From owner-nytenants-announce Fri Jul 2 00:46:11 1999 Received: (from root@localhost) by cnct.com (8.8.8/8.8.6) id AAA07591 for nytenants-announce-outgoing; Fri, 2 Jul 1999 00:46:11 -0400 (EDT) Received: from tenant.cnct.com (ts3-10.ny.cnct.com [207.111.66.142]) by cnct.com (8.8.8/8.8.6) with SMTP id AAA07582 for <>; Fri, 2 Jul 1999 00:46:00 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <4.1.19990701230535.00942a30@cnct.com> Message-Id: <4.1.19990701230535.00942a30@cnct.com> X-Sender: X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.1 Date: Fri, 02 Jul 1999 00:06:08 -0400 To: From: tenant <> Subject: Tenants Online 7/1/99 (update on Vallone Lead bill) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by cnct.com id AAA07587 Sender: Precedence: bulk Tenants Online 7/1/99 ----------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, see the bottom of this newsletter ----------------------------------------------------------------- In this issue... 1. Peter Vallone Lead Poisoning Act of 1999 2. Council Passes a Bill on Lead Paint (NY Times) 3. Lead Paint Bill OKd; foes say it's a gift to landlords (Daily News) 4. Vallone worried about lead in bridges 5. Lead-Poisoning Litigation (NY Law Journal tells landlords how to beat the rap) ----------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 01 Jul 1999 From: Kenneth Schaeffer Subject: Lead Poisoning act of 1999 As you have probably heard, yesterday the city council passed the Lead Poisoning Act of 1999. Peter Vallone forced a 36-15 vote on the measure with one hand, while receiving real estate contributions with the other from the Rent Stabilization Association (located in the same building, 123 William Street, as Vallone's 2001 campaign committee). Members voting against the bill included: Michaels, Perkins, Linares, Lopez, Reed, Quinn, Fried, Eldridge, DiBrienza, Pinkett, Clarke, Foster, Leffler, Rivera, Boyland. The enactment of this bill revealed the darker side of politics in NYC. Even though more than 2/3 of the council support Intro. 205, which had been introduced more than 2 years ago and was a reasonable compromise to make apartmens "lead safe" rathen than completely "lead free", Vallone never allowed a hearing on 205. He then rushed through his bill in the face of unanimous testimony from the medical community that it does not adequately protect kids because, among other things, it allows up to 7 months before exposed lead is removed, more than enough time to poison kids, there is only limited testing for lead dust after work is performed and even then it is performed by the landlord with no monitoring, the burden is on parents to report lead hazards, and when children are, inevitably, poisoned, it will be much harder to impose liability on negligent owners. This bill was forced through without adequate debate, and it did not even received a bill number (Intro 582) until the day of the vote. In an ominous note, the New York Times reports today that Vallone's emissaries (goons?) visited all council members at their homes Tuesday night to hand-deliver a message from Vallone that he wanted their votes on this. This "we know where you live" message is particularly disturbing in light of reports that at least one influential council member is being essentially blackmailed by the leadership regarding his personal life. If your council member is one of the 15 who had the courage to stand up to this pressure, you should contact her or him to express your gratitude on behalf of our clients and all the kids of this city. If not, you should communicate your displeasure. ----------------------------------------------------------------- New York Times July 1, 1999 After Bitter Debate, Council Passes a Bill on Lead Paint By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN The City Council approved a measure Wednesday to replace the city's 17-year-old law meant to protect children from poisoning caused by lead paint, capping weeks of rancor and more than a decade of legislative fits and starts on one of the most complex issues in public policy. The Council vote, 36 to 15, was a victory for Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, a Republican, and the Council Speaker, Peter F. Vallone, a Democrat, who remained united in support of the bill despite fierce opposition. In the weeks leading up to Wednesday's vote, the bill was criticized as too weak by several Council members and by advocates for children and the environment as well as by many medical experts on lead poisoning. The old lead law, enacted in 1982, has never been fully enforced, in part because landlords and the city regarded compliance as too onerous and expensive. The 1982 law has also been the subject of continuing litigation and was interpreted by a judge in 1989 as requiring the removal of all lead paint, which experts now say would do more harm than good. Lead paint has been banned for household use for more than 20 years. While the goal of the 1982 law was to make buildings "lead free," the new measure is intended to make housing "lead safe," a reflection of more recent research concluding that it is usually safer to leave lead paint in place unless it begins to deteriorate. Removing intact lead paint can create invisible lead dust, which is now believed to be the main cause of poisoning. Supporters of the measure said that it would finally offer a workable law to prevent lead poisoning, which health experts have long regarded as the greatest preventable threat to childhood health. "This is a bill to help children, to prevent lead poisoning," Vallone said after casting the final yes vote. He added, "This was our best attempt to get consensus from both sides of the hall that would try to help kids." Several council members seemed torn as they voted yesterday and many said they supported the measure even though they felt it could be stronger. That fact was not lost on Vallone, who said the bill would likely be amended in the future. The new measure, which Giuliani is expected to sign into law this month, seeks to prevent lead poisoning by setting rules and deadlines for landlords to correct hazards. It requires landlords to make annual visual inspections in any apartment built before 1960 where a child under 6 resides. And it requires the city to make repairs whenever a landlord fails to do so. The bill also puts more responsibility on tenants to report suspected hazards. It largely allows landlords to supervise and certify their own repairs. And it will severely restrict the ability of the parents of lead-poisoned children to win lawsuits alleging negligence by landlords or the city. Opponents of the bill, including Councilman Stanley E. Michels of Manhattan, charged that the bill favored landlords and the city over the health needs of children. There were more than 1,000 confirmed lead poisoning cases in New York City last year and as many as 30,000 city children are believed to have dangerously high levels of lead in their bodies. The bill had divided the Council in recent weeks and Vallone and his aides had to exert substantial pressure to insure its passage, first through the housing and buildings committee and then through yesterday's vote. A letter from the Speaker urging support for the bill was hand-delivered to many Council members at home on Tuesday night, a dramatic gesture meant to underscore his leadership role. And in a move to insure passage of the bill, aides to the Mayor and the Speaker agreed late Tuesday to allocate $8.6 million more in the city budget for lead-poisoning prevention efforts, including the development of 10 lead-safe houses where families with lead-poisoned children could live, the purchase of six vans to use as mobile lead-screening units and the hiring of 30 to 50 more Department of Health outreach workers. Yesterday evening's vote followed an afternoon of loud debate in the Council chamber, which was punctuated on several occasions by hisses, boos and outbursts from opponents of the bill who were observing from seats in the balcony. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Lead Paint Bill OKd Angry foes say measure is gift to landlords By FRANK LOMBARDI Daily News, July 1, 1999 A rumble of dissent in the normally lockstep City Council failed to stop passage yesterday of a new lead paint bill that opponents branded a "landlords' protection act." The measure sets new regulations and procedures for landlords to follow to protect young children from lead poisoning, which can cause learning disabilities and permanent brain damage. Backed by Mayor Giuliani and City Council Speaker Peter Vallone (D-Queens), the bill passed by a comfortable 36-to-15 vote after four hours of emotional debate that drew sporadic boos and catcalls from the bill's opponents in the balcony. One woman was evicted after shouting an expletive at Vallone as he urged Council members to "do the responsible thing" and approve the bill. "Yes, remove me from this stupid sham," the heckler shouted at Vallone. "You're a liar! You're a liar!" The bill also reduces landlords' exposure to civil liability suits. "Sure [a victim] can sue," said Councilman Stanley Michels (D-Manhattan), the leading opponent of the bill. "But can you win?" Michels said the measure will ease the sometimes costly burden of landlords to take preventive action and result in "more children being poisoned than ever before." When it's signed into law in a few weeks by the mayor, the measure will supplant the city's 1982 lead paint law, whose enforcement has been largely hobbled by years of litigation. Even opponents agreed the law had to be updated to protect potential victims better. There are 30,000 city children who now suffer from lead poisoning, and the list grows by about 1,000 cases a year, although the growth rate is decreasing. Most of the victims are minority children from impoverished neighborhoods with rundown housing. Two Queens Republicans, Al Stabile and Tom Ognibene, drew sharp rebukes when they said parents have an obligation to keep their homes clean and prevent their children from eating paint. "[That's] the other damned thing that p----d me off," Stabile said. "Why does it have to be a black and white issue?" Councilwoman Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan) said Stabile's comments were offensive and amounted to blaming the victims. The vote split members of the Black and Hispanic Caucus, with many opting to support Vallone's contention that the bill is a good start and can be amended later. Before the vote, Vallone announced an agreement with Giuliani to pump $3 million into enhanced prevention measures. The funds will pay for creating nine lead-safe houses to shelter families uprooted from lead-contaminated apartments, along with buying six new mobile outreach vans and hiring as many as 50 new health workers. Original Publication Date: 07/01/1999 ----------------------------------------------------------------- This little tidbit caught our attention. http://www.ny.com/current/news/news-9502.html February 18, 1995 City Council Speaker Vallone has expressed concern that the project to rebuild the Tri-Borough Bridge was not done right. He claims that the paint is chipping and contains high levels of lead. He warns that a similar fate is in store for the rest of the City's bridges. ----------------------------------------------------------------- The following article from the New York Law Journal describes how defendents in Lead-Poisoning litigation (many of whom could be landlords) can beat the rap. New York Law Journal REAL ESTATE UPDATE Litigation: Lead-Poisoning Litigation June 30, 1999 Fighting Expert Evidence in Cases Involving Infant Plaintiffs By Alan Kaminsky and Patrick Geraghty For defense attorneys handling infant lead-paint lawsuits, perhaps the most frustrating aspect is combating the expert testimony of clinical psychologists, vocational rehabilitationists and economists. Psychologists will often testify as to how the lead-poisoned child developed severe cognitive impairments and learning disabilities that prevent the child from learning in a conventional academic setting and severely limits his or her earning capacity. Often, a psychologist will administer an IQ test to the child and report the findings to a jury; claiming that the exposure to lead paint has lowered the child's intellectual quotient. With these problems before a jury, a vocational rehabilitationist will testify as to the child's future academic and vocational needs, which often include highly specialized schools -- usually more costly than many colleges -- and intensive vocational counseling, which often includes a job coach, who will help the child find and maintain a position in the work force. Lastly, an economist will often take the stand and place a future value on the already expensive price tag laid out by the vocational rehabilitationist. Projections of a loss of earnings in the multimillion-dollar range are not uncommon. Flaws in Testimony The problem in handling the testimony of these experts is that at first glance, they appear to be working in a vacuum. A psychologist who finds a "lead-poisoned" child who displays speech impairments or learning disabilities, will classify these problems as direct consequences of the child's elevated blood-lead levels -- regardless of the lead levels' severity, mildness