Report on Mismanagement of Mitchell-Lama Housing Including Roosevelt Island's Westview

Via Curbed and Roosevelt Island 360, Roosevelt Island's Westview housing complex was cited today in a NY Times article highlighting a report issued by the NY State Inspector General describing NY State's Division of Housing and Community Renewal's (DHCR)

mismanagement and lack of oversight at 80,000 apartments in 189 projects built under the state’s middle-income Mitchell-Lama housing program

and finding

“deep and systemic failure” to properly oversee the rapidly dwindling supply of subsidized middle-income housing has led to the deterioration of the buildings, an increase in rents and a waste of taxpayer money, ...

Regarding Roosevelt Island:

At the highly desirable Westview complex on Roosevelt Island, investigators found a troubling proposal to convert the building to market-rate condominiums. The Division of Housing and Community Renewal granted a proposed buyer a waiver in 2004 to manage the complex. By August 2006, 31 apartments in the complex had been vacant for about a year, despite a waiting list of 1,000 and a policy that “there should be no vacancies in subsidized housing in New York.”

It appears that the operator was warehousing the vacant apartments in anticipation of a windfall from their sale as condominiums. Nevertheless, the report said, an agency inspector “termed the complex’s inflated vacancy rate ‘satisfactory.’ ” The sale fell through in March 2006.

Here is a link to the transcript of Main Street Wire interview with DHCR Commissioner and RIOC Board Chair Deborah VanAmerongen. In regard to taking buildings out of the Mitchell-Lama program, Ms. VanAmerongen says:

The thing that I think creates a difficulty for this owner or any
owner in taking those buildings out of Mitchell-Lama is really the General
Development Plan – though I will admit that, being still new to the job, I’m still getting
up to speed on this and learning everything about what that General Development Plan
says and how it impacts upon the ability of the owner to take those buildings out of
Mitchell-Lama. But you may be aware that there are instances where in the City of
New York, and even outside the City of New York, there were Mitchell-Lamas that
wanted to buy out and because of underlying restrictions on the land – such as an urban
renewal plan, and there was a pretty big case over in Brooklyn with a building called
Tivoli Towers – and I’m not suggesting that the two are analogous, I’m just giving you
an example of the kind of thing that we’re thinking about – where ultimately, the court
said, “You can’t buy out.” And I don’t know that a court would say that here, and I’m
hoping we don’t get to the point where there’s litigation, but I think we need to look at
those things