West Side Tenants Seek to Organize at Conference

The Housing Conservation Coordinators held its 3rd Annual West Side Tenants’ Conference last Saturday, attracting hundreds of low-income city tenants to Fordham University at Lincoln Center where the event was hosted.

The event featured workshops on tenants’ rights, how to obtain Section 8 rent-subsidy vouchers, and how to successfully form tenants’ organizations.

“If we had a strong, organized coalition of tenants willing to stand up, maybe things would’ve been different for us,” said Alton Murphy, 31, a resident of a two-bedroom apartment at 3333 Broadway in West Harlem. “My rent went from about $1,800 a few months ago to $2,180 today.”

3333 Broadway, a 1,190-unit apartment complex on 135th St., has been beset by difficulties in organizing a strong tenants’ association. At one point last year, at least two people claimed sole leadership of the building’s tenants’ association.

Perhaps as a result, Murphy said, the property’s then-owner, Jerome Belson, opted out of the Mitchell Lama program, a state-sponsored affordable housing initiative, in May 2005. In May of this year, 3333 was sold to Urban American Management and City Investment Fund, co-sponsored by real estate firm Fisher Brothers and investment bank Morgan Stanley.

Many, including Murphy, have seen rent hikes and evictions as new buyers seek higher returns on investments.

The Conference also hosted representatives from the New York City Housing Authority who came to explain how to navigate the often labyrinthine city bureaucracy to file a claim in housing court, report illegal hotels, and compel landlords to make repairs.

“Living in New York City is getting more and more impossible,” Darrell Howard, who lives on Claremont Ave. in West Harlem, said. “But I feel like events like these are good.
They just make people more aware of the options they got and let them know to take advantage of them.”