or duration. Unfortunately, it often appears as though the psychologist gives no consideration to the plethora of factors, other than an elevated blood-lead level, which may also account for the child's problems. These problems include, but are not limited to, the following: an absence of pre-school or day-care participation; not learning to speak English until school years; family history of learning disabilities; psychological trauma; and problems in the child's home life. Moreover, the psychologist will often postulate as to the child's loss of IQ and acquisition of learning disabilities without a shred of information regarding the child's pre-lead poisoning IQ level or cognitive functioning, or without comparing the child's IQ with that of the child's mother or siblings. Despite this lack of information, their testimony is routinely permitted at trial, subject only to cross-examination. Vocational Experts The same holds true for the testimony of vocational rehabilitationists. These experts claim to predict the next forty years of the child's life; including the types of schools and summer camps they will attend and where they will work. This is particularly interesting because these experts often never meet the children whose futures they have predicted. First of all, these children are usually less than ten years old at the time these projections are made, and have not had the experiences necessary to develop a notion of what they would like to be "when they grow up." This most basic childhood dream is taken from them in the name of a lawsuit. Ironically, these children are often classified as mentally retarded by their attorneys and experts for the purposes of bolstering a lawsuit. Moreover, the vocational rehabilitationist will often not know the child's developing personality. Perhaps the child is highly motivated and will have more ambition and drive than they have been given credit for, and would be insulted if forced to work at the menial jobs that the "experts" have predicted is their lot in life. Just as the psychologist often turns a blind eye to the child's pre-lead poisoning state or to other factors which may have caused the problems, the vocational rehabilitationist fails to examine how the child's personality, intestinal fortitude and role models will influence the course that his or her future will take. Unsound Testimony The making of such broad pictures and strong conclusions without considering the variables is inconsistent with modern scientific principles, which the experts supposedly follow. For example, there is a litany of articles written regarding the impact of maternal IQ on a child's IQ.[1] Despite this body of scientific literature, plaintiffs' psychologists usually fail to mention that a child's IQ may be due to genetics, rather than to lead exposure. New York defense attorneys have had few weapons, other than cross-examination, to combat such evidence. Currently, in New York the admissibility of expert testimony based on scientific principles or procedures is governed by the "general acceptance" test set forth in Frye v. United States, 293 FSupp 1013 D.C.Cir. 1923. Under this standard, courts must examine whether the scientific principles or procedures on which the challenged testimony is based have gained general acceptance in the relevant discipline. (See, People v. Wesley, 83 NY2d 417, citing Frye v. United States, supra; People v. Angelo, 88 NY2d 217, 222-223; and People v. Roraback, 242 AD2d 400). The rule is applicable in both criminal and civil actions (See Castrichini v. Rivera, 175 Misc2d 530 [Sup. Ct. Monroe Co. 1997]). In essence, evidentiary reliability is conditioned upon the approval of scientists in the field (Martin, Capra and Rossi, New York Evidence Handbook, §7.2.3)(Citations omitted). Federal Standards In federal courts however, the standard for the admissibility of such testimony differs. There, the admissibility of expert testimony is governed by the Federal Rule of Evidence number 702 which provides that where scientific knowledge will assist the trier of fact, a witness with germane credentials may offer an opinion on the issue. In 1993, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Inc., 509 US 579, delineated Rule 702, holding that the terms "scientific" and "knowledge" connote something more than subjective belief or unsupported speculation, but that something less than general acceptance in the scientific community may suffice. Noting that few scientific propositions are indisputable, the Supreme Court directed courts to focus upon the expert's methods and reasoning rather than the conclusion to be propounded. In accordance with this, the Supreme Court set out a list of factors which may be considered in determining the admissibility of such evidence, including whether the scientific methodology has been tested, whether the scientific methodology has been subject to peer review and publication, the known rate of potential error and the "general acceptance" of the method (Daubert, 509 US at 593-595). While general acceptance remains an important consideration, it is no longer the sine qua non. In short, the federal rules permit the submission of opinion evidence by a credentialed witness, if the opinion is based upon a scientific methodology, which is deemed reliable by the trial judge. In a more recent decision, Kumho Tire Co. Ltd. v. Carmichael, 119 S.Ct 1167 [1999], the Supreme Court extended the principles of Daubert beyond the sphere of simply scientific evidence to include testimony based on technical and other specialized knowledge. In this decision, the Court also clarified the factors noted in Daubert and how they should be considered in analyzing the testimony to be offered by a would-be expert. In this regard, the Court stated that "the test of reliability is 'flexible', and Daubert's list of specific factors neither necessarily nor exclusively applies to all experts or in every case" (Kumho Tire, supra, at 1170). In expanding its Daubert holding, the Court explained that the sole objective of the new and augmented analysis is to ensure that an expert, whether basing testimony upon professional studies or experience, employs in the courtroom the same level of intellectual rigor that characterizes the practice of an expert in the relevant field. The result of the extension of the Daubert standard in Kumho was that the plaintiff's expert, whose methodology was found to be unreliable due to insufficient indications of the methodology's reliability, was precluded from testifying as to his opinion on the cause of the accident at issue, resulting in a granting of summary judgment against the plaintiffs/respondents. Reliability Standard Currently, there are approximately fifteen states that have followed the federal courts in applying the Daubert analysis with regard to expert testimony.[2] If New York were to do so, the speculative testimony of psychologists and vocational rehabilitationists might be precluded, and the potential that juries would be unduly swayed by such speculation could be averted. Instead, lead-poisoning trials could focus on the more credible testimony of witnesses such as parents, teachers, and even the child himself, who are more qualified to discuss the child's day-to-day behavior and learning skills. This is not to say that all such experts should be precluded. Instead, the topics which are based on speculation should be evaluated on the basis of content and reliability, rather than on who introduced it. To this end, trial courts must exercise caution and ensure that an expert's testimony rests on a reliable foundation and is relevant to the task at hand, in order to guarantee that the testimony that does not meet these standards, does not reach a jury. The newly expanded Daubert/Carmichael analysis provides an objective approach for courts to assess the reliability of the methodology underlying expert testimony prior to its admission to the jury. While New York courts are not bound by the principles from these cases, they are free -- absent either legislative enactment or a binding ruling from one of the Appellate Divisions or the Court of Appeals -- to apply the Daubert/Carmichael analysis to the testimony of psychologists and vocational rehabilitationists in lead-poisoning actions. The reliability standard is more amenable to the sense of fairness and rationality inherent in the judicial system, and thus, should be the touchstone of an admissibility decision with respect to all types of expert testimony. Notes (1) See generally, Bracken, Bruce A. et al. Prediction of Caucasian and African-American Preschool Children's Fluid and Crystallized Intelligence: Contributions of Maternal Characteristics and Home Environment, Journal of Clinical Psychology, 1993, Dec. Vol. 22(4). 455-463; Bradley, Robert H. et al., Maternal IQ the Home Environment and Child IQ In Low Birth Weight, Premature Children, International Journal of Behavioral Development, 1993, March, Vol 16(1), 61-74; Longstreth, Langdon, E. et. al., Separation of Home Intellectual Environment and Maternal IQ as Determinants of Child IQ, Developmental Psychology, 1981, Sept., Vol 17(5), 532-541; Luster, Tom & Dubow, Eric, Home Environment and Maternal Intelligence as Predictors of Verbal Intelligence: A Comparison of Preschool and School-age Children, Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 1992, April, Vol. 38(2), 151-175; Sameroff, Arnold J. et.al., Stability of Intelligence from Preschool to Adolescence: The Influence of Social and Family Risk Factors, Child Development, 1993, Vol. 64, 80-97; and Schroeder, Stephen, R. et. al., Separating the Effects of Lead and Social Factors on IQ, Environmental Research, 1985, 1985, Vol. 38, 144-154. (2) See Williams v. Hedican, 561 N.W.2d 817 [Iowa 1997]; State v. Porter, 694 A.2d 1262 [Conn. 1997]; Nelson v. American Sterilizer Co., 554 N.W.2d 898 [Mich. App. 1997]; Commonwealth v. Fowler, 425 Mass. 819, 1997 Mass. LEXIS 365 [Mass. 1997]; State v. Rolfe, 686 A.2d 949 [Vt. 1996]; State v. Parkinson, 909 P.2d 647 [Idaho Ct. of App. 1996]; Craddock v. Bennett L. Watson & Barboursville Transfer, Inc., 475 S.E.2d 62 [W. Va. 1996]; State v. Cline 909 P.2d 1171 [Montana 1996]; Smith v. State, 677 S.2d 1240 [Ala. Crim. App. 1995]; Mitchell v. Commonwealth, 908 S.W.2d 100 [Kentucky 1995]; E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co. v. Robinson, 923 S.W.2d 549 [Tex. 1995]; State v. Hofer, 512 N.W.2d 482 [S. Dakota 1994]; State v. Anderson, 881 P.2d 29 [New Mex. 1994]; Nelson v. State, 628 A.2d 69 [Del. 1993]; State v. Foret, 628 So. 2d 1116 [La. 1993]; see also McGrew v. State, 682 N.E.2d 1289 [Indiana 199])[integrating Daubert test with Frye test]). ********* Alan Kaminsky, a partner at Wilson, Elser, Moskowitz, Edelman & Dicker, represents landowners in lead-poisoning and premises-security cases. Patrick Geraghty is an associate at the firm. ----------------------------------------------------------------- NYtenants Tenant's Online is a subscription-based. To unsubscribe, go to TenantNet's web page at http://tenant.net and insert your email address on the form. Make sure your email is exactly the same as when you subscribed, including capitalization. Check "unsubscribe" and click "submit". ----------------------------------------------------------------------- The Tenant Network(tm) for Residential Tenants TenantNet(tm): http://tenant.net email: NYtenants(tm) Discussion List: email to and in the body of the message put "subscribe nytenants". Information from TenantNet is from experienced non-attorney tenant activists and is not considered legal advice. From owner-nytenants-announce Sun Jul 11 21:38:05 1999 Received: (from root@localhost) by cnct.com (8.8.8/8.8.6) id VAA15500 for nytenants-announce-outgoing; Sun, 11 Jul 1999 21:38:05 -0400 (EDT) Received: from tenant.cnct.com (ts3-10.ny.cnct.com [207.111.66.142]) by cnct.com (8.8.8/8.8.6) with SMTP id VAA15479 for <>; Sun, 11 Jul 1999 21:37:21 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <4.1.19990711204300.0094c330@cnct.com> Message-Id: <4.1.19990711204300.0094c330@cnct.com> Message-Id: <4.1.19990711204300.0094c330@cnct.com> X-Sender: X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.1 Date: Sun, 11 Jul 1999 21:07:27 -0400 To: From: tenant <> Subject: Tenants Online 7/11/99 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by cnct.com id VAA15493 Sender: Precedence: bulk Tenants Online 7/11/99 ----------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, see the bottom of this newsletter ----------------------------------------------------------------- In this issue... (from Met Council's Tenant/Inquilino, July 1999) 1. Council Guts City’s Lead-Paint Law (available in Spanish on TenantNet's web site) 2. How City Council Voted on the Vallone Lead Bill 3. Editorial: Turning Lead Into Gold 4. SRO Developer Linked to Charas Sale? 5. City Demolishes Harlem Garden; 500 Green Spots Still in Danger 6. Loft Law Expires ----------------------------------------------------------------- LET THEM EAT LEAD DUST Council Guts City’s Lead-Paint Law By Steven Wishnia "WHO PUT YOU UP TO THIS?" City Council Speaker Peter Vallone fumed at a knot of about 35 demonstrators outside his Astoria district office June 8, protesting his plans to replace the city's 1982 lead-paint law with