The City Council approved the lease of city land to build housing for the formerly incarcerated in the Bronx, over the objections of the local councilmember and City Hall. It’s the first time the Council has overruled one of their own on a land use issue since 2021.

Council Speaker Adrienne Adams ahead of Thursday’s vote not he Just Home plan. )William Alatriste/NYC Council Media Unit)

The City Council approved an application from NYC Health + Hospitals (H+H) to lease land on the campus of Jacobi Hospital in the Bronx, where a nonprofit planned to build 58 units of supportive housing for severely-ill, otherwise-homeless people leaving Rikers Island jails.

Lawmakers voted through the measure Thursday over the objections of the local Councilmember Kristy Marmorato, who opposes the project—a stance that helped her win her seat in 2023. 

It’s a rare example of the Council overruling one of their own on a land use and housing development issue, as lawmakers usually defer to the rep whose district a proposal falls in, a practice known as “member deference.”

After years of planning, the Adams administration pulled its support at the 11th hour, writing to the Committee on Landmarks last week that it was “actively reviewing” the project, which in its current form no longer has the support of City Hall.

On Wednesday night, the eve of the Council meeting, First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro sent a letter to Council Speaker Adrienne Adams urging her not to bring the project to a vote.

“In light of the Mayor’s withdrawal of the application as currently constituted, there would be no purpose to such an authorizing resolution vote and the application should be deemed withdrawn,” wrote Mastro, who added that the city was searching for alternative sites. 

He wrote that they expected the support of the Fortune Society, the nonprofit organization that would build and operate the project.

Stanley Richards, Fortune’s CEO, said that they had not been contacted by the administration about any other locations and were not told about the letter.

“If they have identified another site, it’s not that it should be one or the other. We need both sites, because we see that many people walk through our doors who are struggling with housing insecurity,” said Richards.

Council sources disputed that the mayor has the power to withdraw the application. H+H authorized the disposition of the land in a January 2024 board vote, and Council sources said that it would need to be withdrawn or changed by an action of the H+H board, which may need to restart its process for public engagement.

“Randy Mastro’s letter is indeed irrelevant,” said City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams at a Thursday afternoon press conference. If the administration were to continue to fight the project after the vote, “what the mayor can or cannot do at that point remains to be seen,” she said.

H+H has been silent on whether it wants to advance the Morris Park project or consider a revised plan. The agency did not respond to City Limits’ request for comment on this story before publication.

City Hall criticized the Council for waiting nearly two years to address the application, saying lawmakers are “insisting on going forward with a meaningless vote to approve a limited project on a single site that will never happen because the Mayor no longer supports it,” a spokesperson said in a statement to City Limits

Mastro’s letter said the administration would search for alternative sites for supportive and affordable housing in the Bronx, but those projects would not be designed to support formerly incarcerated people, as Just Home would. Community leaders and H+H have previously said that the need for housing for justice-involved people is high.

City Hall did not provide alternative sites for Just Home in response to City Limits’ questions last week. But in a dig at Councilmember Sandy Nurse, a vocal supporter of the project, Mastro included two proposed sites around Brooklyn’s Broadway Junction in the footnotes of the letter.

Both sites would be in Nurse’s district.

“It was definitely a jab,” Nurse told City Limits. “It’s no secret that I’m not a fan of Randy Mastro and I am certainly not a fan of Mayor Adams.” 

She added that she recently opened a supportive housing site in her district with Housing Plus, an organization that serves justice-involved people.

The proposed site for the “Just Home” project at 1900 Seminole Ave. on the Jacobi Medical Center campus. (Adi Talwar/City Limits)

A spokesperson for City Hall said that they were seeking an alternative location for the project with more community support and targeted Nurse’s district specifically for the proposed alternatives because of her support for Just Home.

“It is the right type of facility. It is the right location, and that district is in need of doing its fair share of housing. I think it will be very hypocritical if H+H pulled out of this project, or if their board made a decision to pull this,” said Nurse.

Marmorato’s East Bronx district ranked 38 out of the 51 Council districts for affordable housing production over the last decade, according to a tracker maintained by the New York Housing Conference. Nurse’s district ranked 10th, with 4,080 new affordable apartments built between 2014 and 2024, compared to 484 in Marmorato’s.

City Hall’s continued opposition, however, makes it unclear how the Just Home project can proceed.

