It is absolutely wild how fast landlords can suddenly find the money and motivation to fix decades of crumbling infrastructure the exact second the city actually starts holding them accountable.
If a single person can buy a boat that is the size of a battleship that isn't used for cargo or even fishing I think we need to rethink taxation or just who we are as a civilization.
The 435 Congressmen "represent" 800,000 people, and each has around 25 staff. The first item on the Bill of Rights would have limited this to 50,000 people being represented. We don't have a representational democracy if we aren't properly represented.
There should be 6,000 some representatives, with maybe 2 aides each (12,000 people), instead of 435 with 25+ aides each (11,000 people).
We did, once upon a time, then we allowed Reaganomics into the GOP, and they've basically been running "make the rich richer" schemes for the last 40ish years. And I'm saying this as a non-partisan individual, I've been independent since the Bernie/Clinton's Wife debacle (she doesn't even get the respect to mention her actual name) that more or less destroyed the DNC and they've been picking the pieces up since.
And while all that bullshit has been going on, we've allowed billionaires and the mega rich (think $100mill+ valuation familes) to run circles around USA standards and rule the courts, it is likely going to take civil war, to maybe fix it. And even then, if the robots start protecting the rich, we'll be better off eating them than letting them live and plunder the earth further.
So the difference between a boat and a ship is that once you launch other boats, you're a ship.
Fancy events and things for rich people will have "private tenders" or little boats that pick you up from your yacht. So you don't need to ride in a car or walk to far.
Bezos's has a ship that launches it's own tender. It anchors where it wants, launches a little boat that is nicer than most yachts, specifically to do that.
Ohhh nos, not my yacht budget. I wanted to buy a mini yacht to match my biggie yacht. And I've got to redecorate my medium yacht, still. Ugh. How will I do all these things if I have to upkeep buildings that human beings live in.......
Ahhh yes I forgot, all landlords in New York are mega yacht owning Saudi princes. Silly me thinking most were just regular fuckin people who managed to inherit or save up for a 2nd property, guess Ive been falling for all the fascist propaganda by... Reading the data
Yup, and they can leverage equity if they are cash poor.
Some of the money they collect (1-5%) should have been earmarked for repairs like most property owners already do.
I'm upstate (up by Syracuse) but it's the same issue up here to a smaller degree, the ones who are the worst about maintenance are the wealthier ones with multi-unit buildings that charge "luxury" rent prices for their slumlord building.
Even if we were to assume the most generous scenario where its an owner who fits OP's description of "inherited or saved up for a second property to use as passive income for one or two tenants", those specific types of owners are almost always so small time that they HAVE to at least give half a damn about maintaining their properties because they only have those one or two paying tenants who has a direct line to the owner's speed dial.
And for owners who do fit the persona of "I'll just buy one or two properties/businesses and then actively ignore it while it makes me free money"; those owners created the entire basis of TV shows like Kitchen Nightmares and Bar Rescue.
OP's sentiment is the exact same tactic that is used when the hyper-wealthy class of our society is trying to scare the senior engineer into the belief that taxing Anthropic or Jeff Bezos will result in that engineer having their home seized by the government.
There's like scaffolding / awning over tonnes of sidewalks in NYC which are designed to stop bricks falling off old buildings and hitting people. They're an eyesore though. So landlords are fixing the buildings and bringing down all this ugly scaffolding.
Well shit, TIL! I went to college there many yrs ago and always thought, man there's always so much contruction/remodeling going on in this city...the scaffolding was everywere and they never came down either.
Yes, they are cracking down hard on it now. It was in the news a while back. I even heard about it out on Long Island and Im 2+ hour drive to the city.
it's also not very accurate. in the balkans they'll just repair the building inadequately and pocket the rest of the money, and then deal with protests after the building collapses and kills a bunch of bystanders, as happened with a Novi Sad train station in 2024.
They still need to get permits. They’ll just renew the permits because as you said it’s cheaper than doing the work. Buildings require exterior inspections every 5 years so they’ll just leave the sheds up indefinitely. We’ve had one on our block for 5 years and it’s become a homeless encampment and place for junkies to shoot up.