one favoring landlords. "There's no bill," the speaker insisted. Vallone, of course, was lying. His staff had already drawn up a measure doing just that. And along with Mayor Giuliani and Housing Committee chair Archie Spigner, he rammed it through the Council, which passed it by a 36-15 vote on June 30. Councilmember Stanley Michels, whose own lead-poisoning-prevention bill was blocked by Vallone, called the bill, Intro 582, a "sham." "The sad truth is that it is nothing more than a landlords' protection bill," he told the Council. “It’s the worst public-health bill the Council has passed in recent memory,” says Chris Meyer of the New York Public Interest Research Group. “Children are the victims of this law,” adds Megan Charlop, who runs a “safe house” for lead-poisoned children in the Bronx. “It was not based on children’s health, it was not based on children’s safety.” About 30,000 children in the city have at least moderate lead poisoning, with over 1,000 a year newly diagnosed as severely poisoned. About 80% of lead-poisoned children are black or Latino. Intro 582 repeals 1982’s Local Law 1, which presumed that all apartments built before 1960 had lead paint and required landlords to remove it in apartments where there was a child under 7. The city government never fully enforced Local Law 1, despite years of litigation. Landlords complained that it would cost too much, and most of its supporters eventually conceded that the “lead-free” standard was unworkable. However, Vallone blocked a Michels bill that would have switched the city to a “lead-safe” standard. The Giuliani administration -- which had pushed for an even more pro-landlord measure -- co-opted the “lead-safe” term, and hailed Intro 582 as a landmark “reform” law. The Vallone-Spigner bill does not define lead-paint dust in an apartment -- the prime source of lead poisoning --- as a health hazard, only peeling or flaking lead paint. It requires landlords to make a visual inspection for peeling or flaking paint on walls or ceilings once a year, if the tenant informs them that they have a child under 6. If tenants complain of lead paint, it gives the landlord more than three months to remove it, and allows them to “self-certify” that the work was done properly. If the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development reinspects and finds that the landlord did not remove the paint, HPD’s Emergency Repair Program is supposed to do the job within 60 days, and the landlord can be fined up to $25,000 for false self-certification if caught. Under the old law, HPD did some emergency repairs, but was only required to do them if the Department of Health reported a lead-poisoned child in the home, according to Michels aide Steve Simons. The new law eliminates that requirement for one and two-family homes. Landlords are also allowed to use cheaper and less safe procedures if they do the work within 21 days after receiving a violation; the Giuliani administration calls this an “incentive-based” approach. To determine whether lead has been removed from windows doors, and wood trim, landlords are required to do one “dust wipe clearance test” on a spot adjacent to the work area. Landlords are not required to test the walls and ceilings, hire an independent company to do the test, or report the test results to the city or the tenant. There are no threshold levels for passing or failing. “It’s totally meaningless. There’s no numbers in here,” says Matthew Chachere, lawyer for the New York City Coalition to End Lead Poisoning in the lawsuit to get the city to enforce Local Law 1. Current Department of Health regulations require four tests, require the results to be given to both the tenant and HPD, and set specific maximums for allowable lead on doors, window sills and elsewhere, he adds. The new law also strictly limits the ability of lead-poisoned children and their parents to sue for damages. Under the old law, it was the landlord’s responsibility to remove any lead paint from an apartment. Under the new law, in order to prove that the landlord was negligent, tenants have to prove that they have notified the landlord of a lead hazard. The law also bars tenants from collecting monetary damages from the city for failing to perform inspections or do emergency-repair work; they can only sue to force HPD to do the work. In the Council on June 30, there was virtually no back-and-forth debate on the bill, with most of the discussion consisting of opponents slamming it. The few supporters who spoke up -- Queens Republicans Thomas Ognibene and Al Stabile -- argued primarily that the main people against the bill were rich suburban trial lawyers upset because they’d be losing large fees from suing the city, that anyone who pointed out that the children suffering lead poisoning are overwhelmingly black and Latino was unfairly raising a racial issue, and that parents should take more responsibility for protecting their children, by mopping floors and watching them more closely. “Responsibility starts in the home,” Stabile sputtered. “You see your kid eating paint off the windowsill, you’re gonna say it’s OK?” Manhattan Democrat Christine Quinn responded that she found that argument offensive, like telling a rape victim she should have worn a longer skirt, and unscientific. Lead-paint dust particles are invisible, and too small to be removed effectively by common household methods. Marie Dixon of the Bronx, whose 2-year-old daughter tested positive for moderate lead poisoning last year, calls the bill “insane.” “They’re playing too much ping-pong with the kids,” she told Tenant/Inquilino. “We’re talking about innocent children’s lives and a preventable disease.” When Dixon and two other mothers tried to tell their stories at a Housing Committee hearing June 24, Spigner cut them short. “I don’t want to sound callous,” he said, “but we’ve heard these testimonies before.” Spigner told Dixon that landlords would be required to tell tenants if there was lead paint in their apartment. “Who is going to know if he does not do it?” she asked. Spigner refused to answer. “No comment?” Dixon inquired scornfully as she left the stand. The next two witnesses at the hearing were landlord lobbyists, Marilyn Davenport of the Real Estate Board of New York and Frank Ricci of the Rent Stabilization Association. They both claimed that it was wrong to penalize landlords if lead dust was found in apartments they owned, because it could have been tracked in from outside. The Council received letters protesting the bill from a score of doctors in the field, including Drs. Bailus Walker of Howard University Medical Center; Sergio Piomelli, director of the lead-poisoning program at Babies and Children’s Hospital, and Rhode Island Director of Health Patricia Nolan. “Were I to hospitalize and medically treat a poisoned child, then send this child home under the provisions of this bill, it would be medical malpractice,” wrote Dr. John Rosen of Montefiore Medical Center. Four amendments proposed by Michels -- to expand the bill’s definition of lead paint, to restore the presumption that pre-1960 buildings have lead paint, and to require more intensive testing after repairs and notification of parents -- were all defeated, opposed by the Council leadership. At the last minute, Vallone and the Giuliani administration said they would add $3 million to the city health budget to fund 10 new safe houses in the Brooklyn-Queens “lead belt,” hire 30 to 50 outreach workers, and send out six mobile testing vans. “They’re going to need them,” says Megan Charlop. Lead-poisoning activists say they may take legal action to challenge the bill, and will certainly take political action. In the end, “who put you up to this?” might be a better question to ask of Peter Vallone. In December 1998, he received $56,000 from two landlord political-action committees, the Rent Stabilization Association PAC and the Neighborhood Preservation PAC, to pay off debts from his failed gubernatorial campaign. He is raising money to run for mayor in 2001, when his Council term expires, and his campaign headquarters worked out of space in the RSA office suite earlier this year. ----------------------------------------------------------------- How The City Council Voted On The Lead Bill YES—36 Democrats—-29 Herbert Berman Adolfo Carrion* Lucy Cruz Noach Dear Martin Malave-Dilan* June Eisland* Kenneth Fisher* Pedro Espada* Julia Harrison Lloyd Henry* Karen Koslowitz* Howard Lasher Helen Marshall* Walter McCaffrey* Michael Nelson Gifford Miller Jerome O'Donovan Morton Povman* Madeleine Provenzano Annette Robinson* Victor Robles* Angel Rodriguez John Sabini* Archie Spigner* Peter Vallone* Lawrence Warden Juanita Watkins* Thomas White* Priscilla Wooten* Republicans—7 Michael Abel Andrew Eristoff Stephen Fiala Martin Golden James Oddo Thomas Ognibene* Al Stabile* NO—15 Democrats—15 Tracy Boyland* Una Clarke* Stephen DiBrienza Ronnie Eldridge Wendell Foster* Kathryn Freed Sheldon Leffler* Guillermo Linares* Margarita Lopez Stanley Michels* Bill Perkins Mary Pinkett* Christine Quinn Phillip Reed Jose Rivera* *These Councilmembers represent districts whith high numbers of new lead-poisoning cases. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Editorial Turning Lead Into Gold Centuries ago, alchemists searched in vain for the “philosopher’s stone” which could turn lead into gold. City Council Speaker Peter Vallone and his allies in the real-estate industry found a way to do just that: Vallone’s two-fisted approach consisted of accepting large contributions from landlords with one hand while gutting the laws protecting New York City kids from lead-paint poisoning with the other. Flying in the face of testimony from doctors, parents of lead-poisoned children and housing experts who have studied the issue for 20 years, Vallone forced a bill through the City Council giving landlords and the city months to remove hazardous exposed lead from apartments where young children live, and shielding property owners from civil liability when children are poisoned—which they are certain to be. Debate on the floor of the Council prior to the vote revealed that most of the members, including Housing Committee Chair Archie Spigner, the main sponsor of the bill, know little about the causes and prevention of childhood lead poisoning. Missing from the discussion was one central fact: Bad landlords cause childhood lead poisoning. They cause lead poisoning not because the walls, windows and doors of their apartments are covered with lead paint, but because they fail to maintain their buildings. Lead paint is in almost every building that was built before 1960 for wealthy or middle-class tenants. It was considered premier paint, and it was expensive. Lead poisoning occurs in the lead belt—those areas of the city that have buildings that were built originally for middle-class tenants and now house poor tenants. These buildings are now owned by slumlords who don’t paint every three years, who don’t repair leaky roofs, who allow leaking pipes to continue to drip month after month, causing deterioration of walls and ceilings. Those are landlords who own buildings in neighborhoods where they don’t live, where they simply collect rent. In the words of Brooklyn Councilmember Una Clarke, the landlords “who are all in Florida playing golf.” Lead poisoning in children occurs when painted walls, ceilings, doors and windows are allowed to get in such bad condition that dust is created and spread onto surfaces that children touch, such as tables, floors, and toys, and then put their fingers into their mouths. Landlords cause this poisoning when they allow these conditions to continue for years, so that no matter how many times the apartment is cleaned, the invisible heavy toxic dust continues to fall. Even under the old 1982 law, 30,000 children—virtually all of them poor, 90% of them nonwhite—suffer from lead poisoning, with over 1,000 serious new cases each year. Babies or toddlers who breathe or eat dust from degrading lead paint in their apartments can suffer permanent brain damage. This tragic disease is preventable by removing lead hazards following federal safety guidelines to make sure that toxic lead dust is not spread during the removal process. Private Use of Public Places Although two-thirds of the Council’s 51 members supported a fair compromise called Intro 205, which has been on the table for more than a year, Vallone refused to even allow a hearing on it, but forced his own bill, drafted in close consultation with landlords, through the Housing Committee and onto the floor of the Council in a matter of days. Supporters of Intro 205 maintained that the current law, Local 1 of 1982, went too far by requiring that apartments be made “lead-free” rather than “lead-safe,” and not far enough in other areas: Intro 205 would have extended coverage to schools and day-care centers. In order to ensure that the fix was in, Vallone removed Washington Heights Councilmember Guillermo Linares, an outspoken defender of the health of children and the rights of tenants, from the Housing Committee, where he had served for years, and replaced him with Michael Nelson, who comes from the same Brooklyn machine Democratic club as Vallone’s chief of staff, Bruce Bender. Linares was given a subcommittee on “the private