Mark Winston Griffith

Affordable Housing threatened in Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village?

As homeowners in the outer boroughs dive for cover while the foreclosure crises rips through working class neighborhoods, an enclave of the few surviving middle class apartment dwellers in Manhattan is also feeling threatened.

The New York Times yesterday reported that tenants from the mostly rent-regulated Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village in Manhattan are complaining of harassment from their landlord, and may be witnessing the early stages of the eventual conversion of these building complexes to mostly market-priced housing.

If true, this would validate the initial fear that accompanied Met Life's sale of Stuyvesant/Cooper to Tishman Speyers in 2006, which was that any buyer other than a non-profit developer would chase away all the rent-stabilized apartment dwellers in order to maximize profits, thus rolling back Stuyvesant/Cooper's original mandate to provide affordable housing to New York's working class and civil servants.

Specifically, Tishman Speyers has been accused of being highly aggressive in accusing hundreds of tenants of not using their rent-regulated apartments as their primary residence. Tishman Speyers has withheld lease renewals and challenged the tenants to prove their primary residency through expensive legal means. While Tishman Speyers says that it is simply trying to identify those who are illegally renting their apartments, some tenants and housing advocates suspect more sinister intentions.

Moving forward, it would behoove New Yorkers to pay close attention to Tishman Speyers' management practices. As Stuyvesant/Cooper goes, so may go affordable housing in New York

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Posted at 8:56 AM, May 28, 2008 in Housing
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