After City Hall pulled its support for an East Bronx project to build supportive housing for seriously ill people leaving jail, City Council members are considering overruling one of their own.

A lawn sign outside homes on Seminole Avenue in Morris Park, where the “Just Home” project was planned, in 2021. The proposal is now at the center of a dispute between City Hall and the City Council. (Adi Talwar for City Limits)

A housing development that would create 58 apartments for formerly-incarcerated people with severe health needs in the Bronx is in jeopardy after the Adams administration pulled support for the project last week. 

Now, Council members are prepared to vote it through anyway, even as City Hall says the “Just Home” plan—which has spurred significant local pushback over the last three years—is now under review.

The vote, which Gothamist reported will take place during the Council’s stated meeting this Thursday, could advance the project over the objections of the local rep, overriding an informal practice called “member deference,” where the Council won’t vote a land use change through unless the home councilmember approves. 

The fight comes after Mayor Eric Adams’ Charter Revision Commission took aim at the Council’s land use powers by advancing four November ballot measures aimed at speeding up housing production in the city.

“The mayor, with one hand, he’s trying to steamroll us with these ballot proposals, and with the other hand, he’s playing games on a f***ing housing proposal,” said Councilmember Justin Brannan.

No-show applicant

The Just Home project has been controversial since it was first proposed in 2022, attracting raucous opposition at community board meetings. The project was approved by NYC Health and Hospitals’ (H+H) board in 2024, and had the Adams administration’s support as of last month.

H+H owns the currently vacant building on the Jacobi Hospital campus in Morris Park where the development would be built. Thursday, in an unusual step, agency officials for H+H did not attend the City Council’s Landmarks Committee meeting where their resolution to lease the land was being reviewed.

It was the second City Council hearing last week where councilmembers expected to question administration officials who didn’t show.

H+H did not respond to City Limits’ questions about the project. 

Instead of attending the hearing, they sent a letter excusing themselves, saying that the administration is “actively reviewing” Just Home to identify a different location for it. The Daily News first reported that First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro was pulling City Hall’s support for the plan, and instructed agency officials not to testify.

Fortune Society, the nonprofit partner which would develop the project, said it will bring 83 residential units to the site. That would include 24 affordable studios for households making less than 80 percent of the area median income ($90,000 for a single person) and 58 supportive units for formerly incarcerated individuals with significant medical needs who would otherwise be homeless.

Some community members, at Thursday’s hearing and throughout the project’s years-long review process, have expressed concerns about safety in their neighborhood.

Bernadette Ferrara, an east Bronx resident, testified Thursday that “the Just Home project is not our community’s need,” saying that it was too close to schools and risked public safety.

A public hearing on the Just Home plan in The Bronx in 2023. (Adi Talwar/City Limits)

“The fact is that providing formerly incarcerated people with supportive housing does not make our neighborhoods less safe,” the Fortune Society CEO Stanley Richards countered at Thursday’s hearing. 

He and other advocates say access to a stable home and other support services makes it less likely someone will return to jail or prison. 

“To the contrary, it makes all of us safer,” he said.

Michael Kaess, a Morris Park resident who supports the project, said he was dumbfounded by the administration’s last-minute shift.

“I don’t know what the hell Adams is doing, because I know these folks,” Kaess said of his East Bronx neighbors. “These are not Adams voters.”

City Hall sent two officials, Senior Advisor to the Mayor on Intergovernmental Affairs Diane Savino and Deputy Mayor for Intergovernmental Affairs Tiffany Raspberry, to testify Thursday. They said they’d asked lawmakers the day before to delay the hearing, which was scheduled three weeks prior. 

“The City is developing a new proposal that would identify a different location for Just Home,” H+H’s letter to the Council read, though officials did not specify what alternative sites are being considered.

City Hall also criticized the Council for waiting to vote on the application until now, almost two years after it was advanced by H+H’s board of directors. 

Brannan said that still doesn’t explain the administration’s last minute rug-pull. 

“How come this has been sitting around for four years and you never had a problem with it until now, when it’s time to vote,” he said.

A new battleground for ballot measures

The contentious hearing Thursday highlighted ongoing tensions between City Hall and the City Council over powers to control land use.

Mayor Adams has advanced three general election ballot proposals that would erode the Council’s authority on housing development decisions, a move that Council leadership has broadly condemned.

Earlier this month, they tried to get the Board of Elections to throw out the ballot measures, calling them “misleading.” But the Board declined.

