By STEPHEN GROVES

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate is voting on legislation Wednesday that would nullify U.S. tariffs on Canada, just as President Donald Trump is engaged in trade talks in Asia as well as an increasingly bitter trade spat with U.S.’s northern neighbor that is one of its largest economic partners.

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Senators have taken a series of votes this week to terminate the national emergencies that Trump has used to impose tariffs. While the resolutions won’t ultimately take effect, they have proven to be an effective way for Democrats to expose cracks between the president’s trade policy and Republican senators who have traditionally supported free trade arguments.

Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, the Democrat pushing the resolutions, said that higher prices caused by tariffs would force Republicans to break with Trump. “It will become untenable for them to just close their eyes and say, ‘I’m signing up for whatever the president wants to do,’” Kaine told reporters.

The Senate passed a similar resolution applying to Brazilian tariffs on Tuesday, and it has already passed a resolution on Canadian imports in April.

Kaine, joined by other Democrats and Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, has forced the votes under a decades-old law that allows Congress to block a president’s emergency powers. However, House Republicans have passed new rules that allow leaders to prevent such resolutions from getting a vote in that chamber, and Trump could veto the legislation even if it did clear Congress.

Wednesday’s vote happened as Trump was in Asia to advance trade talks with partners there. The president has also been jousting with Canadian officials amid a delicate negotiation to reduce tariffs between the two countries.

Sen. Mike Crapo, the Republican chair of the Senate Committee on Finance, acknowledged in a floor speech that many “may be nervous about what comes next” as Trump remakes global trade. But he urged Congress to stay out of the way.

“Let’s truly get a balanced, fair playing field in trade,” Crapo added.

Yet there is increasing tension between GOP senators and the president over how soybean farmers have suffered from the trade war with China, as well as his administration’s plans to allow the purchase of more beef from Argentina.

Vice President JD Vance visited Republicans during a closed-door luncheon this week and also argued that they should steer clear of trade policy while the president negotiates deals. But Vance’s efforts appeared to have little impact on those determined to vote against the tariffs.

“Retaliatory tariffs on American products have turned agricultural income upside down for many of Kentucky’s nearly 70,000 family farms,” said Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, the former longtime Republican Senate leader, in a statement. “Bourbon has been caught in the crossfire from day one. And consumers are paying higher prices across the board as the true costs of trade barriers fall inevitably on them.”

Trump said earlier this week he wanted to impose another 10% tariff hike on imports of Canadian goods because of an anti-tariff television ad aired by the province of Ontario. The television ad used the words of former President Ronald Reagan to criticize U.S. tariffs.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has been trying to engage with Trump to ease the import taxes that have hit Canada hard. The U.S.-Canada economic relationship is one of the largest globally, totaling $909.1 billion in 2024, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. More than three-quarters of Canadian exports go to the U.S., and nearly $3.6 billion Canadian ($2.7 billion U.S.) worth of goods and services cross the border daily.

Canada has also tried to turn to Asian trading partners amid the trade war.

Democrats argued the trade war was impacting a range of industries, from farmers to shipbuilders. They also said it made little sense to engage in a trade war with a close military ally.

Trump has invoked a national emergency to impose the tariffs, saying that fentanyl and other illegal drugs are entering the country from Canada. So far this year, less than 1% of the total fentanyl seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, 66 pounds, was seized at the northern border.

Kaine argued in a floor speech that Trump’s trade policy was actually hinging on his personal feelings. He claimed that Trump had “such thin skin that an ad on television quoting Ronald Reagan” had hurt his feelings and prompted an end to the negotiations.

He asked, “How about that as a rationale for trade policy?”

Fewer people were displaced by the fire and power outage at a high-rise apartment building in St. Paul than Skyline Tower officials initially thought.

The apartments on St. Anthony Avenue off Interstate 94 have a total of 773 residents and all were evacuated Sunday, said Barbara Koch, CommonBond Communities interim vice president of development, on Wednesday. The 1,500 announced on Monday was an estimate and the actual number was determined by tenant rent rolls, according to Koch.

CommonBond, an affordable housing nonprofit that serves low-income communities, lined up hotel rooms for many residents, while some chose to stay with family or friends.

“We are working as quickly as possible to move families back into their Skyline homes and we will provide updates as soon as we know more,” Koch said.

Firefighters responded to a fire on the 25-story building’s 12th floor at 12:23 a.m. Sunday. No injuries were reported.

