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In January 2007, the city reopened the waiting list for Section 8 rental subsidy vouchers for the first time in 13 years, giving many low-income New Yorkers new hopes of finding a place of their own. But, some prospective tenants are finding that having a Section 8 voucher is no guarantee of getting an apartment.
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Joseph Wroblowski was thrilled when T-Mobile offered to pay him more than $1,000 a month in exchange for putting a 27-foot cell phone antenna - disguised as a flagpole - on the roof of his Maspeth home.
After being criticized by his neighbors and learning more details about the project, Wroblowski decided the star-spangled headache is not worth the money. However, T-Mobile is not going to let him off the hook.
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For a map of cell phone towers in New York City, click here.
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Saving a few hundred dollars on heating oil is no small thing for a single mother of three scraping by on a social worker’s salary. Thanks to a Citgo Corporation heating oil discount program, Camille Pow has stashed away some much-needed cash the last two winters.
“I got a deduction of $26 to $30 every month last year, which means $300 more you can look for in your pocket,” said Pow, 45, who rents one of the 1,250 apartments owned by Mount Hope Housing Company, which receives a 40 percent discount on oil from Citgo, then passes the savings on to tenants through rent breaks.
Now the two-year-old program could potentially benefit Pow and other low and moderate-income residents of the 32-building complex in ways they never expected.
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Adam Brock wants to keep his Williamsburg neighborhood green. That’s why the 21-year-old New York University student challenged two mega developers’ plans for the landmark at Community Board 1’s last full board meeting.
Like many of her neighbors, Ethel Thaim grabbed the bare essentials from her apartment before the Fire Department evacuated her unsafe West Harlem building. Now the displaced resident of 305 W. 150th St., is living in an uptown shelter, trying to piece her life back together. More »
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Many New Yorkers were busy plugging leaks during April’s record-breaking rain storm, but for Lydia Vega and her family, the downpour only made a bad situation worse.
“It was like it was raining in the apartment,” said Denise Rivera, 21, who lives with her mother in the problem-plagued Hunts Point I complex on Coster Street in the Bronx.
Leaks are nothing new for Vega, who pointed to three spots where rainwater routinely pours from her ceiling. For months, the sharp odor of mold from a four-foot-wide leak above her kitchen stove has permeated her apartment, overpowering the smell of dinner cooking. More »
Almost every day for the past 28 years, Arthur Wood has hoisted himself to the upper stories of his Clinton Hill home to hammer, paint, and weld an unfinished dream he calls Broken Angel. Although he wears his own hard hat, he has never labored at a construction site or adhered to blueprints.
Bedbugs are back. An itchy scourge for the tenement dwellers of early 20th century New York, bedbugs were beaten into submission with DDT during the ’50s and ’60s. But in the past decade, the city Housing Authority has seen a sharp uptick in the number of bedbug complaints.
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