Latest news with #MihirZaveri
New York Times
a day ago
- Business
- New York Times
Is a Law on Brokers' Fees Giving Renters a Break?
Good morning. It's Tuesday. Today we'll look at whether a new local law has transformed the market for apartment rentals. We'll also get a look inside the newly renovated Waldorf Astoria hotel in Manhattan. This was supposed to be the summer when a new law on broker fees would change the rental market in New York City. The law, called the FARE Act, all but ended a longstanding practice requiring apartment-hunting renters to pay thousands of dollars to brokers. My colleague Mihir Zaveri says the premise of the FARE Act was simple but transformative: Whoever enlisted a broker's help would pay the broker's fee. If a landlord gave a listing to a broker, the landlord would pay. A broker can show someone an apartment, but it isn't the would-be renter's responsibility to pay the broker — unless they had agreed to a fee arrangement in advance. Some brokers are showing apartments and, afterward, claiming there was a de facto payment agreement. The Fare ACT went into effect on June 11. I asked Mihir to discuss whether the law has made things better or worse for renters so far. You write that the results have been mixed. How so? The intention of the FARE Act was to lower the sometimes staggering upfront cost of moving and make it less confusing and more transparent. In many ways, it has done that. Most renters can avoid broker fees when searching for apartments through online platforms like StreetEasy. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
20-06-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Landlords Say They Don't Make Enough Money. Is That Really True?
Good morning. It's Friday. Today we'll look at why landlords say they're struggling, even though rents have gone up over time. We'll also look at an effort to make sure that everyone in New York is counted in the next census five years from now. It's a New York conundrum: Tenants complain that higher rents make the city impossible, while landlords complain that higher operating costs also make the city impossible. The Rent Guidelines Board, which has the power to raise rents for tenants in nearly a million rent‐stabilized units, could soon raise them on some of the city's most affordable apartments. The board voted 5 to 4 in April to support increases of between 1.75 and 4.75 percent on one-year leases and 4.75 and 7.75 percent on two-year leases. That vote was only preliminary. A final vote is scheduled for the end of the month. Still, some landlords say the financial picture is so bad that it reminds them of the 1970s, when owners abandoned thousands of buildings in low-income neighborhoods. I discussed the different perspectives with Mihir Zaveri, who covers housing in New York. Are landlords really hurting? They say they don't make enough money from rent to run their buildings, even though the Rent Guidelines Board has allowed rent increases of nearly 17 percent since 2014. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
23-04-2025
- General
- New York Times
What Do You Look for in an Apartment? Tell Us About It.
Finding a suitable place to live in New York City can be a grueling experience. Rents can be ridiculously high, and good apartments are snatched up quickly. Still, thousands of people put themselves through this every month to live in one of the most desirable cities in the nation. I'm Mihir Zaveri, a housing reporter on the Metro desk. I've reported on the housing crisis for the past three years, including a five-part series called The Housing Crunch. I'm endlessly fascinated by the ways people with vastly diverse needs and preferences find their homes in New York City's turbulent, unforgiving housing market. Tell us about your apartment hunt. Do you avoid first-floor apartments for safety reasons or because you fear rats? How far away from a subway station are you willing to live? Do you need a place that will accept your emotional support parrots? I want to hear all of your odd, serious, trivial or most 'New York' wants and needs. We'll read every submission and contact you if we're interested in learning more and possibly publishing part of your story. We won't publish any submission without reaching out to you and hearing back. We don't use your contact information for any reason other than to follow up with you, and we don't share it outside our newsroom.
New York Times
10-04-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Climate Change Could Become a Global Economic Disaster
As stocks gyrate in response to President Trump's on-again, off-again tariffs, the world is understandably focused on the immediate chaos affecting the global economy. Yet over the past few months a number of signals have pointed to a far more profound disruption on the horizon: the growing economic cost of climate change. In a recent report about the rising demand for air-conditioning, Morgan Stanley casually observed that the planet was all but certain to blow past the goal of limiting the global average temperature rise to no more than 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, a threshold laid out in the Paris Agreement. The company's 'base case,' the report said, was that the world was moving toward a temperature increase of 3 degrees Celsius. That forecast, once thought of as extreme, is now becoming commonplace. The United Nations' Emissions Gap report for 2024 said that the world was likely to warm 3.1 degrees Celsius over the course of this century without efforts to rapidly reduce emissions. