Opposition to Eastwood Submetering Scheme
February 9, 2009
It was standing room only as Eastwood residents packed the Chapel of the Good Shepard Church for an emergency community organizing meeting last Saturday.
Last fall the residents of the Eastwood complex on Roosevelt Island were informed by their management company, Urban American, that management was applying to the New York State Public Service Commission (PSC) for the building to be converted to submetered electricity. Submetering, as opposed to mastermetering, is when tenants are billed individually for their unit’s electrical usage rather than the landlord.
From the get-go, I was skeptical that a 33-year-old building with a baseboard electric heating system, energy-inefficient appliances, faulty thermostats, and a host of other issues, could establish a submetering scheme that wouldn’t result in a de facto massive rent increase that prices families out of their homes. However laudable the environmental goals of submetering, it doesn’t always make sense. In order for submetering to result in cost-savings and energy conservation, tenants need to be able to have the tools to conserve electricity. This is simply not possible in a building like Eastwood.
It was for these reasons that I requested two months of sample billing be sent to residents prior to the start of actual billing. What we have seen since those bills began to arrive last week is alarming. Bills totalling $600, $700, $800, $900, and even $1000 are not uncommon - for all unit sizes.
This morning, the New York Times published an article about this issue and in it Douglas Eisenberg, CEO of Urban American is quoted as saying the following:
“I think that changing one’s habits is a difficult thing to do, and this really takes people being proactive about saving energy[…] A lot of these residents have lived in this building a long time. They haven’t been responsible for their electric bills. Now they are. I think at the end of the day, I feel pretty good that we’re doing the right thing here.”
I am fairly offended by these remarks, as I am sure Eastwood tenants are. If I ran every appliance in my apartment 24-hours a day for a month, I doubt I could match most of the electric bills that Eastwood residents are facing. Electric baseboard heating is simply the most inefficient system you can have in a building like this. And what’s worse is that Douglas Eisenberg knows this. His company has been paying this electric bill since they bought the building, and now they don’t want to do that anymore. Blaming the tenants and accusing them of being wasteful is a low-ball move and it’s not fooling anyone.
I have only seen two bills so far, out of hundreds, where the rent reduction covers what was approved by the PSC, and most tenants are many hundreds of dollars away from that mark. If you are an Eastwood tenant and you have not yet faxed me a copy of your sample bill, please do so. My fax number is 917-432-2983.
One piece of good news to report is that through my negotiations with the NYS Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR), the rent reduction schedule will be improved slightly. DHCR is responsible for setting the amounts for Section 8 tenants based on a strict interpretation of federal HUD regulations. (And the rent reductions for Section 8 tenants were applied to all tenants.) However, the initial calculations by DHCR assumed a lower dollar per kilowatt/hour amount than what tenants are actually going to be charged by Con Edison (14 cents per kwh as opposed to 18 cents per kwh). The new rent reduction rates can be accessed by clicking here, and while they do not solve the problems tenants are facing, I am pleased that DHCR has taken the step to review their calculations in order to ensure that tenants are at least given what they are entitled to under the law.
Despite this small victory, I do not believe that Eastwood is an appropriate candidate for submetering, under any rent reduction scheme. Having now viewed the sample bills, I, along with my colleagues (Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, Borough President Scott Stringer, State Senator Jose Serrano, and Council Member Jessica Lappin) wrote to the Public Service Commission and petitioned for the Eastwood submetering application to have a re-hearing so that a number of factors that may have been initially overlooked may be examined more closely.
***UPDATE*** The Public Service Commission has granted my request for a stay of submetering and the landlord’s application is now in a re-hearing process. Tenants at Eastwood have until April 1st to submit comments to the PSC on the application itself. Please contact my office for more information at 212-860-4906.
10-Bill Package to Protect the Rights of Tenants Passes Assembly
February 4, 2009
Anyone who rents in New York City knows that the rent laws are broken and our City’s affordable housing stock is in crisis. Over the past decade we have watched as speculation in multi-family housing resulted in the harassment and eviction of families from their homes.
I’m proud to say that earlier this week, the Assembly acted to update and strengthen New York’s rent laws. For your information, these ten bills are listed below. The bill package is now headed to the Senate.
A.2005 (Rosenthal) - Repeals vacancy decontrol laws that allow landlords to deregulate apartments. The bill also re-regulates thousands of units that are renting for less than $5000/month.
A.1686 (Lopez) - Reduces the maximum amount a landlord can increase the rent on a vacated apartment from 20% to 10%.
