Before the Celtics’ season even ended last spring, the top of their leadership was already thinking about making some changes.

Celtics co-owner Wyc Grousbeck was sitting courtside at TD Garden as he watched his team getting blown out by the Heat in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals. His thoughts about the future quickly began running through his mind.

“I sat there probably the whole second half of that game starting to think about it,” Grousbeck said Wednesday in an appearance on WEEI’s ‘The Greg Hill Show.’ “And then I took two days to let everything settle down and then went and met with Brad Stevens and Joe Mazzulla, and we formulated a plan. …

I just said, ‘We’re not bringing back the same team.’ It’s been two seasons in a row of really good play but inconsistencies and they showed in the Finals two years ago and then in the conference finals last year. It just felt inconsistent and I said, I just want to change the mix so that there’s just a freshness, a fresh approach, so we made some changes this summer.”

About three weeks later, the Celtics did just that. They shockingly traded beloved point guard Marcus Smart and landed Kristaps Porzingis. Then, on the eve of training camp, they swung a deal for Jrue Holiday.

The mix was successfully changed as they assembled arguably the most talented roster in the league. The Celtics entered the season Wednesday as co-favorites with the Bucks to win the championship. Expectations, as usual, are high in Boston. But Grousbeck cautioned against it being championship or bust.

“It’s the ‘or bust’ part because I don’t think it’s a one and done, like it’s now or never,” Grousbeck said. “I said in another press conference earlier, I think we might have a six-year run here. I just pulled that number out of the air, but our two really marquee players, now we have four or five or six really top players. We have a top six that’s unbelievable. But Jaylen (Brown) and Jayson (Tatum) are in their mid-20s. Jaylen just re-upped for a long contract and we have the opportunity to talk to Jayson next summer and hopefully extend him. Having them in their mid-20s means that I’m looking at this as a period where we can be good every single year. …

“I’ll be so disappointed if we don’t do really well this year and give it a good try, give it a good fight, but I don’t think it’s now or never.”

Following a 30-day voting period that starts Nov. 8, Nostrand could be the first New York City Housing Authority development to join the Preservation Trust, a new public entity that can issue bonds to fund repairs. Similar votes at other NYCHA campuses are expected to take place next year.

With just over two weeks to go, NYCHA residents at the Nostrand Houses in Sheepshead Bay are preparing to cast votes that will impact the future of their homes.

Following a 30-day voting period that starts Nov. 8, Nostrand could be the first New York City Housing Authority development to join the Preservation Trust, a new public entity that can issue bonds to fund repairs.

Residents could alternatively vote to participate in the Permanent Affordability Commitment Together (PACT) initiative, through which NYCHA enters long term leases with private developers, or to remain in traditional Section 9 public housing.

PACT and the Trust are part of a strategy to tackle NYCHA’s growing capital repair needs—an estimated $78.3 billion-worth over the next 20 years—in the absence of more direct government funding. Both promise that residents will continue to pay no more than 30 percent of their income on rent. 

Through PACT, which has already converted 37,000 public housing units since its 2015 launch, private developers brought in to manage NYCHA developments can fund repairs with tax credits, mortgages and bonds. 

The Trust, passed into law last June by Gov. Kathy Hochul, has yet to be tested. Apartments would be leased to the new entity, which would then issue bonds to cover repairs using additional federal funding obtained through Tenant Protection Vouchers (TPVs), which are worth double NYCHA’s current federal subsidy. 

Apartments at Nostrand are in poorer condition than 80 percent of their peer developments, according to Mayor Eric Adams’ administration. The estimated cost to rehabilitate across the 16 buildings is $600 million.

Last week, roughly 50 residents packed into a room at CAMBA Sheepshead Bay Cornerstone, a community center at the neighboring campus, filled with fliers and coloring books for children. 

Deborah Millan was among the first to take a seat. She has lived at Nostrand for 42 years. After being separated from a partner and having two young children to raise, Millan said that she found a safety net in public housing. “It was really a beautiful place to live,” she said. 

But over the decades, conditions at the development deteriorated. “Small things get repaired, like a drain, but there’s a feeling of abandonment,” she explained. 

Millan’s hope, she said, is to see both initial repairs as well as longer term upkeep to maintain those conditions. “I just feel that if the buildings were kept up better, you would see more dignity for the people who live there,” she said. “Perhaps there wouldn’t be piss in the elevator, to be frank.”

Barbara McFadden, the tenant association president at Nostrand Houses and board member for Preservation Trust, led the Oct. 19 meeting. She told residents that although she is a supporter of the Trust, her role is not to sway tenants in any direction. Yet she encouraged the crowd to keep an open mind to new opportunities.

