Rent Fraud: Illegal Rent Increases and the Loss of Affordable Housing in New York City

By analyzing rent registration histories ("rent histories") from 200 randomly selected apartments from across New York City and examining the Division of Housing and Community Renewal's (DHCR) services, this study investigates how often landlords register illegally high rents with DHCR and considers how well DHCR addresses the problem of illegal rent increases. The findings are troubling

The $20,000 Stove: How Fraudulent Rent Increases Undermine New York's Affordable Housing

New York is city of renters, with 2.1 million rental apartments. The majority of those apartments -- 1.4 million -- are regulated under the laws of Rent Stabilization and Rent Control. One of the key benefits of rent regulation for our city is that it keeps rent levels predictable, an important benefit for working- and middle-class neighborhoods.There is a major loophole in the system called the "1/40th program". This loophole allows a landlord to raise the rent on an unoccupied apartment by passing the cost of physical improvements to the next tenant by raising the monthly rent an amount equal to 1/40th of the total cost of the improvements. There is no oversight of any kind of the 1/40th program. Landlords are allowed to unilaterally impose 1/40th rent increases without prior approval, or even documentation. As a consequence of this lack of oversight, fraudulent abuse of the 1/40th program is increasingly common. This includes, for example, claiming a rent increase based on $40,000 when only$10,000 was actually spent on improvements. The lack of oversight of the 1/40th program has led to widespread fraud, and a significant loss of affordable housing. The state housing agency must accept a more active oversight role of the 1/40th program by using its current authority to audit increases and inform tenants residing in apartments where the landlord has filed a 1/40th increase. Additionally, tenants and housing advocates are calling for legislative changes that would extend the amortization formula from 40 months to 84 months and give the state housing agency a stronger oversight role by authorizing it to approve rent increases. These changes are necessary to discourage fraud, ensure that the law is upheld, and preserve affordable housing

Diatoms synthesize sterols by inclusion of animal and fungal genes in the plant pathway

Diatoms are ubiquitous microalgae that have developed remarkable metabolic plasticity and gene diversification. Here we report the first elucidation of the complete biosynthesis of sterols in the lineage. The study has been carried out on the bloom-forming species Skeletonema marinoi and Cyclotella cryptica that synthesise an ensemble of sterols with chemotypes of animals (cholesterol and desmosterol), plants (dihydrobrassicasterol and 24-methylene cholesterol), algae (fucosterol) and marine invertebrates (clionasterol). In both species, sterols derive from mevalonate through cyclization of squalene to cycloartenol by cycloartenol synthase. The pathway anticipates synthesis of cholesterol by enzymes of the phytosterol route in plants, as recently reported in Solanaceae. Major divergences stem from reduction of Δ24(28) and Δ24(25) double bonds which, in diatoms, are apparently dependent on sterol reductases of fungi, algae and animals. Phylogenetic comparison revealed a good level of similarity between the sterol biosynthetic genes of S. marinoi and C. cryptica with those in the genomes of the other diatoms sequenced so far

Rebuilding our Neighborhoods: Improving New York State Housing Policy to Better Meet Upstate Needs

New York faces a wide variety of housing challenges. While in the New York City region, where the population is growing, availability and affordability are the most pressing concerns, upstate regions have a different set of problems stemming from population loss, housing vacancy, abandonment, and deterioration. To address the full range of issues, state housing policy needs a variety of tools in its tool box. This policy brief discusses four ways that state housing policy can better address the needs of upstate regions such as Buffalo: Support holistic neighborhood revitalization, using Buffalo’s award-winning Green Development Zone as a model; Restore and enhance funding streams for small projects and housing repairs; Adjust New York’s Low Income Housing Tax Credit Qualified Allocation Plan to better address upstate needs; and Revise the DHCR Design Handbook to better facilitate rehabilitation projects

Optimizing production scheduling of steel plate hot rolling for economic load dispatch under time-of-use electricity pricing

