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Janae Pierre: From WNYC, this is NYC NOW. I'm Janae Pierre.

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Janae Pierre: Many of New York City's newly constructed buildings, including those really swanky digs with top-dollar rents, are caught up in violations and complaints. On today's episode, we discuss what's happening at these crappy luxury apartments that are falling apart. Later, the WNBA season will gear up in a couple of months under a new collective bargaining agreement. We'll discuss the details of the nearly official deal. First, here's what's happening in our region.

Officials are working to determine the cause of a crash late Sunday night at LaGuardia Airport that killed two pilots on an Air Canada plane and injured dozens of passengers. Port Authority officials say a fire truck was crossing a runway when it collided with the airplane, which had just arrived from Montreal. Here's audio from LaGuardia's control tower from the moments leading up to the crash.

Air Traffic Controller: Stop, stop, stop, stop. Confirm stop, stop, stop.

Janae Pierre: It appears to capture an aircraft controller trying to stop the truck from moving. Officials say the truck was crossing the runway to try to assist a United Airlines plane that reported an odor on board. LaGuardia Airport reopened Monday afternoon.

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Janae Pierre: City Comptroller Mark Levine is warning that New York City's budget is on shaky ground as Mayor Zohran Mamdani pushes a $127 billion spending plan. Levine says the city is relying on overly optimistic revenue projections while facing a multi-billion-dollar gap, possibly as high as $6.5 billion next year. Levine put it bluntly.

Mark Levine: It's very simple. We're spending more money than we're bringing in.

Janae Pierre: He says options like raising income taxes or property taxes face political hurdles, and warns the city could be left with fewer tools if the economy worsens.

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Janae Pierre: The union representing nearly 100 faculty members at New York University has authorized a strike. More than 900 unionized, non-tenured faculty are off the job as students return from spring break. The union says it's pushing for better pay, job security, and a greater role in academic decisions. The university has said classes will continue regardless of the strike. Negotiations have been going on for months, and it's still unclear when negotiations will resume. No one wants to pay top dollar for a crappy apartment, but that's exactly what's happening to thousands of tenants across the five boroughs. More on that after the break.

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Janae Pierre: New York City luxury apartments promise high-end amenities and fewer headaches than older buildings. For some tenants, that promise is breaking down. At a 30-story building in Greenpoint called One Blue Slip, water has come to define life for some residents there. Tenants say water has poured through ceilings during floods and stopped running altogether during outages. On a freezing afternoon last month, residents said they couldn't shower, flush the toilet, or do laundry after pipes connected to a rooftop water tank froze. The problem shocked residents paying luxury rents. Joey Hess lives in the building.

Joey Hess: I moved into what looked like a hotel, and I come home to a shit dump now. It's come to the point this year where everything's breaking down, and people's health is at stake.

Janae Pierre: It may not be an isolated case. A Gothamist analysis of city housing data found that nearly 10% of roughly 1,600 apartment buildings that opened since 2016 have at least one housing code violation per apartment. That's more than twice the citywide average. Housing reporter David Brand analyzed that data and visited several buildings where tenants say the reality of new luxury housing doesn't match the marketing. He joins me now. Hey, man.

David Brand: Hey, Janae.

Janae Pierre: All right, David, so I want to be on the same page here. When we say "luxury building," we're talking about places that cater to a high-end lifestyle, right? Upscale amenities, nice rooftop pools, maybe a really high-end fitness center. Am I getting that right here?

David Brand: Yes, there's no one definitive measure of what makes a building luxury, but there's a couple of things: amenities, apartments priced at market rate, so not just rent-stabilized apartment buildings. These are expensive places.

Janae Pierre: The expensive places.

David Brand: They're often new. They have elevators, doormen. Nice buildings.

Janae Pierre: You review records for about 1,600 newly constructed buildings. Many of them build as luxury buildings. Tell us what you found.

David Brand: Yes, that's right. Over the years, I constantly heard from friends, acquaintances, people you meet at parties, listeners, about the problems that they have in their brand-new buildings. People don't expect to be dealing with things like heat outages, leaks, flooding in places that just open, especially if they're paying a lot of money. New York City luxury prices. I want to see beyond the anecdotes and these stories. People have what the data on the new building showed. I looked at housing complaint and violation records for every new building that received a property tax break called 421a, and that opened in New York City since 2016.