Throughout the meeting, she compared the struggling housing development to a struggling student. “If my child’s not learning in that classroom, I’m talking to the principal, I’m having my child put out of that classroom and put in another classroom where she can learn,” McFadden said. “Just like if you feel like you live at Nostrand Houses and you’re under Section 9 and you feel like you’re not getting results, you try something else.”

The crowd also heard from Vlada Kenniff, formerly of NYCHA’s Asset and Capital Management Division, who had become the Trust’s inaugural president five weeks prior. 

“It’s not about making [properties] pretty, it’s not about shiny things, it’s about fixing the systems,” she said. “I’m here to deliver on that.”

The Trust, Kenniff added, is going to keep the jobs of current NYCHA workers, 22 percent of whom live in public housing. PACT, by contrast, allows partnering developers to bring in their own management teams. 

This was a major selling point for Infinite George, a field representative of the Greater New York Laborers-Employers Cooperation and Education Trust (LECET). George does not live at Nostrand, but came with a stack of pro-Trust flyers to the meeting. 

“It’ll… keep the residents that gained meaningful employment through NYCHA—it’ll keep them employed as unionists as well,” he said. 

To complete needed fixes in apartments, some tenants may need to relocate, Keniff said. According to NYCHA, the amount of time depends on the site, but there is an anticipated three-to-six-month window.

Tenant Herman Cruz demanded reassurances that he would be able to return. 

“If a resident is to move out of their apartment, they’re coming back to that same exact apartment—where can I find that online or in writing?” he asked.

Tamika Brown, a NYCHA manager, chimed in with a response. “If you have to be temporarily relocated, you will sign a temporary lease for an apartment and once your repairs are done, you will go to your other apartment,” Brown said.

Kenniff added that she is working with NYCHA to hold vacant apartments at Nostrand and Sheepshead Bay Houses, a neighboring development, to ensure that tenants will stay on the property.

She also tried to assure Cruz and others that a third-party vendor cannot stop midway through the project if the cost of construction exceeds their expectation.

Under the Trust legislation, she said, a budget is established at the start of the process. Should the Trust pick a third-party vendor to do the repairs, the vendor would need to stay within that budget and complete all the tasks in the contract.

Before the meeting was through, one tenant pulled out a folded piece of paper from his shirt pocket and declared that the flier made him more confused about the difference between Preservation Trust and PACT. It was the flier that George of LECET had left out before the meeting commenced.

“It’s telling me to pick the Trust,” the tenant said. 

Other residents began examining the flier to figure out who it was from. Courtney Yu, the state affairs officer at NYCHA, assured tenants that the paper was not from the housing authority.

“There’s a specific organization that wants you to vote a certain way and they’re sharing their opinions with you, and that’s okay,” Yu said.

As the meeting came to a close, Yu reminded tenants that voting will begin online and by mail on Nov. 8. In-person voting will take place between Nov. 28 and Dec. 7 at their engagement office, located on the campus at 2344 Bragg St., apartment 1C. 

There are more meetings about the vote planned for the coming week, including this Thursday and Nov. 1, at the community center located at 3679 Nostrand Ave.  NYCHA said it has so far contacted 67 percent of tenants to let them know about the vote through phone calls, door knocking and meetings.

“We just want to make sure that you are all informed and we want to encourage you to vote because this is really important,” Yu said. 

Closer to the voting period, tenants can also expect flyering by Residents to Preserve Public Housing (RPPH), co-founded by Marquis Jenkins, a former public housing resident opposed to both the Trust and PACT plans. 

“RPPH firmly believes that the most sustainable way to protect, preserve and modernize NYCHA homes is through all levels of government funding public housing under Section 9,” Jenkins told City Limits by email.  

Millan, who walked out of the Oct. 19 meeting early, said she felt closer to a decision, if still uneasy. 

“It’s disturbing the choices we have,” she said. “I would be opting for the Preservation Trust only because it seems to limit the risk of privatization.”

Do you have questions or opinions about the upcoming vote, or about NYCHA’s PACT and Preservation Trust plans? City Limits wants to hear from you!

Send your questions and comments to NYCHA@citylimits.org. Your feedback will help inform City Limits’ future reporting on these issues.

We also accept oped submissions! If you’re interesting in submitting an opinion piece, email jeanmarie@citylimits.org.

For four years during former President Donald Trump’s presidency, the American Civil Liberties Union was one of his biggest courtroom adversaries. Now, the group is taking his side in a high-profile fight over what Trump can say as a criminal defendant.

The ACLU on Wednesday stepped into the battle over Trump’s federal gag order, arguing that U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan violated Trump’s First Amendment rights as well as the public’s right to hear him when she issued the order earlier this month. Chutkan is presiding over the criminal case special counsel Jack Smith is pursuing against Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.

“The obvious and unprecedented public interest in this prosecution, as well as the widespread political speech that it has generated and will continue to generate, only underscores the need to apply the most stringent First Amendment standard to a restraint on Defendant’s speech rights,” ACLU attorneys wrote in a friend-of-the-court brief.

