City Limits rounds up the latest housing and land use-related events, public hearings and affordable housing lotteries that are ending soon.

The view from Dean Street near Vanderbilt Avenue in Brooklyn. (City Limits/Adi Talwar)

Welcome to City Limits’ NYC Housing Calendar, a weekly feature where we round up the latest housing and land use-related events and hearings, as well as upcoming affordable housing lotteries that are ending soon.

Know of an event we should include in next week’s calendar? Email us.

Upcoming Housing and Land Use-Related Events:

Tuesday, April 14 at 10 a.m.: The NYC Council’s Public Housing Committee will hold an oversight hearing on security guards, fire guards, and NYCHA’s oversight of contractors. More here.

Wednesday, April 15, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.: State Senator Gustavo Rivera will hold a housing clinic at his district office, 2432 Grand Concourse Suite 506, Bronx. More here.

Wednesday, April 15, 12 to 2 p.m.: The city’s Department of Housing, Preservation and Development and Brooklyn Legal Services will hold a Zoom workshop for homeowners on preventing deed theft. More here.

Wednesday, April 16 at 12 p.m.: The NYC Council’s Committee on Criminal Justice will meet regarding the city’s plan to close Rikers Island, including a bill regarding supportive housing eligibility for justice involved persons. More here.

Wednesday, April 16, 6 to 8 p.m.: The city’s Department of Housing, Preservation and Development will hold a Zoom workshop for tenants on Good Cause eviction protections. More here.

Thursday, April 17 at 9:30 a.m.: The NYC Rent Guidelines Board will hold the third in a series of public meetings this spring on potential rent adjustments for tenants in rent-stabilized apartments, culminating in a final vote in June. More here.

Thursday, April 17 at 6:30 p.m.: The Chelsea Reform Democratic Club will host a special hybrid meeting to go over the Draft Environmental Impact Statement on the NYCHA’s plan to demolish and rebuild the Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Houses. It will take place in person at Hudson Guild (441 W 26th St., Manhattan) and on Zoom here.

Thursday, April 17 at 11 a.m.: The NYC Council’s Subcommittee on Zoning and Franchises will meet regarding the 02-51 Queens Boulevard Rezoning. More here.

NYC Affordable Housing Lotteries Ending Soon: The New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) is closing lotteries on the following subsidized buildings over the next week.

Maison 78 AKA 356 East 78th Street Apartments, Manhattan, for households earning between $62,675 and $218,010

Williamsburg Wharf A2, Brooklyn, for households earning between $117,738 and $218,010

The post NYC Housing Calendar, April 14-18 appeared first on City Limits.

By BARBARA ORTUTAY, Associated Press Technology Writer

Meta Platforms Inc. faces a historic antitrust trial beginning Monday that could force the tech giant to break off Instagram and WhatsApp, startups it bought more than a decade ago that have since grown into social media powerhouses.

The looming antitrust trial will be the first big test of President Donald Trump’s Federal Trade Commission’s ability to challenge Big Tech. The lawsuit was filed against Meta — then called Facebook — in 2020, during Trump’s first term. It claims the company bought Instagram and WhatsApp to squash competition and establish an illegal monopoly in the social media market.

Meta, the FTC argues, has maintained a monopoly by pursuing CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s strategy, “expressed in 2008: ‘It is better to buy than compete.’ True to that maxim, Facebook has systematically tracked potential rivals and acquired companies that it viewed as serious competitive threats.”

Facebook also enacted policies designed to make it difficult for smaller rivals to enter the market and “neutralize perceived competitive threats,” the FTC says in its complaint, just as the world shifted its attention to mobile devices from desktop computers.

“Unable to maintain its monopoly by fairly competing, the company’s executives addressed the existential threat by buying up new innovators that were succeeding where Facebook failed,” the FTC says.

Facebook bought Instagram — then a scrappy photo-sharing app with no ads and a small cult following — in 2012. The $1 billion cash and stock purchase price was eye-popping at the time, though the deal’s value fell to $750 million after Facebook’s stock price dipped following its initial public offering in May 2012.

Instagram was the first company Facebook bought and kept running as a separate app. Up until then, Facebook was known for smaller “acqui-hires” — a type of popular Silicon Valley deal in which a company purchases a startup as a way to hire its talented workers, then shuts the acquired company down. Two years later, it did it again with the messaging app WhatsApp, which it purchased for $22 billion.

WhatsApp and Instagram helped Facebook move its business from desktop computers to mobile devices, and to remain popular with younger generations as rivals like Snapchat (which it also tried, but failed, to buy) and TikTok emerged. However, the FTC has a narrow definition of Meta’s competitive market, excluding companies like TikTok, YouTube and Apple’s messaging service from being considered rivals to Instagram and WhatsApp.

