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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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The NYS Legislature is now in session for 2012 and has proposed several bills - some old, some variants of last year's bills. Click on "read more" below for details and links to the bills. Mitchell-Lama bills are first, followed by Rent Stabilization bills. More bills and details will be added over the next few weeks. (Go to the NYS Assembly's website and type the keyword "rent" for the more complete list.)
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Rent stabilization and rent control, SCRIE and DRIE depend on the rent laws - on rent regulation. Upper West Side landlord James Harmon has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn rent regulation.
As explained by attorney Tim Collins (former Executive Director of the Rent Guidelines Board) in the December 2011 Tenant/Inquilino, this case is dangerous.
Click on "read more" below.
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Events: Occupy REBNY - Jan. 19 at 6 PM
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TENANTS ARE THE 99%.
Let's SPEAK OUT AND FIGHT BACK!
Join the Real Rent Reform Campaign at a rally at REBNY’s Annual Gala to tell them that the 99% will no longer subsidize the 1%.
WHO: You, plus many tenants and advocates for working families
WHAT: Protesting REBNY's attacks on working families, weak rent laws and landlords' outrageous demand for a quarter BILLION dollar tax break
WHERE: The NY Hilton Hotel, 53rd St. at 6th Avenue in Manhattan
WHEN: Thursday, January 19th at 6 PM
www.RealRentReform.blogspot.com / 212-608-4320 ext. 316 /RealRentReform@gmail.com,
Like Real Rent Reform on Facebook by going to www.facebook.com/RealRentReform!
Click here for a flyer in English and in Spanish to post in your building!
Click on "read more" for details below.
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Posted by sue on Thursday, January 12 @ 15:31:23 EST (15 reads)
(Read More... | 2604 bytes more | Events)
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Events: R3 and Occupy Albany take action
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The Real Rent Reform Campaign will bus to Albany on Dec. 8, 2011 to join Occupy Albany for an action at the State Capitol demanding that Albany
- Strengthen our rent laws: we still need full repeal of vacancy decontrol!
- Enact fair taxation that produces enough revenue to fund social programs, and
- Ensure fair and independent redistricting of legislative seats.
Get on the BUS!
- Thursday, December 8, 2011
- Meet on the DOWNTOWN (west) side of Broadway outside the McDonald’s. The address is 2549 Broadway
- Gather at 8:45 AM. The bus will leave at 9 AM sharp!
- (Free donuts!)
Click here for the flyer to be distributed in Albany. Click on "read more" below for more information - and how to reserve a seat!.
Click here for a flyer in English. (Spanish flyer coming.) Contact this website for a flyer you can adapt for your organization.
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Redistricting, done every 10 years, determines whether voters choose their politicians, or the politicians in fact choose their voters.
Go to Common Cause/NY's redistricting website for maps and more information.
Click on "read more" below for how this affects tenants.
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Rent Controlled tenants are rent regulated tenants who live in buildings constructed before 1947. Their rent increases are determined by the State's Homes & Community Renewal agency - at rates generally higher than those of rent stabilized tenants.
Come to a Tenants & Neighbors RALLY at the next "Maximum Base Rent" (MBR") hearing:- Thursday, Nov. 10, 2011
- 10 AM
- Spector Hall at 22 Reade Street
(between Broadway and Chambers Street just below City Hall in Manhattan
Learn about Assembly Member Rosenthal's bill, A 1892 and how Rent Controlled tenants can protect themselves.
Click here for a flyer. Click on "read more" below for more information.
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Events: Occupy Wall Street - for Affordable Housing- Mon.Nov. 7
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Occupy Wall Street represents the 99% who don't have golden parachutes & homes they can afford.
From Washington Heights to Wall Street, join us as we march on the sidewalk along Broadway through our communities from the northern tip of Manhattan
(181st St. & St. Nicholas at 10:30 A.M.) to Zucotti Park, where we will join the Occupy Wall Street protest in solidarity.
Monday, Nov. 7, 2011
Join the 99% to start marching down to Wall Street:
WASHINGTON HGTS: at 10:30 AM at 181st Street and St. Nicholas Avenue-
HARLEM: Noon at the Harlem State Office Building -
125th Street & Adam Clayton Powell Blvd.
UPPER WEST SIDE: 72nd Street and Broadway
Add your voice for affordable housing.
Click here for a flyer.
Click on "read more" below.
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Tenants have won the "U or P" case! Hurrah!
The last owner to challenge the validity of DHCR's "unique or peculiar circumstances" regulation in court has failed to file his last chance for appeal.
The challenged regulation says that just leaving the Mitchell-Lama program is not by itself enough to justify a rent increase for tenants in those buildings that become rent stabilized on leaving the program - those built before 1974.
Tenants in these buildings can be greatly relieved: in some buildings, owners asked for rents up to 5 times what tenants were paying. The State's housing agency (NYS HCR, formerly DHCR) has already denied most (if not all) of the owners' applications under those regulations.
Thanks to all the tenant associations, support groups like the Mitchell-Lama P.I.E. Campaign and to the lawyers who have fought this all along, including the firms of Himmelstein, McConnell, Gribben, Donoghue & Joseph and Hartman, Ule, Rose & Ratner.
Click on "read more" below for details.
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Taking Action: T&N's ''Enforce!'' Campaign to Write HCR Regulations
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Join Tenants & Neighbors' ENFORCE! Campaign.
The rent statute signed into law in June has no enforcement provisions. Any enforcement must be done by NYS Housing & Community Renewal (formerly DHCR), the State's housing agency. And that means that HCR must draft and publish proposed regulations - for public comment - and then final regulations. That takes a LONG time - but the real estate moguls are already at work.
Tenants have to propose their own enforcement regulations and comment on any that HCR publishes.
So Tenants & Neighbors is launching a campaign to get the state regulatory agency to enforce the rent laws more proactively. Click here to see a list of some of the reform recommendations Tenants & Neighbors has developed.
The first meeting is - Tuesday, August 2, 2011
- at 6:30pm
- at the T&N office (236 W 27th St, 4th Fl).
To get involved in the ENFORCE! campaign, email or , or 212-608-4320, ext. 316.
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