Press Releases

New York, NY— Members of the Riders Alliance, a grassroots organization of subway and bus riders, thanked members of the City Council on Sunday for allocating City funds to expand the successful “bus countdown clock” program that has been popular in in its first two locations on Staten Island.  The clocks are installed and maintained by the City Department of Transportation (DOT) and are built on new MTA technology that shows where the bus really is at any given moment.

Riders Alliance members had requested that the City Council allocate discretionary funds to bring bus countdown clocks to more communities around the city, and 11 City Council Members responded with funds.   In total, Council Members allocated almost $2.8 million, enough to install more than 100 bus countdown clocks.

Bus countdown clocks will now be appearing in the following City Council districts:

·         Bronx:  Fernando Cabrera ($113,000); Andrew Cohen ($40,000)

·         Brooklyn:  Brad Lander ($240,000); Mark Treyger ($100,000)

·         Manhattan: Margaret Chin ($260,000); Dan Garodnick ($950,000); Corey Johnson ($35,000); Ben Kallos ($640,000)

·         Queens: Eric Ulrich ($180,000); Mark Weprin ($35,000)

·         Staten Island: Steven Matteo ($200,000)

Free summer meals

New York, NY– Today, New York City leaders demanded net neutrality and steps to close the digital divide at a New York State Public Service Commission hearing on the proposed Time Warner Cable-Comcast merger. Council Members Vacca, Kallos, Torres, Levin, Dromm, Van Bramer, Koslowitz and Constantinides called on the New York State Public Service Commission to demand a dramatic expansion of free and affordable broadband along with net neutrality in advance of a possible merger. The Commission has been tasked by Governor Cuomo to use its new regulatory powers to determine whether or not the merger serves customers’ and New Yorkers’ interests. 

I am Council Member Ben Kallos, representing the Upper East Side, Midtown East, Roosevelt Island and El Barrio.

Good afternoon to the Rent Guidelines Board Chair Rachel Godsil, Public Members Flax, Joza, Shine, and Wenk, Owner Members Cruz and Willard, Tenant Members Epstein and Garcia. 

To the members of the public who are here today, thank you for coming out to this hearing. I stand with you today in calling for a rent freeze.  Please show your support over twitter with hashtag #rentfreeze and if you mention @BenKallos, I’ll be sure to re-tweet you. Now, let’s break twitter.

I request that the Rent Guidelines Board vote for rent freeze, that is a 0% rent increase for 1-year leases and a 0% rent increase for 2-year leases.

This rent freeze will help correct the course of extremely high rent increases over the past years, the current environment of an affordability crisis plaguing our city, and the data produced by the Rent Guidelines Board.

Over the past generation, Rent Guidelines Board increases have far outpaced inflation and the consumer price index.  I have personally compared the past 20 years of Rent Guidelines Board increases against the Consumer Price Index and found that Rent Guidelines Board outpaced the Consumer Price Index by 14%.  That means a $500 a month apartment in 1994 is now a minimum of $906.19 a month with an annual rent of over $10,874.22, while following inflation the same unit would be $786.30 a month and $1,438.60 less a year. 

The Rent Guidelines Board must freeze the rents until inflation finally catches up to the generations of increases as high as 5% and 8.5% that provided landlords with windfalls that far outpaced the rising costs these increases were intended to address.