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Housing
After suffering setbacks at the Rent Guidelines Board and in Albany, many housing advocates blame the mayor for not doing more to preserve the city�s dwindling supply of affordable housing. Read more ...

Housing Links In The News
Mayor's Office Cool on Keycard Bill; City�s Plans for Housing Flop in Albany; Rents to Rise;

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Children
The foster care system has often treated birth parents as adversaries but now the Administration for Children�s Services is giving these parents a bigger role in the child welfare system.

Civil Rights
A bill to require co-op boards to explain why they reject a potential buyer seems unlikely to pass � even tough a majority of council members support it.

Crime
Governor Eliot Spitzer�s proposal to take DNA samples from anyone convicted of a crime in the state has revived the debate over this powerful tool.

Demographics
Overall, today�s recent college graduates in New York are not making as much money as their parent�s generation did, with men�s wages falling substantially and earnings for women increasing slightly.

Economy
The Bronx is booming, while New York City residents are narrowing the income gap between them and their suburban counterparts. James Parrott finds some surprising information in a new set of Commerce Department figures.

Environment
Opposition to a recycling facility in Manhattan threatens to derail the city�s solid waste plan. Is it NIMBY or not?

Finance
With budget negotiations in their final weeks, questions remain about how to use the city�s multi-billion dollar surplus � and just how big that surplus is.

Housing
After suffering setbacks at the Rent Guidelines Board and in Albany, many housing advocates blame the mayor for not doing more to preserve the city�s dwindling supply of affordable housing.

Immigrants
While some New Yorker think proposed changes in immigration law could help them, a number of advocacy groups have major criticisms of the bills now in Congress.

Land Use
The developer of the Atlantic Yards megaproject in Brooklyn promise is will be environmentally friendly. But does it truly pass the sustainability test?

Law
Several recent court cases make it clear that ending a relationship in New York can be more difficult than starting one. Judge Emily Jane Goodman explains.

Parks
Conditions at New York City�s neighborhood parks vary widely, and overall, they are in worse shape than last year, according to survey by the group New Yorkers for Parks. The commissioner, however, calls the report card a case of �grade deflation.�

Tech
New York City officials have yet to determine whether high-speed Internet access is a utility � almost as essential as electricity or gas � or a luxury.

Transportation
By next year all taxicabs are to be equipped with tracking systems and video monitors. The taxi commission hails this as a �revolutionary� move to make travel safer and more pleasant. Drivers disagree.

Voting
A number of measures and programs seek to encourage young people to register to vote. But will they be enough to get New Yorkers aged 18 to 24 to the polls in 2008?

Special 9/11 Topic Pages:

9/11/01-/02: Our topic page columnists analyze a year of changes in New York City, in everything from arts to civil rights to technology to the environment.

Arts
Martha Hostetter explains how the arts institutions suffered economically, even while artists helped build community.

Civil Rights
Andy Humm assesses the state of civil liberties since 9/11. Also: the 12 vacant seats on the human rights commission; the new local law about same-sex marriages.

Crime/Justice
Julia Vitullo-Martin attempts to answer the question: Are New Yorkers right to feel as safe in the city as anywhere else in the country?

Demographics
Andrew Beveridge looks at the numbers to present a portrait of those who died at 10048, the zip code that was the World Trade Centerƒs alone.

Environment
Eric Goldstein looks at "the World Trade Center cough" and the other environmental health impacts of the World Trade Center attacks.

Finance
Glenn Pasanen explains what he sees as two major results of 9/11: compounding the "long-ignored structural budget deficit," and exposing the "insider decision-making" in the budget process. It is a process, he says, that has resulted in a reduction of funding for education at a time when education is supposed to be a priority.

Health
Maia Szalavitz reports on how New Yorkers have been coping in the year since 9/11, and offers tips from mental health counselors on how to handle the anniversary.

Housing
Some rents are lower, Rebecca Webber points out, but otherwise the story of housing in the past year is one of more homelessness, fewer vacancies, canceled plans for affordable housing, and unknown consequences in the future.

Immigrants
A special section on the anniversary of Sept 11, which affected immigrants in special ways.

Land Use
Laura Wolf-Powers details the land use rebuilding issues that New Yorkers should be watching to figure out where we are going to go from here -- the swap, the lease, the governor, the Olympics, etc.

Parks
"This September 11, people will again find their way to the parks," as they did a year ago, Anne Schwartz says. But if the parks are more important than ever to New Yorkers, one result of 9/11 is a further reduction in their funding.

Social Services
In the year since the terrorist attack, 70 percent of Americans are said to have offered some kind of aid -- and that includes donations of more than $2.2 billion so far. But, as Linda Ostreicher relates, this outpouring of charity is now accompanied by sharp disagreements over what to do with it, stirring up almost as much passion as the disaster itself.

Tech
Laura Forlano reveals the many important lessons that the rebuilding and recovery effort has taught us about the functioning of technological systems during times of crisis.

Voting
Most people have probably forgotten that September 11, 2001, started out as a day when New York City held primary elections. This year's primary election is not just a calendar year away from the attacks, but it comes at the end of a year when the political fortunes of many candidates have been deeply affected by the implications of the tragedy. The attacks were the background of political life in New York starting with last year's mayoral race and continuing through this year's race for governor.

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