A.860 (Bing) - Adjusts income decontrol thresholds to more accurately reclect present day realities and tie income decontrol thresholds to inflation in the NYC metropolitan area.
A.1687 (Lopez) - Require former Section 8 properties to be automatically subject to rent regulation.
A.1685 (Lopez) - Limit a landlord’s ability to recover an apartment for personal use to one unit per property.
A.1688 ( Lopez) - Repeals the Urstadt Law, allowing New York City to make its own rent laws.
A.857 (Bing) - Maintains the rents for tenants at their same levels when a building leaves the Mitchell-Lama program and enters rent stabilization.
A.1928 (O’Donnell) - Extends the length of time during which major capital improvement (MCI) expenses are recovered by landlords so that the costs to tenants are more spread out. Also, prohibits rent surcharges for MCIs after the costs of the improvement have already been recovered.
A.2002 (Silver) - Creates civil penalties for tenant harassment and raises penalties on landlords that violate DHCR housing codes.
A.465 (Jeffries) - Protects tenants with preferential rental agreements from exorbirant rent increases.
Eastwood Sub-metering Concerns
November 21, 2008
Recently, residents of the Eastwood complex on Roosevelt Island were informed by their management company, Urban American, that the building would be converting to sub-metered electricity. This means that tenants would be billed individually for their household’s electricity usage. Urban American intends for this transition to take place early next year.
I have serious concerns about this process, and how it will affect tenants.
On October 16th, I participated in a town hall meeting, along with Eastwood tenants, at the Good Shepherd Community Center. The meeting was an opportunity to ask building management questions about the sub-metering proposal, as well as to hear from the state agencies involved. As a result of this meeting, and the numerous comments I have heard from residents there, I do not believe that the building is ready to go forward with sub-metering.
Too many tenants still have energy-inefficient appliances and faulty electric heaters, these are not personal items, rather these are items that come with the apartment and the management company is responsible for them. Urban American has promised to replace inefficient appliances and to fix heaters and thermostats for any residents who make a request to them. If you are an Eastwood tenant and you have made a request like this to management but they have not responded, please call me.
It is imperative that we have a clear picture of overall energy use in the building. The building’s heat is electric, so it is essential to ensure that tenants do not face unreasonably high utility bills just to stay warm in the winter. It concerns me that so many apartments are poorly insulated and Urban American needs to address this. I have asked the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority to conduct a full survey of energy use and efficiency in Eastwood, so that residents are not penalized by faulty design or maintenance.
I am also concerned that we do not have a real sense about how billing will work under this new system, given the complicated system of affordable housing programs that are integrated into the Mitchell-Lama’s accounting already. Will the utility allowance calculated by state and federal agencies be enough to compensate tenants for a reasonable amount of electricity usage? I have asked New York City Comptroller Bill Thompson as well as the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal to work with Urban American to ensure that residents are protected.
NOV. 25th 2008 ***UPDATE*** I have written to Urban American Management on this issue. For those who are following this, please see the Publications area of my website to download a copy of that letter.
Opposition to 75%-88% Rent Increases for Westview & Island House on RI
August 14, 2008
This week I testified against the proposed rent determinations for Island House and Westview that would increase rents by as much as 75-88% in these buildings.
The owners of Westview and Island House have applied to the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal for permission to raise rents by as much as 75% (at Island House) and 88% (at Westview). DHCR holds hearings to give the public an opportunity to comment on the proposals. Originally these hearings were to have taken place in June, but as I blogged about then, I was able to convince DHCR to grant a 60 day extension to give tenant associations ample time to prepare for these hearings. This week I testified at two hearings (one for Island House and the other for Westview) on behalf of tenants on Roosevelt Island. Click here to go to the Publications section of this website where my testimony can be accessed.
Any rent increase like the ones proposed would be a disaster - it would drive out long-term residents and would essentially mean the end of affordable housing for much of Roosevelt Island.
Roosevelt Island was conceived as a planned community, offering affordable homes for a diverse mix of working New Yorkers. Driving up rents at two of the Island’s remaining Mitchell-Lama buildings is a betrayal of that mission and of the families who have long called the Island home. The owners’ request is especially obscene because they have failed to do their part. The owners have not tried to cut their own costs and when they were given rent increases in the past, they didn’t do with that money what they were supposed to in terms of improvements to the buildings.
Why should we trust them again?
