Is there an estimate for how much this would cost?

That’s a bad faith attack. I used the emojis twice in a comment of over a hundred words.

If the abatements given to a developer forced by law to rent a portion of his units at a rate that is substantially below market is not in effect a housing subsidy to those who would benefit from those lower rents; then what is it?

What other waivers are being offered to these developers that is not being offered ( either by law or omission ) to any other property owner?

Here’s one that I know about. Increase in density above what the land is zoned for. Literally every “multi family” unit in this city has a “bonus” unit in the basement of attic. Is that not an increase in density above and beyond what is legally permitted? Does the city enforce the law against these property owners?

In effect they are getting exactly what the city is allowing the developers to do but we are supposed to hate the big bad developer and root for “little guy”.

I deal in good faith. Your post implies that you know more than I do on the subject, I take that at face value. Educate me.

This is funny…

You argument is essentially “we were here first and we don’t want people who are not like us to move in next door…”

Based on this bigotry, the family who arrived here 6 months ago and is over staying their visa is an “integral” part of the community but a hipster who takes out student loans to go to collage and lands an 80k/ yr job in the city is not. 🤣😂 we are truly living in a clown world.

As for subsidies, the tax abatements are essentially housing subsidies. They are given to developers who in return are compelled by law to offer “affordable” housing. Show me a residential development that received the tax abatement that is not also forced to set aside 20% of their units to the affordable housing mandate?

If the Northside is the paradise you claim it to be, why don’t you move there?🤣🤣🤣 You don’t want to be told where to live but you want to tell other people where they should and should not live 🤔.

I attended the public hearing for 55 union. They were required to put in run off mitigation measures that include a green / sedum roof that acts to absorb rain water. By my calculation, the biggest contributor to access runoff in this neighborhood are errant home owners who pave over their back yards in violation of code. Not to mention all the illegal extension that increase the built up area on a standard lot. What are you going to do about that?

As for schools, any shortfall in school taxes at the local level will get partially offset by state subsidies as required by law under the Abbot ruling. Look up any article on spend per head by school district in NJ and you will see Newarks spend match or exceed the wealthiest suburbs that surround us. We have an annual budget in access of a billion dollars yet the performance of our schools is nothing short of abysmal. How much more money must we spend before we finally admit that money is not the problem? Even if the developer were to pay taxes the school board is so corrupt that they would just turn around and give the money away to a different developer(for a cut of the profits of course) Just look at how this deal is structured 🤣🤣. What a clown world we live in where people are though to blindly hate developers because they make profits while worshiping criminally corrupt politicians who literally get bribed with those profits.

Tax abatements granted to residential properties that are forced by law to offer subsidized housing is in effect an housing subsidy. The developer is acting as a pass through. I personally don’t approve of this approach. I would rather public housing be public ally owned and operated. I just don’t understand how this simple and basic concept is so difficult for people to comprehend. I guess that’s what happens when have an education system that brainwashes children into being unthinking and uncritical drones; who never question the state sponsored narrative.

What does the ironbound being the jewelry capital of the world 120 years ago have to do with a decision on whether or not to allow development today?

Will halting development in the neighborhood bring back the jewelers? Yet another article written by the uncritical for the uncritical. The argument that change will “ destroy the neighborhood” is exactly the type of arguments racist segregationist used to justify restrictive covenants to stop blacks from moving into the suburbs. Now the reverse is true; what a clown world we live in.

Baraka has “admitted” that development will raise taxes for homeowners; exactly how , no one apparently knows. The article is predictably thin on facts and thick with innuendo and fear mongering.

Building is 2 blocks from Penn station, how is increasing density so close to transit a bad thing. This building is not unique. There are millions of such units spreed across cities in the eastern seaboard. This design was essentially the Bayonne box of the 1900’s. The city needs more housing, revenues , businesses and jobs. How do we do this without creating more housing stock?

The lady who is upset is a planning lawyer who makes her living working for the township of Wayne. Probably owns property nearby and is upset that she won’t be able to find parking as easily. Talk about fair and balanced perspectives in reporting.