One of the proposals, written by a Charter Revision Commission that Mayor Adams convened at the start of the year, seeks to undermine the practice of “member deference,” saying it slows down and limits new housing production.

It would create a new tribunal of the mayor, council speaker, and borough president that could override the Council’s collective land use decisions. 

Kristy Marmorato, the Republican councilmember representing Morris Park, is opposed to the Just Home project, a stance that helped her win her seat in 2023. She did not respond to City Limits’ request for comment.

Now, City Hall’s backtracking on the plan could prompt the Council to override member deference, at least in this instance. Councilmembers Nurse, Brannan, and Restler told City Limits they would support the project over Marmarato’s objections if it came to a vote, and signaled they would also override a mayoral veto of the plan.

They said they believe they have enough support to win both of those votes. That support includes Council leadership and Speaker Adrienne Adams, according to sources.

“Mayor Adams and Randy Mastro may be trying to block another housing project that can deliver homes for the people of our city, but the Council won’t allow it,” a spokesperson for the Council told City Limits, calling the move “despicable.”

The proposed Just Home project building on Jacobi Medical Center’s campus. The Adams administration says it now wants to find a different location for the plan. (Adi Talwar/City Limits)

What’s next?

Still, the project’s future is uncertain. H+H could still pull the application before the City Council can vote on it or try to stall it until January, when there could be a new administration.

Withdrawing the application could restart the years-long public review process.

“It would be incredibly hypocritical and going against their own stated goals and stated needs if they were to pull this application,” said Councilmember Nurse, who co-leads the Council’s progressive caucus. “This, again, would be a situation where the mayor is going against his own agencies and the advice and recommendations and solutions that they have been publicly championing.” 

Fortune Society is more confident: “You’re always worried about the unknown, but I feel pretty good about the leadership and movement on the Council,” CEO Richards told City Limits.

When it comes to member deference, voters will get a chance to weigh in on the ballot measure come the November election. 

Some housing advocates say the practice is a barrier to housing production, with the Charter Commission noting the significant neighborhood-by-neighborhood disparities when it comes to where new units get built.  

But Councilmembers say that forcing developers to the table to win their support helps them extract vital concessions for their neighborhoods, like affordable housing, infrastructure, or other upgrades.

“If we don’t have those levers, then we can’t negotiate those benefits,” said Brannan.

Lawmakers point to the 130,000 projected housing units that the Council has approved through land use actions in the past four years.

“The majority of the Council knows how important housing is and knows where districts have not done their fair share,” said Nurse.

If voted through, this would be the first time the Council overruled one of its own on a land use decision since lawmakers approved the New York Blood Center’s expansion in 2021, over the objections of then-Upper East Side Councilmember Ben Kallos.

Councilmembers think Just Home warrants the same.

“This is the right project and the right location,” said Nurse. “At the end of the day, the opposition to this project is based on homelessness, it’s anti-Blackness. It is fear of people with real social issues. And, quite frankly, I just can’t entertain that.”

Even an approval from the City Council wouldn’t guarantee the project moves forward. But it would allow the Fortune Society to start fundraising to begin development. They’d still need the collaboration of H+H down the road.

“We all must carry our fair share, and we all must be part of the solution,” said Richards. “Time has really come for us to stop pretending we don’t have vulnerable people living in our communities, that if we move them somewhere far away, somehow their challenges in our cities will go away.” 

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 Housing For Formerly Incarcerated Could Test City Council’s ‘Member Deference’ appeared first on City Limits.

By KANIS LEUNG

HONG KONG (AP) — Southern Chinese cities scaled back many aspects of daily life on Tuesday with school and business closures and flight cancellations as they braced for one of the strongest typhoons in years that has already killed three people and displaced thousands in the Philippines.

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Residents living in flood-prone areas put sandbags and barriers at their doors, while others taped windows and glass doors to brace for strong winds. Many people stockpiled food and other supplies, and some market vendors reported their goods were selling out fast.

Some Hong Kongers gathered on a promenade to watch waves as high as 6.5 to 9.8 feet splash onto the pedestrian area before the weather worsens. Authorities rescued three people, including a child, from the sea and police said they were watching the waves.

Hong Kong’ s observatory said Super Typhoon Ragasa, which was packing maximum sustained winds near the center of about 120 mph, is expected to move west-northwest at about 13.7 mph across the northern part of the South China Sea and edge closer to the coast of Guangdong province, the southern Chinese economic powerhouse. Over one million people were relocated in the province, according to the Department of Emergency Management of Guangdong province.