The group urged Chutkan to reevaluate her order, calling it both vague and overbroad, with aspects of its meaning “unknown and perhaps unknowable.” One particular uncertainty the ACLU seized on was the meaning of Chutkan’s prohibition on statements that “target” Smith, his prosecutors, court personnel, defense attorneys or witnesses.

“Reading the order, Defendant cannot possibly know what he is permitted to say, and what he is not,” the group wrote.

Trump’s lawyers opposed the gag and have appealed to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Chutkan has temporarily lifted the gag order while she mulls a request to keep it on ice during that appeal.

While Chutkan said during a hearing on the issue that Trump should not be treated differently from other defendants simply because he’s running for president, the ACLU said the ongoing campaign heightens the public interest in letting the former president speak freely about his prosecution and other grievances against Smith’s office.

“Defendant’s ability to speak publicly about the substance of the prosecution, even including potential witnesses and testimony, is in many ways inextricable from the 2024 presidential campaign in which he is a declared candidate,” the ACLU brief said.

The ACLU brief also echoed arguments from Trump’s lawyers that his speech should not be curtailed simply because some who hear it may have acted violently or issued explicit threats to the targets of his ire.

“The First Amendment does not authorize the Court to impose a judicial gag order on Defendant merely because third parties who hear his public statements may behave badly of their own accord,” the group wrote.

Taking Trump’s side in court is a new look for the ACLU, which once boasted of filing more than 400 legal actions against the Trump administration and saw a huge influx of donations for its legal battles against Trump policies such as the travel ban.

Undoubtedly aware that many ACLU supporters will be surprised to see the organization coming to Trump’s defense, the group’s filing includes a blunt condemnation of his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

“Defendant’s role in the events related to his obstruction of the peaceful transition of power are relevant not only to the proceedings in this Court, but to the country’s decision about whether he deserves to be elected again,” the organization’s brief says. “Much that he has said has been patently false and has caused great harm to countless individuals, as well as to the Republic itself. Some of his words and actions have led him to this criminal indictment, which alleges grave wrongdoing in contempt of the peaceful transition of power.”

By Ye Xie and Michael Mackenzie, Bloomberg News

There’s a good reason why investors are amazed that something hasn’t broken in the economy yet: The last time U.S. government bond yields climbed so far, so fast, the nation plunged into back-to-back recessions.

The 10-year Treasury yield — a key baseline for the cost of money across the financial system — has jumped more than four full percentage points over the past three years, briefly pushing it this week over 5% for the first time since 2007. It’s the biggest increase since the run up in the early 1980s, when Paul Volcker’s efforts to slay inflation pushed the 10-year yield to nearly 16%.

In one sense, the similarities are no surprise, since Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s interest-rate hikes have been the most aggressive since then. In another, it underscores just how much times have changed.

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In the 1980s, the monetary policy onslaught set off two recessions. Now, the economy has continued to defy pessimistic forecasts, with the Atlanta Fed’s estimate showing that in the third quarter it likely even gained steam.

Of course, policy was more restrictive during the Volcker era. Adjusted for consumer-price increases, the “real” 10-year Treasury yield — or what it paid after inflation — was around 4% by the time the second downturn of the period started in mid-1981, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It’s around 1% now.

But the surprising economic strength has nevertheless injected large amounts of uncertainty into markets, where bond yields have pushed up sharply over the past several months amid increasing conviction that the Fed will keep interest rates high.

Whether such resilience can be sustained remains to be seen. Billionaire investor Bill Ackman closed his bearish bets against long-term bonds Monday, saying the economy is slowing fast.

Yet the year began with similar calls, accompanied by expectations that the bond market would rally as the Fed changed course.

Instead, bond prices have kept tumbling. The Bloomberg U.S. Treasury Total Index is down about 2.6% this year, extending its losses since the peak in August 2020 to 18%. In comparison, the worst peak-to-trough drawdown previously was a decline of about 7% in 1980, when the Fed’s key benchmark hit 20%. This selloff has been more painful because rates had been low, depressing the income payments that help to offset the hit.

Another factor has been the sharp increase in the federal deficit, which is flooding the market with new Treasuries at a time when traditional big buyers, including the Fed and other major central banks, have pulled back on bond buying. That’s seen as one reason why yields have marched higher in recent weeks even as the futures market shows traders think the Fed’s rate hikes are likely done.

“A hard landing is sort of our base case scenario — but I can’t point to any data and say, ‘This is a clear leading indicator of a recession and look right here,’”said Priya Misra, a portfolio manager at JPMorgan Asset Management

“Conviction levels are low,” she said. Investors who had been buying bonds “have all been hurt,” she said.

With assistance from Edward Bolingbroke.