Dear New Yorkers, Nearly four years after floating the idea, the city Parks Department will bring kiosk-like toilets to New York. The five prefabricated “Portland Loo” bathrooms, made by the Oregon-based company Madden Fabrication, are set to — finally — be installed next summer, THE CITY has learned, with one in each borough. They’ve been used in cities across North America as a cheaper alternative to new bathroom construction. At $185,000 each, they cost a fraction of the multimillion-dollar price for a traditional restroom. But the concept has had to wait as it got caught in city bureaucracy. Tough New York City building code restrictions have dragged out getting potties to parks. Evan Madden, a sales manager for the Loos’ manufacturer, told THE CITY that securing approval in New York “has been the most difficult” out of all their locations. “I built 180 of these, from Portland to Alaska to Miami, and I’ve never had this certification problem,” he said. Read more here. Some other items of note: Months after it launched, tenants and landlords are still unable to use an online platform that was supposed to streamline access to rental assistance benefits. As a result of the snafus, some New Yorkers are facing eviction. Look out for the signature-gathering hordes over the next few weeks, as petitioning season starts tomorrow for candidates to get on the ballot for all 51 open City Council seats, plus other offices. What exactly does it mean to sign one? Read our voter’s guide to petitioning. Gary Weiss, author of Retail Gangster: The Insane, Real-Life Story of Crazy Eddie, joins THE CITY’s FAQ NYC podcast to explain how a sales tax hustle on Kings Highway became a business whose ads were inescapable as it rapidly grew into a nine-figure fraud before the whole thing collapsed. - See how New York City is doing with our newsroom’s economic recovery tracker.
- For the latest local numbers on COVID-19 vaccinations, testing rates and more, check our coronavirus tracker.
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