“The FTC already has the difficult task, whether it’s looking at 10 years ago or five years ago or today, of trying to define what is the market we’re talking about in a sufficiently narrow way that it can show Meta has a ton of power in that market,” said Paul Swanson, an antitrust attorney for the law firm Holland & Hart. “And I do think that challenge has gotten harder as the years have gone by and we see more and more potential competitors in social media spaces.”

Meta, meanwhile, says the FTC’s lawsuit “defies reality.”

“The evidence at trial will show what every 17-year-old in the world knows: Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp compete with Chinese-owned TikTok, YouTube, X, iMessage and many others. More than 10 years after the FTC reviewed and cleared our acquisitions, the Commission’s action in this case sends the message that no deal is ever truly final. Regulators should be supporting American innovation, rather than seeking to break up a great American company and further advantaging China on critical issues like AI,” the company said in a statement.

In a filing last week, Meta also stressed that the FTC “must prove that Meta has monopoly power in its claimed relevant market now, not at some time in the past.” This, experts say, could also prove challenging since more competitors have emerged in the social media space in the years since the company bought WhatsApp and Instagram.

Meta’s fate will be decided by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who late last year denied Meta’s request for a summary judgment and ruled that the case must go to trial.

Boasberg “seems to be skeptical” of the FTC’s narrow market definition in his rulings to date, Swanson said. He added that the judge also said it is a “fact question,” which means he is open to hearing what the FTC and its experts have to say to define that narrow market.

While the FTC may face an uphill battle in proving its case, the stakes are high for Meta, whose advertising business could be cut in half if it’s forced to spin off Instagram.

“Instagram is now Meta’s biggest money maker in the U.S., its most lucrative market, where the app accounts for 50.5% of the company’s ad revenues in 2025. Instagram has also been picking up the slack for Facebook on the user front, particularly among young people, for a long time,” said Emarketer analyst Jasmine Enberg. “The trial also comes as Meta is trying to bring back OG Facebook in an effort to appeal to Gen Z and younger users as they join social media. Social media usage is far more fragmented today than it was in 2012 when Facebook acquired Instagram, and Facebook isn’t where the cool college kids hang out anymore. Meta needs Instagram to continue growing, especially as more advertisers think Instagram-first with their Meta budgets.”

But Meta isn’t the only technology company in the sights of federal antitrust regulators, Google and Amazon face their own cases. The remedy phase of Google’s case is scheduled to begin on April 21. A federal judge declared the search giant an illegal monopoly last August.

“A big theme here is we are applying 19th-century laws to 21st-century markets. And I think it’s an open question whether the judgment developments to antitrust law can keep up with markets as they are changing — these fluid and dynamic tech markets in particular,” Swanson said. “And this will be a case that speaks directly to that.”

By JAKE OFFENHARTZ, Associated Press

A private plane that crashed in upstate New York over the weekend was carrying six members of a close-knit family of physicians and distinguished student-athletes on a trip to the Catskills for a birthday celebration and the Passover holiday.

The twin-engine Mitsubishi MU-2B went down shortly after noon Saturday in a muddy field in Copake, New York, near the Massachusetts line, killing everyone on board, according to authorities and a family member who spoke to The Associated Press.

Shortly before the crash, the pilot had radioed air traffic control at Columbia County Airport to say he had missed the initial approach and requested a new approach plan, officials with the National Transportation Safety Board said at a Sunday briefing. While preparing the new coordinates, air traffic controllers attempted to relay a low altitude alert three times, with no response from the pilot and no distress call, officials said.

Investigators obtained video of the final seconds of the flight, which “appears to show that the aircraft was intact and crashed at a high rate of descent into the ground,” NTSB official Todd Inman told reporters.

Among the victims were Karenna Groff, a former MIT soccer player named the 2022 NCAA woman of the year; her father, a neuroscientist, Dr. Michael Groff; her mother, Dr. Joy Saini, a urogynecologist; her brother, Jared Groff, a 2022 graduate of Swarthmore College who worked as a paralegal; Alexia Couyutas Duarte, Jared Groff’s partner who also graduated Swarthmore and planned to attend Harvard Law School this fall; and Karenna Groff’s boyfriend, James Santoro, another recent MIT graduate, according to a family statement Sunday.

FILE – MIT women’s soccer graduate student Karenna Groff throws a ball prior to a baseball game at Fenway Park, Monday, April 3, 2023, in Boston. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)

“They were a wonderful family,” James’ father, John Santoro, told AP. “The world lost a lot of very good people who were going to do a lot of good for the world if they had the opportunity. We’re all personally devastated.”

Santoro said his son first met Karenna Groff as a freshman studying at MIT. Groff, who grew up in Weston, Massachusetts, was an All-American soccer player studying biomedical engineering. Santoro, a math major from New Jersey, played lacrosse for the school.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Karenna Groff co-founded openPPE, helping to create a new design of masks for essential workers. In 2023, she received the prestigious NCAA woman of the year award for the previous year for her on- and off-field accomplishments.