use of public spaces,” which, sadly, seems to have become a metaphor for the City Council itself under Vallone’s leadership. Easy as 123 Vallone signaled his coziness with the real-estate industry by opening his campaign headquarters in the same office suite as the landlords’ Rent Stabilization Association at 123 William St. The RSA has spent millions of dollars in lobbying, political contributions and a misinformation campaign to distort the nature of the city’s housing crisis and the effect of rent and eviction protections. Vallone’s interlocking with real estate is personified in his former chief of staff Joseph Strasburg, now the RSA president. Last year, Vallone sought support from tenants in his race for governor against George Pataki. After receiving a written statement of his commitment on a number of issues—specifically including not weakening the laws protecting children from lead poisoning—Met Council endorsed him on the Working Families Party ballot line. Vallone then proceeded to ignore tenant issues completely in his campaign, and went down to a resounding defeat. Now, with his tenure as Council speaker facing an end in 2001 unless he and Rudolph Giuliani can orchestrate the elimination of the city’s term-limits law, Vallone can only prolong his career by seeking another office, and he is raising money to run for mayor. Cut the Baby in Half? Vallone’s rush to gut lead-poisoning protections was supported by Giuliani, who gave credence to the lie that the city had to change the law by June 30 because of a court order. But the lawyers representing the families of lead-poisoned children indicated that they were willing to extend the court deadline until October, rather than rush Vallone’s ill-considered bill through without adequate consideration of its tragic consequences for tens of thousands of children in the years to come. Giuliani also supported Vallone’s bill as a cut-the-baby-in-half compromise between tenants and health advocates, who want to protect children completely, and the real-estate industry, which did not want to protect them at all. Giuliani’s Rent Guidelines Board also used the “nobody is happy so we must have done the right thing” argument to justify their outrageous rent increases for one million rent-stabilized apartments, totally unwarranted in the face of unprecedented landlord profits and no increase in landlords’ costs. Perhaps Giuliani and Vallone should go back to the Good Book, and see that King Solomon did not really intend to cut the baby in half, but used that outrageous idea to determine who truly loved the child. What is the lesson in the Great Lead Sellout of 1999? We must find a way to focus our understandable anger and cynicism into organizing energy and ideas, to bring a new politics to this city, where money will not rule. Extension of campaign-finance reform, increased voter registration and turnout, and identifying a new generation of political candidates who are not beholden to special interests are some of the ways to end politics as usual. If we can only use it to expose and discredit the corrupt way government is run in New York City, the Great Lead Sellout of 1999 could mark the beginning of a new golden age of democracy. ----------------------------------------------------------------- SRO Developer Linked to Charas Sale? ROTTEN BANANAS: To the tune of “Banana Boat Song” and “Yes, We Have No Bananas,” about 50 people protested outside the Belleclaire Hotel on West 77th Street June 29. Belleclaire owner Keith Schwebel is converting the Upper West Side SRO into a hostel for international tourists, part of the Banana Bungalow, Inc. chain. “They are destroying low-income housing so they can squeeze 10 tourists in a room,” protest organizers said. Schwebel and Banana Bungalow are also believed to have similar plans for Charas, the Lower East Side community center the Giuliani administration sold to developer Gregg Singer last summer. ----------------------------------------------------------------- City Demolishes Harlem Garden; 500 Green Spots Still in Danger More than 500 community gardens throughout the city remain in danger of being demolished by the city. despite the May deal that saved over 100 green spots by selling them to a land trust. On June 28, bulldozers demolished part of the Project Harmony garden on West 122nd Street. The bulldozing was timed to precede a court action by the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund and was stopped by a judicial restraining order with about half the garden destroyed, according to the urban-gardening newsletter Urban Outdoors. Haja and Cynthia Worley, the couple who ran the garden, had hoped to work out a deal with the city to exchange the Harlem site, across from a day-care center, for a truly vacant lot elsewhere in the neighborhood, according to Urban Outdoors . “We have plenty of land to build on,” Cynthia Worley told the newsletter. Meanwhile, the City Council land-use committee voted to hand over two Lower East Side gardens to developer Donald Capoccia for luxury housing: the “Jardin de La Esperanza” (Garden of Hope) on East 7th Street between avenues B and C, and the “El Bello Amanecer Borinqueno (The Beautiful Puerto Rican Dawn)” garden on Avenue C around the corner. Capoccia has been trying to accumulate land in the area for luxury apartments since last fall. Community Board 3 approved his project on the condition that the Esperanza garden be preserved. But the Council land-use committee approved a new proposal to build luxury housing on the site, reversing previous commitments without community input. “We were betrayed!” Jose Torres of East 7th Street told the More Gardens! coalition. “How can they do this, after all those commitments to preserve the garden? They didn’t even allow us to speak!” “With about 500 community gardens still threatened, it is now up to activists to convince NYC governmental leaders that alternatives exist to taking gardens in order to provide housing,” Urban Outdoors wrote. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Loft Law Expires by Jenny Laurie As of July 7, when Tenant/Inquilino went to press, New York City’s 10,000 loft tenants were hanging in limbo-land, following the expiration of the state’s loft law on June 30. While state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Assemblymember Deborah Glick, who represent many of the tenants, worked hard to fashion a renewal agreement, Republican Governor George Pataki and State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno refused to renew the law without major concessions on other issues, such as Pataki’s Medicaid cuts. Much of the problem stems from Pataki and Bruno’s deep desire to punish and humiliate Silver. So, with no agreement by June 30, the law expired. In place since 1982, the law covers tenants in residential loft spaces in commercial buildings. Under the law, owners of these buildings are barred from collecting rent increases or evicting their tenants until the building is brought up to city Buildings Department standards for such things as fire safety. Once it is ready for a certificate of occupancy, the owner can collect rent increases, phasing in a repayment of the costs of bringing the buildings up to code. The law covered (and we expect will cover again) residential tenants living in lofts since 1981. Most of the 4,000 units are in lower Manhattan, with a few in Brooklyn and Queens. Owners of these properties can now get very high prices for the units, and so are resisting renewing the law. Originally, the loft dwellers, artists who needed large spaces and were willing to pay for installation of their own bathrooms, wiring and other necessities, were homesteading areas like SoHo. Today, the same spaces are worth millions of dollars, and the artists who made the area trendy are no longer welcome. According to Chuck DeLaney, a leader of the Lower Manhattan Loft Tenants, tenants will soon be getting 30-day notices and facing the process of eviction if the law is not renewed soon. ----------------------------------------------------------------- NYtenants Tenant's Online is subscription-based. To unsubscribe, go to TenantNet's web page at http://tenant.net and insert your email address on the NYtenants Mailing List form. Make sure your email is exactly the same as when you subscribed, including capitalization. Check "unsubscribe" and click "submit". ----------------------------------------------------------------------- The Tenant Network(tm) for Residential Tenants TenantNet(tm): http://tenant.net email: NYtenants(tm) Discussion List: email to and in the body of the message put "subscribe nytenants". Information from TenantNet is from experienced non-attorney tenant activists and is not considered legal advice. From owner-nytenants-announce Mon Jul 12 08:01:13 1999 Received: (from root@localhost) by cnct.com (8.8.8/8.8.6) id IAA14551 for nytenants-announce-outgoing; Mon, 12 Jul 1999 08:01:13 -0400 (EDT) Received: from tenant.cnct.com (ts3-10.ny.cnct.com [207.111.66.142]) by cnct.com (8.8.8/8.8.6) with SMTP id IAA14526 for <>; Mon, 12 Jul 1999 08:00:30 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <4.1.19990711212504.009b2710@cnct.com> Message-Id: <4.1.19990711212504.009b2710@cnct.com> Message-Id: <4.1.19990711212504.009b2710@cnct.com> Message-Id: <4.1.19990711212504.009b2710@cnct.com> Message-Id: <4.1.19990711212504.009b2710@cnct.com> Message-Id: <4.1.19990711212504.009b2710@cnct.com> X-Sender: X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.1 Date: Mon, 12 Jul 1999 07:43:43 -0400 To: From: tenant <> Subject: Tenants Online 7/12/99 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by cnct.com id IAA14545 Sender: Precedence: bulk Tenants Online 7/12/99 ----------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, see the bottom of this newsletter ----------------------------------------------------------------- ADMINISTRAVIA The 1999-2000 Rent Guideline Board Orders are now available on the TenantNet web site, http://tenant.net. We include the Apartment Order below. Your friendly webmaster will be on Housing Notebook on Monday, July 12th at 7 p.m., WBAI 99.5 FM speaking on the recent court decision annulling Air Rights in the Clinton/Hell's Kitchen neighborhood. We'll have info on this in this list at a later date. Scott Sommer hosts Housing Notebook every Monday night. NYtenants (AKA Tenants Online) is not our only email list. For those on Manhattan's West Side, we have the Hell's Kitchen Newsletter (go to http://hellskitchen.net to subscribe), and we recently introduced the NYneighborhoods list for those civic-minded individuals interested in the more arcane issues of NYC Charter, zoning, etc. To subscribe to NYneighborhoods, send an email to neighborhoods@ hellskitchen.net. For those more interested in back and forth dialogue, check out the TenantNet Forum at http://tenant.net/phpBB2. This is where questions may be asked and answered. You can recieve postings to the TenantNet Forum via email -- just fill out the form at the bottom of the main Forum page. (if we can find a Majordomo expert -- the software that runs this list -- we might include 2-way dialoge in this list as well) >From Matthew Chachere on the Mayor's hearing on the Vallone Lead Bill "The Corporation Counsel faxed a copy of the notice from today's City Record for the Public Hearing/Bill Signing of the Vallone Lead Bill, for Thursday, July 15, at 2:30 pm at City Hall (I assume the old Board of Estimate chambers). The Notice is Captioned "Late Notice" .... We're uncertain if it required 5 days notice... it may be that it does... wonder if they can do this on less than 5 (there is a note at the end of the notice for persons needing sign language interpretation that they must request it 5 business days prior to the hearing; which would seem to be an impossibility since the notice came out only 4 days in advance). Of course, it is more notice than the Housing Committee gave! In this issue... 