Janae Pierre: 421a. Okay, tell us about this tax break and what it's for.

David Brand: Yes, let's walk out for a second here. All right, so 421a, this is a tax break that's meant to make it less expensive to build housing. A few decades ago, the state wanted to fuel development. They enacted the program called 421a to waive most of the property taxes on a lot when you build on it. It's changed over the years. In 2016, there was a new version that required developers to make a certain percentage of units affordable, usually for middle-income renters, so rents capped in a portion of the apartments.

That expired in 2022, but developers who qualified at the time can still get it as they finish up their buildings. There's now a new tax break called 485-x. It has deeper affordability requirements, but same idea. All of these tax break programs are based on the understanding that it's expensive to develop, so try to make it a little easier by waiving the property tax costs.

Janae Pierre: Okay, and how central is it to new construction in New York? Are most of these buildings using that incentive?

David Brand: Definitely, and so that's why I use this tax break as a starting point, because developers of virtually all new apartment buildings apply for it to ease their development costs. It really captured most new buildings in this city. Like you said, I looked at about 1,600 properties, I found a pretty big subset of these buildings with some really serious problems. Like you said, about 10% had at least one hazardous violation per unit. That's well above the city average.

Janae Pierre: These issues, are they common to one borough alone? I mentioned Joey Hess at the top, who's in that building in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Are these issues just happening in Brooklyn?

David Brand: Well, I found problems citywide in new buildings. Brooklyn accounts for the most new development, so definitely saw a high concentration of buildings with a lot of problems in parts of Brooklyn. Like you mentioned, the building in Greenpoint, another building in Atlantic Yards in Prospect Heights, right behind the Barclays Center. There definitely is a high proportion of the buildings in Brooklyn, but it's a citywide thing. Buildings in Staten Island, the Bronx, Queens, even Manhattan.

Janae Pierre: What kinds of hazardous violations are we talking about here?

David Brand: These could be heat and hot water outages, roaches and rat infestations, flooding from plumbing problems or leaks. All of that doesn't even account for some of the other inconveniences I've heard, and I'm sure you've heard about, like peeling cabinets, mirrors flaking in the bathroom, just cheap materials, or you pay for an apartment building that comes with a lot of amenities. You're paying for the gym, but the gym is always closed for repairs.

Janae Pierre: Yes, that's not good for my summer body, right? [chuckles]

David Brand: That's right. Hey, summer bodies are made in the winter and early spring, Janae.

Janae Pierre: Yes, yes, so I know you went out to visit several of these buildings, and you also spoke with some tenants. What kinds of problems did residents say they're dealing with?

David Brand: I visited three specific buildings that opened in the past few years, starting with that 30-story high-rise you mentioned. It's on the Greenpoint waterfront. It's called One Blue Slip. Rents there reached $12,000 a month, but people have been dealing with a lot of problems. Most notably, last month, the building had no water at all for three days. It turned out that a line from the rooftop water tank had frozen.

Tenants also showed me videos of huge leaks on the second floor that ended up pouring water into the lobby in the fall a couple of times. That was from a totally different issue. They said that hot water was always going out. I spoke with one resident named Betsy Sidit. She started the building's tenant association and says problems have really mounted in the past year. Did you ever expect that you'd have no heat, no hot water, and now no water?

Betsy Sidit: This building was so wonderful when I moved in. This is just a little side note. When my friends come to visit, they said, "This is the nicest hotel we've ever been to." Now, when they come to visit, they're like, "What is going on with your building?"

Janae Pierre: Oh, wow, that's terrible.

David Brand: A spokesperson for the building owner, Brookfield Properties, told me they are reviewing the problems with the frozen water line. They did give tenants rent credits to make up for some of the problems. Now, the water is back up and running, and tenants do say things have gotten better over the past month.

Janae Pierre: Now, David, when you say rent credits, is that covering half of the rent? What is that?

David Brand: Yes, it's not half, but they're prorating. Whatever people pay for a month, they'll factor into what the daily rate is, and then they'll make it so they don't have to pay, like, three days of whatever their rent would have been.

Janae Pierre: Okay, where else did you go?

David Brand: Well, I visited a new luxury building in the South Bronx called ONE38. It's in Mott Haven, right near the Harlem River, overlooking Randalls Island. Rents there are about $4,500 a month, and there are a lot of amenities in this building. There's this big swimming pool, a rooftop pickleball court, and a pretty big gym on the ground floor.

