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May 7, 2007
Tenants Fight McMansions, Challenging Landlords to Keep Their Homes
Brooklyn Rail
By Eleanor Bader
An article about tenants' fight to save their rent-stabilized aparment a block from Ratnerville notes that Atlantic Yards isn't making things easier for those living in rent-stabilized aparments:
Dave Powell, a tenant organizer at the Fifth Avenue Committee, already sees this happening and blames the increase in owner use cases on the city’s seemingly-endless real estate boom. “We’ve seen the rapid gentrification of Ft. Greene and Park Slope in the last 10 to 15 years and certainly Atlantic Yards is serving to exacerbate that. Rent Stabilization laws are supposed to act as a regulatory force against displacement and eviction,” he says. “The owner use provision was not meant for landlords to create mansions in tenements. I have no empathy for people who are trying to circumvent these laws and remove desperately needed apartments from the affordable housing stock.”
William Whalen of Municipal Employee Legal Services, a group that provides free legal representation to city workers unionized by District Counsel 37... says. “I’ve recently noticed a tremendous change in the nature of our practice. A few years back, landlords wanted their money. It was, ‘how much can you pay and when are you going to pay it?’ Now landlords no longer want the rent money. They want the tenant to move because at this point an empty apartment is worth more than an occupied one.”
Attorney Scott Miller agrees. “Atlantic Yards has been in the forefront of the news for three or four years. Since the development plan was announced, the number of owner use cases has skyrocketed. The area is hot and trendy and will only get more so. I have nothing against the owners of 533 Bergen but they don’t have to displace five families for the pleasure of one. It’s greed. It may be legal, but what’s legal and what’s fair are sometimes different.”
NoLandGrab: In addition to Atlantic Yards's indirect effect on affordable housing in the area, don't forget that developer Bruce Ratner's is trying to use eminent domain to remove tenants from the rent-stabilized apartments that he owns, a tidy way to circumvent all laws and regulations meant to protect these tenants.
Posted by lumi at May 7, 2007 7:55 AM