It may depend on how much H+H considers itself independent from its boss, Mayor Eric Adams. H+H could dispense the land with or without City Hall’s approval, but Fortune Society likely needs the agency’s support to move the project forward, Richards said.

Marmarato urged her colleagues to vote no on the proposal. 

“If you claim to care about member deference, then you must across the board,” she said at Thursday afternoon’s hearing. “You cannot say one thing publicly and then act differently when personal feelings are at stake. That’s not democracy. It’s hypocrisy.”

But the Council ultimately approved the land disposition 36 to 9. It was the first time the lawmakers overrode “member deference” since 2021, when they approved the NYC Blood Center’s expansion on Manhattan’s East Side over the local rep’s objections.

In November, voters will weigh in on ballot measures from Mayor Adams’ Charter Commission that seek to weaken member deference. Housing advocates and City Hall argue that the practice  results in less new housing during a dire shortage.

Council leadership has downplayed the role of member deference, arguing it helps them secure crucial concessions from developers to serve their neighborhoods. Now they’ve ignored a local member’s objections for the first time during Speaker Adams’ tenure.

Richards is hopeful that the long-delayed Just Home project can now move forward.

He and other criminal justice advocates say access to a stable home is a key public safety measure, and helps ensure those leaving jail don’t re-offend. 

A 2022 analysis by the Corporation for Supportive Housing estimated that some 2,500 people held at Rikers Island in a given year are homeless and have behavioral health needs that would qualify them for supportive housing. 

“We see that many people walk through our doors who are struggling with housing insecurity,” Richards said. “Because what we know is that when people have housing and people have access to services, it increases the likelihood of them not returning back to the system.”

To reach the reporter behind this story, contact Patrick@citylimits.org. To reach the editor, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org

Want to republish this story? Find City Limits’ reprint policy here.

The post Council Approves Just Home Project, But City Hall’s Objections Leave Future Unclear appeared first on City Limits.

By FARNOUSH AMIRI and ELLIOT SPAGAT, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — The Trump administration pitched several other countries Thursday on its view that the global system for seeking asylum, in effect since World War II, has been rampantly abused and urged them to join the United States in cracking down on such migration.

Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau led the discussion on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly alongside representatives from Kosovo, Bangladesh, Liberia and Panama. Landau’s gathering allowed American officials to gauge early support and interest for what could be a massive revamp of the asylum system.

“If you have hundreds of thousands of fake asylum seekers, then what happens to the real asylum system?” Landau said in his opening remarks. “Saying the process is susceptible to abuse is not xenophobic; it is not being a mean or bad person.”

The U.S. said changes must, at a minimum, embrace asylum as a temporary status and dictate that those seeking protection should eventually return home. The Trump administration also emphasized that there is no right to receive asylum in a country of choice and that decisions are governed by individual nations, not multinational organizations.

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Human rights groups watched from the sidelines with unease.

Bill Frelick, Human Rights Watch’s director of refugee and migrant rights, said the U.S. proposal “looks like the first step in a bid to tear down the global refugee system.” He faulted the proposal for not embracing a core principle of the current system that people should not be sent to countries where they face persecution.

Filippo Grandi, the U.N. refugee chief, sat in the audience as the world leaders on the panel applauded the Trump administration’s controversial approach to asylum and migration. Grandi, whose organization advocates for those in forced displacement, used the Q&A portion of the event to plead with Landau to take advantage of organizations like his as the U.S. moves forward with this shift in nearly 80 years of policy.

“The right to seek asylum, which my organization upholds, is not incompatible with sovereignty,” Grandi said to the panel. He added that instead of rushing to halt the global asylum process, “the key is to address the root causes” that force people to flee in the first place.

The U.S. has been the top destination for asylum-seekers by far since 2017, with Germany a distant second, according to 2024 figures from the U.N. refugee agency. President Donald Trump and his allies say people with weak cases have abused the system to gain entry to the United States, obtaining work permits while their cases take years to wind through backlogged immigration courts.

The U.S. adheres to a global asylum system first laid out in the 1951 Refugee Convention and enshrined into U.S. law in 1980.

People seeking refuge in the U.S. are able to apply for asylum once they are on American soil, regardless of whether they came legally. To qualify, they have to show a fear of persecution in their own country because of specific reasons, such as their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion. Refugees meet a similar standard by applying abroad.