DHCR Proposal a Step in the Wrong Direction on ‘Phony Demolitions’
August 13, 2008
I spoke at a press conference yesterday, along with other local elected officials, including Senator Martin Connor (pictured to my left), to oppose DHCR’s regulations proposals on demolition provisions.
It is no secret that the current real estate market provides landlords with strong incentives to find ways to remove rent-regulated tenants and convert their apartments to market-rate units. My office is contacted on a daily basis by rent-stabilized and rent-controlled tenants facing harassment, denial of services, improper refusal by landlords to renew leases or acknowledge succession rights, as well as numerous other pressures brought to bear by landlords who seek to raise rents and ultimately remove their units from regulation. In this context, it is all the more vital that the NYS Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR), the watchdog for affordable housing in New York, to uphold the central principle of the Rent Stabilization Laws, which is that landlords may not evict tenants simply because they wish to charge higher rents for their apartments.
One increasingly common loophole landlords seek to exploit in order to rid their buildings concerns what we have come to call “Phony Demolitions.” The law grants landlords the right to refuse to renew leases when an owner intends to demolish the building. Increasingly, landlords have tried to convince courts that “demolition” includes cases where an apartment is merely gut renovated.
Phony demolitions represent an assault on affordable housing in New York, and an assault on the principles of the Rent Stabilization law. They reduce the stock of housing available to low- and middle-income New Yorkers, they upend families without justification, and they damage the public’s confidence in the government’s commitment to upholding the principles of rent stabilization.
In the past few years, tenant leaders and elected officials have called on DHCR to remove any ambiguity about the legal definition for “demolition” by updating the Rent Stabilization Code to clearly define it as razing a building to the ground.
Today, DHCR held a hearing on new regulations, but unfortunately what they propose is a step backward from any common-sense definition. The new language would allow landlords to evict rent-stabilized tenants in order to perform a “complete gutting of all interior space in the building.”
This change would essentially give property owners a green light to continue this abuse. I testified at the hearing today and urged DHCR not to approve these regulations because of their potential to undermine affordable housing in New York.
I asked them to instead adopt the common-sense definition as well as to guarantee tenants the right to a hearing when a landlord files a demolition application. Longstanding DHCR policy affirmed such a right, but a policy change during the Pataki administration eliminated this crucial guarantee of due process.
Also at issue is what happens to tenants in buildings that are demolished. Right now, tenants receive an inadquete stipend as compensation, but the proposed changes to the stipend have a complex formula based on “the mean registered rent of the zip code of the housing accommodation proposed for demolition.” DHCR has not clarified how such a figure would be calculated, and until they do, it’s hard to judge what this means.
But ultimately it is the stipends themselves that are the problem. They require landlords to provide minimal compensation for a limited period of time – eventually, leaving tenants to fend for themselves in an increasingly difficult real estate market. All this does is postpone the date when tenants will no longer be able to afford to live in their own neighborhoods. It’s a system, if anything, that encourages a vicious circle.
When I testified today, I told DHCR that I think the stipend should be eliminated and instead owners should be required to relocate their rent-stabilized tenants to similarly-sized apartments, in the same neighborhood, at comparable rents. If a new apartment is not rent-stabilized, DHCR should require landlords to ensure that the relocated tenants are contractually guaranteed the same rights as those provided under rent stabilization.
Westview and Island House Rent Determination Hearing Granted 60-Day Extension
June 12, 2008
Several weeks ago, the residents of Westview and Island House were informed that the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR) would be holding hearings on Roosevelt Island to consider a rent determination request from the lanlord for rent increases of up to 88%. This is outrageous and completely out of line with the affordability that these Mitchell-Lamas are supposed to provide to the hundreds of families that call them home. These are already the most expensive Mitchell-Lama buildings in New York State. Also, a significant amount of the rent increase is supposedly justified through the need to pay arrears on debt for the buildings, but it is totally unprecedented and unfair to raise rents to pay a landlord’s debt.
The hearings were originally scheduled for this month, but in order to give the tenant associations the time they need to hire accountants to review the proposal and prepare a thorough response, I wrote to DHCR Commissioner Deborah VanAmerongen and requested an extension to this process. She granted that request and the hearings will be rescheduled to August. I will continue to advocate for the hearings to be at a location, time, and date that allow working Roosevelt Islanders to be able to attend and make themselves heard.
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My community office is here to help you.
315 East 65 Street
New York, NY 10065
Tel 212-860-4906
Fax 917-432-2983
Email KellnerM@assembly.state.ny.us
