NYC NOW - September 28, 2023: Morning Headlines

Episode Date: September 28, 2023

Get up and get informed! Here’s all the local news you need to start your day: Members of the New York City council say they're fed up with chronic delays in processing food stamps and cash assistance applications. Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer calls the charges against Senator Bob Mennedez upsetting. Plus, data from New York City's Office of Special Enforcement shows that the legal registration process for landlords and tenants using short term rental platforms like AirBnb can be tricky.

Welcome to NYC Now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Thursday, September 28th. Here's the morning headlines from Michael Hill. Members of the New York City Council say they're fed up with chronic delays in processing food stamp and cash assistance applications on time. WNYC's Karen Yee reports. About 30,000 applicants to the public benefit programs are waiting more than 30 days to get help. That deadline is set by federal and state law. Councilmember Diana Ayala

led a committee hearing on the backlog. She says the rates of processing applications are the worst numbers in the last decade. I mean, that's like an F, you know, capital F with a whole bunch of red lines in there. Officials with the Department of Social Services say the influx of applicants during the pandemic hasn't abated. They're offering staff overtime to process a record number of applications. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York says the charges facing Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey are truly, truly upsetting. Yesterday, Schumer stood outside the Capitol and stopped just short of calling for Menendez to resign. For Senators, there's a much, much higher standard. And clearly, when you read the indictment,

Senator Menendell fell way, way below that standard. As we've been reporting, Menendez pleaded not guilty to multiple bribery and correct. corruption charges yesterday in federal court in Manhattan, so did his wife. Schumer says Menendez will address the Democratic caucus today, and Schumer added, we'll see what happens after that. New York City's latest crackdown on Airbnb and other short-term rental platforms aims to give landlords and tenants a chance to register their units legally. But new data from the city's office of special enforcement released yesterday show that that can be tricky. The office says it approved 405 of 4,600 applications it's received since March. It says most of the forms

are missing necessary information. The office then returned those faulty forms to the applicants to correct, adding time to the process. The new stats come as state and city laws ban owners from renting apartments for less than 30 days unless they also live in the unit. The New York Department of Environmental Conservation says the air quality is good now and expected to stay that way all day. There's a little tree and weed pollen in the air, but levels are low. 57 and cloudy now slim chance of afternoon showers, mostly cloudy in 64 with the breeze. And then we're in for a lot of rain tomorrow all the way into Saturday with potential for flooding. 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 and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. See you this afternoon. Thank you.