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has forecast that without drastic action temperatures will be even higher than that by the end of the century. A constant challenge when talking about global warming is appreciating that little numbers — a rise in temperatures by just a single degree, for example — represent utterly profound changes. Which is why it's worth pausing to consider what scientists have said about what the world would look like if average global temperatures rose 3 degrees Celsius, and what it will cost. At 3°C of warming, rising seas are likely to inundate many coastal cities, including metropolises like Rio de Janeiro, Shanghai, Miami and Osaka, Japan. A litany of other problems, including extreme weather, unrelenting heat waves, the proliferation of insect-borne diseases, widespread species extinction and declines in crop yields, would also get worse. It's impossible to know the actual cost of all these disruptions. Yet as the prospect of more intense warming becomes more likely, some estimates are beginning to emerge. By 2049, costs from the effects of climate change could total more than $38 trillion annually, according to a paper by scholars at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. In the United States alone, climate change is expected to wipe away $1.47 trillion in value from real estate around the country by 2055, according to a February report from First Street, which models climate risk. Just in New York City, more than 80,000 homes could be lost to floods in the next 15 years, my colleagues Mihir Zaveri and Hilary Howard reported this week. Beyond the immediate losses inflicted by severe weather and flooding, a decline in output is likely as crops fail and extreme heat strains supply chains. Researchers at ETH Zurich recently calculated that in a world that has warmed 3°C, global gross domestic product is likely to fall by an average of 10 percent, with poorer countries hardest hit. In a recent post on LinkedIn, Günther Thallinger, a member of the supervisory board of Allianz SE, the Swiss insurer, offered a stark warning about what these costs could mean for the financial system. Climate change is simply making some things uninsurable. 'The math breaks down: the premiums required exceed what people or companies can pay,' he said. 'This is already happening. Entire regions are becoming uninsurable.' But the risks extend well beyond the insurance business, Thallinger said. 'This is not a one-off market adjustment,' he wrote in his post. 'This is a systemic risk that threatens the very foundation of the financial sector. If insurance is no longer available, other financial services become unavailable too. A house that cannot be insured cannot be mortgaged. No bank will issue loans for uninsurable property. Credit markets freeze. This is a climate-induced credit crunch.' At that point, Thallinger wrote, 'the financial sector as we know it ceases to function.' 'And with it,' he added, 'capitalism as we know it ceases to be viable.' Trump administration cuts funding and staff for flagship climate report The Trump administration has cut funding and staffing at the program that oversees the federal government's premier report on how global warming is affecting the country, raising concerns among scientists that the assessment is now in jeopardy. Congress requires the federal government to produce the National Climate Assessment every four years. It analyzes the effects of rising temperatures on human health, agriculture, energy production, water resources, transportation and other aspects of the U.S. economy. The report is used by state and city governments, as well as private companies, to prepare for global warming. The last assessment came out in 2023. — Brad Plumer Read more. A wave of Trump moves on climate In the past few days, the Trump administration has signed a series of executive orders and announced other moves on climate. Here's what has happened: Trump signs orders aimed at reviving a struggling coal industry: Trump signed a flurry of executive orders aimed at expanding the mining and the burning of coal in the United States. One order directs federal agencies to repeal any regulations that 'discriminate' against coal production, to open new federal lands for coal mining and to explore whether coal-burning power plants could serve new A.I. data centers. — Brad Plumer and Mira Rojanasakul Learn more and read five takeaways from Trump's plan to rescue coal. Trump threatens climate policies in the states: First, the Trump administration moved to dismantle federal climate regulations. Now, it has launched an assault on efforts at the state and local levels, where many leaders are still working to try to avoid the dangerous impacts of global warming. Trump outlined the move in an expansive executive order he signed on Tuesday directing the Justice Department to block all 'burdensome and ideologically motivated 'climate change' or energy policies that threaten American energy dominance and our economic and national security.' — Lisa Friedman Read more. Trump administration cuts research funding, claiming it creates 'climate anxiety': The administration announced it is cutting nearly $4 million in federal funding for climate change research at Princeton University, saying that the work promoted 'exaggerated and implausible climate threats' and increased 'climate anxiety' among young Americans. The cuts to programs that study topics like sea-level rise and coastal flooding were announced Tuesday by the Commerce Department, which houses the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, one of the world's top climate science agencies. — Brad Plumer and Austyn Gaffney Read more. More climate news: Thanks for being a subscriber. Read past editions of the newsletter here. If you're enjoying what you're reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here. And follow The New York Times on Instagram, Threads, Facebook and TikTok at @nytimes. Reach us at climateforward@ We read every message, and reply to many!
