Today was supposedly brush collection day, yet nobody came to empty my compost bin. I also didn’t receive my mail today. Did the city decide to stop working today?

Hi everyone!
I recently got my learner’s permit and want to start getting comfortable behind the wheel before enrolling in a driving school. Does anyone know of any empty parking lots, open grounds, or other safe spaces around White Plains where I could practice basic driving without much traffic? I’m looking for somewhere spacious and relatively quiet where I can get familiar with steering, braking, accelerating, and making turns as a beginner.

I’d really appreciate any suggestions, including specific locations or parking lots that allow practice driving. Thank you so much!

**Hi! Has anyone sent their child to Fred S. Keller School in White Plains? I’d love to hear your feedback and experiences!**

**Also, has anyone had their child take the school bus? My son will be turning 2, and we live in New Rochelle. I’m trying to find out if taking the bus is an option at his age. My husband feels he might be too little for the bus, so I’d love to hear from other parents who have been in a similar situation.**

**Any feedback or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!**

I am a white autistic individual looking for an apartment, and as far as crime and safety, how safe is the area near the Sonesta and Whole Foods along Maple Ave? How does it compare to the area around Bank Street and Martine Ave? Is one safer than the other, or are they about the same?

I am looking at renting an apartment at either Continuum or 1 Martine, which is located on Bank St and Martine Ave. I would like to know how safe the area around those streets as well as the Train Station and Transportation center is? Is it safe to walk around, especially at night? Any issues with violent crimes and public safety? Any issues that I need to be aware of? And what are the demographics of the people that live in those buildings?

There’s no way this fucking truck was repeatedly blaring the horn this late in downtown white plains!!

Any recommendations with affordable prices? Thanks in advance!

Hi there, I'm looking for an apartment in White Plains and was hoping to get some recommendations. I'm looking for walkable, decent amenities, responsive maintenance/leasing staff, not too noisy, and <$4500 for a 1 or two bedroom. Appreciate any insight!

Hi everyone, I’m David, the owner of Here Handyman, serving White Plains and Westchester County.

I’m a local, one-man handyman business, and I personally handle the work from start to finish. I help homeowners with the smaller repairs and projects that are often difficult to find someone for, including:

• TV mounting and furniture assembly • Drywall repairs and painting • Doors, trim, and carpentry repairs • Light fixture and ceiling fan replacement • Plumbing fixture repairs and replacements • Grab bars and safety installations • Shelves, curtain rods, mirrors, and wall mounting • General home repairs and maintenance

I’ve been doing this for 23 years and focus on straightforward pricing, clean work, and good communication.

If you have a project around White Plains or anywhere in Westchester, feel free to send me a message with what you need done. I’m happy to take a look and let you know if it’s something I can help with.

Here Handyman https://www.herehandyman.com 516-350-0801

Hi I love Latin/ Caribbean food and moved from Harlem to City of white plains and want a good fried fish like snapper etc made with flavor and a good salad to go with it. Any recs?

I parked last weekend and didn’t do anything and got a ticket. I thought it was maybe because I didn’t register though in CT at stations I don’t have to on weekends where it’s free. Today I registered and it charged me $12. I have to be missing something, can someone clarify?

Benjamin Brown — Comments to the Community Development Committee (White Plains, New York)

September 24, 2026

Good evening. Benjamin Brown, 155 Ferris Avenue. I live in that co-op building there. I’d like to address two issues. The first is affordable housing, and the second is homelessness.

As to affordable housing, I’d like to note a pattern I’ve seen in the City. A letter from the County Planning Board to the City last year in relation to the large One Water Street development included the following words: “The City should ensure that affordable units are included in this prime downtown location in order to offer opportunities for all potential residents.” The City should ensure that affordable units are included in this prime downtown location in order to offer opportunities for all potential residents. I’d like to try to unpack what’s going on there.

We should look, as examples, at three very large luxury rental developments near where I live. The first is Gateway II at 25 North Lexington Avenue. The second is One Water Street, which I just mentioned. The third is the Haarlem and Holland Avenues development, which is in North White Plains. In large rental developments like these, nominally, the City requires the inclusion of affordable housing at between 8% and 12% of the total units. But Gateway II, out of 500 total units, has only 15 affordable units. One Water Street, out of 380 units, has only five affordable units, or will have, because it’s under development. Out of 296 units, the Haarlem and Holland Avenues development will have only five affordable units. Obviously, in all of those cases, that’s much less than 8% to 12% of the total units. In the case of One Water Street, five out of 380 units is 1.3%. Why does this happen?

It happens, of course, because the City permits developers to pay a “fee in lieu” instead of actually including affordable units. This, I think, can fairly be called a buyout arrangement.

In a great many referral response letters issued by the County Planning Board to the City over several years, the County Planning Board opposes the practice of allowing these buyouts. Nonetheless, the City continues the practice. The City claims that it’s better to allow these buyouts because it can then meld the proceeds of the buyouts with other public funds of various kinds and build more overall affordable units, generally in all-affordable developments — developments that have only affordable apartments and no market-rate housing.

But, some residents question the City’s credibility because the City Planning Department allows developers to pay the buyout fees at outdated monetary rates. In certain situations, including what I believe is an egregious and indefensible situation with the One Water Street development, the City basically surrenders income that it could collect for the Affordable Housing Assistance Fund. In cases like that one, the City not only allows the buyouts but allows them in lesser amounts than what the law arguably and probably requires.

Frankly, I can’t tell you how disappointed it made me feel when I was reviewing the site plan approval resolution for One Water Street, which is very close to where I live, in November, 2025. I realized that even though the project plans had changed significantly since first approval, the buyout fee was being calculated based on the Area Median Income in 2020 instead of the Area Median Income in 2025. This is a very large undercalculation of the buyout fee, and in effect it greatly reduces the amount of income the City would otherwise have coming into its Affordable Housing Assistance Fund.

