Jon Matthies via Compfight cc

A new study from the Brookings Institution shows that poverty in American suburbs increased by 64 percent over the last decade, more than twice the rate of poverty growth in cities. In the New York/tristate metro area alone, the number of suburban poor grew 28 percent since 2000, while the number of poor in the city grew 2 percent.

Alan Berube, one of the authors of the report, says that while the city becomes more expensive and popular, low wage economies are increasingly found outside them. The recession coupled with population growth in the suburbs contributed to the explosion of poverty there. "And in the end," he adds, "Where poverty is--is where affordable housing is."

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Being this outright defensive about the middle class is probably the most blatant difference between Ms. Quinn and her boss.

Yesterday, the City Council Speaker gave her State of the City address -- or, basically, What I'll Do As Mayor -- and mentioned the income tax bloc in between the poor and rich numerous times. The speech included a study that showed what we've all been thinking/living: the middle class in New York City (and, for that matter, across the country) since 2001 has been shrinking because, yes, the rent is too damn high.

And, in response, Ms. Quinn proposed her first ambition to stem off rising costs of living: 40,000 new middle-class apartments, using $300 million in taxpayer money to fund it all. The homes would be aimed for families of four that make around $142,000. To add to that, Ms. Quinn came out swinging against gentrification, focusing particularly on now-second-highest-most-expensive-place-ever Brooklyn: "I refuse to accept the notion that large portions of our city are destined to become a luxury only available to the wealthiest among us."

Is Christine Quinn the new Jimmy McMillan? For the mayoral race's sake, we sure hope so.

You can watch the entire speech here.

[jsurico15@gmail.com/@JSuricz]

Jason Lewis/ Village Voice

Timothy Hogan (left), deputy commissioner at DOB, Michael Flowers, director of mayor's financial task force, and Joseph Woznica (far right), deputy assitant chief for FDNY deliver testimony at yesterday's hearing.ay;

It appears as though the city is actually doing a good job executing its multi-agency task-force established to crack down on illegal building conversions.

But, it's also apparent that the city is still having problems with illegal hotels and with affordable housing.

The city came under-fire in 2011 after a family of three and two firefighters were killed in separate fires in illegally converted buildings in the Bronx and Brooklyn. In June 2011, the administration announced the Housing Access Task Force, a multi-agency effort to better access and inspect potentially dangerous illegally converted buildings.

"The thing that I think has been most successful frankly is just the coordination that's gone on between the [Department of Housing Preservation and Development],the [Department of Buildings] and the fire department, " Michael Flowers, director for the mayor's financial task-force, said at a City Council hearing on illegal conversions yesterday. "That level of coordination is such a wonderful thing for bringing to bear the city's resources in the most efficient way on this thorniest of problems."

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Public officials took big money to award contracts and favors.

Two guilty pleas entered yesterday revealed rot inside the city's affordable-housing department.

Luis Adorno, an inspections supervisor with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, and Michael Provenzano, the department's director of construction services, both confessed to taking bribes in exchange for awarding construction contracts.

Adorno admitted that he took $100,000 in return for helping a contractor win a departmental construction contract.

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El Diario

95 percent of the Montealegres belongings

"The whole marshal encounter was surreal," Andres Mares Muro said about Maria Montealegre's eviction that went down late afternoon this past Monday. "She vomited afterwards, her kids wept lots."

Muro, a former staff member of the Mirabal Sisters Cultural and Community Center in Hamilton Heights, has been helping Montealegre, and her family, throughout her housing/eviction situation since the beginning, exchanged texts with the Voice throughout Monday evening informing us that after going to various shelters, and being turned away, Montealegre and her kids ended up in a Queens motel.

After we reported that neither Mirabal, Public Advocate, Urban Justice Center, Housing Preservation Department, nor Councilmember Robert Jackson, did little to help Montealegre avoid eviction or attain housing--let alone take over 1985 Amsterdam Ave. or hold Moshe Samovha accountable for his multiple housing violations, we got some angry phone calls. More »

Steven Thrasher

Maria Montealegre, the tenant at 1985 Amsterdam Avenue who was assaulted by her landlord and evicted after helping organize neighbors, has been evicted today. A marshal showed up roughly around 4 this afternoon, leaving 95 percent of her, and her family's, belongings on the sidewalk.

A bevy of people from "community groups" -- mostly from the Mirabal Center -- came to a press conference outside her building. Despite the presence of many people in yellow Mirabal shirts, no one had a real plan in place, nor anywhere for Montealegre and her four kids to go tonight.

And though Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and Councilmember Robert Jackson's offices seemed like they might get heavily involved in recent days, neither were there today.

In fact, almost everyone who has ever said they were trying to help Montealegre is doing little more than to wait for her to actually get evicted, put on the street, and to be put into the homeless-shelter system after she's actually homeless.

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Eighty of New York's most crime-ridden housing developments will be fitted with security cameras over the next year and a half, to deter shootings and theft.

This decision occurred after the New York Daily News reported that while the city council had earmarked tens of millions of dollars for the purpose, but the New York City Housing Authority has been sitting on the money without taking action for several years.

Residents of the worst buildings said that the lack of cameras makes them prisoners in their own homes after dark. Meanwhile, NYCHA Chairman John Rhea, the man in charge of making sure that the money gets to where it needs to go, lives in a newly-built condo in Harlem with a 24-hour virtual doorman.

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Yesterday, Mayor Mike Bloomberg announced a competition for developers to design 275 to 300 square foot studios ("micro-units") that might serve as a model for New York's swelling small-household population -- city stats indicate that NYC has 1.8 million one- and two-person homes and only one million studios and one bedroom apartments.

How it works: The competition entails what's called a "Request for Proposals" for an apartment building made entirely out of these miniature units -- which, by the way, would have bathrooms and kitchens.

However, they would be smaller than what current regs permit. So, Bloomberg will waive some zoning rules so that a City property at 335 East 27th Street -- in Kips Bay -- can serve as an experimental space.

But is this really necessary?

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Mayor's Office via flickr

Shot of an illegal hotel at 38 West 88th Street in Manhattan.

In today's Mike-Bloomberg-praises-himself news, we've got for you a story about illegal hotels, fire hazards, and, one of the mayor's favorite things -- numbers.

Late yesterday afternoon, the mayor's office released results of the city's ongoing efforts to curb illegal hotels, which are converted residential buildings that are often plagued by dangerous conditions and are generally disliked by elected officials and New Yorkers who live near them (we imagine some tourists may like them?).

According to the mayor, the city's doing a good job!

These "hotels" are buildings that are designated for permanent occupancy, but are converted, often unsafely, into hostels and hotels by landlords who hope to attract tourists or others looking for a temporary place to stay.

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via nysenate.gov

State Senator Liz Krueger

Some good news today for those of you who pick fights with your landlords, or who are harassed by them for no good reason: New York courts are going to stop selling your names to companies that make it harder for you to secure your next apartment.

This policy change in the New York State Unified Court System is going after a phenomenon called "tenant blacklisting," where landlords basically reject potential tenants whose names are on a list, which says they have been parties in housing court actions. These lists don't say what they've done, or what the situation was, or if the tenant brought the landlord to court, or visa-versa. It just says that the tenant was involved in housing court at some point, and because there's such a high demand for housing in the city, that's often reason enough for landlords to immediately reject an applicant. In some cases, landlords may even mistake a potential tenant for someone on the list with the same first and last name.

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