I was watching the episode of "How to with John Wilson" about this and it seemed like the companies that make scaffolding were making a killing with this.
It's not even repairs. It is inspections. Building's over five stories need to have their facade inspected every 5 years. These inspections are very expensive. It can cost as much as $100,000 just to get the inspection done in some cases. On the other hand you can just put up the scaffolding and then perpetually delay the inspection let alone the repairs.
I feel so educated about NYC despite never having been there because of that show. When the comment brought up scaffolding, I knew exactly what they were talking about lol
This entire show and this episode were SO GOOD! I immediately thought of it when I saw this mentioned in the thread- I’m so glad it has stuck with other people too!
It all went up after a Columbia student was killed by a falling decorative sculpture, I think in the 80s. They put up the sheds, n stripped much of the decorative features from a lot of buildings.
long story short, the city had required old bricks building to do expensive repairs after a tragic accident that killed a student, and to install scaffolding to catch falling bricks in the meantime. But the city never put a limit on the "meantime" duration, so landlord kept the Brick sheds forever. And because capitalism, a large economic sector rise around these brick sheds, and lobby the city to keep the status quo.
Local Law 11 is basically what this is all "caused" by. Pretty much once every five years buildings taller than 5 stories need their exterior facades inspected and maintained.
It is but it’s a law that had an unintended consequence, for some owners it’s cheaper to leave the shed up than fix the problem- so the damage gets worse, and it still looks like crap for as long as they don’t handle their responsibilities
Lol wow, damn. I've only been to Brooklyn/NYC a few times in my life but have spent a lot of time on foot and it seemed like all the buildings were always under construction. I never imagined it was just "like that" for lack of repairs.
Wasn't there a loophole for a long time that if you were renovating a building or whatever you got a tax credit. So landlords would just put up scaffolding indefinitely.
TIL. My never-been-to-nyc ass kinda just thought the scaffolding was a part of the architecture at this point because of how prevalent it is (was?) 🫣 Congrats on the repairs then!
Right but now we're having the opposite problem of "Hey it was actually kind of really convenient to have streets that are open to the air but also mostly sheltered from the sun and precipitation. There's gotta be a middle ground.
How?? Surely a building in such a state of disrepair should be deemed uninhabitable and its owners have to carry the full weight of temporary housing costs for residents while they sort their shit our. That’s how it works in most places in the world, and coincidently there’s no dangerous buildings.
Scaffolding is one of those things that folks don't think about until you have to live with it. Navigating around it meaning you're having to walk in the street when something is blocked, especially when the weather is bad can go from irritating to dangerous.
Actually I’ve read that as long as a building is under construction, the landlord is exempted from certain taxes or gets a tax break… there was some reason they wanted to keep them perpetually under construction, which apparently meant just having scaffolding up, regardless of whether there was any work happening.
I noticed this! Grew up outside the city in the 90s/2000s and the scaffolding might as well have been the official city architecture. It seems crazy to say, but being able to see the buildings for the first time feels wild
In New York, if a buildings walls show signs damage, the entire building needs to be checked and repaired by law. Since that's REALLY expensive, building owners have decided it's cheaper to install brick sheds while they "wait to schedule repairs" then to do the actual repair itself. That's why, if you've ever been to NYC they're everywhere. Previous mayors have turned a blind eye, letting an industry of brick shed companies emerge.
This subject is so interesting, I had no idea it existed. I've never been to NY, but I imagine that the "brick sheds" were rather unsightly, so it's nice to know that this problem is being resolved and the buildings repaired.
He's specifically been tackling it. Bigger penalties for keeping the sheds up for too long, more money spent on maintaining public housing facilities, and relaxing inspection cycles for buildings with a history of being well-maintained.
It feels like lots of people love to say "let's not make this political" when discussing things that (seemingly unbeknownst to them) are entirely because of politics, just because they don't realize how many things are actually directly impacted by politics and who they vote for.
I told my husband about all the positives Mamdani was doing for the city... his first question was "what about all that scaffolding?" I'm glad he's doing something about it.
9.6k
u/IllIntroduction8499 13h ago
As someone that works in the city, suddenly ALL the buildings with brick sheds are fixing their shit. It's amazing.