NYC NOW - October 19, 2023: Midday News

Episode Date: October 19, 2023

City jails officials say a plan to move detainees with serious health conditions off Rikers Island and into state-of-the-art hospital units has been delayed by several years. Also, Mayor Eric Adams is lifting a cap on electric taxis that's been in place for two years. Meanwhile, the New York Liberty lost to Las Vegas Aces yesterday, who become back-to-back champions. Finally, a century-old building on the Upper East Side is getting some much taller neighbors. Construction is well underway on a pair of high-rise buildings that envelope the five-story walk-up. WNYC Housing reporter David Brand talked with a tenant about what it’s like living in a construction site.

Welcome to NYC now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Thursday, October 19th. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill. City jails officials say a plan to move detainees with serious health conditions off Rikers Island and into state-of-the-art hospital units has been delayed by years. At a hearing yesterday, City Council member Lincoln Wessler, asked the Department of Correct. why more than 360 hospital beds approved in 2019 have stalled. Your failure to follow through on therapeutic beds is incredibly harmful to the people who should be off of Rikers Island.

The DOC says leadership changes and design flaws have delayed about 100 beds until late next year. Council members call the delays devastating. Starting today, New York City could see a number of new electric taxis. Mayor Adams is lifting the cab put in place two years ago. The Taxi and Limousine Commission will now allow any vehicle that runs solely on electric power or is wheelchair accessible to get a TLC license. BetaV Desai is Executive Director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance. She says more for higher vehicles will make it harder for drivers to make a living,

and she says the MTA's upcoming congestion prices. program already is going to hit cabbies. The city's about to flood the streets with cars while the state is looking to rain in the number of cars on the streets. And both are being done at the expense of the drivers. Mayor Adams wants all taxi trips to be electric or in a wheelchair-accessible vehicle by the year 2030. It is all over for the New York Liberty, the Las Vegas Aces, one last night, 70 to 69 in Brooklyn, becoming the first WNBA team to win back-to-back championships. Mostly sunny today and 66 for a high.

Tomorrow morning we'll have some showers, a high near 65 with a slight breeze. More showers, Saturday morning, cloudy in 64, and then it seems we dry out on Sunday with high temperatures in the mid-50s. A quaint century-old building on the Upper East Side is getting some much taller neighbor, Construction is well underway on a pair of high-rise buildings that envelop the five-story walk-up. One of the new condo complexes even rises above the roof. WNYC Healsam reporter David Brand talked with the tenant about what it's like living in a construction site. Caitlin Green's apartment offers a front row seat to the construction.

An elevator is stationed right outside her dust-covered window to carry workers to the higher floors. It just goes up and down all day long. The setup along 3rd Ave near 75th Street looks like a scene from the movie Up, where the main character's modest home is dwarfed by modern skyscrapers. One of the new buildings stretches up and over Green's roof like a Tetris piece, reaching another 300 feet into the sky. It gets loud. Clanking, cement mixer, elevators, people yelling, people smoking.

It's kind of been a crazy experience living in a construction zone. With limited physical space left to build on in Manhattan, land use attorney Sheila Posen says the jangle-like setups are becoming more common. Developers around the city buy the air rights to neighboring buildings so they can make their own projects taller while still complying with zoning rules. She says sometimes the seller and the developer make a deal to extend a piece of the new building over an existing one with a kind of deck known as a cantilever. It's unique to New York because land is at a premium here.

So people have to get creative and kind of funky with how they design their buildings. Pozon says she's represented clients in hundreds of air rights sales. If you have a seller that doesn't want to sell and they're open to doing a cancel lever, then you take what you can get. Sometimes residents and rent-stabilized apartments hold out for big sums in exchange for leaving. That didn't happen with Caitlin Green's building on Third Ave. Green and other tenants I spoke with say they never got a buyout offer. The current landlord declined to talk, and the developers next door didn't respond to messages.

But property records show a previous owner sold the air rights for close to $6 million back in 2018. Now Green and her neighbors have to deal with the headache. You have to use noise canceling headphones to work from home. Definitely gets you up. We had to install our own screen so you don't have dust coming in. She says she and her husband moved into their place in April when the high-rise projects were barely off the ground. They had to leave their last apartment in Soho when their landlord more than doubled the rent. Despite the dust, the noise and the stress, their current rent's not so bad.

Green says they're paying $2,800 a month and might even stay. So I do think, as New Yorkers, we just put up with a lot, and you kind of just assimilate at the end of the day. Construction is supposed to end in the summer of 2025. David Brand, WNYC News. Thanks for listening. This is NYC Now from WNYC. Be sure to catch us every weekday, three times a day, for your top news headlines. and occasional deep dives

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