The co-ops, condos, and rental apartments on the corner of Columbus Avenue and West 92nd Street set the stage for changes currently transforming New York City’s housing market.
Several buildings in this area of the Upper West Side have participated in Mitchell-Lama, a New York housing subsidy program that builds and maintains affordable homes for low- to middle-income residents. Since it was established in 1955, Mitchell-Lama has developed over 105,000 apartments, according to the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal. But the number of developments still participating in the program has decreased as landlords choose to opt out—a move which can subject their tenants to rent deregulation.
Staying home at Trinity House
“These buildings are rolling over quickly,” said Sandra Fowler, a resident of a Trinity House rental co-op on West 94th Street. “They’re being privatized.”
Stepping out from the state subsidy program, owners of local apartment buildings are able to charge more for rent.
“Everyone’s been fighting the privatization because there’s no affordable housing here anymore,” said Wyetta Carter, a resident of Trinity House’s building at 100 West 92nd St. “My husband and I are both on fixed income, and if this place leaves Mitchell-Lama, I don’t know if we could afford it.”
Currently, Trinity House remains a Mitchell-Lama residence, composed entirely of rental units and owned by the Trinity School, with some apartments set aside for Trinity faculty and administrators.
“We were in discussions to sell the building,” said Myles Amend, director of development and alumni relations at Trinity School. Though the sale was withdrawn a year ago, Amend confirmed that if the building had been sold, it would have likely left the Mitchell-Lama program.
But now, Amend said he does not expect Trinity House to face such change.
“There is no plan to take the building out of Mitchell-Lama,” he said, adding that Trinity will continue to be “the same as it was two years ago, four years ago, 10 years ago.”
“Trinity House residents, unlike those in nearby buildings, want to keep the rents affordable,” Community Board 7 chair Helen Rosenthal wrote in an e-mail. “Most of the residents in nearby formerly M-L [Mitchell-Lama] buildings were happy to get some extra money for being ‘bought-out.’”
Michael Skidmore of Maxwell-Kates, Inc., the manager of Trinity House, declined to comment.
Moving out
The process of moving on from Mitchell-Lama is not as simple as moving out of an apartment, as some buildings are still bound to rent regulations even after they leave the program. The complex history of affordable housing has paved divergent paths for homes within the same neighborhoods.
In 1971, New York enacted vacancy-decontrol legislation that allowed any vacant apartment to be priced at market-rate value, a law that proved problematic for residents who could not afford the sudden increase in rent. Three years later, the state followed up with the Emergency Tenant Protection Act, which stated that if a Mitchell-Lama building was constructed before 1974, its rents would continue to be subject to stabilization even if the owner opted to leave the program. Housing developments built after that year were not bound by the ETPA. In addition, the rent stabilization rule for pre-1974 buildings had a loophole: rents could still be forced to rise to market rate under what the act called “unique and peculiar circumstances.”
Among the buildings on the Upper West Side that have left the Mitchell-Lama program but whose apartment units remain rent-regulated under the ETPA are Central Park Gardens on West 97th Street, Westview Apartments at 765 Amsterdam Ave., and Westgate—also called KSLM—on West 97th Street.
Some landlords in the area argue that withdrawing their buildings from Mitchell-Lama creates a “unique and peculiar circumstance” because doing so forces them to calculate new rent rates based on state determinations. This interpretation of the act can allow the conversion of an affordable housing unit into a market-value unit when a building leaves the Mitchell-Lama program.
The state recently amended the ETPA to make clear that merely leaving the program is not considered a “unique and peculiar circumstance.” In response, landlords have sued the state department, claiming that this regulation is unconstitutional.
Sue Susman, president of the Central Park Gardens Tenants’ Association, said the outcome of the lawsuit could affect 24 buildings that house between 50,000 and 60,000 tenants.
Legislate to regulate
In an attempt to protect affordable housing, New York State Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins, who represents Yonkers, re-introduced a bill in March that would re-regulate buildings that were deregulated after 1974.
“My legislation would extend the Emergency Tenants Protection Act to these kinds of buildings as they leave the Mitchell-Lama program,” Stewart-Cousins said, adding that the tenants “would be able to continue paying the moderate rents they had been paying while the building was in the Mitchell-Lama program. It offers protection so people will not find themselves looking for apartments they cannot afford.”
But landlords believe the importance of a property’s potential to profit is often overlooked.
“If rent stabilization is a damper to financial success, then we have to say no,” said Philip Schorr of Bronx Management, the firm that used to manage Independence House, a Mitchell-Lama development on West 94th Street. The current landlord of Independence House, Jim Ruben of Leebar Management, could not be reached for comment.
“The critical element of all of this is financial stability of the property,” Schorr said, adding that state-imposed constraints might have a negative impact.
According to Tenants & Neighbors, a resident rights advocacy group, there are 100,000 deregulated apartments in the city and one million that are regulated. If passed, the Stewart-Cousins bill would apply to all Mitchell-Lama buildings, both former and current. Those that were built after 1974 and have since left the program—such as 3333 Broadway at West 135th Street—tend to see deteriorating conditions as landlords falter in apartment upkeep, pushing out lower-income residents to make room for higher-paying tenants. The bill would seek to even the playing field between these now-deregulated properties and buildings still participating in Mitchell-Lama.
“There are a finite number of Mitchell-Lama buildings, both pre- and post-1974, which helps this bill because people are afraid of the infinite,” Susman said. “It [the bill] won’t cost the state any money ... and landlords would be better off ... Actually, it may be to everyone’s advantage.”
But in Susman’s neighboring buildings, conditions are less favorable, and some residents said they have noticed a gradual change in the demographics of their neighbors.
“True, the buildings have always been well-maintained, but a lot of people moved because of the cost increases,” Trinity House resident Ida Albelo said. “We’ve got a lot of new people now.”
Amy Chan, Mitchell-Lama organizer for Tenants & Neighbors, was optimistic about the potential of the Stewart-Cousins bill, stating that it “would be a really good way to ameliorate these problems. It eliminates the ‘unique and peculiar’ loophole so landlords can’t sell [previously Mitchell-Lama apartments] at market rate.”
“It’s like there’s one faction against another,” said a resident of an apartment in St. Martin’s House on West 90th Street, who was granted anonymity to protect the tenant’s rental standing. “It’s the management against the people, like me, who can’t pay market rate.”
With the Stewart-Cousins bill pending and the welfare of thousands of tenants on the line, the St. Martin’s resident said the issue of most concern was “the fear of not knowing our future more than anything else.”
Sam Levin contributed reporting to this article.
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