the suffering in her predominantly black Southeast Queens community was made worse by Cuomo playing politics. She accused the former governor of cutting hospital funding. She says he delayed access to testing and vaccines in her community because of Cuomo's long-running feud with former mayor, Bill de Blasio. Is Andrew Cuomo the only one at fault? Not really. He didn't create this kind of politics. He just mastered it.

Her speech marked her most direct and personal attacks on Cuomo, the frontrunner in the Democratic primary. It also came just two days after reports that the Department of Justice was investigating Cuomo for possibly lying to Congress about his response to the outbreak in New York nursing homes. Cuomo's campaign and his supporters object to Adams' claims. I'm Jennifer Jones-Austin, CEO executive director of the Federation of Protestant Welfare agencies. Jones-Austin leads a social service nonprofit that works with community-based organizations to tackle economic and health challenges. She dismissed allegations of friction between DeVlasio and Cuomo over vaccines and testing. She says her experience dealing with Cuomo then was very different. I remember well being surprised when talking with state leaders in the very early stages of the COVID pandemic

about how they were standing up in their churches with the support of the Cuomo administration, testing facilities, informational forums, But despite their disagreement, Jones Austin extended sympathy to Adams for the loss of her father. And an analyst, with the Empire Center, poured cold water on Adams' claims about hospital cuts, saying there was no correlation between spending and COVID deaths. With less than five weeks until the primary and, given Cuomo's sizable lead in polling, its clear memories of the pandemic are likely to be relitigated on the campaign trail. And it'll be up to voters to decide.

whose version of history they believe. That was WNYC's Bridget Bergen. Tomorrow we'll take a closer look at former Governor Cuomo's history with Janine Piro. The two have clashed in the past. Now, with a federal investigation reportedly underway, his fate could end up in her hands. Rochdale Village is a sprawling co-op complex near JFK Airport in Southeast Queens. That's home to 25,000 New Yorkers.

Residents there are bracing for a hefty increase in monthly maintenance costs to cover building repairs, mortgage payments, and interest on an unpaid water bill. And as WDWIC's David Brenn reports, other housing complexes could face similar problems. The first thing you need to know about Rochdale Village is it's huge. It's big enough to fit city field four times. I used to jog around. When I first moved here, me and my mom, we would walk just to get exercise. So it probably took us maybe about hour.

Regan Smith has been a resident here since 2012. She agreed to walk the entire length of the 100. 120-acre campus with me. She describes it as a city within a city. You don't ever have to lead a community if you don't want to. Like, everything is here. It has its own mall and a stop on the Long Island Railroad. We got basketball courts.

We have a library on that side. There's another supermarket, a nail salon. Even over here, you know, there's a hairdressing spot right next door. The other thing you need to know is that Rochdale Village was built in 1963 through the state's Mitchell Lama program. At the time, Mitchell Lama was seen as an innovative way to make home ownership possible for middle-income New Yorkers. The program imposes income caps on buyers and also limits how much owners can sell their apartments for. The city hasn't built new Mitchelama apartments for over four decades,

but there are still more than 100,000 units left, and many are facing financial problems because of lack of investment paired with rising costs and sometimes serious mismanagement. And the floor is yours. So good morning, Chair Rosenthal and members of the Assembly Committee on House. Becky Kepnik is a senior vice president at the state's housing agency. She addressed the problems at a state assembly hearing late last year. Mitchellama properties have had to implement significant carrying charge increases

just to pay their basic bills. The properties are required to be financially self-sufficient. For Rochdale Village, that'll mean at least a 22% increase in residence monthly maintenance fees. The co-ops board of directors made up a volunteer, says the complex needs $450 million to fix building facades and replace decades-old plumbing. They deferred loan payments early in the pandemic. Then the management company stopped paying water bills to make up for the higher costs. Now they owe millions more in interest.

Residents like Regan Smith say they're angry. It's very egregious, you know, for some people, this is inheritance for their families. So to see a lot of people have to uproot and leave, maybe they're not even going to be able to stay in new. New York. Smith says she and her mother pay about $1,900 a month for their apartment. That will go up to around $2,300 once the increased charges take effect. The same will be true for tens of thousands of residents here, which is why Smith and her neighbors are asking whether the board and the management company made good financial decisions.

I spoke with Rochdale Village's lawyer, Dean Roberts. Why did the board choose the 22.3% as their recommendation? Because it was the least bad option. You know, it got money to cover bills and get us back on our financial stability. And he says the board could be forced to hike costs even higher by the state's division of homes and community renewal, or DHCR, which regulates Mitchell Lama Housing. At the end of the day, DHCR could tell us, you know, 38% if they wanted to. It's tough. We understand that. The agency declined to comment on a pending decision.

Advocates for Mitchell Lama residents say the state needs to do more to preserve Mitchell Lama as an affordable housing option for New Yorkers. They want to see lawmakers step up with grants, low-interest loans, and additional support to help all volunteer boards make sound choices. Local elected officials recently formed a task force to try to keep the affordable housing, actually affordable. When we go back here, you're going to see the garden. My uncle plants in the garden.

So we get fresh produce in the summertime. After about 45 minutes, Smith and I finally reached the end of our walk across Ratchdale Village. I like this exercise that I get. It's good. We're getting our step counter. I should have put my stepper on. I always forget. It's a new thing.

Smith says the upcoming increase will hit her and her family hard. She's a therapist and says she'll need to start earning more. So I'm increasing my clientele so that the income can come in and I'm trying to find other supplements for the income to pay. The state will determine the final cost increase for residents later this year. That's WNIC's David Brand. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WNMIC. I'm Sean Carlson. Have a great Memorial Day weekend.