1. RGB OKs Rent Increases, Raises Poor Tax (Tenant/Inqquilino) 2. Quinn Critical Of Board's New Rent Increases (Backstage) 3. RGB Apartment Order #31 (starts Oct. 1, 1999) 4. Town Hall Meeting: "CUNY Under Attack: ----------------------------------------------------------------- RGB OKs Rent Increases, Raises Poor Tax Met Council Tenant/Inquilino by Jenny Laurie In an unusually fast vote June 24, the city Rent Guidelines Board voted to increase the rents of apartment tenants and SRO hotel tenants by amounts that far outstrip what landlords’ costs showed guidelines should be. The board voted 5-4 to set apartment guidelines of 2% for a one-year lease and 4% for a two-year lease, a “poor tax” surcharge of $15 on apartments renting for $500 or less and — for the first time ever — a minimum rent of $215 a month. Chairman Edward Hochman cast the deciding vote, joined by public members Edward Weinstein and Justin Macedonia and the two landlord representatives, Harold Lubell and Vincent Castellano. Weinstein and Macedonia, both Giuliani appointees, voted consis- tently through the evening with the landlord representatives. Siding with the tenant representatives against the guidelines were Agustin Rivera, a Koch appointee, and Bartholomew Carmody, a Giuliani appointment. The two tenant representatives, both Giuliani appointees—Jeffrey Coleman, a lawyer with the firm of Hughes, Hubbard and Reed, and David Pagan, the director of Los Sures, a Brooklyn housing organization—argued strenuously for no increase for one-year leases and against the poor tax. “Mortgage rates are the lowest they have been in 17 years, the price index is zero, including an 18% drop in fuel costs last year, and landlords’ profits are higher than ever,” Coleman argued. He explained that in addition to the surveys showing landlords should get no increase for one year, there was ample evidence that rents have become more and more unaffordable. “In 1970, the average tenant paid 20% of his or her income for rent; today the average tenant is paying 32%.” The RGB rejected that proposal, 6-3, with Hochman voting yes after it was clear it would be defeated. The group of tenants who will suffer most from the guidelines this year are those living in single-room-occupancy hotels. The RGB passed guidelines of 4% a year for all categories of SRO/hotel housing. This increase appeared to be motivated by Ed Weinstein, who at previous meetings had spoken with sympathy about SRO owners who get hundreds of dollars a night from tourists and only that much per month from rent-regulated tenants. SRO tenants had received 0% guidelines from the RGB every year for the past five years, because of concern that even small increases would cause additional homelessness in the very fragile population of people who live on low, fixed government-benefit incomes. These tenants did get a break when Coleman and Rivera proposed a stipulation that SRO owners could only collect these guidelines from tenants if they had at least 70% of their rooms rented to rent-regulated tenants paying legally registered rents. This rule passed despite Weinstein’s no vote; he explained that he didn’t like the restriction because it “created a regulatory atmosphere which I, in principle, am opposed to.” Intense rhetoric about landlords going broke as a result of renting apartments below $400 and $500 a month surrounded the proposals for increasing the poor tax. The RGB voted to allow landlords to collect an extra $15 surcharge on apartments renting for $500 or less. Setting a very dangerous precedent, it also passed for the first time a minimum rent. Starting on October 1, any rent-stabilized tenant with a rent below $215 will have their rent go up to that amount with the lease renewal. This again was engineered by Hochman with support from Weinstein and Justin Macedonia. In addition, the Board voted for increases on lofts of 1% for one year and 2% for two years. It voted—after some debate—a zero sublet allowance, and left the vacancy allowance at the state-legislated level of approximately 20%. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Quinn Critical Of Board's New Rent Increases By Roger Armbrust Backstage, July 1, 1999 Christine Quinn represents Manhattan's District 3 on the New York City Council. Running on the West Side roughly from 60th Street to Canal Street, District 3 is the area where most of the city's performing artists work, and many live. With that in mind, Quinn is critical of both recent increases in rent-stabilized leases, and developers' efforts to turn commercial properties in her district into new, expensive housing. Last week, the city Rent Guidelines Board approved increases for rent-stabilized apartments by 2% for one-year leases and 4% for two-year pacts. The rise affects nearly 1 million city apartments operating under rent stabilization, which prevents landlords from raising rents at will. Quinn appeared at that board meeting, recommending that rents not be raised. The board's 5-4 vote for the increase was a response to its staff's recommendation based on the Price Index of Operating Costs, i.e. the city's survey of landlords' expenses in buying and maintaining apartments. "That survey to see how landlords' costs have increased showed that their costs rose less than 1%," Quinn told Back Stage on Monday. "But tenants get rent increases of 2% to 4%. This is a process that is biased to landlords." Landlords, on the other hand, criticize the city's price index survey, arguing that it doesn't properly reflect long-term expenses. One landlord told the board last week that apartment buildings age, causing more repairs which increase maintenance cost; and that the city keeps imposing new regulations-such as for fire sprinklers and lead-paint removal-which add to expenses. Quinn said that the city council has introduced new lead-paint legislation-requiring removal of the poisonous paint from buildings-in response to a court ruling requiring action by the city. But she also cautioned that she believes "the council is moving too quickly" on the proposed law. "We haven't studied it to determine its impact, and haven't heard from enough diverse groups of advocates." While the bill will increase landlords' expenses, Quinn stressed that it is "a bill driven by the landlord industry and is being pushed for quick passage by landlords." She added that the bill would "require more rent" from tenants for the landlords to perform the lead-paint removal. "The original timeline the city gave for passing the bill was June," Quinn noted. "But the plaintiffs [in the decisive court case] have asked to delay the matter until Oct. 15." She said she and many other city council members agree with that extension, and believes the court will provide it. "This isn't a deadline issue," she said. "The extension will give us time to study the bill and make sure it doesn't overburden landlords, but also provides proper protection for children." The most serious lead-paint issue involves children peeling and ingesting it. In her testimony before the Rent Guidelines Board, Quinn also noted her wariness of real-estate interests which propound a lack of housing in the city. "Landlords are trying to cry that there's no residential development," she told Back Stage. But she added that she is constantly seeing requests before the city Planning Commission to rezone manufacturing properties in her district to residential ones. But such housing, she opined, "would be of no benefit to actors or artists. The type of residential they [real estate developers] want would be outside the guise of rent protection laws; and they'd charge luxury rents. "What they're talking about is not building housing to support people who live and work in New York City, such as actors and artists, and others making their livings here," she concluded. "They want people with greater financial means than those of us here now." ----------------------------------------------------------------- THE CITY OF NEW YORK RENT GUIDELINES BOARD June 25, 1999 Order Number 31 Order Number 31 - Apartments and Lofts, rent levels for leases commencing October 1, 1999 through September 30, 2000. NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN PURSUANT TO THE AUTHORITY VESTED IN THE NEW YORK CITY RENT GUIDELINES BOARD BY THE RENT STABILIZATION LAW OF 1969, as amended, and the Emergency Tenant Protection Act of 1974, as amended, implemented by Resolution No 276 of 1974 of the New York City Council and extended by the Rent Regulation Reform Act of 1997, and in accordance with the requirements of Section 1043 of the New York City Charter, that the Rent Guidelines Board (RGB) hereby adopts the following levels of fair rent increases over lawful rents charged and paid on September 30, 1999. These rent adjustments will apply to rent stabilized apartments with leases commencing on or after October 1, 1999 and through September 30, 2000. Rent guidelines for loft units subject to Section 286 subdivision 7 of the Multiple Dwelling Law are also included in this order. ADJUSTMENT FOR RENEWAL LEASES (APARTMENTS) Together with such further adjustments as may be authorized by law, the annual adjustment for renewal leases for apartments shall be: For a one-year renewal lease commencing on or after October 1, 1999 and on or before September 30, 2000: 2% For a two-year renewal lease commencing on or after October 1, 1999 and on or before September 30, 2000: 4% These two adjustments shall also apply to dwelling units in a structure subject to the partial tax exemption program under Section 421a of the Real Property Tax Law, or in a structure subject to Section 423 of the Real Property Tax Law as a Redevelopment Project. NO VACANCY ALLOWANCE FOR APARTMENTS No vacancy allowance is permitted except as provided by sections 19 and 20 of the Rent Regulation Reform Act of 1997. SUPPLEMENTAL ADJUSTMENT OF UP TO $15 PER MONTH FOR RENEWAL LEASES FOR APARTMENTS RENTING FOR $500 OR LESS ON SEPTEMBER 30, 1999. RENTS THAT ARE $215 OR LESS ON SEPTEMBER 30, 1999 AFTER ANY ALLOWABLE INCREASES IN THIS ORDER ARE APPLIED, WILL BE INCREASED TO $215. For a renewal lease on a dwelling unit with a lawful rent of $500 or less per month on September 30, 1999, the levels of rent increase for renewal leases commencing October 1, 1999 through September 30, 2000 are the same as those set forth hereinabove plus a $15 per month supplementary adjustment. For a renewal lease commencing on or after October 1, 1999 through September 30, 2000, on a dwelling unit with a lawful rent of $215 or less per month after any allowable increase(s) in this Order are applied, the new lawful rent will be $215. ADDITIONAL ADJUSTMENT FOR RENT STABILIZED APARTMENTS SUBLET UNDER SECTION 2525.6 OF THE RENT STABILIZATION CODE In the event of a sublease governed by subdivision (e) of section 2525.6 of the Rent Stabilization Code, the allowance authorized by such subdivision shall be 0%. ADJUSTMENTS FOR LOFTS (UNITS IN THE CATEGORY OF BUILDINGS COVERED BY ARTICLE 7-C OF THE MULTIPLE DWELLING LAW) The Rent Guidelines Board adopts the following levels of rent increase above the "base rent", as defined in Section 286, subdivision 4, of the Multiple Dwelling Law, for units to which these guidelines are applicable in accordance with Article 7-C of the Multiple Dwelling Law: For one-year increase periods commencing on or after October 1, 1999 and on or before September 30, 2000: 1% For two-year increase periods commencing on or after October 1, 1999 and on or before September 30, 2000: 2% VACANT LOFT UNITS No Vacancy Allowance is permitted under this Order. Therefore, except as otherwise provided in Section 286, subdivision 6, of the Multiple Dwelling Law, the rent charged to any tenant for a vacancy tenancy commencing on or after October 1, 1999 and on or before September 30, 2000 may not exceed the "base rent" referenced above plus the level of adjustment permitted above for increase periods. FRACTIONAL TERMS For the purposes of these guidelines any lease or tenancy for a period up to and including one year shall be deemed a one year lease or tenancy, and any lease or tenancy for a period of over one year and up to and including two years shall be deemed a two-year lease or tenancy. ESCALATOR CLAUSES Where a lease for a dwelling unit in effect on May 31, 1968 or where a lease in effect on June 30, 1974 for a dwelling unit which became subject to the Rent Stabilization Law of 1969, by virtue of the Emergency Tenant Protection Act of 1974 and Resolution Number 276 of the New York City Council, contained an escalator clause for the increased costs of operation and such clause is still in effect, the lawful rent on September 30, 1999 over which the fair rent under this Order is computed shall include the increased rental, if any, due under such clause except those charges which accrued within one year of the commencement of the renewal lease. Moreover, where a lease contained an escalator clause that the owner may validly renew under the Code, unless the owner elects or has elected in writing to delete such clause, effective no later than October 1, 1999 from the existing lease and all subsequent leases for such dwelling unit, the increased rental, if any, due under such escalator clause shall be offset against the amount of increase authorized under this Order. SPECIAL ADJUSTMENTS UNDER PRIOR ORDERS All rent adjustments lawfully implemented and maintained under previous apartment orders and included in the base rent in effect on September 30, 1999 shall continue to be included in the base rent for the purpose of computing subsequent rents adjusted pursuant to this Order. SPECIAL GUIDELINE Under Section 26-513(b)(1) of the New York City Administrative Code, and Section 9(e) of the Emergency Tenant Protection Act of 1974, the Rent Guidelines Board is obligated to promulgate special guidelines to aid the State Division of Housing and Community Renewal in its determination of initial legal regulated rents for housing accommodations previously subject to the City Rent and Rehabilitation Law which are the subject of a tenant application for adjustment. The Rent Guidelines Board hereby adopts the following Special Guidelines: For dwelling units subject to the Rent and Rehabilitation Law on September 30, 1999, which become vacant after September 30, 1999, the special guideline shall be the greater of the following: 1. 