NYC NOW - June 21, 2024: Midday News

Episode Date: June 21, 2024

New York City data show heat-related emergency room visits have risen over the last several days. Meanwhile, New York State Attorney General Letitia James says UnitedHealthcare must pay for failing to cover birth control. Plus, there’s a proposal in Queens to to transform a large city-owned building in Long Island City into a permanently affordable, shared commercial space for artists, nonprofits and vendors. WNYC's Sean Carlson speaks with reporter Arun Venugopal about the proposed “Queensboro People’s Space” and the significance of the intended site.

Welcome to NYC Now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Friday, June 21st. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill. It's getting hotter in this heat wave. That's sending more and more New Yorkers to the emergency room. New York City data show heat-related visits to the ER have been rising over the last several days. Last Saturday, when temperatures hit 81 degrees, one person went to the ER for heat.

On Wednesday, we reached 91 degrees, and at least 14 people went to the ER. A related sickness can cause symptoms like muscle cramps and extension and make pre-existing conditions worse. On New York State Attorney General, Leticia James, says insurance company United Healthcare is going to have to pay up for failing to provide birth control coverage. WNIC's Catalina Gonella has details. It started when a patient in Brooklyn submitted a complaint to the Attorney General's office. after United Health Care denied them coverage for their oral contraceptive. A.G. James says that violated New York's Comprehensive Controceptive Coverage Act, which requires health insurance plans to cover FDA-approved contraceptives

without copays restrictions or delays. James also announced that on top of the $1 million penalty, the health insurance company will reimburse consumers who paid out of pocket for birth control. United Health Care did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 90 now and sunny with heat advisories for the tri-state area.

Don't overdo it outside. Stay hydrated, take breaks, and find safe ways to stay cool. Mostly sunny and 92 today and feeling hotter than that. Stay close. There's more after the break. NYC.

I'm Sean Carlson for WNYC. There's a proposal in Queens. to transform a large city-owned building in Long Island City into a permanently affordable, shared commercial space for artists, nonprofits, and vendors. W&YC's and Rune Vennecabal joins us to talk about the proposal for the Queensboro People Space and the significance of the intended site.

Arun, this location should be familiar to a lot of New Yorkers, even if they've never set foot in Long Island City. Explain why that is the case. All right, so let's go back to 2018, Sean. This is the area where Amazon wanted to build a second headquarters. It's so-called HQ2. Oh, yeah. There was this big national beauty pageant of proposals, all this high-level wooing, mayors and governors who got involved.

Long Line City got picked as one of its two sites around the country. But the euphoria didn't last, right, because of series pushback from neighborhood residents and elected officials in Queens who were worried about potential displacement, especially with one of the largest public housing communities in the country nearby in the Queens. public houses. So Amazon ended up nixing the idea altogether in 2019, about five years ago, but went ahead with its other planned corporate headquarters in the Washington, D.C. area. And that halted development in the area for good? Well, not quite. Okay. There are lots and lots of high rises that have been built since then. Rents have just kept on going up. There are now big plans still on the drawing board that include rezoning, which could potentially encourage even more high rises to be built. So some of the same.

The same conversations about displacement have surfaced around this new project. So let's talk about that. Tell us about the Queensboro People's Plaza. What is the idea here? All right. So the idea behind this project is take one building, a very big one. It's nearly 600,000 square feet in size. It's currently occupied by the city's Department of Education and to remove it from the for-profit real estate market. You've got elected officials, some of whom have expressed interest in the idea, which comes from a group called the Western Queens Community Land Trust. I spoke to the organization's co-chair Jenny Dubnow during a block party they recently had. And it would be permanently affordable for all kinds of small businesses, manufacturers, artists, community-based organizations, street cart vendors to have affordable space to do their work and serve the community. You can hear the jazz and a block party vibe in the background. She says there will also be all these other amenities, you know, a food co-op, which they say they really need in this neighborhood, a rooftop garden, a commercial kitchen for all these different vendors and people who want to cook.

So that's the vision. Why do they think this project is necessary? Well, this area, LIC, it's the fastest growing area in the city. Okay. That's according to the city planning commission. It says the median monthly asking rent for the area has grown from $4,000 for a two-bedroom apartment. That was in 2020 to $5,300 in 2022, just two years, very steep growth, right? So LIC is getting really expensive there.

Once again, lots of luxury high rises, members of the Community Land Trust, the Western Queens Community Land Trust, like Hannah Burson. They say all of this is squeezing out all the long time residents, working class, poor people, and it's changing the character of the neighborhood. You can see as you take the end train and it curves up on the elevated line from Queens Plaza, there are beautiful, right, gym facilities, pool tables, lounge areas, rooftop areas. And, you know, good for people that they get to enjoy those things. But it's pretty clear that those kinds of spaces are not really meant for the community as it's been here.

And supporters of the space, they say that in addition to creating affordable homes, it's really important to create affordable commercial spaces also for people in this area. and the plan is to lock in commercial rents at $18 to $25 a square foot compared to about twice at amount for the going rates of space that are on the market right now. Arun, given what happened to the Amazon HQ2 thing, I think it's fair to ask, what are the prospects of something like this actually happening? So this is a movement right now that's kind of bubbling up. It's called Community Land Trust movement. It's still small, but they say it's growing. These are initiatives that, They take land off of the speculative market and they let the community decide how to use the land. There are now about 20 of these community land trusts across the city, according to the Pratt Center for Community Development.

Five of these land trusts now own land. Another four have a land transfer and process. So there is some precedent, Sean. With the Queensboro People Space specifically, you have elected officials who express support, Congresswoman Nidio Velasquez, said, she supports the idea. But the city isn't tipping its hand. And there's an ongoing discussion about new zoning for the area. It's likely that's going to take another year or so. What does come next in this process? So city planners are hosting a town hall this coming Monday on the future of Long Island City. And that's at 630 at CUNY law school. That's WNYC's Arun

Venetabala. All right. Thanks so much. Keep us posted on this. Sure. Thanks, Sean. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WMYC. Check us out for updates every weekday, three times a day, for the latest news headlines and occasional deep times. And subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We'll be back this evening.