Letters
To the editor:
Below is a quote from today’s Broadsheet. So, the subsidy for tenants in total was $228,000,000 ($380,000 x 600 units). LeFrak gave $8,000,000 more than they got. But did they, really?
The 600 units were those whose tenants had lived there the longest. These are the people who are the oldest and who will be leaving this earth sooner than later and who might die earlier than average due to WTC exposure. When the original tenant leaves, does the apartment revert to market level rates? If so, LeFrak played the odds that they will do better in the long term, and the odds are greatly in their favor! Only if these units remain below-market is this deal a success for affordable housing.
“In July, 2020, the Authority agreed to revise the ground lease for Gateway Plaza, Battery Park City’s oldest and largest residential complex, to extend a rent protection agreement for approximately 600 households. In exchange for terms that require these tenants to pay more during the coming ten years (but save them from unrestricted market rents), the LeFrak Organization (the owner of Gateway Plaza) received reductions in future ground rent increases worth more than $220 million dollars. This translates into a subsidy of more than $380,000 for each of the 600 households that benefited from this deal. Such a windfall, if given directly to tenants, rather than to their landlord, would have enabled every household in Gateway Plaza to live rent-free for almost five years, or could have paid the entire rent of those 600 households for decades into the future.”
Thank you,
Maryanne Braverman
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To the editor:
All Gateway Plaza residents in units subject to the July 2020 agreement will have rent-protection through June 30, 2030. The protection is tied to the tenant, not the unit. Units in Gateway Plaza began going to market-rate rents whenever tenants vacated their units after 2009, as per the agreement established at that time. Faced with the certainty of all units going to market rate once the 2009 deal expired, what the Battery Park City Authority achieved with the most recent extension was to continue rent protections for hundreds of longtime Battery Park City residents for another decade. As part of that agreement Gateway Plaza will also be increasing its ground rent payments to BPCA over the next two decades.
From Gateway Plaza to Tribeca Pointe and beyond, we’re continuing our efforts to preserve affordable apartments and address concerns about housing costs for Battery Park City residents.
Nick Sbordone
BPCA
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To the editor:
The extension of affordability provisions at 41 River Terrace (as reported in the Broadsheet’s informative recent article) is undoubtedly good news for at least some of the tenants in that building, who will be able to remain in their apartments.
However, there are thousands of other BPC residents who have been displaced from our amazing neighborhood over the past few years, as the tax breaks and accompanying Rent Stabilization protections have expired in various buildings in the community—for example, at 70 Battery Place (Riverwatch). Tenants have seen rent renewals at much higher rates than the typical Rent Stabilized increase of 2-4%—and many did not receive a renewal lease at all, erasing another critical protection of Rent Stabilization, particularly during these times when housing inventory (everywhere) is in short supply.
Many longtime residents have been unable to afford these increases, and are being effectively forced-out of the community they have called home for many years. Unless BPCA and others can provide an incentive for landlords to do business differently, this displacement in BPC will continue, until only the 1% remain.
A BPC neighbor
