NYC Council: Speaker Wants More NYC Homeowners, Housing at Aqueduct & Crackdown on Deed Theft

LIBOR Government Affairs recently attended the 2024 “State of the City” address, delivered by City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams (D-South Ozone Park, South Jamaica, Rochdale Village) and where the City Council’s leader “put forward several proposals to boost housing production as the city faces an acute housing crisis reflected in its record low 1.4% vacancy rate,” reported AMNY.

“The Speaker, in line with her  Fair Housing Framework legislation to push every neighborhood across the city to ‘equitably’ contribute to building housing, offered up sites in her own southeast Queens district she said are ripe for constructing new homes. Those include the 172-acre state-owned Aqueduct Racetrack, which is due to close in three to four years, and an adjacent vacant parcel of city-owned land. ‘This presents a generational opportunity to transform this site into housing and homeownership, to transform it into open space and new community amenities,’ she said.” Two local state legislators were very cool to the Aqueduct idea, but have supported Resorts World’s bid for an expanded casino at the South Ozone Park racetrack.

Speaker Adams “also proposed working with the city’s three public library systems to build housing atop their branches and on other city-owned land,” as well as a new package of bills that “aims to tackle deed theft, which predominantly affects working-class communities of color. The legislation will require the city to inform homeowners and people who inherit property of the fair market value of their homes, and will also provide legal assistance to help them protect their assets. The move comes in response to an  investigative series,” reported The City.