City council should pass a resolution to reject the ruling by the HPC. Tyrants win when we let them.

What is the significance of the Lincoln having spoken here to anyone that is alive today? Will demolishing the spires and using the land to build something that actually looks decent and is affordable some how bring back slavery? The arguments for the preservation of old building is founded on a selective sense of nostalgia that primarily benefits those who are already wealthy.

The arc tower is supposed to be built on a site that used to house on old time bank. Next to it is a fried chicken joint. How many of the patrons of that fried chicken place do you think look at the old building and marvel at its architecture? How many of the folks that walk by on their way to the light rail station after working their second or third job give a single fuck what building stands there? My guess is the answer is zero.

Almost every building of true historical significance is already well preserved. Historical preservation today is a virtue signal pure play. Upper class and wealthy assholes showing off to their fiends that they know how to discern the “finer” things in life.

Your method is based on false logic. The only thing that matters is the ratio of expected impervious surface into actual impervious surface. That is the only apples to apples comparison.

I believe code requires the max buildable area for a standard lot not exceed 50%. I am almost certain that there isn’t a single lot in the ironbound that adheres to code. A combination of reasons are to blame:

1. Loose granting of variance as a result of corruption and/or apathy
2. Illegal extension
3. Illegal paving over of unpaved surface area

The question is not what the best land use is; it’s whether or not parking lots are the cause of the flooding problem. On that count, they are no more responsible than the average residential lot that is paved over.

If we are Ok with allowing the owners of the average residential lot paving over their lots; why hold the owners of the parking lots to a different standard?

The article perpetuates a popular talking point amongst “activist”, that paved parking lots are either wholly or disproportionately responsible for access run off. There is absolutely no evidence to support this claim. It’s wise to remember that the parking lots are paved over with the permission of the city, which I presume approves these request on the basis that the residential lots have the impervious surface area required by code.

Bottom line, it does not matter if the parking lots are converted to housing, from a run off perspective; it’s more them likely that there will be no change in net impervious surface area.

A more pertinent question is why don’t we tell the truth? Tell property owners that their homes are flooding because they choose to pave over their yards, throw trash in the street and clog up the catch basins. That their unwillingness to co-operate with the street cleaning schedule has a direct causal effect to flooding.

Unfortunately, In the neo liberal zeitgeist, every issue has to be viewed through a lens of victim and culprit, hence the false narrative that paved over parking lots cause flooding. Poor home owner= victim; greedy parking lot owner = culprit.

How does this false narrative help homeowners ?? It does not! The proposed solution creates more Bureaucracy. Dozens of 100k / year paper pushers, who will raise taxes that the wealthy developers will bribe their way out of. It’s the rest of us who will have to foot the bill.

Start by enforcing existing laws and zoning standards. Restore impervious surfaces and clean up the streets and catch basins.create more open spaces. If all that fails, then we can start billing landowners for runoff.

🤣🤣🤣 you keep saying the same thing over and over without explaining how. It’s almost as if you are a robot whose program as malfunctioned🤷🏾‍♂️.

They are all related…. 🤔, tell me how?

🤣🤣🤣🤣 you switched the discussion to land use now🤦🏾😂🤣

Did you even read the article ? The article blames flooding on surface parking , presumably because it is paved over and therefore does not absorb rain water. My point is, that is a false and dishonest argument. Houses that have their backyards paved over in violation of code are equally responsible.

What you are taking about; i haven’t a clue.

🤣🤣that has nothing to do with the issue at hand but good try🤣🤣

So your bright idea is to convert all the paved over parking lots to paved over single family houses and that will somehow fix the flooding problem?

It involve simple math. If you have a parking lot that is 25,000 sqft that is completely paved over it has an impervious surface areas of 0. On the other hand you have 10 single family homes on 2500 sqft lots each that are completely paved over, each of those lots have an impervious surface area of 0; 10 x 0 = 0.

I live in the ironbound.and know for a fact that surface parking lots make up a small fraction of land use. The vast majority are housing unit, that, regardless of occupancy class have their back and side yards paved over, in violation of code.

