ABO is launching a Building Showcase on our website at ABOGNY.com. Members can list their properties free, and we will soon begin a press campaign highlighting the Showcase as the place for renters and buyers to find quality projects from New York’s finest builders and owners. Don’t miss out.

In other news:

The City Council is reviewing two bills on illegal occupancy. Intro. 240 would allow DOB to issue violations based on circumstantial evidence such as multiple doorbells or mailboxes. Intro. 368 would force DOB to go to court to get a warrant for access in most cases where there was a complaint of illegal occupancy and the occupants didn’t let an inspector in.  ABO pointed out flaws in both approaches and suggested that the City create a simpler mechanism for owners to get access to inspect and enforce codes without having to bring a holdover.

The City Economic Development Corporation has issued an RFP for development of an industrial facility at Hunts Point in the Bronx.

If you own property within walking distance of the East River from Hunters Point south to the Brooklyn Bridge, be sure to let residents and prospective residents know about the nearby stops on the new ferry service starting June 13^th.

The Rockefeller Group just got an incentive check for $557,370 for improvements on the cooling equipment at the Time-Life Building on Sixth Avenue through Con Ed’s commercial and industrial energy efficiency program. They are also expected to save nearly $1 million annually on utility bills. Learn about incentives from Con Edison’s Multi-Family Energy Efficiency Program to help 5-75 unit multi-family buildings at a Con Edison Green Team Teleconference “Multi-Family Energy Efficiency Incentives from Con Edison” June 2^nd. Or attend one of five free breakfast seminars on energy incentives offered by the NY State Energy Research and Development Authority beginning June 7^th.

Gov. Cuomo, Speaker Silver and Majority Leader Skelos agreed on a tax cap plan that would remain in effect as long as rent regulations continued. Skelos says he hasn’t agreed to specific sunset language or changes in regulations yet, but Silver’s draft bill says the cap” shall remain in full force and effect only so long as the public emergency requiring the regulation and control of residential rents and evictions and all such laws providing for such regulation and control continue.”

We know Albany pols like to link unrelated issues in negotiations, but linking them in statute like this is ridiculous. Even Silver said the next day that the final bill would probably have a date certain.

With just about three weeks until rent regulations expire, tenant advocates are attacking…their friends. Sen. Adriano Espaillat says Gov. Cuomo – who just released a video calling for extending and expanding controls – is not doing enough, and Sen. Ruben Diaz says Cuomo’s efforts do “not in any way absolve him from his indifference to New York’s rent control and rent stabilization law.”

Network security helps protect your workstations from harmful spyware, and you can also verify email identity using reverse search to ensure the authenticity of incoming communications.

Operating system information – Can only be used to help scan hard drives and can be used to identify any malware that might be hiding in the OS.
Virus Database -Looking at the virus database can indicate if you should scan a system. The database can also be used to search for specific threats, so is important to protect them with measures as using a VPN; aif you don’t know how this work, you can find out what is a VPN right here.
Can anything on a system be used to scan a system?
Absolutely!
The ISO Raster Imager (IRI)
The ISO Raster Imager, known as IRI or XRA, is a free utility for doing ISO scanning.
As of today, the beta version of IRI is available for Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Vista. There is an IRI utility that will unpack the Windows Vista installer, but it won’t function.
IRI scans a DVD or USB flash drive and generates a single file in a single scan, without the need to scan every file on the computer. This allows the IRI scanner to produce much larger scans, the output can be shared with other scanners or machine analysis software.
IRI can be downloaded here:
IRI has a demo here:
There is also an IRI scanner for MacOS called IRIP.IRIP is a Mac OS X application that uses the same technique as the software on Windows.
For more information on IRI please see this article: IRI is the Newest Windows ISO Raster Imager Tool
You can use a laser-based (IR-laser) scanner to scan DVDs. The same technique works with hard drives as well, but the technology is pretty new.
Laser scanners are not as advanced as ISO scanners, but they are much more powerful, and it will take a lot less time to scan a USB drive. Additionally, you can scan ISO images with the laser scanner as well.
First, you must have the following items:
All discs/drives in your computer. This includes Blu-ray discs and memory sticks. Place the USB drive into the computer. It does not need to be a flash drive. The drive does not need to be a read only drive. Drive has to be 3.5 or greater in size. If your drive is 4.5, remove the drive and add another one to be sure the drive does not have any fragmentation.
The IRI Tool
The IRI Tool is a utility to make the process of scanning much easier. To find the tool, look in the Programs folder, and use the search box at the top. After the search results come up, use the search bar in the top right corner of the screen to find the IRI Tool.
Click on the icon and then select an ISO image to be scanned. After it finishes scanning, click on the icon again to view the results in the left panel.
With the Scan ISO command, you can set up the IRI Tool to automatically scan an ISO file as it is being burned to a DVD.