The fire activated the building’s fire protection sprinklers on the 12th, 13th and 14th floors, and the water caused a power outage, according to the fire department. The building’s elevators, fire suppression system, heat and water supply went out.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation; there were not signs that it was suspicious, said Deputy Fire Chief Jamie Smith.

Information about donating to residents and volunteering can be found at commonbond.org/skylinetower.

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Following the accidental death of their 8-year-old son, a northwestern Minnesota couple have been charged with gross misdemeanor negligent storage of firearms for making them accessible to a child.

Theodore Charles Stewart, 42, and Danielle Elizabeth Stewart, 39, of Roosevelt, each face up to 364 days in jail and a $3,000 fine.

First responders were dispatched to their home on Sept. 4 after receiving a report that an 8-year-old had been shot in the neck. The injured child was taken to a hospital, where Roseau County Sheriff’s Office staff confirmed he died of his injuries later that day.

One of his four siblings told law enforcement that when their father left for work, they — along with their 8-year-old brother — took out a .22-caliber rifle and laid it on their parents’ bed, according to the statement. The child said they did not put any bullets in the gun, and they thought they checked to see if it was loaded, but when the gun was set down, it fired and struck the 8-year-old.

Theodore Stewart confirmed that he had just left for work, the children were all inside and their mother was outside walking at the time of the incident.

A probable cause statement in the case said law enforcement found 34 firearms throughout the home. Of them, one was secured; the remainder were in places the five Stewart children could easily access, the statement said.

Charges were filed via summons on Sept. 30. The couple’s first court appearances are scheduled for Monday.

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After a luxury building in East New York flopped, the city is taking advantage of a new program to fill it with families who have hard-to-use city housing vouchers.

Tara Gilbert in her apartment. (Adi Talwar/City Limits)

Tara Gilbert spent months looking for an apartment with her city-funded housing voucher while living in a Staten Island women’s shelter since January.

She had leads on several apartments throughout the year, only to have them disappear and get rented to someone else.

“It was very frustrating. I was starting to get angry to the point where I was like, damn, am I going to be in shelter for the rest of my life. What is this?” asked Gilbert.

But her fortunes changed this October, when she moved into a new luxury building on Atlantic Avenue in East New York. All 183 units in her building will house voucher holders moving in from one of the city’s shelters.

The project is the result of a “happy accident,” said Rebecca Crimmins, senior vice president for real estate and development at the Institute for Community Living (ICL), which now owns the building.

In 2024, the Jay Group listed one-bedroom apartments in the building for $2,500 to $3,000 a month, and as much as $4,000 for three-bedroom units. But after the developers realized their luxury building didn’t have the demand they expected, they sold it to a nonprofit. 

The Atlantic in Brooklyn, where all 183 apartments are for city voucher holders who were previously living in shelter. (Adi Talwar/City Limits)

The nonprofit and the city struck a deal to fill the building with voucher holders enrolled in the City Fighting Homelessness and Eviction Prevention Supplement (CityFHEPS) program, which provides rental aid to New Yorkers in shelter or at risk of homelessness. Expected revenue from the voucher payments will finance ICL’s mortgage on the building.

City officials are confident the project is replicable. The effort is part of a new program called Affordable Housing Services from the Department of Social Services (DSS) that officials say will help ease the housing crisis by creating more options for voucher holders, whose housing choices are often slim.

“For the first time ever, we are using social service dollars to actually underwrite affordable housing, and it is 100 percent dedicated to those coming out of the shelter system,” said DSS Commissioner Molly Park.

In early October, Gilbert moved into a studio, which she decorated with crafts she made during her months in shelter. 

“Once I got home, I was happy. I was ecstatic,” Gilbert said. The feeling, she said, was “more peace than anything.”

Gilbert’s new kitchen. “I was ecstatic,” she said of moving into the apartment. (Adi Talwar/City Limits)

Stiff competition

The CityFHEPS program has grown rapidly in recent years, and has become increasingly vital as the Trump administration pursues cuts to federal programs.

Over 60,000 households, comprising 136,000 people, are currently leased up with a CityFHEPS voucher; they typically pay a third of their income on rent, with the subsidy covering the rest. From July 2024 to June 2025, 37,500 New Yorkers entered the program, more than any year on record, according to DSS.

The budget for CityFHEPS grew five-fold from 2021 to 2025, to over $1.25 billion. “The federal government has essentially abdicated responsibility for growing availability to our rental assistance. The city has very much stepped up,” said Park.

But a frequent criticism of CityFHEPS is that the vouchers are hard to use. Officials hope the Affordable Housing Services initiative will help the city actually build more of the units voucher holders need.