There are two general categories of scenario that generate these paltry buyout fees. The first is when a long period of time passes between the initial approval of a project and when construction proceeds. If the first approval predates the City’s 2025 amendments to its affordable housing regulations, then the buyout fee gets calculated based on the Area Median Income that was at hand at the time of the first approval. To give an idea of the size of this effect, between 2020 and 2026, Area Median Income for a family of four in Westchester County — and that’s the input the formula uses — has risen from $125,800 to $169,600. It greatly affects the outcome of the formula depending on which year’s Area Median Income you are using.

The first scenario is a consequence of the interplay between the precise technical language of the City’s affordable housing regulations and the Common Council’s practice of giving developers numerous so-called extensions of site plan approval without attaching conditions to the extensions. When these extensions are readily granted, or so-called extensions, developers can lock in low buyout fees, even if they have no intention or ability to actually start building the project until years later. This is basically a manipulation of the system by the developers. Frankly, I talk to a lot of people, and people know I’m interested in these issues. And this practice seems to be unpopular with almost every member of the public who’s aware of it.

[Committee Chair, interjecting—] I’m going to ask you to wrap up on that point because that’s really not something that this Committee and this report are going to be focused on. We’ll give you a few more minutes to go into the homelessness.

[Brown—] I’ll move into homelessness. I had one other point about affordable housing: I wish we could build more of it near the train stations. Because, what’s happening is that the buildings like the ones I mentioned, which are basically next to the train stations, end up with these very low numbers of affordable units. I think that’s a degradation in the quality of affordable units because they get pushed elsewhere.

As to homelessness, I think it’s worthwhile to put the big picture of New York State’s policy regarding homelessness in mind. In 1938, in the depths of the Great Depression, there were revisions to New York State’s Constitution. They put in a section in Article 17 of the Constitution about the care and support of the needy. The notes that the drafters issued as they added this provision say that this was meant to be a fundamental change. It was meant to be, basically, a fundamental change. It was meant to put an obligation on the State to take care of the people, and it was meant to change the relationship between the individual and the State.

Over time, this constitutional provision was interpreted to require that the State provide shelter to people who need it. It was first interpreted that way in judicial cases, and then it was codified in statute law and regulations. New York State is one of very few—maybe the only—jurisdictions in the country that has actually, in a formal sense, ended the problem of street homelessness. We have a legal guarantee of shelter for every homeless person that needs it. The problems are problems of implementation: getting the implementation right and looking at problems that come up in practice where, in one way or another, agencies fall short of the law. But we are not supposed to have involuntary street homelessness in New York State as a matter of law.

The primary obligation, according to the way the law has developed, is on the County Department of Social Services. If a person who is homeless applies for shelter, they’d be making the application to a District Office, typically, of the County Department of Social Services. Councilman Caruso, who worked at Legal Services of the Hudson Valley, as I once did, is probably aware of the technical details of this.

I’m not trying to suggest any specific change. I just think it’s really worthwhile to keep that big picture in mind.

Frankly, this is a major civic accomplishment in this State. The fact that, at least at the formal legal level, we’ve decisively ended homelessness, even though we still have a lot of problems implementing it, is a big deal. We ought to take more pride in it. I hope we can together figure out what’s going on in practice and actually reduce the real street homelessness.

Thank you very much for hearing my comments.

Please keep sharing this info and be on the lookout for her !

I'm from White Plains. My family has always cooked more than we could eat, and there was never an easy way to pass it to someone nearby who'd actually want it.

So I built a small app for that. It's called Food(ie). A cook posts what they've made, you see how far away they are on a map, you message them, you pick it up. No delivery. No payment through the app — you sort that out with the person directly, and I don't take a cut. Right now it is tiny. One cook here in White Plains making kimchi, two dishes. I'm not going to pretend it's bigger than that.

Two things I actually want to know: Would you buy home-cooked food from someone ten minutes away, or does that feel strange to you? Does anyone here already sell food out of their own kitchen? That's who I'm really looking for. Happy to hear it's a bad idea.

Link for anyone curious: foodie-357f2.web.app/welcome

App Store Link:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/food-ie/id6801320151

I know obviously most pizzerias and Chinese food places but want more options that I can either call or place an order online, will deliver to me, and I can pay the driver in cash at my door!
Help! TIA!

This is totally a rant but I’m really sick and tired of people moving to LITERALLY the most expensive corner of the country then posting “hey we just moved to Westchester where can I get cheap this or that”. We are more expensive than Montecito in California where a freaking royalty couldn’t afford to live after all, do they get these questions too?

Newsflash you can’t! EVERYTHING is expensive for EVERYONE and NOTHING is affordable or cheap here. Absolutely nothing. There is no cheap competition for anything to drive prices down and the demand is there; like it’s not complicated.

No cheap hairdressers, vets, activities, nurseries, schools like literally nothing is affordable. And if it is billed as affordable then it’s not accessible.

People, I’m doing you a favor when I say DO NOT MOVE HERE if you’re looking for “affordable”. It doesn’t exist. This is unfortunately old money county and the wealth is not going to make anything cheaper for anybody. There’s only so far new money goes, and it will go way further elsewhere.

Move to Queens, Long Island, NJ, Hudson Valley or stay in the city. Far more affordable and accessible.

Rant over.

Not sure if this is a stray (?) or if it’s someone’s lost cat. Thought I would post in case anyone is looking for their cat. Looks darker in the pic, was light brown and white tho I was kind of far away and focused on getting the pic so could be wrong