“It is time to exploit the ‘City of Yes’ zoning changes and reclaim the 2,500 acres currently dedicated to a sport that is effectively dead as an urban pastime.”

The golf course at Ferry Point Park in the Bronx, pictured here shortly after it was constructed in 2013. (Spencer T Tucker/NYC Mayor’s Office)

The New York Real Estate Board recently confirmed what every New Yorker feels: we are in a housing free-fall. With a staggering shortfall of up to 540,000 units and a vacancy rate of just 1.4 percent, the pace of new construction is glacially slow. But the solution might be hiding in plain sight, tucked away behind the chain-link fences of our city’s woefully underutilized golf courses.

It is time to exploit the “City of Yes” zoning changes and reclaim the 2,500 acres currently dedicated to a sport that is effectively dead as an urban pastime.

City Comptroller Brad Lander floated this idea at the start of his mayoral run—an idea I first proposed seven years ago in the Queens Tribune. If Mayor Zohran Mamdani is serious about his pledge to build 200,000 units of housing over the next decade, he must look at these dying municipal greenways.

The spatial inequality of New York City golf is striking. Nearly half of the city’s courses are in Queens, covering 960 acres. This includes Forest Park (508 acres), Kissena Park (237 acres), Clearview (111 acres), and Douglaston (104 acres). Staten Island and Brooklyn account for another 931 acres, while the Bronx holds 375.

Despite occupying prime real estate, these courses are largely empty. The sport’s decline is so pronounced that the Parks Department counsel’s office admits the agency no longer even tracks annual golf membership sales.

This isn’t just a local trend; it’s a national expiration. While the pandemic provided a minor “dead cat bounce” for the industry, the long-term data is grim. My 2018 investigation found that green fees had plummeted by an average of 17 percent across the city. At Staten Island’s La Tourette, revenues dropped by 33 percent. Only Silver Lake and Marine Park showed growth—they should be kept, but the rest are ripe for reimagining.

Converting golf courses isn’t radical; it’s practical. As far back as 1979, Augusta, Georgia, converted a public course into open space. Since then, municipalities from Portland, Oregon, to Windsor, Connecticut, have worked with the Trust for Public Land to turn fairways into parks.

Deputy Mayor for Housing and Planning Leila Borzog is compiling a report on sites available for building housing. It’s due at the end of January. She should include this land. We need a mix of high-density housing and reimagined public space that serves the 21st-century New Yorker.

Critics will argue that parkland is sacrosanct. They are right—which is why these 2,500 acres should be opened to the entire public, not just those who can afford a set of clubs.

Transforming these spaces would also slash the city’s carbon footprint; golf courses are notorious for high water usage and pesticide runoff. By “de-accessioning” these lands through the state legislature, the mayor can create playing fields for cricket and soccer—sports that reflect the passions of the city’s immigrant-heavy neighborhoods rather than the fading hobbies of the elite.

The stakes: according to the Coalition for the Homeless, more than 350,000 New Yorkers—including families and single adults—are currently without a home, living on the streets, in shelters, or “doubled up” in precarious conditions.

There is no reason why the Kissena and Douglaston courses couldn’t be linked to create a “Central Park of Queens,” anchored by thousands of affordable housing units.

The rapid fade of golf is a gift to the city’s urban planners. It is an opportunity to solve a humanitarian crisis with the stroke of a pen. Mayor Mamdani and the City Council must seize the clubs and take the swing.

Eddie Borges writes about race and poverty in New York City.

The post Opinon: The Hole-in-One Solution for NYC’s Housing Crisis appeared first on City Limits.

“It’s inviting people into community and it’s breaking stigma,” said Meg Pipe of Venture House, which manages four clubhouses—free, public spaces where adults with severe mental illness can take part in programs and connect with others—in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island.

One of Venture House’s mental health clubhouses in the Bronx, pictured here in August of 2025. (Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)

In August, New York City announced that it would double its network of mental health clubhouses operating across the five boroughs—free, public spaces where adults with severe mental illness can take part in programs and connect with others.

It was the first time the city expanded its clubhouse program in nearly three decades, officials said at the time. But New York is no stranger to the model, which started here in the 1940s and is now in use internationally, with more than 300 operating across the United States alone, according to Meg Pipe of Venture House, a mental health agency that manages four clubhouse locations in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island.