Janae Pierre: Nice.

David Brand: It sounds nice, but tenants first moved there in August 2024. They started dealing with big problems right away. The power would go out constantly. The building was running on generators for a while. Tenants said they had no hot water. The ground floor and garage were flooding constantly. Alfred Lowe is a lawyer living in the building, and he says he moved in after returning from Paris and felt duped.

Alfred Lowe: The lobby didn't exist. The garage didn't exist. The pool didn't exist. We had no heat, no air-conditioning, no water. All of the apartment doors were wide open, right? There was nobody in the front for security. The whole thing was just a complete bait and switch. I had all of the emails I could forward you where the owner says, "Hey, we're going to offer you to move out because we understand it's not safe." There was no electricity. I have photos and videos of the actual generators that was powering the two buildings.

David Brand: Lowe and other residents started withholding rent in protest. The property manager then sued to evict them and started notifying credit agencies that they weren't making their rent payments. Company also deactivated their key fobs. That ended up locking them out of whole sections of the building. They're in court now over all of that.

Janae Pierre: Wow. What do reps for the building have to say about this?

David Brand: Well, I talked to building manager Joseph Klein about all these problems. He says some of the early issues were severe, but that new buildings always have these kinds of kinks to work out, these issues to fix. Seems like that's kind of a pattern in a lot of buildings in New York City that are new, marketed as luxury, end up having a lot of problems that tenants don't expect to experience in a new building. What do you make of that?

Joseph Klein: I've managed a lot of properties in my life. It takes time for a building to settle. It's not luxury or opening too early. People use certain bathrooms that the plumber missed or something. The tenant moves in six months and the building's open, and they missed a certain pipe or something. I always call it a building settles. It takes time. I would say the first year, a building settles. You find out things that you didn't know before. You know what I mean?

Janae Pierre: Don't know what he means, David.

David Brand: [chuckles] Well, he acknowledged that there were problems. We said, "These might have been extreme," but there's always issues as you're figuring out how buildings work. He says a lot of them have been resolved now, but he did say the company does deactivate key fobs. He said they do report missed rent payments to credit agencies. He said they also report completed payments, which end up improving credit scores. He said the most of the problems have been resolved in the building.

Janae Pierre: I don't know about Alfred Lowe or the other tenants, but I'd be pretty pissed off if they deactivated my key fob. Is that even legal, considering laws protecting tenants in the city?

David Brand: Well, locking tenants out of their buildings and their apartments is definitely illegal. It seems like this may be more of a gray area because the key fobs are being deactivated for certain parts of the building, like the pool or the gym or certain stairways leading up to the rooftop. You definitely can't change locks to keep people out of their apartments. That's an illegal lockout. I guess that's going to be up to the judge and the attorneys on these cases that are going through a housing court right now to decide.

Janae Pierre: One thing that really stood out to me in your reporting is that some of these buildings were opening while parts of the construction were still unfinished. Is that becoming more common in the city's development boom?

David Brand: Yes, that's a great question. The Bronx building was extreme, and it did seem like that opened when a lot of things were not yet complete. Alfred Lowe and some of the other residents were saying they didn't have mailboxes when they moved in. The electricity wasn't fully hooked up to the power grid, so it was running on generators. That seems pretty extreme. Even the property manager, Klein, did acknowledge that. I have heard from a lot of renters that in a lot of cases, the amenities weren't finished in their buildings.

They're paying for the gym and maybe a yoga room or dog grooming. That wasn't ready, and maybe never will be, but there is an incentive for developers to try to open up buildings as soon as possible, as soon as they get a certificate of occupancy from the city. That's because they're paying loans for months and even years before they can actually start making money back from the building. There's pressure to get tenants in and start renting them out ASAP.

Janae Pierre: That makes sense, I guess. I'm curious. What did you learn about why these problems are happening so often in these new buildings?

David Brand: Yes, I definitely wanted to dig into that, so I ended up talking to a lot of architects and engineers and developers and construction experts about all this. They said there are often kinks to work out in new buildings. People maybe go into a new building expecting everything to be perfect. Because the building has never been occupied before, there might be some things that the developer, the owner, the property manager learns need improvement.