China’s National Meteorological Center forecast the typhoon would make landfall in the coastal area between Taishan and Zhanjiang cities in Guangdong between midday and evening on Wednesday. Heavy rainfalls are tagging along in the majority of Guangdong and nearby Fujian province.

Schools, transport, factories halted

The observatory in Hong Kong issued storm warning signal No. 8, the third-highest in the city’s weather alert system. The city categorizes tropical cyclones with maximum sustained winds near the center of 185 kph or above as super typhoons to make residents extra vigilant about the approach of more intense storms.

The water level was forecast to rise about 2 meters over coastal areas in the Asian financial hub on Wednesday morning, and the maximum level in some areas could hit 4 to 5 meters above the typical lowest sea level.

The government said the water levels could be similar to those recorded during Typhoon Hato in 2017 and Typhoon Mangkhut in 2018 — estimated to have caused the city direct economic losses worth over 1 billion Hong Kong dollars ($154 million) and 4.6 billion Hong Kong dollars, respectively.

Schools were closed in Hong Kong and the neighboring casino city of Macao. Hundreds of residents sought refuge at temporary shelters in the financial hub and three injured people were treated at hospitals. Other cities such as the Chinese tech hub of Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Foshan in Guangdong province and Haikou in Hainan province ordered class cancellations and a gradual suspension of other businesses, production and transportation.

Hundreds of flights were canceled in Hong Kong. Shenzhen airport will halt all flights from Tuesday night. The Macao government was evacuating residents and tourists and ordered bridges to close in the evening.

Trail of destruction in Philippines, Taiwan

Heavy rain caused a barrier lake in Taiwan’s eastern Hualien County to overflow and torrents of water rushed downstream and swept away a bridge, the Taiwan’s Central News Agency reported. Local authorities said two people died and 30 others were missing.

Another 28 were injured across the island and over 7,000 people were evacuated, authorities said.

Roads in Guangfu township in Hualien turned into churning rivers that carried away vehicles.

In the northern Philippines, Ragasa left at least three people dead, five others missing and displaced more than 17,500 in flooding and landslides, officials said.

The dead included a 74-year-old man, who was pinned in one of four vehicles that were partly buried by mud, rocks and trees that cascaded down a mountainside onto a narrow road on Monday in the mountain town of Tuba in Benguet province, officials said. Two other villagers died in the storm, including a resident in Calayan town, a cluster of islands off northern Cagayan province where the super typhoon made landfall on Monday.

Ragasa, which means scramble in Tagalog, prompted the Philippine government on Monday to close schools and government offices in the densely populated capital region and 29 northern provinces. Fishing boats and ferries were prohibited from venturing into very rough seas and domestic flights were canceled.

Associated Press journalists Jim Gomez in Manila, Philippines, Johnson Lai in Taipei, Taiwan, Fu Ting in Washington contributed to this report.

By WYATTE GRANTHAM-PHILIPS

NEW YORK (AP) — Tariffs and years of teetering mall traffic have roiled much of the toy industry. But Build-A-Bear investors are continuing to reap sizeable gains.

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Shares of Build-A-Bear Workshop are up more than 60% since the start of 2025, trading at just under $72 apiece as of Tuesday afternoon. That compares to just 13% for the S&P 500 since the start of the year, and marks dramatic growth from five years ago, when the St. Louis-based retailer’s stock sat under $3.

The toy industry overall has been “reasonably soft” in recent years, notes Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData — but certain categories, including craft-oriented products, have done very well following the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. And that’s key to Build-A-Bear’s core business model: welcoming consumers into their brick-and-mortar stores to make their own plush animals.

That may also set Build-A-Bear apart from the malls its stores are often inside, many of which have struggled to see overall traffic rebound over the years.

“The mall may not be a destination, but Build-A-Bear often is — because it’s often a planned trip,” Saunders said. “It’s a store within a mall that many consumers make a beeline for.”

Build-A-Bear is still not isn’t entirely immune to macroeconomic pressures, but the company’s profit has soared to record after record in recent quarters. Last month, the retailer reported what it said were the best results for a second quarter and first half of a fiscal year in the history of the Build-A-Bear, which opened its first store in 1997. Company executives pointed to strong store performance and other expansion efforts.

In the first half of its 2025 fiscal year, the company’s revenues hit $252.6 million and its pre-tax income climbed to $34.9 million — up 11.5% and 31.5%, respectively, year-over-year.