Pipe sat down for a recent interview with Kadisha Davis of the “Hear Our Voices” podcast, which shares stories, resources and information about family homelessness in New York City (the podcast is produced by the Family Homelessness Coalition, whose members include Citizens’ Committee for Children, a City Limits funder).

“It’s a nonclinical setting—so it’s not treatment, it’s not therapy,” Pipe said of the clubhouse sites, which are open daily and provide member-led activities that can vary widely depending on participants’ interests, and can include things like art, music, cooking or workforce training. “It’s this supportive program where members come in and they work side by side with staff in all operations of the clubhouse.”

Some 783,000 New York State residents have a serious mental illness, including 1 of every 9 New Yorkers who are unhoused, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. “When you’re in shelter, that alone [can make you] feel isolated,” Davis said.

Clubhouses aim to address that social isolation, according to Pipe. “It’s inviting people into community and it’s breaking stigma,” she said. “Life is hard and we need each other. I think that’s just the beautiful thing of clubhouse —that you’re known, and people care, and people are paying attention.”

You can listen to the rest of their conversation—the first part of two segments—below.

To reach the editor, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org. Want to republish this story? Find City Limits’ reprint policy here.

The post ‘Hear Our Voices’ Podcast: NYC’s Mental Health Clubhouses appeared first on City Limits.

Members of the St. Paul City Council exchanged strong words before deadlocking 3-3 on a failed vote to suspend procedure and introduce an amended “separation ordinance” that would prevent St. Paul Police from cooperating with federal immigration authorities.

Council members had discussed strengthening the city’s longstanding separation ordinance Wednesday morning during a meeting of the council’s policy committee, where Molly Coleman, the sole council member with a law degree, has been taking the lead on beefing up the ordinance.

On paper, the city has barred city employees, including police, from enforcing federal immigration policy since 2004, but St. Paul police still showed up during a federal immigration enforcement action on Rose Avenue on Nov. 25, where they used chemical munitions as they clashed with protesters.

At the end of Wednesday’s regularly scheduled afternoon meeting, Council Member Anika Bowie asked for the opportunity to introduce a draft version of the revised separation ordinance, which would set in motion a public hearing a week later and a final council vote possibly by the end of the month.

Objections

Calling the last-minute submission legally dubious, half the city council objected, noting there was nothing printed before them or available online for public review.

“It is on the council member who is bringing the motion to take responsibility for printing out the copies and making sure the copies are available online,” said Council President Rebecca Noecker, noting the language requires review by the city attorney. “We might have those next week, but at the moment, we don’t.”

Bowie objected at length.

“I’ve always deferred to your leadership, Council President Noecker, but in this moment I’m very ashamed,” said Bowie, who later posted her objections to social media. “This is a time to speak up for our immigrant communities. … I can’t go back to them and say ‘hey, I didn’t have it printed’ or ‘the city attorney didn’t get to it.’ The city attorney can see all over what our residents are up against.”

Noecker, Coleman and Saura Jost then voted against suspending the rules to introduce Bowie’s proposal for further consideration. Bowie, Nelsie Yang and Council Vice President HwaJeong Kim voted to support Bowie’s motion. Cheniqua Johnson is on leave following the birth of her child. The motion, which required four votes to pass, failed.

How it unfolded

The impasse unfolded at the end of the afternoon council meeting, after Noecker thanked a handful of childcare workers in the audience who had arrived to express concern about Immigration and Customs Enforcement action around their daycares. She said she had joined Kim and Yang in speaking with them before the council meeting to help schedule a sit-down with the police chief and the mayor’s office later in the week.

Noecker then asked if any council members had additional announcements from their wards. Bowie said she would ask the council to vote to suspend the rules and introduce a strengthened and amended separation ordinance for its first reading.

Noecker and city staff then noted the proposal had not been uploaded to the city’s online meeting agenda, which is delivered through Legistar software, for public perusal. For an ordinance to be submitted under a suspension of the rules, the city attorney’s office needs to review the wording, as well, said a representative of the city attorney’s office at the table.

