Roosevelt Island Mitchell Lama Westview Residents To Receive 14% Rent Hike While Rest Of NYC Apartment Rents Going Down - Does That Make Any Sense?

Image of Westview From Corrections History

While many New York City residents are receiving reductions in their rent due to the recession and poor economy, Roosevelt Island residents of the Mitchell Lama Westview building have just been informed that they are to be paying higher rents to stay in their apartments.

A reader of this post sends the following message regarding Westview rent increase:

I am a long time Resident of Westview.

People on this Island need to know about the fight we have here trying to preserve "affordable" housing here on R.I, the very reason this Island came to be in terms of residential buildings back in 1976.

Westview is still under the Mitchell Lama system and was thinking of doing a conversion, but it fell through. That was due in part to the last Greedy Landlord and potential new owner.

We now face a 14% rent hike by 9/1/09.

The last rent hike we paid never brought us the things it was supposed to like new elevators, etc.

The conditon of our Buildings continue to worsen, we have 360 apartments and our rents are almost 1,000 for a Studio, 1200, for a one bedroom, etc.

Westview is the MOST EXPENSIVE M/L Building in the entire State of NY.

The illegalities and conflict of interests are mind- boggling.

I want to know how it is Legal in NYS for the Head of DHCR to also be the Head of RIOC- our so-called "Public Benefit Corporation".

The Head of RIOC in her rhetoric implored us last year on 8/13/08 at the BRD that "affordability" was very important to them and DHCR.

Now, a year later, it all goes out the window.

The new owners are supposedly a "charitble" organizatin that fund Cancer Research and have a shark of a Lawyer representing them.

All kinds of rules have been broken in Westview, in terms of breaking M/L rules, NO Warehousing is allowed Ever. That is why we have internal and external lists.

There are tons of illegal subletters here, residents with primary residences in other states- those are grounds for getting kicked out of the Building.

The Task Force does continue to fight for the Tenants, but most tenants don't know what they are doing and that has been going on for awhile now.

There was a time on this Island when major news about the "WIRE" Buildings was reported on in the Wire, now, you never see anything on Eastwood- who is fighting sub-metering, Island House, who had a rent hike shoved on them in the Winter and now Westview.

All of this needs to be out in the open and transparent again.

There are lots of tenants in Westview, whose rents have kept the Buildings standing since it went up, who now stand to lose their homes.

Roosevelt Island's representative on the NYC Council Jessica Lappin comments:

I disagree with DHCR's decision to increase rents for Westview. I have urged DHCR to deny Westview any increase in rent and will continue to oppose any future rental increases. I am disappointed by the news, and am worried about the hardship and difficulty this increase will cause.

This past July, Roosevelt Island's elected officials including Ms. Lappin, Assembly Member Kellner, State Senator Serrano and Borough President Stringer sent a strongly worded letter to DHCR Commissioner Van Amerongen stating:

... we believe that granting any significant rent increase at Westview would be destructive of the tenants’ efforts to negotiate a fair and reasonable conversion agreement with the owners, as well as of DHCR’s own stated goal of preserving affordability in the building. Moreover, we are concerned that the owners’ initial request for an extraordinarily high rent increase may have been intended to prejudice these ongoing negotiations. We believe that any increase would be unjustified, given the owners’ failure to implement energy efficiency measures in the building, to refinance the building’s mortgage, or to make proper use of funds raised by previous rent increases....

... we believe that DHCR should terminate the current BRD without awarding Westview’s owners an unjustifiable rent increase, and start the process anew....

Apparently DHCR Commissioner Van Amerongen did not heed this advice.

More on Westview, affordable housing and Mitchell Lama from earlier posts.

The Westview Task Force web site is here.