The challenges are numerous. City housing vouchers don’t always pay enough to access the higher rent parts of the city, as City Limits has previously reported. And some landlords discriminate against voucher holders—even though doing so is illegal. 

“That whole process was terrible because a lot of them don’t want to rent to people with vouchers. They got the bad stereotype of what people are coming out of the shelter system,” said Gilbert.

A sign welcoming a new tenant to the building. (Adi Talwar/City Limits)

Commissioner Park also pointed to competition in New York’s hot housing market, particularly for apartments with rents low enough for voucher holders. “The hardest part about using a CityFHEPS  voucher is the city has a 1.4 percent vacancy rate. There’s 13,000 households in the shelter system right now, who have what we call a shopping letter, and who haven’t found a place to use their voucher, which is a staggering number of people,” she said.

Some households spend months searching for a place to use their voucher. While DSS does not track search times, Park said, a comptroller’s report found that it took 10 months on average (DSS has disputed the findings of that report).

Affordable Housing Services, Park said, takes that competition out of the process by setting aside units specifically for voucher holders.

Between this Atlantic Avenue project and the Baisley Pond Park hotel conversion, DSS said they are opening 374 units of deeply affordable housing in October using the program, bringing the total number of units funded with the initiative to over 1,000.

Commissioner Park also expects Affordable Housing Services units to have faster lease ups than traditional CityFHEPS application packets, which take about 30 days, according to the agency—because their involvement with the projects helps them plan ahead.

Victor Rivera, 58, who moved into a two-bedroom apartment in the building with his mother Rosa, 88, said it simplified and shortened their stay at a Far Rockaway shelter, where a social worker identified them as a good fit for the new development.

Larger units paired with services

After four months staying together in one cramped shelter room, Rivera and his mother got a spacious two-bedroom in the new building. “Oh, my moms was so happy. I was happy too, because first they said they was gonna give us a one bedroom,” he said.

Rivera and his mother will benefit from support services on site, as well as a full gym, laundry, lounge, and a rooftop. “We’re really excited to be able to provide, you know, wraparound services to a variety of household sizes, including three bedroom units, which are really hard to find at this point in time,” said Crimmins.

One report suggested that as much as 70 percent of subsidized affordable units built citywide under the Adams administration were one- and two-bedroom units. In all, the building has 43 studios, 54 one-bedrooms, 57 two-bedrooms, and 24 three-bedrooms. 

“There’s a place for a lot of different housing options, given that we just don’t have enough places for people to live who have modest means,” said Crimmins. The city’s housing vacancy rate is even lower for units priced at under $1,100, with just 0.4 percent open to renters. 

Commissioner Park pointed to different levels of need, including traditional affordable housing for people with lower incomes, and supportive housing for chronically homeless people with particular health needs, paired with robust services. This building helps fill the void, she said.

“Historically, there hasn’t been anything in between, but we know there are people in between,” said Park.

Opportunistic acquisitions

Not every Affordable Housing Services project will be a luxury building turned into affordable housing, which grew from the Human Resources Administration’s Master Lease program, which set aside 10 percent of units for voucher holders. That program has received support from mayoral candidates like Zohran Mamdani, who says he would expand it if elected.

Affordable Housing Services goes further, funding entire buildings meant for voucher holders.

Park suggested that they were deploying the program tactically. As with The Atlantic, they may acquire newly constructed buildings where developers have pushed the market and may be incentivized to sell. Others might involve distressed buildings that can preserve affordability and have their lives extended through a project-based voucher contract like the one the Affordable Housing Services program offers.

It has yet to be used to finance construction itself—to build for the explicit purpose for housing voucher holders. But officials wouldn’t rule it out as they try to grow the program. Crimmins said that would likely require the city’s housing agency to help finance the project.

“I absolutely believe that it is scalable,” said Park.

Victor Rivera, 58, and his 88-year-old mother moved into a two-bedroom in the building. (Adi Talwar/City Limits)

Earlier this year, the Rivera family was renting in Rego Park, paying $2,100 a month for a two-bedroom. When their landlord raised the rent $200, they went to a shelter to seek help, Rivera said.

Rivera, who provides full time care for his mother, said they live on her social security and disability.

“Before, everything was just going to rent,” Rivera said. Now he says they have a little money to get his mother’s hair done, and pay for a home health aide so he can get out of the house more.

The family chef, he said he’s looking forward to cooking Thanksgiving dinner in his new apartment.

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

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The post This Building Was Supposed to be Luxury Apartments. Now It Will House 183 Families From Homeless Shelters appeared first on City Limits.