Governor’s ‘gift’ has tenants up in arms

Volume Number 1 Issue Number 11 / December 6 - 12, 2006

Chelsea Now photo by Jefferson Siegel

Assemblymember Deborah Glick spoke at a rally before Monday’s hearing on new rent regulations that are being proposed. To her right is State Senator Liz Krueger and behind them is City Councilmember Bill Perkins.

By Roslyn Kramer

The New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal is proposing rule changes that would hit rental tenants hard while easing rules that apply to landlords. At a hearing on the proposed changes on Monday, opponents of the proposed regulations — noting the rules were publicly announced just three weeks before the end of Governor George Pataki’s final term in office — condemned them as giveaways to the real estate industry.

“They’re making the city

unaffordable,” said Ann Salzberg, a social worker. “Double security, lead paint, J-51 — and they are retroactive. The changes they’re making are outrageous.”

She was referring to major provisions that would, first of all, require tenants to pay two months’ security instead of one. Second, the proposed rules would require tenants, not landlords, to pay the cost of lead-paint abatement. Another new regulation would allow landlords to back out of deals they made with the city to lower rents in return for getting significant abatements on major alterations and construction; landlords would be allowed to opt out of rent-subsidy programs, such as 421a and J-51, early and raise rents to market rate.

Another change would allow D.H.C.R. to evict tenants who don’t hold the lease if the lease-holding tenant hasn’t conformed to specific rules, including the amount he or she charges the subtenant; this rule would apply retroactively, even if no such limitations existed when the secondary tenant moved in.

These new rent regulations are part of an upheaval in the city’s housing landscape. The sale of Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town, the possible sale of Starrett City, the imposition of huge rent hikes at London Terrace in Chelsea, and now the possibility of new regulations that narrow the rights of tenants while loosening controls on landlords are all happening at the same time.

London Terrace tenants have been hit with major-capital-improvement surcharges independent of the proposed regulations. One renter at London Terrace, who requested anonymity, expressed her concerns to a Chelsea Now reporter during the hearing. The tenant called the latest rule-making flurry “the straw that broke the camel’s back” for rent-controlled and -stabilized tenants in the prewar, full-block development on 23rd St. between Ninth and Tenth Aves. M.C.I. increases have been plaguing tenants since the complex went co-op in 1986.

“We got M.C.I. increases for repiping the four buildings [that comprise London Terrace], repointing brickwork on the facade, which is now being redone for the third or fourth time because it wasn’t done properly the first time,” the tenant said. “We’re still paying for water towers, sidewalks and elevators.”

Besides this barrage of increases, D.H.C.R. has just approved retroactive rent increases for rent-controlled London Terrace tenants going back 11 years. The way they bill those increases can mean a 25 percent increase; this is a 25 percent increase for most tenants who are seniors on fixed incomes.

When asking for his 11-year retroactive increase, the London Terrace’s landlord claimed hardship.

“They waited 11 years; nobody can afford a 25 percent increase,” the tenant said. What’s more, because some of these tenants have incomes slightly above the protected income for seniors under SCRIE (Senior Citzens Rent Increase Exemption), they could face eviction.

“They are unprotected,” the tenant said of these senior tenants.

Another purpose multiple rent increases serve is to crack the $2,000 level, at which point rents can become deregulated.

Leonard Sydney of the East Side Tenants Committee denounced the new measures boosting landlord income.

Reiterating what he said at the hearing, he told Chelsea Now: “It’s entirely inappropriate for the real estate industry to receive a windfall of a second month’s security when they’re in good condition financially.” He called the threatened loss of tenants’ homes “capital punishment” — the absolute, final punishment in the realm of housing. Making tenants responsible for hazardous lead paint removal he called “outrageous.”

The hearing went in fits and starts; in between, tenants schmoozed.

“Why aren’t we advocating for home rule?” asked Johanna Flynn, an East Sider and a political consultant, talking to Chelsea Now. “The problems with not having home rule is the Urstadt Law, which gives dominion of all things rental to Albany.” City tenants, she added, are at the mercy of Upstate residents who have no interest in Downstate, particularly since much of their economy is agrarian. “We are such pawns in this political double standard,” Flynn said.

Before the hearing, local elected officials led a rally protesting the rent hikes on Seventh Ave. in front of the Fashion Institute of Technology, where the hearing was held.

From a larger perspective the proposed rules “undermine the stability of our city and neighborhoods,” Assemblymember Deborah Glick declared at the rally. The proposals, said Glick, “constitute a huge gift from George Pataki to landlords.”

The proposed regulations are potentially an incentive for tenant harassment, several opponents said. Speaking at the rally, State Senator Liz Krueger singled out one proposed change allowing landlords to go after tenants mid-lease when they think, or claim, an apartment is not a tenant’s primary residence. This would leave tenants constantly vulnerable to harassment and the high cost of defending themselves in court. Current regulations, Krueger noted, already provide for “the removal of tenants who are not using their rent-stabilized apartment as their primary residence, while protecting tenants against repeated frivolous litigation during their tenancy.”

Speaking outside the hearing room, City Councilmember Bill Perkins recalled the infamous history of lead abatement in Harlem when “anything under the sun would pass as lead abatement.” Perkins wrote a bill outlawing lead paint. “Why should we reward scofflaws and slumlords for doing what they should have done 25 years ago, when we should be punishing them instead?” he asked.

The proposed regulation changes were largely unknown until the last minute, although they were first published in the New York State Register on Oct. 18. The sole hearing came at the end of the public review process, ending with a comment period for written comments that only lasted a few days.

Tenant sound and fury notwithstanding, the state isn’t talking. Rummaging through his pockets for a piece of paper, D.H.C.R.’s amiable spokesperson, Peter Moses, finding the paper, read: “The purpose of the hearing is to gather information so that we can make an informed decision. We will review the public comments and take them into consideration as we assess the proposed changes.”