Time-of-Use (TOU) electricity pricing provides an opportunity for industrial users to cut electricity costs. Although many methods for Economic Load Dispatch (ELD) under TOU pricing in continuous industrial processing have been proposed, there are still difficulties in batch-type processing since power load units are not directly adjustable and nonlinearly depend on production planning and scheduling. In this paper, for hot rolling, a typical batch-type and energy intensive process in steel industry, a production scheduling optimization model for ELD is proposed under TOU pricing, in which the objective is to minimize electricity costs while considering penalties caused by jumps between adjacent slabs. A NSGA-II based multi-objective production scheduling algorithm is developed to obtain Pareto-optimal solutions, and then TOPSIS based multi-criteria decision-making is performed to recommend an optimal solution to facilitate filed operation. Experimental results and analyses show that the proposed method cuts electricity costs in production, especially in case of allowance for penalty score increase in a certain range. Further analyses show that the proposed method has effect on peak load regulation of power grid.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures, 4 table

Weatherization Assistance and Low-Income Households

Weatherization is one of the most efficient affordable housing tools available to communities and residents. Weatherization is defined as the practice of protecting a building from the elements (such as sunlight, precipitation and wind) and modifying the building to reduce energy consumption and maximize energy efficiency. Traditionally, weatherization processes have focused on heating and cooling as methods to conserve energy. Currently, however, weatherization is expanding and beginning to focus on “whole house” approaches to incorporate advanced technology. The new methods address energy usage in a comprehensive manner, with a focus not only on heating and cooling, but on environmental impact, health and safety, and economic benefits. Weatherization technologies are evolving from traditional methods in an effort to provide greater energy savings for consumers and to contribute to the economic and environmental health of communities

Resisting Displacement in the Southwest Bronx: Lessons from CASA's Tenant Organizing

CASA is proud to present our new white paper, Resisting Displacement: Lessons from CASA's Tenant Organizing in the Southwest Bronx!In the last year, CASA has organized or provided technical assistance to over 90 buildings, which are home to more than 7,000 families. In the last year alone, over 4,000 tenants have actively engaged in CASA's work. Our new white paper shares lessons in tenant organizing, explores the forces of displacement that we are up against, and solutions for fighting displacement in the context of an impending rezoning.This is a critical moment for the Southwest Bronx. A potential rezoning is imminent, and could have devastating impacts on low-income tenants of color, their communities, and the state of affordable housing. CASA has drawn on our organizing experience, coalition work, previous research and the experiences of the tenants we work with to draft this white paper.In the report we:Present a clear and accurate definition of displacement and counter the false assertion that most tenants leave neighborhoods by choice;Explain the tactics that landlords already use to exert displacement pressures on low-income tenants of color;Emphasize the risk of increased displacement posed by rezoning, and in particular the Jerome Avenue rezoning, when new housing is not genuinely affordable and there are insufficient protections against displacement;Offer solutions that would protect tenants from displacement, allow them to remain in their homes, and preserve their communities

Third-generation in situ hybridization chain reaction: multiplexed, quantitative, sensitive, versatile, robust

In situ hybridization based on the mechanism of the hybridization chain reaction (HCR) has addressed multi-decade challenges that impeded imaging of mRNA expression in diverse organisms, offering a unique combination of multiplexing, quantitation, sensitivity, resolution and versatility. Here, with third-generation in situ HCR, we augment these capabilities using probes and amplifiers that combine to provide automatic background suppression throughout the protocol, ensuring that reagents will not generate amplified background even if they bind non-specifically within the sample. Automatic background suppression dramatically enhances performance and robustness, combining the benefits of a higher signal-to-background ratio with the convenience of using unoptimized probe sets for new targets and organisms. In situ HCR v3.0 enables three multiplexed quantitative analysis modes: (1) qHCR imaging – analog mRNA relative quantitation with subcellular resolution in the anatomical context of whole-mount vertebrate embryos; (2) qHCR flow cytometry – analog mRNA relative quantitation for high-throughput expression profiling of mammalian and bacterial cells; and (3) dHCR imaging – digital mRNA absolute quantitation via single-molecule imaging in thick autofluorescent samples

Ant colony optimization for scheduling walking beam reheating furnaces

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.This paper presents a new mathematical model for the walking beam reheating furnace scheduling problem (WBRFSP) in an iron and steel plant, which allows the mixed package of hot and cold slabs and aims to minimize the energy consumption and increase the product quality. An ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm is designed to solve this model. Simulation results based on the data derived from the field data of an iron and steel plant show the effectiveness of the proposed model and algorithm