The BroadsheetDAILY ~ 6/23/20 ~ Putting a Dent in Rents Pandemic and Economic Downturn Impact Local Leasing

Lower Manhattan’s Local News

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Editor’s Note: Today, Tuesday, June 23, voters in the Democratic primary will effectively decide the race for the State Assembly seat representing the 65th District in Lower Manhattan, which stretches from the Battery to Vesey Street on the West Side and traces a jagged line between Broadway and the East River, topping out just above Houston Street, on the East Side.

There are two major candidates vying for the Democratic nomination: incumbent Yuh-Line Niou and aspirant Grace Lee.

The Broadsheet asked both candidates five questions.

Here are Ms. Lee’s and Ms. Niou’s responses.

Now it’s up to you to go out and VOTE!

Putting a Dent in Rents

Pandemic and Economic Downturn Impact Local Leasing

A new report from brokerage Douglas Elliman and appraiser Miller Samuel indicates that rents are trending downward in Lower Manhattan, while the inventory of vacant apartments is ballooning. These tidal shifts appear to be attributable to the health crisis associated with the pandemic coronavirus, and the economic slowdown it has triggered. The monthly Elliman Report for May documents that new lease signings have fallen at an unprecedented rate, while vacancies have surged to a new record.

For all of Lower Manhattan, the report finds that the median rent is now $3,895, which represents a 7.3 percent drop from one month earlier when the median rent was $4,200, but a slight increase of one-half of one percent from last May, when the median figure was $3,875.

The number of new leases signed in May fell off a cliff, dropping to 948 from 2,542 in May 2019. This constitutes a 62.7 percent drop, year to year, but a 51 percent increase from April’s leasing activity, which was marked by an even-worse 628 new signings.

If numbers of leases and rental amounts present a somewhat mixed picture, however, inventory tallies are unambiguously discouraging for landlords, and trending in only one direction. In May of 2019, vacant apartments comprised 2.36 percent of Lower Manhattan’s total. By last month, this figure had crept up to 2.49 percent. And for May, it topped out at a new record of 3.65 percent.

The month of May is often interpreted as a bellwether in the real estate industry, serving as the gateway to the warm-weather leasing season (for brokers, the equivalent of what Christmas is to retailers), and reliably predicting the outlook for the remainder of the year.

Matthew Fenton

Tribeca Community On Display

All of Us Thank All of You

Fine artist and long time Downtown resident Adele H. Rahte has spent the stay-at-home period designing and creating these fabric collages representing the people in our community as a special form of thank you to the essential workers of our community and city for keeping us safe.

On display during the month of July at the Tribeca Community Window Gallery located at 160 West Broadway.

The Downtown Virtual Calendar

Tuesday June 23

12Noon

Beyond the Resume: Getting Your Foot in the Door

LMHQ

You’ve spent hours crafting the perfect cover letter and your resume is spotless. You’re a great candidate, but it feels like you’re sending emails into a black hole. Now that you’re ready to find your dream job, how do you get your foot in the door? And once you’re in, how do you land the gig? Rose Chan Siow, Founder and Principal of SCOUT and facilitator of last month’s workshop on Cultivating Your Career in a Time of Uncertainty will take participants through the key steps of securing and excelling at a job interview. FREE

6PM

Community Board 1 Month Full Board Meeting

Live Remote Meetings – https://live.mcb1.nyc

Here’s a link to tonight’s AGENDA

7PM

Trivia Tuesday

Brookfield Place New York

Test your trivia IQ at home with your friends and family! Follow along on Zoom and enter your answers via Kahoot (links to be provided) every Tuesday for a digital version of Brookfield Place’s weekly trivia series with ThinkFast. Part of the #BFPLatHome series. Prizes: 1st Place: $150 gift card to a BFPL restaurant of the winner’s choice; 2nd Place: $20 BFPL Gift Card; 3rd Place: Two bags of For Five Coffee – winner’s choice! (must live in NYC, NJ, or CT). FREE

Ongoing

Battery Dance

Battery Dance TV provides free online live dance classes and programming for the general public.

Met Opera Streams

Each day, a different encore presentation from the company’s Live in HD series is available for free streaming on the Met website, with each performance available for 23 hours, from 7:30 p.m. EDT until 6:30 p.m. the following day. The schedule will include outstanding complete performances from the past 14 years of cinema transmissions, starring all of opera’s greatest singers.

Coaches Dana & Ann came up with some wild challenges for you to try.

Show off your skills at home, in the park, anywhere!

Rockefeller Rainbow #ROCKYRAINBOW

Make a rainbow with this classic soccer trick

B-Ball Court Balance #BBALLCOURTBALANCE

Get creative with a basketball balance

Teardrop TP Juggle #TEARDROPTP

How long can you juggle a roll of TP?

Wagner Wiggle #WAGNERWIGGLE

Show off your dance moves!

Tag your videos & pics to @bpcparks / #cfd2020

to receive a special Virtual BPC Community Field Day e-mail on June 26th!

Race and Class

A Lower Manhattan Community Leader Considers How Much Has Changed and How Much Still Needs To Change

“I’m a lot older than many of the young people now protesting in the streets,” reflects Pat Moore, 67, who chairs the Quality of Life Committee on Community Board 1. “And my father, who died last January, was a police officer at a time when there were very few black men on the NYPD. So I have a slightly more complicated perspective about all this.”

“I was born in 1953, and my family is from Louisiana,” she recalls, “so I’m old enough to remember traveling to the South as a little girl, and sitting at the back of the bus, or visiting the public pool, where nobody who looked like me was allowed to go in.”