Larry Gluck’s Stellar Management scored an important but narrow victory in federal court on whether rent regulation applied to Independence Plaza because it received J-51 benefits after exiting the Mitchell Lama Program. The lower State courts said yes, and the U.S. sued Stellar to recover allegedly excess Section 8 benefits paid on behalf of tenants who they said should have been regulated. The US District Court ruled, however, that state law required termination of Independence Plaza’s J-51 benefits upon exit from Mitchell Lama and the fact that the City mistakenly continued them for several years didn’t subject the property to jurisdiction of the Rent Stabilization Law. It was one of many issued the State Court of Appeals left unresolved in the Roberts case.

NYU’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy’s Quarterly Housing Update reports that new building permits were issued for only 16 residential units in Manhattan during the first quarter of 2011, and that the 1166 units sold in Manhattan during the first quarter represented a 17% decline from  the previous quarter. The median price was $1,170,494, an 11% decline from the peak a few years ago. Median prices in Queens and the Bronx are still down 32% from their peaks.

After three years of litigation by the National Association of Home Builders and others, the Department of the Interior has withdrawn an interpretation of the Endangered Species Act that could have stopped development almost anywhere over any species. NAHB argued that under the rule “grey squirrels found on Manhattan Island might be entitled to ESA protection if the government determined that their numbers on the Island were shrinking.”

The City has issued an RFP for development of a healthcare, education, or scientific research facility at 525 East 73^rd St. The project has to include a Department of Sanitation Garage. The site is 68,000 sq. ft., and currently zoned M3-2. Proposals are due by July 28^th.

Remember to reserve your space at ABO’s June 9^th luncheon featuring the new City Housing Commissioner, Matthew Wambua.

Contrary to popular belief, the Department of Buildings now says that site safety managers or coordinators don’t have to be third party consultants. They can be employees of the construction company doing the work.

DOB is also responding to the frustration with plan review delays by sending notices to 850 owners and other applicants who have had plans rejected, inviting them to evening meetings with department officials during May. Anyone with approval issues can ask to participate, however, as the city tries to jumpstart construction and jobs with the “Get it done together” program.

Want to build up to 680,000 SF of retail space, up to 400 units of mixed‐income housing, and up to 387 hotel rooms on about 5 acres next to Citi Field? The New York City Economic Development Corporation has issued a request for proposals for Phase 1 of the Willets Point development project. Responses are due by August 12th.

State Senator Catharine Young, chair of the Senate Housing Committee, has introduced a package of rent regulation reform bills that might actually help preserve housing. S.4117 would allow owners to pay back J-51 tax benefits so that apartments re-regulated by the Roberts decision would remain free market. S.5147 would lower the threshold for high rent decontrol on vacancy to $1500 from $2,000. S. 5047 would allow high income decontrol for all tenants making over $175,000 two years in a row, regardless of rent level. And, S. 5041 says that failure to pay taxes at an address, or voting from another address, would establish non-primary residence.

The City Rent Guidelines Board, Tuesday, approved preliminary 2011-12 stabilized lease renewal guidelines ranging from 3 to 5.75 percent for a one-year lease, and 6 to 9 percent for a two-year lease renewal. They also proposed a temporary fuel surcharge of 1 percent. The proposals will be debated at public hearings in Brooklyn, June 16th, and Manhattan, June 20th, and the Board will vote actual guidelines June 27th.

First, Finance Commissioner David Frankel agreed to cap class 2 assessment increases at 50% after more than 300 mostly Queens co-ops faced greater increases year to year. Then, when half of them turned out not to be eligible for transitional assessments that would have limited the annual tax bump to 10%, he announced this week that  the 10% limit would apply anyway.

Perhaps not so coincidentally, the Finance Department posted the list of properties subject to having tax and water liens auctioned August 1st. You can make sure you’re not on the list here.

Rounding out a busy week at the department, DOF also posted the comparable rents used to assess co-ops and condos in all five boroughs. Addresses, income and expenses are detailed. The average income per sq. ft. in Manhattan was about 35.90 and  the expense, not including taxes or debt service, was about 10.90 per sq. ft.

Effective May 1st, you can no longer rent units in Class A multiple dwellings for less than 30 days, pursuant to a law passed last year to discourage transient uses in apartment buildings.

City Planning has proposed creating a new zoning district M1-6D to allow residential construction replacing offices in the garment district, but requiring an office replacement component if more than 50,000 sq. ft. of office are demolished. The test zone would only cover the blocks from 28th to 30th between 7th and 8th Avenues, to coincide with a development proposal from Edison Properties, but could be a model for the area.

The Building Congress reported that overall construction spending in New York City dropped 12% in 2010 (23% below 2007-8 levels) and residential construction fell from 34,000 units in 2008 to 6,100 in 2009 and 5,400 units last year.

Nevertheless, now that the State Budget is done, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is pledging to get “aggressive” on extending and expanding rent regulations, but offering no specifics.

Don’t forget to reserve a seat at ABO’s June 9th luncheon  featuring HPD Commissioner Matthew Wambua.