She Pays The Rent

There are two ways to respond to the news that “increasingly” parents are cutting off Williamsburg trustafarians. One, relief that the parental stimulus money that has disturbed and bubbled the economic ecosystem in the outer boroughs, driving up prices of crappy small rental apartments and other services (similar to the bubbling of the Manhattan real estate ecosystem by wealthy people who turn crappy small rental apartments into pied-a-terres and drive up the prices for people who actually live and work in the city), may be waning, bringing costs back down to reality for those who do not get stimulus checks. The other way to respond is something along the lines of “Hahahahahahahahaha!”:

For the past five years, Ernie DiGiacomo has been able to count on parents to guarantee the $1,500 to $2,500 rents he charges for the 15 apartments he owns in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. When he called renters who had missed payments, he often heard, “My parents will send you a check.”

But in the past six months, the parents are pulling back financial help, he said, and as a result, he has watched more renters move out.

“Most of them are moving back with parents,” Mr. DiGiacomo said.

Luis Illades, an owner of the Urban Rustic Market and Cafe on North 12th Street, said he had seen a steady number of applicants, in their late 20s, who had never held paid jobs: They were interns at a modeling agency, for example, or worked at a college radio station. In some cases, applicants have stormed out of the market after hearing the job requirements.

“They say, ‘You want me to work eight hours?’ ” Mr. Illades said. “There is a bubble bursting.”

Famed for its concentration of heavily subsidized 20-something residents — also nicknamed trust-funders or trustafarians — Williamsburg is showing signs of trouble. Parents whose money helped fuel one of the city’s most radical gentrifications in recent years have stopped buying their children new luxury condos, subsidizing rents and providing cash to spend at Bedford Avenue’s boutiques and coffee houses.

. . .

The cutbacks for the more privileged residents are a welcome change for locals who have struggled to support themselves without parental help.

Katie Deedy, 27, an artist, works two bartending jobs to shore up her designer wallpaper business. Gazing out from the bar at the patrons playing darts and sipping bloody marys during a Sunday shift at the Brooklyn Ale House, she described how refreshing it felt not being the only local resident trying to live on less.

“If I’m going to be completely honest, it does make me feel a little bit better,” she said. “It’s bringing a lot of Williamsburg back to reality.”

Creating Good Jobs By Investing In Our Workforce And Leveraging City Economic Development Assistance To The Creation Of Quality Jobs

Questions . . . 1) What is the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City if not a slush fund for city employees to work on city officials’ under-the-radar pet projects? 1a) Followup: Why is this somehow OK? 1b) Followup: How many of these initiatives would be mistaken by the average person, applying contemporary community standards, as a stealth form of campaigning? 2) Why does New York City need another tour company operator? 2a) Followup: And why is this entity undercutting the private sector by using its massive organization and brand to edge out its competition? 3) Do we really need the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting making podcasts? 3a) Followup: Don’t they have enough to do by issuing all those permits? 4) Is New York City in danger of losing its tourism or something? 4a) Followup: Why is the City so desperate to promote itself like it’s some dusty Route 66 relic between Albuquerque and Vegas? I don’t know that there are answers to all these questions, but here’s a place to start:

If Cathy Epstein had been drinking a beverage when she saw a report about City Hall’s latest tourism promotion, the double-take she did probably would have been a spit-take.

Ms. Epstein is the director of marketing for On Location Tours, a company that has been selling tours of movie and television show locations in and around New York City for 10 years. On Monday, the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting started giving away audio tours of some of the same locations on its Web site.

The agency’s initiative upset some tour operators, who complained that it could cut into their already shrinking business. Rather than offer an alternative to their services, they said, city officials should be supporting them, especially during a severe recession.

. . .

She said nobody from the city government had contacted her company, which is a dues-paying member of the city’s tourism marketing agency, NYC & Company, about the podcasts. She said she and her colleagues wondered how much farther the film office planned to go with the audio tours, especially because On Location offers a walking tour of locations in Central Park.

Katherine Oliver, the commissioner of the film office, which helps arrange filming at city locations, declined to be interviewed about the podcasts. A spokeswoman said the office spent $23,000 on the podcasts, all of which came through private donations to the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City.

One Day You’ve Been Gentrified . . .

. . . then they move in the homeless shelter. Buried lede — at $2700 a month, developers everywhere should be volunteering to convert their bad investments into shelters:

City officials said the condos — which couldn’t attract buyers in the fizzled housing market — are part of an effort to help an “unprecedented” number of homeless families who have ended up on the street because of the tough economy.

Units priced at $350,000

It appears to be the first time a faltering upscale building has found a new purpose as a shelter, said Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York.

Neighbors were furious the 67-unit building on East New York Ave., where apartments were supposed to sell for $250,000 to $350,000, has been turned into a shelter.

“I’m a hardworking taxpayer, and I don’t think homeless people should be living better than me,” fumed Desmond John, 35, a window salesman who wanted to rent one of the fancy apartments. “They said it’s not for rent. It’s a shelter. I was shocked.”

Luxury brokerage firm HQ Marketing Partners started promoting the condos last summer — with the hook that buyers could custom design the units.

When the market started to tank in the fall — and his gamble on a fringe neighborhood didn’t pay off — developer Avi Shriki said he had to come up with a Plan B.

“When the market went south, we knew we had to do something different,” said Shriki, 44. “With the market being the way it is you have to be creative.”

This spring, Shriki signed a 10-year contract with the Bushwick Economic Development Group to turn the building into a homeless shelter.

Shriki wouldn’t say how much he gets paid — but he said he jumped at the chance to get people in his building.

“At least we still own the building and we are paying our mortgage, so that’s good,” said Shriki. “The outcome is not as bad as some people I know who had to surrender the whole building to the bank.”

City pays $90 a night

The city is paying Bushwick Economic Development Corp. $90 a night for each of the apartments, about $2,700 a month — a figure that also covers social services, housing help and job counseling designed to get families back on their feet.

The developers in similiarly overbuilt Long Island City should take notice — some of these rentals are way under $2700 . . .

What Environmentalism Is Good For

Mayor Iceberg shows how environmentalism is an efficient leveraging tool to extract tax hikes while still appearing “visionary.” The method is simple — first look sexy and “green” — either with an unserious congestion pricing initiative or an equally unserious plastic bag tax — and then let the city council institute a ridiculously unsexy half-cent sales tax increase (Christine Quinn has been screwed at least twice now):

The Bloomberg administration has backed down on a plan to charge a 5-cent fee on plastic shopping bags and to add sales tax on all clothing purchases as part of a budget agreement reached with the City Council on Monday night, aides said.

To close a gap of about $1 billion in next year’s budget, Mr. Bloomberg and the Council have instead proposed increasing the city’s sales tax by half a percentage point, to 8.875 percent. In addition, the city would begin charging sales tax on clothing over $110. All clothing was previously exempt from such taxes.

A typical household in New York City making $35,000 a year would have to pay an extra $74 a year in sales taxes, clothing included, according to estimates by the city’s Independent Budget Office. A household making $125,000 would pay an additional $237 a year, and one making $500,000 would pay $687 more.

Weather Report Suddenly Calls For Slush

City Council discretionary funds reap results:

Three-quarters of the Council’s 51 members got campaign contributions from employees or board members of the nonprofits they helped bankroll with taxpayer money.