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Dear New Yorkers,

A deal in the state budget — expected to be announced as early as today — includes a compromise on housing that will allow Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams to claim they have a package that will jumpstart construction to solve the city’s housing crisis.

Almost no one is happy about it.

Real estate groups, tenant activists, and progressive Democrats like city Comptroller Brad Lander have all denounced the package.

But given the way Albany works — where controversial legislation is bundled within a massive budget that can only be voted up or down — Assembly members and state Senators will find it very difficult to derail the plan.

“That's why they do it in the budget,” said one person close to the negotiations — who asked not to be identified given the uproar about the deal.

And, whether the changes are enough to achieve Hochul’s and Adams’ aims will depend on details that have not yet been made public, say experts on housing.

Read more about the details of the housing deal here.

Weather scoop by New York Metro Weather Monday's Weather Rating: 9/10. NOW WE'RE COOKING! Most of today will be extremely pleasant with partly sunny skies, low humidity, high temperatures in the mid to upper 70s (!!) and low humidity. A few scattered showers are possible this afternoon, but the vibes are tremendous!

Our Other Top Stories

Fire Marshals made a first arrest in the FDNY’s campaign to stamp out e-bike battery fires last Friday, as the department filed criminal charges against a Flatbush e-bike shop owner who repeatedly faced civil summons for allegedly selling illegal uncertified batteries and charging them in an unsafe manner. This marks the first time the department has used criminal charges against people violating laws related to e-bike batteries. Until now, store owners have only been hit with civil penalties, which in most cases only carry minimal financial penalties On Friday afternoon, two days shy of the five-year anniversary of the police killing of Kawaski Trawick in The Bronx, the NYPD announced in a 259-word statement that Commissioner Edward Caban had decided the officers involved in the fatal shooting would face no discipline. For years, the Civilian Complaint Review Board — an independent oversight body that investigates use of force by police officers — had sought last year to terminate officers Brendan Thompson and Herbert Davis for their roles in Trawick’s death. A federal judge is allowing a lawsuit against the MTA’s Access-A-Ride service, which provides car transit for New Yorkers with disabilities, to move forward in the discovery phase of proceedings. At issue is whether the MTA is violating the New York City Human Rights Law by requiring people with disabilities to book Access-A-Ride trips by 5 p.m. the day before travel. The lawsuit was filed after a 2022 Justice Department report about excessive travel times and untimely dropoffs — and after THE CITY reported in 2021 that Access-A-Ride service reliability had sunk to its lowest level in years because of driver shortages and increased traffic. But recently, the MTA has been able to point to key turnarounds: improved on-time performance, fewer driver no-shows, a drop in wait times, increased customer satisfaction and ridership returning to pre-COVID levels. On the latest episode of FAQ NYC, journalist Steve Fishman talks about his new podcast, The Burden, where he speaks with and digs into the history of former NYPD “super-cop” Louis Scarcella. Listen here.

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Things To Do

Here’s what’s going on around the city this week.

Monday, April 15: Written Work: Poetry, Labor, and the Global City, the kickoff event of the New York Public Library’s World Literature Festival — a book party “unpacking the pleasures and pain of working in the city.” Free from 6:30 p.m. online and in-person at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library.  Wednesday, April 17: Henry Street Settlement’s 9th Annual Lillian Wald Symposium, a dialogue about the recent increase of migrants and asylum seekers in NYC. Free from 6 to 8 p.m. at Abrons Arts Center in Manhattan. Thursday, April 18: Spring Wildflower Walk, an educational walk led by Urban Park Rangers that teaches botany basics, plus how to identify different species of flowers. Free from 3 to 4 p.m. at Seton Falls Park in The Bronx.

THE KICKER: The Vessel — a 150-foot-tall, climbable sculpture in Hudson Yards that closed in 2021 after a spate of suicides — will reopen this year with new safety measures in place.

Thanks, as always, for reading. Make it a great Monday.

Love,

THE CITY

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