The article is written in such away as to lead the uncritical reader to believe that the paved over parking lots are largely responsible for the runoff problem when in fact sqft for sqft, the average homeowner is contributing just as much to the problem as the parking lot owner.

Once you sell this lie to the uncritical reader, you then sell them a “solution” that will almost always end up costing them in taxes. When you think about it, it’s a perfect ponzi scheme.

If the city sent out inspectors tomorrow to issue citations to every homeowner who has illegally paved over his backyard, they could create impervious surfaces the equivalent of 10x the surface parking area. That of course will involve telling the truth and potentially loosing a few votes and that’s bad for business. So here we are with an ever growing govt. and more taxes.

The level of cognitive dissonance in this article is off the charts. I bet every person interviewed has every sq inch of their property paved over. Then they are busy bitching to everyone who will listen about how the streets around their homes floods every time it rains🤷🏾‍♂️. No one wants to buy a 40 dollar trash can so 2x a week you see bare trash bags on the curbside for cats and rodents to tear apart spilling the contents on to the streets. Street cleaning barely happens and when it does there are always cars parked on the cleaning side. No one ties up the cardboard boxes they put out so if it rains or there is wind, there is paper and cardboard everywhere. Beer and drink bottles strewn at every street corner. The few trees we have on the sidewalks are being reduced every day. Don’t get me started on the trash, no one gives a fuck about where they throw trash! The streets here a worst than the so called third world country I was raised in. City does not bother about the blocked up catch basins. It took me 6 months of calling city hall to get the catch basin cleaning truck out to my street corner. The guy operating the truck tells me the city has only 2 such trucks. Where do you expect water to go if the catch basins are all blocked up ?? How stupid do you have to be to argue that an increase in population density has an impact on how much run off there is when it rains? 🤦🏾 A single family home with all its surface area paved over has exactly the same impervious surface as a parking lot of comparable lot size; both are 0. Why only blame the parking lot?

This is what happens when you abandon reason, logic and common sense for ideology. Every single problem we face, must, by definition be blamed on a ideologically driven set of culprits. In this instance, it’s climate change and gentrification.

Every solution has to involve increasing taxes and expanding government. More pigs feeding at the trough. I guess as long as the pigs have blue snouts , it does not matter.

For what it’s worth, the author should be commended for not finding a way to blame this on Trump. 😂🤣😂

😂😂the comments on this post are hilarious; reminds me of grandmas standing around trying to convince each other their their grand baby is the prettiest🤦🏾

Loitering is not a problem if you are not the business owner who is running that 7-11.

I bet you would not think it over policing if a large congregation of homeless people were permanently camped out on your door steps, throwing their refuge indiscriminately, playing loud music, dealing and using drugs in the open. As much as I empathize with the homeless, I don’t see the logic of allowing them free reign to what are public spaces. How does it help them?

The well to do liberals who live in the heavily policed suburbs like Montclair and Glen Ridge and pay high property taxes for the privilege of not having to deal with the unwashed masses tell you that the homeless must be allowed to do as they please. They assuage their own guilt this way because it cost them nothing to so. It’s the poorest and most disadvantaged members of our society who pay the price for the failed policies they push.

Crime is up 30% at a time when the nation is at full employment. Only the delusional can be tricked into believing that “criminal justice reform” in the form of eliminating cash bail and setting dangerous repeat offenders out on the streets to victimize the poor and defenseless is a net good to society.

The truth is much more hard to digest. Criminal justice reform is the “cheapest” wokie policy that the dems could come up with to placate a base that they have been cheating for decades. Not higher minimum wages or better public education or publicly funded health care or higher education. All of that would cost their donors and their favored constituents; the laptop class to much. So they give you a policy that is failing even before it’s has been fully rolled out.

There is a housing crisis in this country and both parties are busy funding a proxy way with Russia that has us at the brink of nuclear catastrophe! 100billion for Ukraine and there are homeless people right now forced to take a shit in Peter Francisco park🤦🏾. Not one “progressive” opposes the war!! Tells you all you need to know about their priorities.