Some of it may be more extreme than others. I talked to one guy named Ross Spivak. He's a construction industry consultant. He says developers are trying to get projects completed as soon as possible. Spivak says that that can lead to some developers or contractors cutting corners or just using cheaper, more readily available materials.

Ross Spivak: Every construction project is a combination of time and money, right? What I mean by that is the sooner a project is completed, the sooner you can start selling it, as soon as you can start getting revenue. If you need to get cabinets, for example, that takes longer to build, or solid wood, maybe there's six or eight weeks to get. Maybe you can get a product from China or some other places that you can get in two to four weeks, let's just say. It's made of particle board. It's a laminate. It's melanin. It's not made of quality materials. You take that. If you need 50, 75, 100 kitchens, for example, it costs a lot less to get. You get these kitchens. You ship them here. You put them together. You put them in, but the quality isn't that good. Eventually, they're going to fall apart.

David Brand: He also says it could just be a matter of bad luck and finding out what needs improvements or adjusting once people actually start using the buildings.

Janae Pierre: New York City agencies are in charge of making sure that these buildings are safe, right? Tell us what they had to say about your findings.

David Brand: That's right, so I asked the Department of Buildings about the specific sites that I mentioned. A spokesperson said new building projects are "complex," and that maintenance problems are pretty common. He said the city's safety standards mean that new buildings are structurally sound, including the specific ones I mentioned.

Most of the buildings that I reviewed didn't have this huge raft of hazardous problems like the ones I mentioned, or like that subset of 10%, but still pretty statistically significant subset that I looked at. I also talked with the Department of Housing Preservation & Development. A spokesperson there says they're going to investigate the complaints at these specific buildings and that they take tenant protection seriously, even if it's a luxury building where tenants are pretty well-off.

Janae Pierre: Let's step back from the buildings that you visited. What does your reporting suggest about this wave of new luxury housing built across the city over the past decade?

David Brand: Well, that's the big question that I'm left with. That, I think, is going to form the next phase of my reporting here. Are there deeper problems with these buildings, especially with these new buildings, with a lot of clearly evident problems already? I want to know. What happens to these buildings in the future, especially when the tax breaks expire, and owners are on the hook for not just a ton of upgrades and maintenance, but also their full property tax bill? How are they going to handle all of that and still make sure things are safe and well-maintained?

Janae Pierre: Yes, I'm definitely looking forward to following your reporting on this. Thanks a lot, David.

David Brand: Thanks, Janae.

Janae Pierre: That's WNYC's David Brand.

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Janae Pierre: All right. Now, to a little sports talk. If you have New York Liberty tickets this season, I've got some really good news for you. The WNBA and its players' union signed the official term sheet for a new labor agreement. The deal has been signed on paper, but it hasn't yet been formally ratified. Now, this collective bargaining agreement could significantly change how players are paid as the league continues to grow.

We're talking a higher salary cap and a new model that ties player pay more directly to league revenue. New York Liberty star Breanna Stewart is a VP of the players' union. She calls the deal transformational, but what are the implications for a star-filled roster like her team's? Sports reporter Priya Desai is back with us to break it all down. Hey, Priya.

Priya Desai: Hi.

Janae Pierre: Let's start with this. When you look at what has been reported so far, what stands out to you as the most meaningful change in this deal?

Priya Desai: From a labor standpoint, the minimum salary going from $66,000 to $300,000 is huge.

Janae Pierre: Big deal.

Priya Desai: That's going from a salary where you were needing to play overseas to have a livable wage to now being able to focus on your career here. Now, I'm sure some of them will still take the option to play overseas.

Janae Pierre: Yes, or unrivaled.

Priya Desai: Right, or unrivaled, but this was a huge jump. There's also additional resources for retirement, family planning. That's health care.

Janae Pierre: Yes, a 401(k).

Priya Desai: Correct. These are all things that unions fight for.

Janae Pierre: A big piece of this is tying player pay to league revenue. Can you walk us through how that works and why that's such a shift from how things were structured before?

Priya Desai: Yes, I'm going to use some numbers. Please don't zone out. The old CBA had a 9.3% revenue share, I guess. That would only increase if the league hit certain metrics, really hard metrics, until last year. Last season, the revenue hit certain numbers. It triggered a higher share between the players in the league, which was perfect timing, right?

Janae Pierre: Yes.

