Huge competition for affordable housing lotteries

New York Times: Huge competition for affordable housing lotteries

New York Post: De Blasio names Leonard Litwin to committee for 2016 Dem convention

  

Daily News: Gazillionaires planning mega-mansions in Manhattan: new gilded age

New York Times: Ever-greater amenities in new luxury condos for the super-rich

Michael McKee

Treasurer

Tenants Political Action Committee

How would Carl Heastie be on rent (and other issues)

Gotham Gazette: How would Heastie be on issues important to NYC, including rent?

Heastie potential Silver successor.

Read about Heastie in Juan Gonzalez's NY Daily News article.   Gonzalez suggests that Heastie distance himself from some of his principal advisors including Stanley Schlein, whose lobbying clients have included the Rent Stabilization Association, and the NY Yankees, according to the NY Observer.  

It behooves all tenants to urge their Assembly Members to tell the next Assembly Speaker - whoever it may be - that we need repeal of vacancy deregulation along with renewal of the rent laws that expire in June 2015. 

421-a program could raise your rent

WNYC

Assembly Speaker Silver's Departure Could End Up Raising Your Rent

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

By Janet Babin : Economic Development Reporter, WNYC News

Excerpt: 
""It's a terrible deal. We spend $1 billion a year and for that we get about 15,000 affordable units," said Tom Waters, a housing policy analyst with the Alliance for Tenant Power.

But if you live in a rental, developers want you to know that ending this tax program will result in a reduction of available units, which could then increase the price of rentals."

Avowed Tenant Champ Dethroned by [alleged] Developer Kickbacks

Former Urban Justice Center attorney-turned-journalist Tammy Kim provides the irony and the perspective of people in Assembly Member (and former speaker) Sheldon Silver's district. 

"Avowed Tenant Champ Dethroned by
Developer Kickbacks"

Did Silver sell out tenants in 2011?

A Sheldon Silver Mystery: Did He Betray New York Renters? 

in@propublica.org.

Excerpt: A little-scrutinized section of the criminal complaint alleges a luxury developer implicated in the Silver bribery scheme requested changes to the law. The changes were ultimately adopted.

The complaint has tenant advocates who lobbied on the bill, known as the Rent Act of 2011, wondering what really happened. For now, it's a mystery: U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara hasn't specified what change Silver made on behalf of a developer who was part of the alleged bribery scheme.

The Indypendent: Tenant Laws in Peril

The Indypendent, New York's Tenant Laws are in Peril

by Steve Wishnia

Excerpt: 

For both of the tenant-group coalitions working on the issue — the Alliance for Tenant Power and the Real Rent Reform Campaign — the top priority is repeal of the 1997 amendment that lets landlords decontrol vacant apartments if the rent can be raised to $2,500 a month or more.

That amendment has effectively created a two-tier housing system in the city, in which new arrivals face astronomical rents and no rights or security. If it’s not repealed, tenant advocates say, the supply of rent-stabilized apartments will eventually erode to a handful occupied by elderly and poor residents. Merely raising the threshold for deregulation — in 2011, the last time the laws were renewed, it was increased from $2,000 to $2,500 — would be as inadequate as putting a Band-Aid on a ruptured aorta, they say.