Good morning. It’s Tuesday. Today we’ll find out why it’s going to cost more to take a shower in New York — and to renew a lease on a rent-stabilized apartment. We’ll also get details on a prison sentence for the Brooklyn preacher known as the bling bishop.
It already costs a lot to live in New York City. For the quarter of the city’s population that lives in rent-stabilized housing, it is going to cost more — as much as 5.25 percent more.
Increases for lease renewals, which were authorized on Monday by the Rent Guidelines Board, the city agency that oversees the city’s rent-regulation system, were slightly less than those the board approved last year.
And, because of a decision by a different city board, it’s also going to cost more to take a shower.
Water and rent are not the only basics that cost more. Con Edison’s rates went up 4.2 percent in January and will go up an additional 3.8 percent next January, adding a total of $9.63 to a customer’s bill, assuming that he or she uses 600 kilowatt-hours a month.
For all the grumbling about high prices, New York City had trailed the nation after the pandemic — until last month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Prices in the New York area climbed 3.9 percent in May, while the overall national increase was 3.3 percent.
There was a bright spot: It cost less to eat in New York last month — unless you ate out. Food prices dropped 0.3 percent in May after an increase of 0.7 percent in April. Prices for cereals and bakery products led the way last month, dropping 3.7 percent.
But “food away from home,” the category that covers restaurant meals, was 4.2 percent higher than in May 2024.
Also figuring in the overall increase: an increase of 0.2 percent in the energy category in May, pushed along by a 3.6 percent jump in gasoline prices.
James Parrott, the director of economic and fiscal policies at the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School, said the energy category was given less weight in the cost-of-living equation for the New York area because, unlike many other cities around the country, New York relies on public transportation far more than on cars.
So how is the city’s economy doing?
“It has partially recovered, I guess is the way to put it,” Parrott said. A moment later, he said his assessment was “not terribly upbeat, but it’s not doom and gloom, either.”
Higher rent when renewing a lease
The city’s Rent Guidelines Board voted in April to support increases for leases on rent-stabilized apartments. The vote on Monday night made those increases official. The vote was the latest sign of the city’s struggles with housing affordability amid the continuing financial pressures in the aftermath of the pandemic.
In 2023, the median rent was about $1,500 a month for a stabilized apartment, according to a recent survey conducted for the city by the United States Census Bureau. The comparable amount for an apartment not covered by rent regulation was $2,000 a month.
A different survey, conducted by the firm Miller Samuel for the brokerage Douglas Elliman, suggested that the rental market might be softening in some places: Market-rate apartments in Manhattan rented for 3.3 percent less in May than in April. But in Brooklyn, the survey found, market-rate rents were up 1.4 percent last month, from May 2023.
More expensive showers
Rent is also going up for the Water Board.
The city is charging the board, which it runs, more than $1.4 billion in rent over four years to lease the city’s water and sewer systems.
Last week the Water Board responded by approving an 8.5 percent increase in rates for property owners, effective July 1. Bills will go up by $93, on average, to $1,181. The increase, the highest in 14 years, was double last year’s.
Landlords — or co-op or condo boards — pay water bills, but some may pass the increases on to tenants in the form of higher rents.
The board’s increase would pay for only part of its higher rent. Some of the rest is likely to come from funds that typically go toward capital upgrades — without which malfunctions and disruptions could be more likely.
The city had long charged the Water Board rent but stopped doing so when Bill de Blasio was mayor. He was said at the time that the city was “righting a wrong.” Mayor Eric Adams reversed the policy. A spokeswoman for Adams said last month that the city leads the nation in keeping water rates low.
Weather
Temperatures will start to climb today as a sweaty, early-season heat wave spreads across the city. The high today will be near 90, but that is only the beginning: The heat index forecast for Friday is 96 degrees. The city is activating its heat emergency plan today, with hundreds of cooling centers opening in air-conditioned facilities.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
Suspended today (Eid al-Adha) and tomorrow (Juneteenth).
The latest New York news
For the ‘bling bishop,’ a nine-year sentence
The “bling bishop,” the flamboyant Brooklyn preacher who prosecutors said was a career con man with a church, was sentenced to nine years in prison.
The preacher, Lamor Whitehead, 46, had been convicted in March of defrauding the mother of a parishioner and attempting to commit extortion. Whitehead pleaded for mercy at a hearing on Monday, but the judge handling the case, Lorna Schofield, said she had heard no remorse in his rambling remarks.
Whitehead — who was robbed of jewelry at gunpoint during a service that was being livestreamed from the church in 2022 — was already in custody. Schofield had revoked his bail last month over false statements he made on social media about law enforcement officials and his victims.
Prosecutors, in a memo to the judge before the sentencing, argued that Whitehead had raked in millions, much of which went for cars, clothes and jewelry. One of his victims, Pauline Anderson, broke into tears at the hearing as she told how she given Whitehead $90,000 from her retirement account, believing that he would help her buy a home, as he had done for her son.
She said that instead, he “broke my heart, my spirit and my soul.” Prosecutors said he had lied and threatened her when she asked for the money back.
Whitehead had bragged that he had tried to cultivate Mayor Eric Adams, who was the Brooklyn borough president from 2014 to 2021. Text messages introduced during the trial showed that Adams had sought to distance himself from Whitehead, sometimes admonishing him for creating conflict. The mayor was not accused of wrongdoing.
METROPOLITAN diary
Coney Island in winter
Dear Diary:
If I had a few bucks and the weather wasn’t terrible, I would bundle up and take the subway from Bay Ridge to Coney Island.
Truthfully, this was about all I could manage. I was 17, and my mother had just died. Soon, I would be on my own.
At some point along the way, the train exited the tunnel’s darkness into dazzling daylight. Then on to Coney Island and Stillwell Avenue, the end of the line.
Downstairs, Philip’s Candy was my source for chocolate licorice. The windows were darkened with dust from the station above.
Across the street was the Cyclone. According to a childhood legend: “Once kids were playing with the controls in the first car, and the coaster left the track and got chopped up in the Wonder Wheel!”
To the right was the original Nathan’s. They had crinkle cut French fries and hot dogs with snap. My mom once bought a crinkle cut potato slicer to make us fries like the ones at Nathan’s.
To the left was Eldorado Auto Skooter: bumper cars with disco lighting and a body-slamming sound system. Possibly the greatest invention of all time.
Further down was the carousel. Majestic and fast-moving, a menagerie of surging, vivid animals amid a harrumphing organ with castanets and cymbals. It was operated by the world’s saddest-looking man.
On the boardwalk, if the sun was shining, people of every stripe would be out and about. Some were ancient residents, their skin like leather from years baking in the sun.