“Ms. Bowie, is there anything in Legistar?” Noecker said. “Our rules require that we have a copy of it before us, which we don’t have. … I recognize there is a lot of urgency about this.”

Bowie said she had shared copies of the ordinance amendment with council members by email.

“To my knowledge, the draft of the ordinance has been given to all of us,” Bowie said. “We’ve reviewed it. We gave feedback to it. That language is already written. … I guess I’ll look to our staff to print out the copy if we need to physically look at it.”

“I think this is extremely unfortunate that we are not taking some level of action because we don’t have printed copies while people are literally getting kidnapped and terrorized on our streets,” she added later. “Right now we are going to end this council meeting doing nothing to protect our residents.”

Disgreements

Coleman, who said she had been working closely with Yang and Kim on a revised ordinance since early December, said she would vote against Bowie’s motion to suspend the rules “because I have such a deep urgency and a deep need to get this right. … We have to follow our procedure. We have to ensure that we are not opening ourselves up to additional legal liability that will prevent us from doing the work of protecting our residents.”

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“The last time I looked at this ordinance, it was not in completed form,” Coleman added. “What I’ve seen from city staff … is people working around the clock to get this done.”

Yang disagreed.

“Everyone here, we want process, we want structure, but there are moments when we need to unleash ourselves from that,” Yang said. “We have childcare providers here in City Hall today because they need direction from us, they need us to even be giving out written information about what our police officers are going to be doing.”

By REGINA GARCIA CANO, Associated Press

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodríguez on Thursday asked lawmakers to approve reforms to the oil industry that would open the doors to greater foreign investment during her first state of the union speech less than two weeks after its longtime leader was toppled by the United States.

Rodríguez, who has been under pressure by the Trump administration to fall in line with its vision for the oil-rich nation, said sales of Venezuelan oil would go to bolster crisis-stricken health services, economic development and other infrastructure projects.

She outlined a distinct vision for the future, straying from her predecessors, who have long railed against American intervention in Venezeula. “Let us not be afraid of diplomacy” with the U.S., said Rodriguez, the former vice president who must now navigate competing pressures from the Trump administration and a government loyal to former President Nicolás Maduro.

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The speech, which was broadcast on a delay in Venezuela, came one day after Rodríguez said her government would continue releasing prisoners detained under Maduro in what she described as “a new political moment” since his ouster.

On Thursday, Trump met at the White House with Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, whose political party is widely considered to have won 2024 elections rejected by Maduro. But in endorsing Rodríguez, who served as Maduro’s vice president since 2018, Trump has sidelined Machado.

Rodríguez, who had a call with Trump earlier this week, said Wednesday evening on state television that her government would use “every dollar” earned from oil sales to overhaul the nation’s public health care system. Hospitals and other health care facilities across the country have long been crumbling, and patients are asked to provide practically all supplies needed for their care, from syringes to surgical screws.

The acting president must walk a tightrope, balancing pressures from both Washington and top Venezuelan officials who hold sway over Venezuela’s security forces and strongly oppose the U.S. Her recent public speeches reflect those tensions — vacillating from conciliatory calls for cooperation with the U.S., to defiant rants echoing the anti-imperialist rhetoric of her toppled predecessor.

American authorities have long railed against a government they describe as a “dictatorship,” while Venezuela’s government has built a powerful populist ethos sharply opposed to U.S. meddling in its affairs.

For the foreseeable future, Rodríguez’s government has been effectively relieved of having to hold elections. That’s because when Venezuela’s high court granted Rodríguez presidential powers on an acting basis, it cited a provision of the constitution that allows the vice president to take over for a renewable period of 90 days.

Trump enlisted Rodríguez to help secure U.S. control over Venezuela’s oil sales despite sanctioning her for human rights violations during his first term. To ensure she does his bidding, Trump threatened Rodríguez earlier this month with a “situation probably worse than Maduro.”

Maduro, who is being held in a Brooklyn jail, has pleaded not guilty to drug-trafficking charges.

Before Rodríguez’s speech on Thursday, a group of government supporters was allowed into the presidential palace, where they chanted for Maduro, who the government insists remains the country’s president. “Maduro, resist, the people are rising,” they shouted.