After the devastating gas explosion in Harlem in 2014 that leveled a building, leaving eight people dead, and a second explosion in the East Village in 2015 that killed two and injured twenty, New York City passed Local Law 157 (LL157). Whi…
When my grandfather came to New York City from Hungary in 1924 he lived in a rooming house on East 78th Street on the then not-very-fashionable Upper East Side of Manhattan. When temperatures soared in the summer, the family slept on the fi…
Local Law 97 (LL97), part of New York City’s drive to achieve a zero carbon footprint by 2050, looms large for both the city’s landlords and the boards of shared-interest communities. The cost of compliance is high, and the process complica…
In 2025, the first compliance requirements for Local Law 97 will become a fact of life for literally thousands of New York City co-ops and condos, and those who call them home. Local Law 97 is far-reaching legislation aimed at making New Yo…
The acceleration of global warming and the accompanying climate crisis is affecting shared-interest residential communities all over the United States and around the world. This past September was the wettest ever recorded in the eastern Un…
Nobel Prize–eschewing poet and folk-rock music legend Bob Dylan might have been the first person to be known as “going electric” (at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965), but as with much of his oeuvre, the world is now following in his foots…
In his 1971 book Future Shock, author Alvin Toffler describes a society undergoing enormous structural change as a result of technological advancements—and the social stress and disorientation that came with that change. A half-century late…
As the push to reduce our carbon emissions and maintain livable conditions intensifies, sustainability has become an increasingly important concern for multifamily buildings—including condos, co-ops, and HOAs. More and more legislation and …
The quest to achieve a zero carbon footprint by 2050 - the holy grail set by New York City to battle global climate change - is far reaching. So far reaching in fact, it involves nearly every component of building function and construction…
Local Law 97 (LL97), intended to make New York City a carbon neutral oasis by 2050, is both an ambitious and commendable attempt to bring a city born in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries into the twenty-second. It also places a substan…