To read more…

Pushing for Peace of Mind

Local Leaders Urge Heightened Federal Response to September 11 Mental Health Issues

Community Board 1 (CB1) is urging federal lawmakers to expand benefits offered by the World Trade Center Health Program and the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund to include more robust help for survivors of the terrorist attacks who are grappling with mental health issues.

To read more…

‘A Fraudulent Scheme to Evade the Rent Stabilization Laws’

FiDi Renters Seek Recompense for Years of Rent Overcharges; U.S. Supreme Court Declines to Overturn Tenants’ Victory

More Financial District tenants are going to court to demand restitution from years of illegally high rent, on the heels of a 2019 ruling by New York State’s highest court, which found that as many as 5,000 Lower Manhattan apartments had been illegally deprived of rent stabilization benefits.

The most recent suit was filed on behalf of tenants at 90 Washington Street, a 397-unit rental building located between Rector and Joseph P. Ward Streets. This filing follows similar legal actions on behalf of tenants at 63-67 Wall Street, Ten Hanover Square, 50 Murray Street, 90 West Street, and 53 Park Place.

At issue is the 421-g subsidy program, To read more…

Eyes to the Sky June 15 – 28, 2020

Summer Solstice – June 20, 2020

Every day is Sun day for the month of June, when the Sun is up for 15 hours plus a few minutes most days and darkness prevails, most days, for a few minutes less than 9 hours. The longest days of the year occur as Earth reaches the point in its orbit when the North Pole is tilted closest to the Sun, known as the summer solstice. This year, astronomers calculate that the solstice occurs on Saturday, June 20 at 5:44pm. According to my pencil on paper figuring from Starry Night* data, which is offered to a tenth of a second, day length at our location on Friday the 19^this 3 seconds shorter than on the solstice and on the 20^th day length is 2 seconds longer than on Sunday the 21^st.

To read more…

Changing Lanes

CB1 Wants to Claim Part of the Pike for Cyclists

Community Board 1 is calling upon City and State transportation officials to close—at least temporarily—the lane of Route 9A (also know as the West Side Highway) that adjoins the Hudson River Park, between Chambers and Canal Streets, to enable continued social distancing, as New York scales back quarantine measures in the wake of the pandemic coronavirus outbreak.

The plan would use concrete barriers to bar traffic from the westernmost lane of the eight-lane highway, for a half-mile stretch of the waterfront boulevard, in order to allow users of the Hudson River Park additional room for biking, jogging, and walking.

To read more…

Honorable WilliamWall Opens for Business

The Honorable William Wall is open.

Click for more information.

June 23: Today in History

Alan Turing

930 – World’s oldest parliament, the Iceland Parliament, established

1683 – William Penn signs friendship treaty with Lenni Lenape Indians.

Some historians place the date of the treaty today in 1683, when Penn purchased two tracts of land from Tamanend and his associates. It is believed that transaction and the “Great Treaty” took place at the same time. William Penn’s words when he met with with Tamanend and other Delaware chiefs, of the Turtle Clan, under the great elm at Shackamaxon, within the limits of Philadelphia, “We meet on the broad pathway of good faith and good-will; no advantage shall be taken on either side, but all shall be openness and love. We are the same as if one man’s body was to be divided into two parts; we are of one flesh and one blood.”

The reply of Tamanend, is equally noble: “We will live in love with William Penn and his children as long as the creeks and rivers run, and while the sun, moon, and stars endure.” The “Great Treaty” was broken when the Penn’s Creek Massacre occurred on October 16, 1755. (from Wikipedia)

1713 – The French residents of Acadia are given one year to declare allegiance to Britain or leave Nova Scotia, Canada.

1780 – American Revolution: Battle of Springfield fought in and around Springfield, New Jersey

1810 – John Jacob Astor organizes Pacific Fur Company in Astoria, Oregon

1868 – Christopher Latham Sholes patents “Type-writer”

1888 – Frederick Douglass is first African-American nominated for president

1917 – Ernie Shore replaces Red Sox pitcher Babe Ruth with a runner on, he throws him out and retires all 26 he faces for a perfect game

1949 – 1st 12 women graduate from Harvard Medical School

1951 – British diplomats Guy Burgess & Donald Maclean flee to USSR

1959 – Convicted Manhattan Project spy Klaus Fuchs is released after only nine years in prison and allowed to emigrate to Dresden, East Germany

1972 – Nixon and Haldeman agree to use CIA to cover up Watergate

1974 – First extraterrestrial message sent from Earth into space

Birthdays

47 BC – Pharaoh Ptolemy XV of Egypt (d. 30 BC)

1858 – William Ernst Johnson, Cambridge England, mathematician

1911 – David Ogilvy, advertising whiz (Ogilvy & Mathers)

1912 – Alan Turing, mathematician/pioneer in computer theory

1927 – Bob Fosse, Chicago Ill, choreographer/director (Cabaret, Damn Yankees)

Deaths

79 – Vespasian, Roman Emperor, dies at 69

1980 – Clyfford Still, American painter (b. 1904)

1995 – Jonas Salk, biologist (Polio vaccine), dies of heart failure

1997 – Betty Shabazz, widow of Malcolm X, suffering from burns, dies at 63

2001 – Yvonne Dionne, one of the Canadian Dionne quintuplets (b. 1934)

2009 – Ed McMahon, American television personality (b. 1923)

Previously Published Downtown News

COVID Compensation

CB1 Endorses Push to Expand VCF Coverage to Pandemic Illness

Community Board 1 (CB1) has signed on to a campaign that aims to expand the eligibility criteria of the September 11 Victims Compensation Fund (VCF) to include illnesses related to the outbreak of the pandemic coronavirus.

Read the rest of the story.