The New York City Rent Guidelines Board voted last week to increase rents for the city’s 1 million stabilized apartments in what would be the largest increase in almost a decade.

“I believed that the numbers initially reported were much too high, so I called for a better balance — and it is good the board moved lower,” Mayor Adams said following the vote. Read more

Mayor Adams said the administration is “excited about the energy” it is receiving from Albany lawmakers in whose hands the future of school control lies.

“It’s imperative that we get help from Albany,” Adams said at a press conference on Monday at City Hall alongside schools Chancellor David Banks, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations and the Service Employees International Union. Read more

Donning a pink and navy-striped crewneck and a button with a clothes hanger crossed out by a red-slash “no” symbol, Forest Hills resident Diane Weisstuch certainly looked the part as she stood on the steps of Queens Borough Hall ahead of last Thursday evening’s abortion rights rally.

And it wasn’t her first rodeo, either. Weisstuch said she made the button for the 2017 Women’s March, when, following the election of Donald Trump as president, many Americans feared the right to choose would come under threat. But, she said, things are different this time, as, following the publication of a leaked, draft majority Supreme Court decision last week, the 1973 landmark case Roe v. Wade looks poised to be overturned, and with it, that fear would become reality. Read more

Monday evening’s leak of the U.S. Supreme Court draft majority opinion on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization — in which Associate Justice Samuel Alito says that Roe v. Wade must be overruled — has taken both Queens and the nation by storm as the right to choose an abortion is on the chopping block.

If the ruling outlined in the opinion obtained by Politico — the first to ever be leaked ahead of an official ruling — holds, the right to choose would no longer be a protected one in all 50 states. It is the culmination of a decades-long effort by the right to severely limit abortion access, all the while, the balance of the Supreme Court has shifted in their favor. Read more

Details surrounding the friendly-fire death of Queens Det. Brian Simonsen during a botched 2019 robbery emerged for the first time this week at the opening of the trial of one of his accused killers.

Three years after Simonsen was killed, the murder trial of Jagger Freeman — the man who claims he was merely the lookout in the robbery of a T-Mobile store in Richmond Hill where the shooting occurred — began Tuesday in Queens Criminal Court. Read more

Just when it seemed New York’s 2022 redistricting process couldn’t get any more chaotic, both Democrats and Republicans managed to exceed expectations this week.

On Sunday, Republicans introduced a new cause of action to the case, Harkenrider v. Hochul, in order to invalidate the recently passed state Assembly district lines. Come Monday night, national Democrats sought a temporary injunction with the Southern District Court of New York in an attempt to keep the congressional primary on June 28, as initially scheduled — using the lines that the New York Court of Appeals just struck down. The following evening, Judge Lewis Kaplan agreed that a three-judge panel would hear their case Wednesday morning. Read more

The city Department of Sanitation cleaned up garbage surrounding the Hollis Long Island Rail Road station on Tuesday. For years the area has been a site for illegal dumping, but it has gotten worse since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, according to Novella Oliver, a former leader of the now-defunct Woodhull Civic Association.

The other problematic areas for illegal dumping included 191st Street and Woodhull Avenue, 195th Street between Sagamore and 99th avenues, and 99th Avenue between 193rd to 195th streets, according to Oliver and her neighbors Noreen Wright and Goutam Bhola. Read more

Former District 32 Councilman Eric Ulrich will take on a new role as commissioner of the city Department of Buildings, the Mayor’s Office announced today.

“From day one, Mayor Adams has made ‘Get Stuff Done’ the motto of his administration, and this is the spirit I bring to the Department of Buildings,” said Ulrich in a prepared statement. Read more

The Panel for Educational Policy voted last week against approving the Fair Student Funding formula, a measure that comes up yearly and provides the main source of money for most schools.

Schools Chancellor David Banks called the vote “deeply problematic” and said that he would have to play a different role in engaging parents and members going forward. Read more

A 51-year-old woman was gunned down in the doorway of her home on 109th Avenue in Ozone Park on Wednesday afternoon.

Police say that just before 2:30 p.m., Giuseppe Canzani, 41, walked up to the home and knocked on the door. When Anna Torres answered, he fired three rounds from a silver, 45 caliber Taurus handgun, striking her twice, said Deputy Chief Jerry O’Sullivan, commanding officer of Detective Bureau Queens South. Read more

Even before the housing bubble crisis of 2008, almost any residential neighborhood could have a house become an eyesore and even a danger if the owners could not meet mortgage payments and a bank or lender moved in to foreclose.

The lending institution is required by state law to maintain the grounds and building in a proper fashion. Read more