150% above the maximum base rent as it existed or would have existed, plus the allowable fuel cost adjustment, or 2. The Fair Market Rent for existing housing as established by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for the New York City Primary Metropolitan Statistical Area pursuant to Section 8(c) (1) of the United States Housing Act of 1937 (42 U.S.C. section 1437f [c][1]) and 24 C.F.R. Part 888, with such Fair Market Rents to be adjusted based upon whether the tenant pays his or her own gas and/or electric charges as part of his or her rent as such gas and/or electric harges are accounted for by the New York City Housing Authority. Such HUD-determined Fair Market Rents will be published in the Federal Register, to take effect on October 1, 1999. DECONTROLLED UNITS The permissible increase for decontrolled units as referenced in Order 3a which become decontrolled after September 30, 1999, shall be the greater of the following: 1. 150% above the maximum base rent as it existed or would have existed, plus the allowable fuel cost adjustment, or 2. The Fair Market Rent for existing housing as established by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for the New York City Primary Metropolitan Statistical Area pursuant to Section 8(c) (1) of the United States Housing Act of 1937 (42 U.S.C. section 1437f [c][1]) and 24 C.F.R. Part 888, with such Fair Market Rents to be adjusted based upon whether the tenant pays his or her own gas and/or electric charges as part of his or her rent as such gas and/or electric charges are accounted for by the New York City Housing Authority. Such HUD-determined Fair Market Rents will be published in the Federal Register, to take effect on October 1, 1999. CREDITS Rentals charged and paid in excess of the levels of rent increase established by this Order shall be fully credited against the next month's rent. STATEMENT OF BASIS AND PURPOSE The Rent Guidelines Board is authorized to promulgate rent guidelines governing apartment units subject to the Rent Stabilization Law of 1969, as amended, and the Emergency Tenant Protection Act of 1974, as amended. The purpose of these guidelines is to implement the public policy set forth in Findings and Declaration of Emergency of the Rent Stabilization Law of 1969 (§26-501 of the N.Y.C. Administrative Code) and in the Legislative Finding contained in the Emergency Tenant Protection Act of 1974 (L.1974 c c. 576, §4 [§2]). The Rent Guidelines Board is also authorized to promulgate rent guidelines for loft units subject to Section 286 subdivision 7 of the Multiple Dwelling Law. The purpose of the loft guidelines is to implement the public policy set forth in the Legislative Findings of Article 7-C of the Multiple Dwelling Law (Section 280). Dated: June 25, 1999 Edward S. Hochman, Esq. Chairman Rent Guidelines Board ----------------------------------------------------------------- Friends of CUNY and the New York Forum Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields Former Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger U.S. Representative Jerrold Nadler State Senators Tom Duane & Eric Schneiderman Former State Senator Franz S. Leichter Assemblymembers Deborah Glick, Dick Gottfried & Scott Stringer Councilmembers Kathryn Freed, Margarita Lopez & Chris Quinn Invite You To A Town Hall Meeting "CUNY Under Attack: Open Admissions or Closed Door to Opportunity" The Mayor and Governor are determined to "downsize" CUNY and deprive those who need CUNY the most of their opportunity for a college education and a chance for a future. Wednesday, July 14, 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm At Fashion Institute of Technology, Katie Murphy Amphitheatre, Building D, Main Floor, Seventh Avenue & 27th Street Find out what we can do to fight back. Learn the truth about: The Proposal To End Remediation Standards and Graduation Rates Budget Cuts, Tuition Hikes & Their Impact on New Yorkers The Report of the Mayor's Task Force on CUNY For More Information, call Bill Zwart at 212-582-5020 ----------------------------------------------------------------- NYtenants Tenant's Online is subscription-based. To unsubscribe, go to TenantNet's web page at http://tenant.net and insert your email address on the NYtenants Mailing List form. Make sure your email is exactly the same as when you subscribed, including capitalization. Check "unsubscribe" and click "submit". ----------------------------------------------------------------------- The Tenant Network(tm) for Residential Tenants TenantNet(tm): http://tenant.net email: NYtenants(tm) Discussion List: email to and in the body of the message put "subscribe nytenants". Information from TenantNet is from experienced non-attorney tenant activists and is not considered legal advice. From owner-nytenants-announce Tue Jul 13 16:48:47 1999 Received: (from root@localhost) by cnct.com (8.8.8/8.8.6) id QAA08946 for nytenants-announce-outgoing; Tue, 13 Jul 1999 16:48:47 -0400 (EDT) Received: from tenant.cnct.com (ts2-2.ny.cnct.com [207.111.66.118]) by cnct.com (8.8.8/8.8.6) with SMTP id QAA08927 for <>; Tue, 13 Jul 1999 16:48:35 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <4.1.19990713161053.00981d20@cnct.com> X-Sender: X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.1 Date: Tue, 13 Jul 1999 16:32:33 -0400 To: From: tenant <> Subject: Tenants Online 7/13/99 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by cnct.com id QAA08937 Sender: Precedence: bulk Tenants Online 7/13/99 ----------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, see the bottom of this newsletter ----------------------------------------------------------------- In this issue... 1. Vallone Lead Bill Online 2. You can testify at Rudy's lead-paint bill signing 7/15 3. Loft Law Limbo: Artists Fret As Albany Fiddles (Voice) 4. Uneasiness Prevails as Loft Law Expires (Times) 5. Tenants Up in Air: Loft Law expires and leaves 10,000 dwellers hanging (News) ----------------------------------------------------------------- LEAD BILL NOW ONLINE The final text of the Peter Vallone/Rudy Giuliani Lead Bill, Intro 582 (AKA Landlord Protection Act of 1999) is now online at http://leah.council.nyc.ny.us/leg99/int0582.htm. ----------------------------------------------------------------- SAMPLE TESTIMONY FOR LEAD POISONING ACT OF 1999 BILL SIGNING HEARING JULY 15, 1999 2:30 PM CITY HALL by A. Tenant Mr. Mayor, I urge you not to sign the Lead Poisoning Act of 1999. While some may consider this a done deal, it is not a contract until it is signed, and I urge you to keep your pen in your pocket. This moment defines whether you are still a prosecutor, or have become a defense attorney for irresponsible and criminal behavior by those responsible for protecting vulnerable children from lead poisoning, a form of institutional child abuse. Parents are helpless to protect their children from invisible lead dust without the intervention of the city to monitor and enforce safe lead abatement work by owners when it is found that children are exposed to lead or, when unable to obtain compliance from an owner, go in and eliminate the danger of irreversible brain damage quickly and safely itself, and pursue appropriate action against that owner. By providing unreasonable time periods for abating dangerous conditions, by eliminating the requirement for lead dust testing to prevent poisoning immediately after removal work is done, and by creating a panoply of defenses for owners who are responsible when poisoning does occur, Introl 582 would ensure that a given number currently healthy babies will suffer severe lead poisoning in the years ahead. In addition to effective code enforcement the second prong of any effective lead poisoning prevention program has been the incentive of the possibility that those found responsible for the serious poisoning of a child will be held accountable for not protecting children from a known tragedy that currently effects over 30,000 children in New York City, Your decision on the law you have been asked to consider will send a message to this State and this County about where this city stands on the question of protecting babies and children under six years of age from unnecessary exposure to toxic lead paint and lead dust. Every expert who testified at the City Council's hastily convened hearings two weeks ago agreed that Intro. 582 does not go far enough in ensuring that children are not exposed to toxic lead dust. This ill-conceived bill was based on inadequate consultation with affected constituencies. While the interests of property owners, some of which are clearly valid, would receive undo concern, the interests of health providers who have been successfully reducing lead poisoning over the past twenty years, the interests of tenants and of those concerned with the preservation of safe and affordable housing, and most importantly the interests of parents and children forced to live in the Lead Belt - those neighborhoods characterized by older, under-maintained buildings occupied predominantly by low income tenants of color- were not adequately consulted or protected. For this reason, Intro. 582 has been rightly described as protecting property owners but not children from the consequences of preventable lead poisoning. This bill contains several unacceptable provisions and constitutes a step in the wrong direction on the path toward protecting tens of thousands of children from suffering permanent brain damage from this preventable disease. The 21-day incentive period, during which property owners would be encouraged to avoid federal safety standards by removing possible lead paint without it ever being tested by the city, encourages less responsible owners to avoid . Responsible and diligent owners, who want to ensure that children are not exposed to lead poisoning even if this law would not compel them to, are essentially subject to financial penalties. This is equivalent to fining owners who obey the law or act responsibly. One of the justifications of this law is the unproven claim that parents can prevent lead poisoning of their children - 90% Return to the model of the old window guard which was shown not to work. Window related tragedies for young children went down by 50% as soon as the a provision was inserted into law by your predecessor requiringowners affirmatively to seek out whether young children reside in an apartment and to install window guards in all cases where they do. Intro. 582 removes owners' existing obligation to determine whether children reside in an apartment, and removes the rebuttable presumption - based on irrefutable scientfic evidence - that paint in pre-1960 buildings is likely to be lead-based. Mr. Mayor, I understand that you are not allowed to sign this bill until this hearing is over, is that correct? In that case, you are going to have to arrest me. Thank you for your attention. ----------------------------------------------------------------- June 30 - July 6, 1999 Towers & Tenements by j.a. lobbia Loft Law Limbo: Artists Fret As Albany Fiddles Imagine a downtown artist's loft with brick walls, sunlight streaming through tall, arched windows, space that measures in the four-digit range, and a three-digit rent. The tenants may not be rich in the stocks-and-investments sense, but as far as real estate goes, they're loaded. In this town of tub-in-the-kitchen tenements and smaller-than-a-shoebox studios, wealth can be calculated in square feet, closets are currency, and loft-dwellers are the ultimate conquerers of space. But these days, city artists are worried that, any time now, they could be robbed, and by the state legislature no less. That's because the loft law, which allows them to live and work in commercial spaces, expires on June 30. Originally passed in 1982 and renewed periodically since, the law must be reenacted by the state legislature to be effective. But the law's late June end date has thrown it smack into the middle of a protracted and heavily political state budget battle and has turned the housing law into what Albany Republicans have called "a secret weapon" to force pro-loft Democrats into supporting GOP issues. As of this writing, the loft law has not been renewed and is expected to limp along on short-term extensions until the budget is resolved. But while the law's tenuous status makes loft-dwellers nervous, it's not expected to be scrapped altogether. Says Bill Hall, a sculptor and cochair of the Lower Manhattan Loft Tenants group, "I have every reason to believe [Democratic Assembly Speaker] Shelly Silver," whose downtown district includes most of the city's 835 loft buildings, "will make sure it happens. It just takes time." The law is not only tangled up in Albany politics— with Senate Majority Leader Republican Joe Bruno holding it hostage to GOP budget demands and Governor George Pataki trying to leverage it to force things like extended cuts in Medicaid— it is also entwined in the ambitions of power brokers. First, there's the partisan skirmishing between Silver and Bruno (who waged the famous 1997 Albany attack against rent laws). Add the war between Pataki and Mayor Rudy Giuliani— two Republicans competing for national attention. "Anything Rudy wants, Pataki won't do," says one loft tenant. "With all the ambitions and egos, it's hard to call." Loft landlords are trying to use the window to loosen the law and have drafted a bill— which still lacks a sponsor— that could effectively force half of the city's 10,000 loft tenants out by removing buildings that dedicate less than 51 percent of their gross square footage to residential lofts. Sources say the