Curbed

In Ben Kallos’s view, internet access is as much a basic necessity as heat and hot water. And he has a point, after a year in which a lot of us began our remote-work lives. More than 500,000 households in New York City lack internet access — and that’s why Kallos, the Upper East Side City Councilmember, has put forth a proposal requiring that all new residential buildings, as well as those undergoing renovations, be wired for broadband and that owners of all existing buildings with ten or more units provide it to their tenants gratis. After a three-year grace period to get everything up and running, that would give virtually all New Yorkers internet access — in theory, at least. It’s a laudable goal, one that Kallos calls “the right thing to do.”

But shouldn’t universal broadband be a public amenity to begin with? (In many communities across the U.S., it already is.) What we’d be doing here, instead, is asking private-property owners to pay private companies in what amounts to a large giveaway to Spectrum, Verizon, and the other telecom giants who dominate the business. Kallos, of course, adopts the position — not unreasonable — that this is the way to get things done right now, rather than waiting for the much bigger, citywide shift laid out in the city’s Internet Master Plan. That is a yearslong, multibillion-dollar undertaking (and it has taken us since 2014 just to get to this point), and it will not, in the end, create a true citywide public-internet utility; instead, it will rely on a mix of public and private partnerships. “This is more immediate,” Kallos says, “and even in the jurisdictions that offer municipal broadband, it’s adding competition to the market, but it doesn’t make it free,” he told Curbed. “You have a lot of New Yorkers who, when the rent is done — the MetroCard, the groceries, the prescriptions are done — there’s just nothing left to pay for internet.”

Certainly true, but you have to suspect that landlords, or at least those owning unregulated apartments, will simply pass those costs right through in the form of rent increases. “Who is really going to end up paying for it? Is it the consumers, again?” asks Jane Coffin, a senior vice president at Internet Society, a nonprofit that advocates for greater access. The bill would prohibit landlords from spiking rents, but Kallos concedes that it doesn’t set fines or create an enforcement mechanism; that would fall to the city’s housing department, which is already overwhelmed. “I would start with public investment stepping up first,” Coffin says, noting that landlords can lawyer up against any new mandate. “You don’t want to run into a five-year battle in court with these cats.”

“Ultimately those free-market apartments will see rent increases to cover the costs. It’s human nature — it’s not greed. You have to cover the costs somewhere,” said Jay Martin, the executive director of the Community Housing Improvement Program, which represents operators of more than 400,000 apartments in the city. Martin’s greatest concern, he says, is for owners of rent-stabilized apartments, who would be on the hook to retrofit decades-old buildings with broadband and unable to recoup those costs through rent because increases for those units are set annually by the Rent Guidelines Board. Kallos’s bill, though, would set up city-funded grants to help landlords who can show that installing the infrastructure out of pocket would be a financial strain.

All that said, internet advocates aren’t ready to dismiss this bill. Most important, for Coffin, is ensuring that landlords aren’t pushed into a no-other-options situation for good. “There’s a balance here. You want the connectivity in the building, but are you locking in a company that landlords may not be able to afford later on? You don’t want to eliminate choice,” said Coffin. Incentives, such as a tax break, could make property owners more amenable to footing the bill for tenants’ internet. As long as there’s room for competition from smaller networks, suggests Brian Hall, the founder of NYC Mesh, a volunteer-run collective that connects tenants and buildings to the internet using fiber cables and wireless routers, the legislation is “the logical thing to do.” Hall explains that when Verizon and Spectrum install cables in a building, they can effectively keep any other entity out and maintain a monopoly; requiring the owners to do it during construction and renovations would remove that obstacle and makes it easier for NYC Mesh and other small community networks to offer a cheap alternative to the telecom giants. “Ideally, the internet would be regarded just as water. You don’t think about where your water comes from — it’s just there in your apartment,” said Hall. “This could make it a lot cheaper for the residents, and a lot simpler, and move us closer to that.”

You’re probably used to seeing headlines about neighborhood groups as they rail against shelters and hotels housing homeless New Yorkers — particularly over the past year and particularly on the Upper West Side. This week, residents on the Upper East Side surprisingly bucked that trend: At a community-board meeting about a new shelter on East 91st Street, locals overwhelmingly supported the project, Patch reported. “No fanfare, no problem. The men can stay,” said City Councilmember Ben Kallos, who actually advocated for the shelter (imagine that!).

This couldn’t be more different from the monthslong saga of their neighbors on the other side of Central Park. There, residents raised just shy of $180,000 to support legal action against three Upper West Side hotels to oust their homeless residents, and on a Facebook group, locals openly fantasized about using wasp spray and dog feces to make the homeless feel unwelcome. Some now oppose a newly planned shelter for women on West 59th Street. As one commenter on a recent West Side Rag post put it, “I don’t want to hear another word from anybody that the UWS isn’t doing its ‘fair share’ of housing the homeless. We’re doing far more. Why doesn’t the UES have any shelters and we get flooded with them?” This sentiment was echoed at community-board meetings, where residents asked why their similarly well-to-do Upper East Side neighbors weren’t hosting more homeless beds.