Once someone is granted asylum, they can’t be deported, they can work legally, bring immediate family, apply for legal residency and eventually seek U.S. citizenship. It offers a permanent future in the U.S.

The panelists Thursday, despite their countries facing varying degrees of migration, appeared to agree that economic migration, in which an individual flees to another country for better financial opportunities, has been conflated with individuals seeking asylum for safety purposes.

Vjosa Osmani Sadriu, the president of Kosovo, talked about her own refugee experience, saying that people like her who are experiencing real dangers and persecution are suffering from loopholes of the asylum system.

“We all came to the conclusion is that it is the illegal migration that must be challenged in order to protect and preserve the integrity of those who are real asylum seekers, of those who are legal citizens and those who respect the rules and respect the law,” she said.

The number of people coming to the U.S.-Mexico border seeking asylum has ballooned in recent years, overloading immigration courts and leading to cries that the system is being abused by people who are coming for jobs or other reasons that don’t meet the standards for asylum.

Facing mounting criticism over the large numbers of migrants coming to the border, the Biden administration took steps that severely curtailed asylum access.

The first day in office, Trump signed an order declaring an invasion at the southern border and said he was “suspending the physical entry” of migrants and their ability to seek asylum until he decides it is over. Immigration advocates have sued, and the issue is before the courts.

Spagat reported from San Diego. Associated Press writers Matthew Lee in New York and Rebecca Santana in Washington contributed to this report.

St. Paul’s Parks and Rec is trying to rename Osborn Plaza and they need your help.

The department is looking for residents’ input on a new name for the city-owned urban park at 376 Wabasha Street North. People can submit suggestions through a two-minute survey online at stpaul.gov.

The survey will close around Oct. 1.

Brett Hussong, a principal designer in the Parks and Recreation design and construction division and the project manager for Osborn Plaza, said a potential name change could help emphasize to residents that the plaza is a city-owned park.

Once the survey goes through, the design team will do community engagement on the most popular names. Once a name is chosen, it will be approved by the St. Paul Parks and Recreation Commission and then the City Council.

“I think the reason for us doing this is because I think there is some confusion about whether this is a publicly owned park,” Hussong said. “We actually went to the farmer’s market this weekend and a couple of people knew this was park land, but the majority of people didn’t. So I think it would help create a little more awareness that this is public property and its park land and it’s open to the public.”

Revitalization project

The name change and the new design are a part of an overall revitalization project, Hussong said.

The design will have a new sound system, decorative lighting that can change color, and more space where new art can be added in the future.

“It’ll bring an interesting feel and warmth if we can have lighting and sound,” Hussong said.

This isn’t the first time the plaza has had a name change. The building was originally named the Osborn Plaza after Merritt J. Osborn, who founded the Economics Laboratory, which was later named Ecolab in 1923, reported the Pioneer Press.

The name changed in 1998 when the St. Paul City Council renamed it to the Ecolab Plaza and the Capital Centre Plaza in recognition of the company’s size and influence.

In 2022, Ecolab asked the city council to restore the building’s name to Osborn Plaza.

Hussong said the final design for the plaza is expected to be released soon. The remodeling project is expected to be completed by late summer or early fall of 2026.

The renovation and the possible name change will help people in St. Paul find an additional place for leisure and recreation, he said.

“I think everyone needs trees and green space, and people need to get away. They are utilized as that amenity to be out in nature,” Hussong said.

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Alan Horton will shift over from the radio call to television for much of the upcoming season, the team announced Thursday.

The longtime Timberwolves’ radio voice will sit in Michael Grady‘s chair whenever Grady is taking on national television duties, which is expected to be a frequent occurrence this season.

Grady has signed on with Amazon and NBC/Peacock for the upcoming NBA season, and could do anywhere up to around 20 of the 65 Timberwolves regular season games that will air on FanDuel Sports Network.

That leaves a large slate of games for Horton to call alongside analyst Jim Petersen.

Horton enters into a more prominent position in now his 19th season with the organization. Horton will still be the team’s radio play by play voice when Grady is available to call the Timberwolves games or when Minnesota is exclusively on national television.

But for the games where Horton is on the television broadcast, he and Petersen’s call will be simulcasted onto radio airwaves.

Minnesota also announced that Lea B. Olsen will be the television sideline reporter for the local broadcast of all Timberwolves’ home games this season, while Cayleigh Griffin and Ashley Stroehlein will handle that role for road contests.