draft is unlikely to go anywhere. Tenants have a bill, passed in the Assembly, that would extend the law until 2004. While the loft battle surfaces periodically in Albany, another conflict simmers more regularly here in the city. Artists argue that they could not afford to live here without the privileges extended by the loft law, which allows for residential and studio use of commercial spaces and keeps rents low while landlords bring buildings up to housing code standards. But that argument is irritating to many nonartist tenants who pay sky-high rents for tiny apartments and who would just as soon paint or sculpt instead of working tedious jobs to pay the rent. "There is an awful lot of resentment because the housing market is so unfairly checkerboarded in this city," says Sharon Zukin, a sociology professor at Brooklyn College and author of a book on loft living. "The laws dispose people to a dog-eat-dog mentality. Of course, it's the owners and developers who have a major share of the benefits." Indeed, a simple Saturday saunter through Soho or Tribeca shows that loft districts settled by artists decades ago have transformed neighborhoods from desolate warehouse districts to overcrowded shopping strips, with property owners as the ultimate winners. More plainly, artists act as a social detergent for developers, moving in and cleaning up forgotten neighborhoods until they become livable and finally attractive to nonartists. In the end, the neighborhoods become so hygienic, artists who are newcomers can no longer afford to live there. (Only commercial buildings that were occupied by residential tenants from 1980 to 1981 are covered by the loft law, and no more are coming on line.) "The role of artists is sort of a double-edged sword because their presence made the way they live an attractive commodity itself," says Zukin. "Lofts became desirable to nonartists, partly because the media, like New York magazine and The New York Times, were eager to break the news to their readers about a new chic way to live. The development of loft districts was the beginning of using culture as an economic development strategy. The ability to turn these abandoned industrial spaces into something else that looked cosmopolitan and sophisticated really gave a big cue to cities about the future importance of gentrification and attracting certain parts of the middle class." In fact, in a 1977 New York Times article, Zukin warned against efforts to create loft zones in Soho and the Garment District, warning that such a move "represents a costly travesty of heterogeneity that will produce, at best, a copy of the [then recent urban] renewal of the Upper East Side. We will see yet another quarter of monolithic, high-rent residences and shops, surrounded by drastically reduced 'ethnic' and 'atelier' zones." Soho's current consumer culture proves Zukin right. "When you have a neighborhood with multiple branches of Louis Vuitton, cosmetic stores, and consumer goods, it's really quite something different," Zukin said in a recent interview. "It's not a local neighborhood anymore, and it's not an artists' group anymore. It's an urban mall, and I don't know whom to blame for that. The loft movement turned into a market a long time ago. It still has the cachet of a movement, but not much spirit." Bill Jordan, a photographer who has lived on Lower Broadway for 22 years, calls his neighborhood's commercial explosion "a mixed blessing. I'm ambivalent because I don't like the crowds, but the larger-scale stores are— someone will kill me for saying this— more stable" than smaller shops that once populated his Broadway block but that have now been replaced with chains like Old Navy, Banana Republic, and Club Monaco. Longtime loft-dwellers themselves have mixed feelings about the evolution. "As far as people being resentful that we have big spaces for low rent, what can I say?" asks sculptor Hall. "These neighborhoods were created by artists who needed space for their studios, and it's difficult to be apologetic. At the same time, I understand. You'd have a hard time moving to Tribeca now even if you were a stockbroker. The loft prices are unbelievable." Research: Nellie Abernathy ----------------------------------------------------------------- Uneasiness Prevails as Loft Law Expires July 1, 1999, New York Times By WINNIE HU Loft dwellers in New York City were left wondering about their homes Wednesday night when a state law expired that since 1982 had protected residents of commercial buildings from eviction. Although the lofts technically became illegal residences when the law expired at midnight, state legislators offered reassurances that people would not have to start packing. And several tenants and landlords said the expiration was an inconvenience but not a real threat. "I'm not going anywhere; this is my home," said Madeline Stossker, 32, a painter who shares a Greenwich Village loft with her boyfriend. "It will take more than just a law disappearing to make me disappear." State lawmakers allowed the loft law to expire in a political tussle over unrelated budget issues. As a result, an estimated 664 loft buildings, situated primarily in lower Manhattan, became illegal residences. The law had legalized what artists and others had done for years: occupy commercial spaces with the consent of landlords. Buildings affected by the law were those that had originally been used for commercial purposes but in which three or more residential units became occupied between April 1, 1980 and Dec. 1, 1981. The conversion had to meet fire and safety requirements and comply with laws on access for the disabled. Many buildings needed plumbing and electrical work, and the installation of sprinklers and smoke detectors. Now that the law has expired, it is unlikely that anyone will be evicted immediately. For one thing, a landlord must file a 30-day notice of eviction. For another, state lawmakers are expected to resurrect the loft law when they meet again on July 12. "The reality is people are not in danger of losing their homes, but that doesn't abrogate the Legislature's responsibility to protect their homes," said Senator Thomas K. Duane, whose Manhattan district includes hundreds of loft buildings. But for some loft dwellers, that was small consolation. Duane said he had received hundreds of phone calls and letters from concerned loft tenants in his district. During the legislative session in Albany, he turned over part of his office to loft tenants who were lobbying other lawmakers. Michael Kanakis, 48, a photographer who lives with his wife and son in a loft in Chelsea, said the law provided a measure of protection from landlords who were more interested in the bottom line. Before the law was passed, he said, his heat was turned off every Friday afternoon for the weekend. Afterward, he said, he not only had heat, but was also given a phone number to call if the heat went off. "Whatever we did get, we had to fight for," he said. "This law is important to us. You don't mess with people's homes." But others would just as soon see the loft law disappear permanently. Thomas Berger, president of the Association of Commercial Property Owners, a 400-member group of loft landlords, said the law required them to make costly renovations to their buildings while restricting the amount of rent they could demand. "It's a stupid law, it's an unworkable law, but it's a pawn in a chess game," said Berger, adding that he had spent $300,000 on required renovations to his TriBeCa building. Throughout the city, the loft law has allowed people to create communities where once there were vacant buildings and warehouses. Kanakis, for example, has lived next door to the same two families for 22 years. Another loft dweller, Lawrence Wheatman, said his bright, spacious loft on West 30th Street had started out as nothing more than a dump for other tenants, with garbage bags piled to the ceiling. But Wheatman, a photographer, said he had spent more than $20,000 to turn the 1,000-square-foot rental space into a home. "This was the location we wanted, there's no doubt about it," he said. "I'm still here 19 years later. I love this space." ----------------------------------------------------------------- Tenants Up in Air: Loft Law expires and leaves 10,000 dwellers hanging By DAVE GOLDINER Daily News Staff Writer, July 2, 1999 Painter Joe Marioni moved into his Garment District loft more than a quarter century ago when his landlord couldn't give away space in the dilapidated former button factory. Like thousands of other loft dwellers, Marioni spent yesterday worrying about his future in the treasured 1,000-square-foot space that doubles as an apartment and studio after a state law protecting them expired. "We artists have a very intimate relationship to our work and the space we work in," said Marioni. "Anything that disturbs that is very serious. It's consuming my time, and it's legal harassment." The estimated 10,000 loft tenants — mostly artists in lower Manhattan — are on pins and needles over the lapsing of the 1982 Loft Law, which expired yesterday amid a partisan budget dispute in Albany. Since the clock expired on the law, loft tenants are technically living illegally in some 900 commercial and industrial buildings. Although no one will face immediate eviction, some tenants may get 30-day eviction notices. Others may be forced to hire lawyers to battle landlords. The uncertainty could prove unsettling to artists who thought they had finally achieved a degree of stability. "It certainly will be high anxiety for a lot of tenants, if nothing more," said Bill Hall, a sculptor who lives with his family in a Tribeca loft. "We're heading into uncharted legal waters." Landlords oppose the Loft Law as unnecessary government regulation. They say it forces them to spend thousands of dollars on renovations while sharply limiting rents they may charge. "The law is total insanity," said Thomas Berger, president of a loft landlords group. "The rents are way too low, and it makes the owner's life impossible." A bill extending the Loft Law was passed by the Democratic-controlled Assembly, but died in the Republican-held Senate. Tenants blame Gov. Pataki and his GOP allies for holding up approval to punish Democrats who are battling over items in the state budget. "We have been used very cynically," said Chuck DeLaney, a photographer who lives in a loft on Pearl St. Insiders believe the lawmakers will eventually pass the Loft Law, possibly after they reconvene on July 12. It can't happen too soon for Marioni, who would rather be concentrating on his artwork than on the Byzantine world of Albany politics. "It's not fun being a pawn in a political game," he said. Original Publication Date: 07/02/1999 ----------------------------------------------------------------- NYtenants Tenant's Online is subscription-based. To unsubscribe, go to TenantNet's web page at http://tenant.net and insert your email address on the NYtenants Mailing List form. Make sure your email is exactly the same as when you subscribed, including capitalization. Check "unsubscribe" and click "submit". ----------------------------------------------------------------------- The Tenant Network(tm) for Residential Tenants TenantNet(tm): http://tenant.net email: NYtenants(tm) Discussion List: email to and in the body of the message put "subscribe nytenants". Information from TenantNet is from experienced non-attorney tenant activists and is not considered legal advice. From owner-nytenants-announce Wed Jul 14 13:22:10 1999 Received: (from root@localhost) by cnct.com (8.8.8/8.8.6) id NAA28531 for nytenants-announce-outgoing; Wed, 14 Jul 1999 13:22:10 -0400 (EDT) Received: from tenant.cnct.com (ts2-16.ny.cnct.com [207.111.66.132]) by cnct.com (8.8.8/8.8.6) with SMTP id NAA28519 for <>; Wed, 14 Jul 1999 13:22:00 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <4.1.19990713215010.00985ec0@cnct.com> Message-Id: <4.1.19990713215010.00985ec0@cnct.com> Message-Id: <4.1.19990713215010.00985ec0@cnct.com> X-Sender: X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.1 Date: Wed, 14 Jul 1999 13:01:07 -0400 To: From: tenant <> Subject: Tenants Online 7/14/99 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by cnct.com id NAA28523 Sender: Precedence: bulk Tenants Online 7/14/99 ----------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, see the bottom of this newsletter ----------------------------------------------------------------- In this issue... 