Rooming houses protected in six boroughs

Six boroughs have moved to protect rooming houses, a residential format that’s been in decline for decades but which offers accessible living space for people with minimal incomes.

In other rental-type news, the city had to remove Airbnb renters from a condemned building on Centre Street in the Point. WTF? I thought Airbnb was largely on hold because of Covid-19, but where do you send people to live in the middle of a pandemic?

City hall had proposed for new projects the requirement of 20% social housing, 20% “affordable” housing and 20% units large enough for families, but a report from the OCPM has shot this down as insufficiently worked out. The OCPM recommended keeping only the social housing part, and the city’s already rethinking its plans. Is there a textbook definition of “affordable” for housing?