The median number of signed contracts across all Manhattan neighborhoods is up a staggering 78% compared to the same time last year, according to an analysis by real estate data firm UrbanDigs.
New York State Team
As a Dominican-American teen in Harlem, Vladimir Bautista thought it was commonplace to see friends arrested for using marijuana.
Carted away by officers and released days later, Bautista and his friends believed the same cycle happening in his very Black and Latino neighborhood of Hamilton Heights happened everywhere else.
His realization of the the disparities in marijuana enforcement would come years after selling the drugs and being exposed to whiter, more affluent parts of the city.
“As I got older, I started meeting friends from more affluent areas like Tribeca, (the) West Village and they were like, ‘Oh, we always smoked outside; they never arrested us,’” he said. Those people weren t burdened with criminal records stopping them from getting into certain colleges or securing affordable housing, which halted the upward mobility of many in his neighborhood.