City Council member Ben Kallos has been trying to fight back since 2016, when he introduced legislation that would cap facade repair work at 90 days with the possibility to extend it for another 90, and require scaffolding to be removed if no work has taken place for seven days. Kallos also introduced legislation this year that would require scaffolding that’s been up for more than a year to be inspected at least once every six months by the DOB, at the building owner’s expense.

A Manhattan lawmaker wants to give communities a new tool in their fight against hulking towers: advance notice of when air rights transfers occur.

City Council member Ben Kallos, who represents the Upper East Side, introduced a bill Thursday that would mandate the Department of Finance notify and provide the local community board, councilmember, borough president, and City Council Speaker with the relevant documentation within five days of such a transfer occurring, according to Kallos. The legislation, he says, will give New Yorkers more time to prepare when a developer is cobbling together air rights or zoning lots to build towering buildings that loom over neighbors, and may give them pause before selling their unused development rights.

“My hope is that folks may say, ‘Not today. I’m not going to sell out and I’m not going to sell you my air rights,’” Kallos told Curbed. “When you’re racing the clock every second counts. The community needs as much notice as possible so that they can react and work with the developer to either get a responsible building or take necessary actions

Councilmember Ben Kallos, who represents the Upper East Side and who has been a champion of strengthening restriction on voids, called for the city to limit mechanical spaces to no more than 40 feet in these areas, broaden the scope of its review, and to narrow possible exemptions for mixed-use buildings. The issue is especially crucial because excessive voids fill buildings with empty space rather than housing, said Kallos.

The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) has scrapped a controversial private development on an Upper East Side public housing complex after fierce pushback and a lawsuit against the project.

NYCHA withdrew its application for a 50-story building on a playground at the Holmes Towers development it had planned with Fetner Properties. The building was intended to be the first of NYCHA’s 50/50 projects—rental towers built by private developers on public housing property—and was set to rise 530 feet above East 92nd Street with 339 apartments.

Last month the City Council voted to strengthen restrictions on excessive mechanical spaces used to beef up building heights. Now, a pair of council members are throwing their weight behind state efforts to make it even harder for developers to exploit those spaces.

Manhattan Council members Ben Kallos and Keith Powers have introduced a resolution backing state legislation that would place aggressive limits on ceiling heights to curb cavernous mechanical voids. It’s a necessary step to discourage overdevelopment in some of the city’s densest areas where there’s no shortage of luxury skyscrapers, says Kallos.

“We don’t need more buildings for billionaires, we need new affordable homes for everyday New Yorkers,” Kallos said. “We are fighting overdevelopment at every level of government, whether through city zoning, the city’s building code, or state legislation.”

The City Council voted to close a zoning loophole that has allowed developers to boost building heights with excessive mechanical spaces—but it’s only the first step in addressing the issue, say lawmakers.

“The point of city planning is to have predictability and we have a zoning text that has been under attack by people looking for loopholes, and the newest is these gerrymandered lots,” says Upper East Side City Council member Ben Kallos, who requested the study and has staunchly advocated for the city to crack down on the practice. “The point is to restore the predictability.”

In a May 13 letter to Marisa Lago, the director of the DCP, Kallos suggested applying lot restrictions already in place for residential properties to all zoning districts, with a certification process for instances where carving out a tiny lot is legitimate. In low-density neighborhoods zoned for single-family, detached homes, for instance, the minimum lot area is 9,500 square feet and the minimum lot width is 100 feet. Another solution could be creating a “Minimum Distance Between Lot Lines” restriction, Kallos suggested.

In a notable exchange with Council member Ben Kallos, who represents a swath of Manhattan’s east side, Hsu-Chen acknowledged that although the city tweaked the revision to cap voids at 30 feet it would support the council if it amended the modification back to the 25 foot cap.

“We would support the City Council modification,” said Hsu-Chen. “The city planning commission did take into consideration input from expert practitioners and made the modification, but we believe 25 feet would be sufficient.”

DCP acknowledged that its research did not identify buildings where an additional five feet would have been crucial for the function of a void, but said it opted to include the extra space to “future proof” buildings in case of innovations in equipment that require additional space. Though the agency did concede that additional zoning changes could be made later to accommodate such innovations.

The Tuesday review of the zoning change was the first leg in the final obstacle—the City Council—the revision must face before it can be enacted. Kallos told Curbed he anticipates a successfully push for the amendment to be scaled back to its original 25 foot cap.

“I believe we should have widespread support,” said Kallos. “I anticipate that amendment will be the case.”