In The Press

The city’s approval last month of the sale of Independence Plaza sets the stage for what will probably be a protracted struggle between the new owner, Larry Gluck, and the IPN Tenants Association.

The approval by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development clears the way for Gluck to move to withdraw IPN from the government’s Mitchell-Lama housing program, while the tenants hope to stymie that plan.

HPD said that it had examined Gluck’s background and his history as a landlord. “After an extensive investigation, HPD did not uncover any negative findings,” the agency said.

Steve Vitoff, vice president of the Marino Group, the public relations firm that Gluck hired several months ago, declined to say when Gluck would finalize the purchase from Harold Cohn and Duane Street Associates. After he assumes ownership, Gluck plans to apply to HPD to withdraw, or buy out, from the Mitchell-Lama program, which keeps rents at IPN’s 1,330 apartments below market levels.

Owners must give at least a year’s notice of their intention to buy out, so no change in IPN’s status can occur until at least early next summer.

The tenant association last month continued its campaign to counter Gluck’s buyout plan, which tenants fear will lead to unaffordable rents. Neil Fabricant, the association’s president, and tenant attorneys met with City Council Speaker Gifford Miller to discuss proposed legislation to create new regulatory hurdles for Mitchell-Lama owners buying out. But Miller has not indicated whether he will back the bill.

“We support finding a way, through legislation or otherwise, to protect the tenants of Independence Plaza as well as of other Mitchell Lama developments facing buyouts,” Miller told the Trib through a spokesman.

IPN leaders also sought support from the Bloomberg administration at a May 23 meeting with Daniel Doctoroff, deputy mayor for economic development. “He said the administration would take an active role in assuring what he referred to as a ‘fair outcome,’” Fabricant said of Doctoroff. “But the jury is still out.”

The tenant association is trying to assemble financing for its own purchase of IPN, which would let residents purchase their homes or maintain low rents. Fabricant said that the tenants could offer Gluck fair market value and even leave him with a small profit, but the association has not found a way to get its deal considered.

HPD and Gluck have sought to reassure IPN tenants, saying that after a buyout, about two-thirds of them will be eligible for federal rent subsidies, known as “sticky vouchers,” that cover the difference between Mitchell-Lama-equivalent rents and market rents. For other tenants, Gluck and HPD say, the owner will negotiate reasonable rent increases.

Tenants earning up to 95 percent of a government-set median income level would be eligible for vouchers. Curently, a single person earning up to $41,800, a two-person household making up to $47,750 and a family of four earning up to $59,660 would qualify.

But the tenant association says that government funding for the vouchers might be cut, that too many tenants would be unprotected by them, and that rent increases negotiated in other Mitchell-Lama buyouts were too steep.

In the meantime, at Park West Village, a rent-stabilized complex on the upper west side that Gluck and a partner, Joseph Chetrit, purchased in 2000, tenants have filed 28 complaints with the state claiming that the owners were overcharging on rents. The owners exaggerated the amounts they spent to renovate vacant apartments so that they could remove the units from rent stablization protection, the tenants said.

So far, the State Department of Housing and Community Renewal has ruled for the tenants in 17 cases and for the owners in one, and eight decisions are pending (two cases were withdrawn), according to Randall Sawyer, a DHCR spokesman.

DHCR has also “opened a fraud investigation to determine if a pattern exists or if any knowing violations of rent laws has occurred,” Sawyer said.

Park West Village tenants last month also ended a 13-month rent strike over chronically broken elevators after the elevators were finally fixed, according to tenant association president Vivian Dee. Gluck, who has a 22-percent ownership interest in Park West Village and a 35-percent interest in its management company, according to HPD, has said that he is only minimally involved in the complex.

<<<  back to Main Page: In The Press