A report from the New York City Comptroller finds the Big Apple’s working class faces America’s steepest inflation, with food prices up over 56% in a decade—outpacing the national average. Recent surveys say 67% of residents, especially Hispanics an…
As New York City’s median rent climbs 21% faster than incomes, stalwarts like Juan Dela Cruz’s Lower East Side bodega are squeezed by $11,000 monthly rents and vanishing customers. With storefront vacancy hitting 11.4% citywide—double 2004’s rate—lawmakers hawk commercial rent control, though real estate barons snort at interference. For small businesses, the “city that never sleeps” increasingly means insomnia for all the wrong reasons.
New York’s comptroller, Mark Levine, has cast a chill over Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s $127bn budget plans, cautioning that City Hall’s buoyant revenue projections and tax hike gambits may leave Gotham with a $6.5bn gap next year—worse than Mamdani’s own figures. Political resistance in both Albany and City Council leaves precious few options; as ever, mayors seem to save the real fixes for the encore.
As Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s team skipped New York City Council hearings on his hefty $127 billion budget—the first such no-show in decades—City Comptroller Mark Levine and others sharpened their pencils, questioning the administration’s $5.4 billion deficit forecast and reluctance to trim ballooning social spending. Calls for Albany to tax the rich or face property tax hikes have met scepticism; apparently, some fiscal sums are best left unexplained, at least until after sundown.
In its latest budget proposal, the New York State Assembly suggests doling out one-off checks of up to $500 to help 5.4 million households manage steep energy bills, rather than diluting the 2019 climate law. Governor Kathy Hochul, meanwhile, floats ideas from pegging utility bosses’ pay to affordability to dialing down emissions targets—though wrangling over which number counts as “progress” continues apace, as ever in Albany.
Two NYPD officers, Chief Aaron Edwards and Sgt. Luis Navarro, recall leaping into action outside Gracie Mansion after suspected ISIS-inspired attackers threw bombs at a weekend protest in Manhattan. The pair arrested Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi before the devices detonated, averting potential tragedy, though only belatedly grasped just how close they came to disaster—and, alas, an earful from Edwards’s rightly skeptical spouse.
New York’s Democratic lawmakers, not content with the usual tussle in Albany, have formally adopted much of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s tax-the-rich vision into their state budget counterproposals, targeting incomes above $5 million and pushing corporate rates up to 9%. Governor Kathy Hochul, uncharmed by such arithmetic since 2021, remains opposed, but with a $5.4 billion hole, even stalemate seems like undeniable progress.
New York’s newly installed mayor, Zohran Mamdani, and Department of Transportation chief Mike Flynn talk up a “new era” for the city’s parks and pavements, but the real challenge lies in extending car-free corridors and revived public spaces—like Paseo Park in Jackson Heights—beyond the wealthier boroughs. The blueprint exists; all that’s left is wrangling the money, the politics, and the odd errant delivery van.
Several members of New York’s City Council Black, Latino and Asian Caucus want Albany to pass the End Toxic Home Flipping Act, taxing firms and investors who sell homes within two years or flip properties above $1 million, particularly in Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. With nearly 12,000 homes flipped since 2019, and exemptions for hardship cases, we await data on whether such taxes can outmaneuver seasoned property speculators.
