Author: linked

The name alone is worthy of a link, but today is also the 202nd birthday of one the great engineers of the 19th century. As detailed in this Wired article, Brunel designed a number of early suspension bridges, some of which are still in use today, as well as the first transatlantic steamship and the Great Britain, the first trans-Atlantic screw-propeller iron steamship (and the world’s largest ship). His Great Eastern steamship, launched in 1858, was the largest ship in the world until the construction of the Lusitania in 1906.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, one of the three most powerful men in Albany, apparently supported congestion pricing. He just couldn’t convince anyone else to go along with him.

[Silver said] he favored some kind of congestion proposal but that the mayor’s plan simply lacked enough support to pass. “Let me be clear: If I were making the decision alone, I might have made a different decision,” Mr. Silver said.

Right.

No one goes there, its too crowded.

Seriously, we drove by on our way through Fort Greene yesterday, but there was no parking anywhere (it was also prime church-going time). From what we saw, and have seen posted (20,000 people!), it sounds like it was a rousing success.

An interesting infographic from yesterday’s Times on the extent of the subprime foreclosure situation (aka, the shitpile) across the country (there is no direct link to the chart, you need to click on the “Multimedia” link on the left). The big map tells us that the NYC metro area has a an above average number of subprime foreclosures, but that the ratio of subprime loans to total loans in lower in our region than in most. The smaller maps at the bottom are more interesting, though (and more of a silver lining): on a per capita basis, the construction boom in the NYC metro area has seen a below average number of new housing units, and, the area has a below average unemployment rate. Hopefully those numbers mean that there will be a little bit less shit in the shitpile in our area.

(Be careful of the chart junk in the big map. The perspective skews in favor of the southern states, and the area of the extrusions has no meaning. Rather than relying on arbitrary geographical boundaries, it would have been more useful to adjust the area of each bar to indicate the volume of troubled (or total) loans. Then we could better compare, say, St. Louis to New York to Las Vegas, or Barnstable to Minneapolis to Sacramento.)

Assemblyman James Brennan thinks the DOB should do a better job policing site safety. According to the Voice, the current system is rigged against the public:

Essentially, current buildings-department regulations create a race between aggrieved citizens and corner-cutting developers: Neighbors have to muster all their energy to stop illegal work, while builders try to outrun them, getting foundations in the ground and walls up before anyone throws a red flag. Then the developers’ lawyers go to work, arguing that so much money has already been expended that civic decency should allow them to continue.

According to PropertyShark (via the Real Deal), first-quarter foreclosures are way up in NYC. The distribution is interesting – Queens leads with a whopping 508 (in one three-month period), and Staten Island is second with 174. Brooklyn had 140, the Bronx 73 and Manhattan only 23.

In the Times’ Cityroom blog today, a story about Kennedy Rivera, “a housing specialist with Bushwick Housing Independence, a nonprofit group that by its own account takes on 30 clients a month fighting eviction by landlords eager to rent to younger, hipper and better-off tenants”.

This morning, a tractor trailer crashed into a building at 51 Kent Avenue, at the corner of north 11th Street. As Gothamist has already noted, Williamsburg starts at North 14th Street. I’d add that Kent Avenue is in Wiliamsburg, Kent Street is Greenpoint.

Yet another crony resigns. Of course not for his work presiding over the largest housing meltdown in over 70 years; nor for politicizing his office. Just run of the mill corruption and cronyism.

Nice job, Al.

(In related news, the Mine Safety and Health Agency is apparently a little too cozy with the mine companies it regulates:

The federal agency charged with overseeing mine safety was negligent in protecting workers at the Crandall Canyon Mine, the Labor Department’s own Inspector General says in a new report.

Combine Bloomberg’s money with Obama’s ability to raise money, and, well…