$126B city budget sealed. A tax loophole erased 538 affordable apartments.. New York Explained for July 2, 2026.

The City Council adopted the fiscal year 2027 budget 45 to 6 on June 30, giving Mayor Mamdani a $126 billion spending plan that closes a gap his administration attributed to "fiscal irresponsibility" by former Mayor Eric Adams [95]. The deal expands CityFHEPS housing vouchers with $175 million in new funding (baselined at $125 million in subsequent years), extends Fair Fares for low-income transit riders, and creates universal savings accounts for public school kindergartners [95]. The Council simultaneously settled a lawsuit against the Adams administration over CityFHEPS, with advocates securing expansion without any added work requirement [95]. Council Member Althea Stevens (District 16, Bronx) was the sole Democrat to vote no, saying her constituents in Morrisania, Concourse, and Highbridge, where poverty runs at double the citywide average and median household income sits below $42,000, did not get a budget that reflects the urgency of their challenges [95].

A Gothamist analysis of permit data found 48 clusters of adjacent buildings across the city, each carved into structures of 99 units or fewer, that collectively denied the city 538 affordable apartments required by the state's 485-x tax exemption program [114]. The starkest example: developer David Bistricer of Clipper Equity, who paid more than $50 million for a nearly block-size lot at East 125th Street and Park Avenue in East Harlem (acquired from the Durst Organization), filed permits to divide the site into seven separate 99-unit buildings rather than one 700-unit tower [114]. The split pays off on two fronts. Clipper can pay construction workers as little as $17 an hour instead of the $63 an hour required on projects over 100 units. And the required affordable share drops from 25 percent to 20 percent, costing 35 affordable apartments on the East Harlem site alone [114]. City Hall said Mayor Mamdani is not currently pushing to change the state program; closing the loophole would require action in Albany [114].

NYCHA's annual recertification process, which requires all Section 8 tenants at privately managed PACT buildings to document their income and household makeup, broke down. Section 8 terminations for "failure to recertify" jumped from 42 in 2024 to 836 last year, a nearly 2,000 percent increase, according to Legal Aid Society data obtained under public records law [130]. NYCHA blamed a scanning backlog, acknowledging that submitted documents were not processed. When the subsidies disappeared, private building managers billed tenants for the full unsubsidized rent; tenants kept paying their regular share; the difference accumulated as "arrears." One tenant NYCHA claims owes $80,000 in back rent has never stopped paying. The problem is concentrated at Linden, Boulevard, and Penn-Wortman Houses in East New York, Brooklyn, where Stanley Avenue Preservation LLC, a joint venture of Douglaston Development, L+M Development Partners, Dantes Partners, and SMJ Development that closed a $535 million PACT deal in December 2021, has filed more than 900 eviction proceedings against tenants since 2023 [130].

The Supreme Court ruled last Thursday to allow the Trump administration to revoke Temporary Protected Status for roughly 350,000 Haitian immigrants nationwide, including about 5,400 in New York City and 40,000 across New York State [61]. Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, Attorney General Letitia James, Assemblymember Clyde Vanel, and HAUP CEO Elsie Saint Louis rallied at Queens Borough Hall in Kew Gardens on June 29 to call the ruling "shameful" and demand a congressional response [61]. Queens has the second-largest Haitian population in the five boroughs after Brooklyn. TPS holders receive no federal public benefits but contributed more than $2.2 billion in taxes in 2021 alone, according to the American Immigration Council, and Haitian TPS holders nationwide account for $5.9 billion in annual economic activity per Forward US [61].

The Ocean Parkway Older Adult Center, on the ground floor of 1960 E. 7th Street in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, served its last meal on June 27 and laid off most of its staff [66]. Its landlord, Ahi Ezer Housing Development Fund Corp, a nonprofit that owns the affordable senior building above the center, declined to renew the lease after more than 20 years, claiming attendance had "collapsed" and a new operator was ready to take over and "boost the attendance" [66]. The center's own records, obtained by The City, tell a different story: from November through May, the kitchen served well over a thousand lunches per month, an average of 65 participants per day according to the Department of Aging, plus 180 home-delivered meals daily for homebound seniors who cannot leave their apartments [66]. The neighborhood where the center operated is one in five residents 65 or older, and 48 percent were born outside the United States [66]. The closure happened as New York entered a heat wave expected to push temperatures above 100 degrees. The center had been one of the city's official cooling centers [66].

The Department of Transportation reported Wednesday that 46 pedestrians died in the first six months of 2026, a 13 percent drop from the 53 killed over the same period in 2025 and the lowest total for any first half since Vision Zero launched in 2014, with the only lower mark being the lockdown months of early 2020 [156]. Separately, Mayor Mamdani's Committee on Government Efficiency released a report targeting a 2009 Bloomberg-era law that requires DOT to obtain written sign-offs from NYPD, FDNY, the Department of Small Business Services, and the Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities for any street redesign exceeding 1,000 feet or three blocks, a provision bike-lane opponents have used to add "mountains of unnecessary paperwork" to routine safety projects [161]. A Queens judge used the law last year to stall a protected bike lane in Astoria. Council Member Joann Ariola (R-Queens) has since added another layer, requiring DOT to get written confirmation from individual firehouses, not just FDNY headquarters, before any street redesign in their area [161]. COGE plans public hearings this summer and would put proposed charter reforms to a November referendum [161].