New York Times
08-04-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
How Climate Change Could Make Homes Disappear
Good morning. It's Tuesday. Today we'll look at how one consequence of climate change, coastal flooding, could make New York's housing shortage worse. We'll also get details on testimony by Columbia University's former interim president, who told a federal task force that she did not remember the specifics of Columbia's report on antisemitism. In a city surrounded by water, communities along the shore are vulnerable to coastal flooding brought on by climate change. That is troubling for a city that also has a housing shortage, as New York does, because homes could be lost to rising water — 82,000 homes in the city and nearby suburbs over the next 15 years, according to a report from the Regional Plan Association, a New York-based urban research and policy group. The report also said that the New York region needed 362,000 homes today to relieve overcrowding and provide permanent housing for the shelter population. But that number will more than triple by 2040. I asked my colleague Mihir Zaveri, who with Hilary Howard analyzed the report, to explain the findings. What neighborhoods are at risk of flooding? When it comes to coastal flooding and rising sea levels, the areas along the coast will, of course, be affected the most. Specifically, in New York City, we're looking at areas like the Rockaways and South Ozone Park in Queens, Canarsie in Brooklyn and neighborhoods along the southeastern shore of Staten Island. The projected losses in areas on Long Island — like the towns of Hempstead, Babylon and Islip — make up nearly half of the overall toll. If the report is right and so many homes are lost in the next 15 years, how will that affect the housing crisis? The New York metropolitan area already has a steep housing shortage because not enough homes have been built in the past few decades. Because so many people want to live here, the lack of housing supply leads to an increase in prices. Anything, including flood risk, that further reduces the number of homes will make the housing shortage worse. That said, the roughly 80,000 or so homes lost to flooding is only a small fraction of a housing shortage that is already in the hundreds of thousands and could grow to a staggering 1.2 million homes when flood loss, population growth and other factors are taken into account. There are other reasons — like zoning rules, the costs of development — that play bigger roles in increasing the housing shortage. In 2012, Hurricane Sandy flooded a significant part of Staten Island. What happened to the homes that were in its path? Were they rebuilt to withstand another storm as powerful as Sandy? Many homes (even whole blocks) on Staten Island were destroyed during Sandy. Many of those homes had been built on wetlands that once served as a buffer against rising seawater. Hundreds of homes were not rebuilt; the state ended up buying hundreds of properties, clearing away the damaged homes and returning the land to its natural state. Still, many homes there remain in flood zones and might be susceptible to the next big storm. According to the report, more than 1,500 Staten Island homes could be lost by 2040. What about the plan to safeguard the entire city? And the resiliency projects on the Lower East Side? How far along are they? Flood control projects progress notoriously slowly. A major federal plan to protect New York City from coastal storms has yet to be approved by the federal government and is at least 20 years away from completion. Some local projects, though, are moving forward. On the Lower East Side, for example, the city has installed 'floodgates' and 'flood walls' to serve as barriers to rising floodwaters. This system should be operational by the end of next year. One expert told you that local officials need to 'rethink what a conventional home looks like.' How will the need to adapt affect communities with single-family, stand-alone homes? We've already seen how some homes will need to be bought out or relocated. And we know that in other places, we'll need new, costly and complicated infrastructure projects to keep rising water at bay. The report recommends shifting to denser housing, like apartment buildings, in areas that are less likely to flood. For this to happen at scale, the report says, zoning rules would need to change. If they did, very gradually, we could see fewer new homes with yards and more lots with multiple units on them instead. The report also recommends adapting buildings so they can withstand flooding and improving sewer systems. And what about Mayor Adams's 'City of Yes' plan? Will it allow for enough homes to cover the losses from climate change? The 'City of Yes' plan, which loosens zoning rules within the city, could allow developers to build roughly 80,000 additional homes in New York City. That number seems superficially similar to the number the city, Westchester County and Long Island are expected to lose to flooding by 2040. But it's important to remember that these are all hypotheticals. In fact, the 'City of Yes' initiative might reduce the city's housing needs by only around 14 percent by 2040, according to the report. The city would still be hundreds of thousands of homes short. Expect a mostly sunny, windy day, with temperatures in the mid-40s. In the evening, there will be a mostly clear sky with blustery winds and a low around 31 degrees. In effect until Saturday (Passover). The latest New York news Columbia's former president faced contentious questioning Dr. Katrina Armstrong, the former interim president of Columbia University, told a federal task force during closed-door testimony last week that she could not remember details from the university's report on antisemitism. She repeatedly said that the past year had been such a 'blur' that she had trouble recalling specifics and could not say what steps she had taken to fight antisemitism. Armstrong was questioned as part of an investigation into antisemitism at Columbia. The Trump administration canceled roughly $400 million in federal funding to Columbia last month. Since then, the university has been trying to convince the administration that it is responding to White House demands to do more to fight antisemitism on campus. The session took place several days after Armstrong had stepped down as interim president. The university initially said that she would remain chief executive of the university's medical center. But on Sunday, the medical center said that Armstrong would take a sabbatical, and the university's trustees released a statement distancing themselves from what she said in the deposition. 'This testimony does not reflect the hard work undertaken by the university to combat antisemitism, harassment and discrimination and ensure the safety and well-being of our community,' the trustees said, adding that they were 'firmly committed to resolving the issues raised by our federal regulators, with respect to discrimination, harassment and antisemitism, and implementing the policy changes and commitments' outlined in a letter from the board dated March 21. The board's co-chair was Claire Shipman until her appointment as acting president after Armstrong stepped down. A transcript of the April 1 session with Armstrong was leaked to The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative publication, which published it on Sunday. A government official confirmed its authenticity. My colleague Sharon Otterman writes that the transcript offers a glimpse of the tensions between Columbia and representatives of the Trump administration's multiagency antisemitism task force, which is investigating at least 10 universities in an effort to root out what it sees as disturbing antisemitic activity on campuses. Good Manners Dear Diary: I was strolling through Joan of Arc Park on the Upper West Side. An older woman was walking her little dog in front of me. A young man, evidently in a hurry, passed me and cut right in front of the woman, causing her to stop short. 'Sorry,' the young man said. 'Please excuse me.' The woman nodded and said it was fine. 'I was actually talking to your dog,' the young man said. — Jim Pavia Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here. Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. P.S. Here's today's Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here. Stefano Montali and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@ Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
