NYC NOW - Midday News: Suspect Sought in Fatal Shooting of Queens Woman, Why the MTA Wants to Push Heat Deeper Underground, and the Cost of Housing Takes Center Stage in Race for NJ Governor

Episode Date: September 26, 2025

Police are looking for a man they say shot and killed a woman at her Queens building two weeks ago. Plus, the MTA is exploring new technology that would transfer heat in subway stations deeper underground. And finally, a look at how the rising cost of housing in New Jersey is taking center stage in the governor's race.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Friday, September 26th. Here's the midday news from David First. Police are looking for a man, they say shot and killed a 21-year-old woman at her Queens building two weeks ago. NYPD officials say DeShanna Donovan was sitting in the courtyard of her building on 96th Street and East Elmhurst on the night of September 12th when the man approached her. Police say surveillance footage shows she got up and ran and he chased her, shooting her several times. Officers found Donovan with a gunshot wound in her building's basement. Officials say the man was wearing a blue hooded sweatshirt, black pants, black sneakers, and a black backpack around the time of the shooting.

The MTA is exploring new technology that would transfer heat in subway stations deeper underground. MTA documents show that deep stations often feel like a sauna because they, lack ventilation. Trains and electrical equipment also add heat. This is especially true for some of the city's deepest stations at 168th and 181st streets on the one line. Maimuna Treyor regularly commutes through those stations. There should be some kind of like AC or some kind of circulation, especially in the summertime people get really, really hot and people can pass out. The cooling technology would use geothermal energy that would move heat deep into the earth. The The MTA says there is no timeline to introduce this cooling system.

For now, they are just shopping for ideas on how to make it work. 76 degrees right now. We're expecting mostly sunny skies today, getting up to a high near 80 degrees. Tonight, a low around 65, and then tomorrow. Partly sunny, a high of 78, a good chance for some rain showers tomorrow night. Stay tuned for more after the break. The race for governor in New Jersey, continues to be close, with polls showing Republican nominee Jack Chittarelli and Democrat

Mikey Cheryl within a few percentage points. According to campaign finance records, Chidorelli has received more than $750,000 in campaign contributions over the past four years from a billionaire New Jersey real estate family. Questions about the donations are placing rising rents at the center of the governor's race, and joining us now to talk about it, as WNWC's New Jersey reporter Mike Hayes. Mike, these donations, they came up during the debate earlier this week between the nominees that you covered. Can you tell us what happened?

During Sunday night's debate, which was a town hall format, an audience member stood up and asked the candidates how they planned to lower skyrocketing rental prices in New Jersey. And Mikey Sherrill went on the attack against her opponent. Let's hear what she had to say. We know Jack's not going to do anything about it because one of his biggest donors is actually being taken to court and sued on this very issue. Now, David, if you were watching the debate and wondering, hey, which biggest donor is she talking about here who is being sued? You didn't get an answer. But the answer is the

Kurtz's, a wealthy, politically connected family who owns 10,000 apartments across New Jersey. Richard Kurtz, the 85-year-old patriarch of the family is a billionaire. And he once sold New Jersey's most expensive home for about $27 million. And not only has he donated, he, thousands of dollars to Chitterelli directly, he's given hundreds of thousands to super PACs supporting the Republican nominee. Most recently, he donated 200K to kitchen table conservatives packs the day after Chitterelli won the Republican primary in June. His son Jeff Kurtz runs Camson Corporation. That's the family's real estate company. He runs it along with his father. And Jeff Kurtz has also donated thousands of dollars to

Chittorelli. Okay, so that's who the Kurtzes are. Cheryl mentioned they're being sued. Tell us what they're being sued for, exactly. Yeah, so their company, Camzen Corp, is one of ten real estate firms named in a lawsuit brought by the New Jersey Attorney General Matt Placken's office. Now, that lawsuit alleges that the companies use a price-setting algorithm by Real Page, Inc, to drive up rental prices at their properties. In the lawsuit, Plattkin alleges this behavior. He likens it to a cartel because he says, and this is all, we should note, this is all what the AG is alleging here, David.

Nothing's been proved that these companies illegally shared proprietary pricing information, and that amounts to price fixing in the market. And New Jersey is actually one of nine states that are suing Real Page and landlords around the country over the use of this algorithm, right? now. Sort of a side note here on New Jersey, Jersey City and Hoboken both recently passed ordinances banning landlords from using Real Pages Rent Sending Software for certain buildings. This fall, earlier this fall, to give you an update on the case, the landlords here in the New Jersey case, they filed a joint motion to dismiss the lawsuit. They called it baseless. And I spoke to Jeff Kurtz about this, and he told me that they intend to fight this lawsuit all the way. and that they believe it's okay that they're using the price-setting software.

Okay, so when Cheryl brought this up at the debate, how did Chuderelli respond? Yeah, he ignored it, but he did answer the voter's question about rising rents in New Jersey. Here's some of what he said. The reason why rents are going up is because property taxes are going up. The reason why rents are going up is because insurances are going up across the board. The reason why rents are going up is because in many cases of the tenant doesn't pay electricity, the landlord does, and that's going up. Yeah, in that response, David, you hear a lot about landlords' problems like maintenance costs going up and property owners' problems like high taxes.

What you don't hear is any direct fixes for renters themselves. If you look at the Chitterelli campaign platform here, he's much more geared towards helping out homeowners. He talks a lot about lowering property taxes for seniors, for example, and he says he wants to stop the overdevelopment of the suburbs. Now contrasts that with what Cheryl's proposing here. She addresses renters more directly in her housing platform. For instance, she's vowing to crackdown on landlords that are jacking up rents or who are being negligent. And that raises another point about Camson Corp here, the Kurtz's company. It has paid more than $10,000 in fines for safety violations at one particular apartment complex in South Jersey.

So you could argue that Cheryl is speaking to renters in those kinds of situations. However, we should also note here, David, that Mikey Sherrill has gotten a lot of financial support from the real estate world, but not as much as Chitterelli. In November 2024, a pro-Sheryl political action committee, one giant leap, received a $25,000 donation from a construction industry association that's anti-union opposed to federal rules that would require contractors to accept union agreements. The group actually later returned that money, the super PAC. And Jeff Kurtz told me right now, the family thinks Chittarelli is the better candidate to lead New Jersey. But, you know, kind of an interesting twist here. He said that their support could change if he hears something from Mikey Cheryl that they like. All right.

What role do we expect these donations to play as the campaign continues? Cheryl kind of went out of her way to use this question about rising rents to bring up the Kurtz's. I mean, it signals that it could become a bigger issue on the campaign trail. This race has tightened a lot in the polls since the spring. And political experts I've spoken with about this expect it to tighten even more as we get closer to election day. And, of course, affordability issues like rising rents, electricity prices, housing prices in general, they have dominated this campaign. Now, big wealthy donors like the curtses are just a fact of life. in this day and age in politics.

But some political observers say these particular donations from a real estate family caught up in a high-profile lawsuit over alleged price fixing could turn off voters. WNYC is Mike Hayes. Thanks for joining us. And for more coverage of the race for governor in New Jersey, go to our website, Gothamist. 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 dives. And subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.