“Really, this recognition is a testament to my MIT women’s soccer family and all of the guidance, support, and friendship they have provided for me over the years,” she said in an interview at the time.

After graduating, Santoro and Groff moved to Manhattan, where Groff enrolled in medical school at New York University and Santoro worked as an investment associate for Silver Point, a hedge fund based in Greenwich, Connecticut.

India-born Saini was an accomplished pelvic surgeon and the founder of Boston Pelvic Health and Wellness, according to the family statement. She trained in medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, where she met Michael Groff, who became a distinguished neurosurgeon and experienced pilot, the statement said.

On Saturday morning, they all headed to Westchester County Airport in White Plains, a suburb of New York City, where they boarded Michael Groff’s private plane, according to John Santoro.

They were set to land at Columbia County Airport but crashed roughly 10 miles to the south. The plane was “compressed, buckled and embedded in the terrain” of a muddy agricultural field, Inman said.

The pilot was flying under instrument flight rules, rather than visual flight rules, but it was too soon to determine if reduced visibility from weather conditions were a factor, he said.

The plane had been sold a year ago and had an upgraded cockpit with newer technology that was certified to Federal Aviation Administration standards, according to the NTSB.

Investigators expect to be at the crash site for about a week and a full accident report could take between 12 and 24 months to complete, Inman said.

Funeral arrangements were underway, Santoro said.

“The 25 years we had with James were the best years of our lives,” he added, “and the joy and love he brought us will be enough to last a lifetime.”

By JIANG JUNZHE and MATT OTT, Associated Press

Wall Street was poised to add to last week’s gains when markets open on Monday as investors juggle incoming corporate earnings along with possible tariff updates from the U.S. and its trading partners.

Futures for the S&P 500 gained 1.4% before the bell Monday, while futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1%. Nasdaq futures were up 1.7%.

Shares rose in technology companies that stood to be hit hardest by the U.S. tariffs against China after President Donald Trump said he was temporarily exempting smartphones, computers and other electronics from the import fees.

Apple jumped close to 6% in premarket trading Monday, with computer maker Dell and chipmaker Super Micro Computer also up by about the same amount.

Goldman Sachs rose 1.5% after the New York investment bank topped Wall Street’s first-quarter earnings and revenue targets.

Coming later this week are the latest financial results from Bank of America, United Airlines and Netflix, among others.

The Chinese Ministry of Commerce said Trump’s weekend tariffs move was “a small step” toward fixing its wrongful action of what the U.S. president calls reciprocal tariffs. China urged him to completely cancel them.

China had announced Friday that it was boosting its tariffs on U.S. products to 125% in the latest tit-for-tat increase following Trump’s escalations on imports from China.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng jumped 2.4% to 21,417.40, while the Shanghai Composite index picked up 0.8% to 3,262.81 after the government reported that China’s exports surged 12.4% in March from a year earlier in a last-minute flurry of activity as companies rushed to beat increases in U.S. tariffs imposed by Trump.

The Taiex fell 0.1% in Taiwan, whose economy is heavily dependent on exports of computer chips and other high-tech goods after Trump said the new chip tariffs will be announced “over the next week.”

The friction between the world’s two largest economies could cause widespread damage and a possible global recession, even after Trump recently announced a 90-day pause on some of his tariffs for other countries, except for China.

In early European trading, Germany’s DAX gained 2.4%, the CAC 40 in Paris was up 2.1% and Britain’s FTSE 100 added 1.7%.

Asian shares logged sturdy gains. Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 1.2% to 33,982.36 and South Korea’s Kospi gained 1% to 2,455.89.

Shares in technology companies surged, with Tokyo Electron up 1.4% and Advantest, a testing equipment maker, up 4.9%. South Korea’s biggest company, Samsung Electronics, gained 1.8%.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 added 1.3%, closing at 7,748.60.

On Friday, the S&P 500 rose 1.8%, capping a chaotic and historic week. The Dow gained 1.6% and the Nasdaq composite jumped 2.1%. For the week, they each logged gains between 5% and 7%.

Stocks kicked higher as pressure eased a bit from within the U.S. bond market, which was flashing serious warning signals last week that drew Trump’s attention.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury eased to 4.44% early Monday. On Friday, it topped 4.58% in the morning, up from 4.01% a week ago. That’s a major move for a market that typically measures things in hundredths of a percentage point.

U.S. benchmark crude oil reversed early losses, gaining 83 cents to $62.33 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, climbed 81 cents to $65.57 per barrel.

The U.S. dollar dropped to 143.06 Japanese yen from 143.91 yen. The euro climbed to $1.1404 from $1.1320.