Priya Desai: For the CBA. Now, they're at a 20% gross revenue share. One of the big things was the players wanted gross, not net, meaning they don't want after you take out all these expenses. They want 20% of gross. That then has a direct reflection on the salary cap. Because in the old CBA, the salary cap and the revenue, they were separate entities altogether. The salary cap was at 3%. Every year would raise an arbitrary number. Now, it's connected to that revenue share. That's huge because, now, these players are a part of the profit of this league. It has grown exponentially, right?

Janae Pierre: Yes.

Priya Desai: For the salary cap to go from $1.4 million to $7 million is a huge jump. That's 20% of the current league revenue.

Janae Pierre: Why do you think it took so long?

Priya Desai: [chuckles] That's a good question. It's always like, chicken or the egg, right? Like, "Oh, well, they need to make money in order to invest." Also, if you build it, they will come. That was the constant argument. You need to show that this league is a league that balls. Pun intended, right?

Janae Pierre: Definitely.

Priya Desai: That's what fans want to go see. They want to see a team that owners and also a league that invest in these teams. I'll point to the Liberty. They were one of the first teams who really invested in training facilities and staffing and wanted to make sure their players were flying private, which, of course, you weren't allowed to do. There's a whole thing with that. Now, they can't. First, it's in the CBA. First class. That's right, absolutely. In that CBA, there's a lot of talk about investing in things like training facilities. Those are the things you need to match up to what these women are showing and what these women are creating, which is profit.

Janae Pierre: Let's talk about what's happening on the court in Brooklyn. What does this deal mean? How does this deal impact the New York Liberty, especially when it comes to keeping and paying star players?

Priya Desai: This is going to be really interesting because you have Sabrina Ionescu. You have Breanna Stewart and Jonquel Jones. They're all free agents. Now, you have these supermax contracts of $1.4 million. How do you keep all of them and still stay under the cap? That's going to be the big question. Let's also look at some of these dates. Expansion draft because we have a two-team expansion coming up, so expansion draft. Each of the teams are going to have to give up a player. That's on April 6th. Then you have free agency ends on April 7th. Then you have the college draft on April 13th.

Janae Pierre: Wow.

Priya Desai: Then training camp on April 19th. That is a lot of stuff happening in a short amount of time because of this whole CBA process. Then you have Chris DeMarco, a brand-new coach. What's going to happen in the next 60 days is really going to show the power of the CBA, but it's going to change, I think, a lot of rosters for a lot of teams. New York had the most expensive roster in the league. Now, a lot of teams are going to have money, and they're going to go after these star players.

Janae Pierre: Well, we're definitely keeping our eyes and ears open, cheering for every player in the WNBA and the WNBPA as well. Before we go, got to talk a little NCAA March Madness. St. John's University pulled quite an upset against Kansas. They won 67 to 65. Now, the Red Storm is making it to the sweet 16 for the first time in over 25 years. Priya, what are your thoughts on this team and the way that they've been playing during this tournament?

Priya Desai: Number one, I cannot believe the '90s were that long ago. I refuse to believe it.

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Priya Desai: That was such a phenomenal game. I will say if y'all have not watched the clip, please do. Dylan Darling, perfect name, I think, for this moment, has a game-winning, buzzer-beating shot.

Janae Pierre: It was his only shot for the game, right?

Priya Desai: He went 0 for 4 in the night. Then you find out afterwards that he was the one who went up to Coach Pitino and said, "I can do this." Pitino being Pitino was like, "All right, do it. Let's see what you got." I cover so many heavy things in sports, and then you watch a moment like that, and you're like, "I forgot this is why I love this game so much." It's such a big moment. Look, they're playing Duke next. Do I think they have a shot? I do, in fact. It would be such a David-and-Goliath moment, but it's going to be a great game regardless.

Janae Pierre: That's a hot take.

Priya Desai: I had a feeling they were going to make it at least this far. I don't think the Duke game is going to be some sort of runaway varsity versus JV. This is going to be a really strong game, so you never know. I'm not going to call them a Cinderella team because they are absolutely not the Johnnies. They are a sleeper team, so it's going to be a really fun game to watch.

Janae Pierre: Priya said, "Wake up."

Priya Desai: [laughs]

Janae Pierre: That's sports reporter Priya Desai. Thanks so much for chatting with me.

Priya Desai: Thank you for having me.

Janae Pierre: Thank you for listening to NYC NOW. I'm Janae Pierre. See you next time.

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