Is it any wonder that the Republicans, despite being a morally bankrupt party of reactionaries and outright loonies has managed to pull away upwards of 15% of the black and Latino vote!

More and more people are clueing in to the simple fact that the so called progressives don’t give one fuck for the people at the bottom beyond using them as cheap votes and canon fodder in the culture wars, but hey; you keep blaming the police; getting rid of the police is the solution we all deserve.

There is another post about it on this sub. No idea what’s replacing it

Great idea. The 7-11 that’s closing in the ironbound can reopen there .

It if the entrance to the business is a homeless encampment 24/7.

A plant spewing toxic smoke form the burning garbage is not the equivalent to a convenience store selling chips and soda?

The ironbound already has the highest concentration of restaurants, barbers shops and mail saloons in the country l, but sure let’s shut down an existing business to make way for a magical restaurant.

The fact of the matter is simple, I walk by that store in during peak foot traffic hours 4 days a week. The homeless people who congregate there make access to the site an highly unappealing proposition. This is likely the main driver why the business closed. A convenience store in that type of location anywhere else would be a gold mine. Leave it to a moron like Micheal Silva to try and spin this as a good thing.

The police and the city refuse to address the loitering problem.

Wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for the place to be magically transformed into restaurant. No one in his right mind would put one there.

So the remedy to fixing the food desert problem is closing down a 7-11? By the miracle of magical thinking, the organic coop grocery store is going to sweep in and fill that empty store front?😂😂

The loitering in front of that store existed long before the 7-11 existed. No matter what store you open there the homeless will congregate in front of it.

Honestly I was being sarcastic. After all what’s the point of having a superhero in your city if he’s on the opposite end of where the crime is happening? 😂😂

On a more serious note; assuming you are indeed walking around in the more dangerous parts of the city, I would urge you to be cautious. Also don’t mess around with car jackers, buddy of mine is in federal law enforcement and apparent that shit is heavily controlled by organized crime. Those guys don’t fuck around.

Where were you when the cops got shot?

You won’t get a meaningful response without providing more details:

1. Budget
2. Parking?
3. School for kids
4. Pets
5. Level of comfort with living in a city and all that comes with it.

No I am not. I am simply pointing out the the term “captured” does not in itself dehumanize the criminal. To suggest otherwise is pure projection. The term captured / arrested and apprehended are used interchangeably very often in news reports. I see no evidence proffered to suggest that the term is used more or less often when describing offenders of a particular race. Absent such evidence, the argument that the mere use of different synonyms to describe the same act can somehow result in the “dehumanization” of said offender is not tenable.

The study the other poster cited says as much. Nothing novel in the study what so ever. Participants were exposed to description of 3 different crimes; an assault, the murder of young children and embezzlement. Participants were equally morally outraged by all 3 crimes but viewed the child murders as less human and therefore less worthy of rehabilitation and warranting longer sentences.

The important thing to note is that the tendency to view the criminal as less human is not a function of how the crime was described ( something that you and the poster you are responding to are making the case for) rather it is a function of the crime itself. Child murders are viewed as less human than someone who embezzled a few hundred grand! What’s ground breaking about that ??

Apply that to this case, you have a criminal who while being investigate for a series of serious crimes gets into a gun fight with the police in a building full of other residents and ends up shooting and injuring two police officers. He then flees the crime scene and is arrested some time latter. You and the other poster seriously believe that given the facts of the case, this criminal will somehow be prejudiced by the fact that his apprehension was described in a Twitter post as him being “captured” 🤷🏾‍♂️🤦🏾🤷🏾‍♂️

This thread is the perfect illustration of the manufactured lunacy that plagues our society today.

Describing a known criminal who is both armed and dangerous and who shot 2 police officers in an attempt to evade the law as having been “captured” is the “problem” in this whole tragic episode. Not apparently, the crime itself or the danger this criminal put the general public in when he decided to engage the cops in a gun battle form the roof of a residential building. Or any one of the many alleged criminal acts that brought the cops to his doorstep in the first place.

Lo and behold ; the word police has decreed that the very act of “capturing” this man has magically robbed him of his humanity.

What a clown show we are living in. 🤦🏾