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Mitchell-Lamas in Jeopardy
Thousands of Mitchell-Lama apartments in New York City -- created by a wonderfully successful NYS middle-income housing program -- are facing extinction. This website primarily concerns rentals. If you want to keep your Mitchell-Lama co-op in the program, contact Co-operators United For Mitchell-Lama.
The year your building was built makes a difference!.
The state courts have affirmed the validity of a state housing agency regulation that protects tenants in pre-1974 buildings taken out of Mitchell-Lama. Tenant in building constructed from 1974 on remain unprotected.
This home page has the most recent announcements and articles. Click on the various categories on the right side for additional material.
- The CALENDAR includes events regarding affordable housing.
- To find your legislators and learn more about your building and its history, click on "FIND YOUR BUILDING" here or on the right panel.
- Click on LEGISLATION for the status of pending bills this term, and on LEGAL CASES for recent court developments.
- Find tenant association resources -- including
- "TAKING ACTION" suggests what we can do, and
- "EVENTS" is a record of coming and past events in the Affordable Housing movement.
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Tenants of Independence Plaza and politicians urge the state's highest court to hear their appeal on J-51.
In the case of Denza v. Independence Plaza Associations, the Appellate Division reversed a lower court ruling, and held that as soon as a building leaves Mitchell-Lama, it automatically loses its J-51 tax benefits. That means - the landlord's tax break ends immediately;
- tenants do not remain rent stabilized until the landlord's tax break comes to an end (usually a period of years);
- tenants do not get the benefit of a J-51 provision that the landlord's failure to notify a tenant of J-51 rent regulation protection means that that tenant gets to stay rent regulated for the duration of the tenancy.
Click on "read more" below for a comment by attorney Seth Miller, and an article about this.
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Legislation: 2012 Bills on Mitchell-Lamas and Rent Stabilized Apartments
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The NY State Legislature is in session and voting on tenant bills. Click on "read more" for links to and a summary of each bill. The bills with a * below were passed by the Assembly's Housing Committee on April 18, 2012 and are now on the floor of the Assembly and in the Senate's housing committee.
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Community Serv. Society report to RGB
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Tom Waters and Victor Bach, Housing Policy Analysts of the Community Service Society testified before the Rent Guidelines Board .
Among other points:
- Rents have soared 31% over the past 6 years.
- Rent increases have vastly outpaced net incomes for the typical renter.
- By 2011, 51% of low-income renters were paying at least half their incomes in rent.
Read the full testimony!
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Posted by sue on Friday, April 27 @ 19:05:40 EDT (25 reads)
(Read More... )
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Events: Occupy (and testify at) the RGB on May 1st!
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This May 1st, the Real Rent Reform Campaign is joining Occupy Wall Street for a
Tenants General Assembly
outside the RENT GUIDELINES BOARD's preliminary vote on rent increases for October 2012 through September 2013.
Click on "read more" below for more information. And click here for the flyer.
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On April 23, 2012, the United States Supreme Court decided against hearing landlord James Harmon's challenge to rent regulation.
See the New York Times and Bloomberg News articles.
That ends Mr. Harmon's case, and preserves rent regulation as it is. So now it is time to strengthen the rent laws. Join the Real Rent Reform Campaign.
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The Furman Center at NYU has just published a report with telling statistics about rent regulation in New York City.
Read it!.
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Events: Reform RGB - Press Conference
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Come to a Tenants & Neighbors press conference on reforming the Rent Guidelines Board:
- Monday, April 16, 2012
- at City Hall
(press conference starts at 11 AM, so be there by 10:45 to get through security!)
Join State Assemblymember Brian Kavanagh and State Senator Daniel Squadron, sponsors of A6394/S741 and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn to support making the RGB more representative and accountable to all of us.
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According to scotusblog , the U.S. Supreme Court justices will be discussing (behind closed doors) on April 13, 2012 whether to hear the appeal of landlord James Harmon. Harmon is seeking to overturn New York's rent regulation. The outcome may not be published immediately. ("SCOTUS" = Supreme Court Of The United States.)
Meanwhile, some lawyers don't think the Court will take the case. Click on "read more" below.
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The tenants at Independence Plaza North (a huge development owned by Larry Gluck of Stellar Management), argued that because Gluck accepted J-51 tax benefits after the buildings were taken out of Mitchell-Lama, the apartments were rent regulated.
They just lost in the state's mid-level court. Click on "read more" below for an explanation and click here for a copy of the decision.
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Media Coverage: NY Times: Harmon case obscures FACTS about rent regulation
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NY Times
Some highlights from the article:
- “New York is a more diverse place because of rent stabilization . . . ."
- More than half of New Yorkers, whether they are in rent-stabilized apartments or those priced at market rates, spend above 30 percent of their income on rent, according to the Furman Center; 25 percent to 30 percent has long been the guideline. Nearly a third of those in rent-stabilized apartments are paying more than 50 percent in rent. A few weeks ago, I wrote about a formerly homeless man whose salary was insufficient to pay for a $963-a-month one-bedroom apartment in an undesirable part of the South Bronx."
- Moreover, according to the city data, approximately 240,000 rent-controlled and rent-stabilized units are occupied by those making $15,000 or less a year."
Click on "read more" for the full article.
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