What’s next?

Real estate industry insiders signaled that a lawsuit could be filed. They argue that the new laws should not be permanent because the ability to regulate rents is contingent on the existence of a housing crisis. Another argument could target the retroactive rule that limits how much landlords can charge tenants for past upgrades.

Tenant advocates want to move in the other direction. Initially they sought a law that would essentially create a rent cap for all renters, as well as make it harder for landlords to evict tenants. Next year, they could renew the push for those changes.

What is the big picture?

How important is real estate to New York? “It is New York,” The Times’s Luis Ferré-Sadurní, who reports on housing, told me.

We spoke on the 14th floor of The Times’s tower in Manhattan. It is one of the buildings that might have not been built vertically if New York had more space horizontally.

Disruption for New Jersey Transit commuters

The Times’s Patrick McGeehan reports:

Today is the first day of a season of hardship for some suburbanites who commute through Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan.

For the third consecutive summer, Amtrak will be reducing the number of trains coming in and out while it repairs tracks beneath the station. The work is scheduled to start July 1, and the Long Island Rail Road is waiting until then to adjust its schedules. But New Jersey Transit is getting a head start on the disruption.

First to be inconvenienced will be riders on the Montclair-Boonton and North Jersey Coast lines. Five morning-rush trains will be diverted to Hoboken Terminal, where Manhattan-bound passengers will have to transfer to a PATH train or a ferry. Five evening trains that usually leave from Penn Station will depart from Hoboken.