The company also raised its financial outlook for the full year, despite anticipated costs of President Donald Trump’s steep tariffs on goods coming into the U.S. from around the world and other headwinds.

“Tariffs are a real cost that we are facing,” Voin Todorovic, chief financial officer at Build-A-Bear, said in the company’s Aug. 28 earnings call — pointing to current U.S. import tax rates of 30% on China and 20% on Vietnam, where the retailer sources much of its products. Some of that has already trickled down to the cost of Build-A-Bear’s merchandise in North America, but Todorovic noted that such levies would impact the company “even more in the second half of the year.”

Still, he and other executives pointed to preparations Build-A-Bear had made to lessen the blow, including previous inventory increases. The company also maintained that consumer-facing price impacts would be limited.

While the retailer offers some ready-made toys and toy clothing, “what Build-A-Bear generally buys is materials,” Saunders noted. This can “hedge against tariffs much more effectively,” he explained, as they reduce labor costs and potentially allow for more flexibility on sourcing.

Still, Saunders notes that everyone is going to be affected by tariffs and Build-A-Bear isn’t an exception. He adds that consumers will probably “eat that extra cost because they’re paying for the entertainment value.”

Barring any significant changes, Todorovic said in August’s earnings call that tariffs are anticipated to cost Build-A-Bear under $11 million for the 2025 fiscal year. But despite that and other costs, he noted that the company is still on track to approach or slightly beat last year’s earnings.

The company’s latest guidance expects its pre-tax income to reach between $62 million to $70 million for the full 2025 fiscal year, compared to just over $67 million reported in 2024.

By TRAVIS LOLLER

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Bobby Cain, who helped integrate one of the first high schools in the South in 1956 as one of the so-called Clinton 12, died Monday in Nashville at the age of 85, according to his nephew J. Kelvin Cain.

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Bobby Cain was a senior when he entered the formerly all-white Clinton High School in Tennessee on a court order. He had previously attended a Black high school about 20 miles away in Knoxville and was not happy about leaving his friends to spend his senior year at a new school in a hostile environment.

“He had no interest in doing it because, you know, he’d gotten to rise up through the ranks at Austin High School as the senior and was finally big fish in the pond. And to have to go to this all-white high school — it was tough,” said Adam Velk, executive director of the Green McAdoo Cultural Center, which promotes the legacy of the Clinton 12. Velk added that the 16-year-old had to do it “with the entire world watching him.”

This was a couple of years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v Board of Education that separating public school children on the basis of race was unconstitutional and a year before Little Rock Central High School was desegregated by force. Unlike the Little Rock Nine, the Clinton 12 students were not hand-picked and trained for the job of desegregation. They just happed to live within the Anderson County school district at the time, Velk said.

Although the court-ordered desegregation in Clinton was accepted by state and local authorities, many in the local white community were against it. They were soon joined by Ku Klux Klan members and other segregationists from outside the community in a series of protests that led to the National Guard being called in to restore order.

Cain managed to stick out the year, becoming the first Black student in Tennessee to graduate from an integrated state-run school. What should have been a triumphant moment was marred by violence. After receiving his diploma, Cain was jumped and beaten up by a group of white students. In the end, only one other member of the Clinton 12 made it to graduation. Gail Ann Epps graduated the following year, according to the Tennessee State Museum.

Cain had a lot of anger around his experience at the school and didn’t talk about it for many years.

Bobby Cain poses poses for a photo in the Civil Rights Room of the Nashville, Tenn., Public Library in October 2017. (Robin Conover/The Tennessee Magazine via AP)

“He didn’t want to remember it,” his nephew said.

He received a scholarship to attend Tennessee State University in Nashville, where he met his wife. After graduation, he worked for the Tennessee Department of Human Services and was a member of the U.S. Army Reserve. He never joined in the sit-in protests of the era, quipping to The Tennessee Magazine in a 2017 interview that it was because “you had to agree to be nonviolent.”

Cain told the magazine that he had no white friends at Clinton High School.

“You have to realize that if any white students had gone out of their way to be nice to us, they would have been jumped on,” he said.

He also had to stop playing sports because “the coaches at Clinton told me that none of the other high schools would play against us if I was on the field at the game.”

Velk calls Cain a reluctant hero.

“This is a normal, everyday human being who found themselves in extraordinary circumstances and acted above those circumstances,” Velk said. “This is a person who dealt with this tremendous difficulty and rose to the occasion.”

Cain is survived by a daughter, Yvette Cain-Frank, and grandson Tobias Cain-Frank.