1. Notes from the Underground (City Limits) NYCHA's Gadfly 2. The Fix Is Out: Public Housing Crumbles on Republicans’ Watch (Voice) 3. Waltham, Massachusetts City Council Votes Boycott of MetLife over Rent Increases ----------------------------------------------------------------- Notes from the Underground By Kathleen McGowan Sitting in his living room in Bay Ridge, his tabby cat lolling at his feet, Jack Ballinger has become the self-appointed scourge of the New York City Housing Authority. His fax newsletter is a hotsheet for the legions of civil servants at NYCHA, which manages public housing for about 500,000 poor and working-class New Yorkers. Sexual harassment allegations? Stolen memos and lost files? Epic tales of patronage, wife-beating and politically charged office affairs? The Housing Spotlight has got it all, with nudge-and-a-wink hints of who's doing wrong and a knowing tone that makes it Page Six for housing bureaucrats. "It's a great country," he laughs. "I've got a fax machine, and we pay $30 a month for unlimited calls." Ballinger's anonymous faxes have developed a loyal following among NYCHA staff, who read the newsletter under their desks and covertly e-mail him new dirt. "The Spotlight has been a lifeblood for those of us who are civil servants," says one of his tipsters. "We were like, 'Oh my God, somebody's out there.' I didn't know who he was, but I was so happy. He's the sanest, fiercest, most fabulous man." The newsletter selects its targets with care. Ballinger, himself an ex-NYCHA employee, is a careful editor, focusing on the follies of the Authority's political appointees and higher-ups, especially when they torment their underlings. That's because for the 52-year-old Ballinger, it's personal. Last month he went public with a 25-page indictment, complete with dates, names and details, of two corruption scandals he witnessed at the agency. He signed his name to the testimonial, posted it on his web site ( http://www.spacelab.net/~guijackb/spot ) annotated with memos and taped phone conversations-and faxed it to more than 100 politicians and investigative agencies nationwide. How did this man, a former steamfitter who admits he got his NYCHA job through a local politician, come to spend four years trying to get his allegations taken seriously? And, given the gravity of his accusations, the mysterious suicides that he's written about and the possibility of libel, why did he decide to reveal his identity? He's not on a crusade. In fact, he doesn't seem to care much for abstract ideas of taxpayer accountability or the public good. "I wouldn't care if they stole $600 million," he insists. "I'm no reformer." He rarely mentions the hundreds of thousands of tenants that suffer the consequences of wasted money and corruption. Instead, he spends nearly all his time-and, by his account, put himself in physical danger-to avenge NYCHA's working stiffs. "It's what they did to the little guys," he says. "They've screwed too many people's lives over." Ballinger's transformation from steamfitter to whistleblower began in 1995, when, after a few months working at NYCHA's central office, he says he stumbled on a big problem: All the information normally kept on one agency database- everything from the number of workers to insurance records and permits-was missing from $50 million worth of contracts for security systems like intercoms and lights. The work had no documentation, making it impossible to tell if it had been inspected. To Ballinger, the situation stank. "I was once a contractor myself, and if you tell me that nobody's going to check on my work or my materials-and that you're going to pay me for top-class work-I'll be a very happy man," he says. But when he pointed the problem out to his bosses, he was promptly transferred to Coney Island. There in the field office, he was approached by a roofing inspector who had been taking bribes and was terrified of getting caught. He asked for Ballinger's help in going straight, and the two wound up coordinating an investigation between NYCHA's Inspector General office and about 12 inspectors. Sometimes contractors would offer the inspectors outright bribes, but the more subtle deals involved officials in NYCHA management, reports one contract administrator turned double agent. Ballinger says that the sting lasted about five months in 1997. But the inspectors began to suspect that their work was being leaked. They also say that the IG instructed them to target new contractors, instead of perennial favorites that they knew were on the take. Since then, says Ballinger, nothing has happened. The investigation into the missing contracts has apparently been closed, and Ballinger thinks the bribery investigation has been botched. The IG's office never questioned him about the missing data, and still hasn't spoken to men who would provide crucial testimony and documentation through their daily log books. "The minute we received [Ballinger's complaints], we took them seriously. We turned it over to the IG," says NYCHA spokesman Hilly Gross. "The minute his findings become public, we'll make them public." But it's hard to determine where the investigation stands. Although there are rumors that the investigation is ongoing, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, which funds NYCHA, recently told Ballinger that the case was closed last year. Ballinger's accusations may sometimes sound over the top. He says his car has been forced off the road, and mentions three unexplained deaths-two apparently suicides-of NYCHA employees who were aware of his investigations. But he provides plenty of corroborating evidence, and reporters have confirmed his stories. Last year, Channel 9's investigative team aired a series based on his sources. And the Spanish-language daily Noticias del Mundo ran a two-week series in May focusing on another Ballinger exposŽ, NYCHA's $100 million sweetheart lease on a building recently purchased by a friend of Authority board member Kalman Finkel. By last year, Ballinger was on worker's comp from his NYCHA job and frustrated that his undercover work was stalled in official channels. He decided to bypass the investigative apparatus and talk directly to the people that would know and care about what the agency was all about. The Spotlight was born. What's most interesting about this scandal sheet is the insight it provides into the institutional psyche of the 15,000-employee Housing Authority. In the Spotlight's pages, this massive bureaucracy, nationally recognized as the country's best public housing authority, is a poisonously paranoid place. Morale is devastated by infighting. Low-level corruption is rampant, and retaliatory transfers and demotions are constants. Nervous breakdowns at Ballinger's NYCHA seem to be as common as office colds. That his reports have satisfyingly soap opera-like continuity only adds to the can't-put-it-down quotient. Regular characters like Kalman "The Fink" Finkel re-appear with satisfying frequency. Although his prose tends toward the overwrought, this Matt Drudge of the Housing Authority has clearly hit a nerve. The Housing Spotlight is contraband at NYCHA, and being caught with the tipsheet means trouble. Employees report that higher-ups hang around the fax machines on Tuesdays, waiting to intercept it. Surreptitiously, his fans strike back. "I put them in the ladies' room," says one NYCHA worker. "Every Tuesday you see women from other departments in our ladies' room. Or I put them in the freezer, and strange women come to the department asking, 'Do you have any ice? Do you have any frozen peas?' I'd photocopy 100 of them, leave stacks in elevators, send 'em down the post office chute, leave them in the Dunkin' Donuts. They'd all be gone. That's how we knew it was powerful." And the Spotlight's reports have repercussions. Ballinger was the first to write about a NYCHA sexual harassment case that many point to as the scandal that forced out former board chair Ruben Franco. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani used to keep a close eye on NYCHA; in fact, he prosecuted one of the Authority's most famous corruption scandals in the 1980s. But NYCHA staff, many of whom initially supported Giuliani, say the mayor has betrayed the agency by refusing to investigate and punish corruption, and by stocking the Authority with patronage appointees. "It's worse than it's ever been," says one secretary. "Giuliani doesn't give a shit. He's brought in people who know nothing about housing, and they're not taking care of the agency." In the end, it's the city's public housing tenants that must cope with locks that break, sprinklers that don't put out fires, and asbestos that isn't properly removed. As for Ballinger, he has hopes for the new NYCHA chair, John Martinez, but promises to keep dogging upper management. He now gets about a half-dozen emails every day. "This is my life," he says. "So many people are upset in their jobs, and they're calling me, crying over the phone. I'll get more information every week, I'll keep faxing, and eventually, hopefully, we'll have some sort of investigation into this. I keep telling them-if they treated people right, I'd be out of business." ----------------------------------------------------------------- July 14 - 20, 1999 Towers and Tenements by j. a. lobbia The Fix Is Out: Public Housing Crumbles on Republicans’ Watch In the shank of last week's killer heat wave, Bob stood in the lobby-turned-oven of his Williamsburg apartment building and rethought his next move. It was about 8:30 at night, and he had planned to take the elevator home to his 18th-floor apartment to cool off for the evening. Instead, a familiar scene forced him to change his approach: The elevator was broken. "I'm going to go back and sit in my car with the air conditioning on for a few minutes, and then I'll walk up," said Bob, 35, who would not give his last name. "I've done this before. It'll take me less than 10 minutes to get up there." Walking 18 flights of stairs in stifling heat is daunting, but possible, for a man in his midthirties. But for hundreds of other tenants of Williams Plaza, a group of buildings that contain 577 apartments run by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), the task is near impossible. As Bob headed for his car, an elderly couple, the Rosados, braced for an 18-story climb home; the journey would take them at least 15 sweltering minutes. When their son, Daniel, complained that the elevator breaks down at least once a week, his father corrected him: "It's more like three or four times." Chronically dysfunctional elevators are just one problem at Williams Plaza, according to a report released last week by state comptroller Carl McCall. Unreliable boilers and a dramatically degenerated roof are among the development's worst traits. McCall's study showed that problems at Williams Plaza are common citywide: just around the corner at Independence Towers, faulty elevators left cane-reliant seniors with a baffling choice: walk upstairs, or impose on neighbors who live on lower floors and who might let them spend the night. Across the water at Staten Island's 693-unit Stapleton houses and in Harlem's 1207-unit Drew Hamilton houses, McCall's staff found most kitchens in need of immediate attention. And in the Bronx, McCall found, the heating system for the 441 apartments in the Baychester Houses was rated as poor, and bathrooms in the Linden Houses, with 1586 apartments in East New York, had declined from their already lowly rating of poor a decade ago, the last time the comptroller reviewed such developments. The McCall study focuses on the 21 NYCHA projects that were built by the city or the state; another 325 NYCHA developments are federal and were the subject of a February McCall report. The 21 projects contain 20,000 apartments and are home to 59,000 residents. "NYCHA housing is one of the most significant public housing systems in the country, a gem that New York City should be able to be proud of," says McCall. "This is not simply valuable infrastructure for the city; it is also home to thousands of people. That's why we're looking critically at what we have now and asking what can be done to ready it for the future." Relying on NYCHA's own management reports that rate physical conditions, McCall's staffers compared the results to a similar comptroller study done 10 years ago. "Much to our dismay," the current report states, "we conclude that the buildings...have deteriorated significantly since we last reviewed their condition." Tenants of the developments don't need number-crunching bureaucrats to know their buildings are in trouble. "We have many, many serious problems here," says Joseph Garber, a member of the New York City Public Housing Residents' Alliance who has lived in Independence Towers, a cluster of five 21-story buildings, since 1976. Independence Towers has been thrust into Williamsburg's long-standing housing battle between Orthodox Jews and Latinos, and is one of three buildings ordered by a federal judge to set aside apartments for Latinos, since Jews have been favored there for years. Garber, who himself expresses the housing dilemma in racial terms—complaining about Latino supers and black tenants—acknowledges that disrepair does not discriminate. "If the elevator doesn't work," he says, "the effect is the same if you're black, white, green, or Hispanic." The problem, predictably enough, is money. When the city and state built public housing, it was assumed that the rent roll would cover modernization. By the mid 1970s, rising costs proved that calculation wrong, and tenants have been shortchanged since. Governor George Pataki exacerbated the dilemma in 1998 when he eliminated an operating budget that the state had provided to NYCHA annually since 1969—a move that has resulted in two yet-unresolved NYCHA lawsuits against the governor. City budgets have tried to bridge the gap, but even those have fallen short, forcing NYCHA to channel federal money to pay for maintenance for city and state stock. Spokespeople for the governor and for the mayor did not return calls. Even NYCHA does not dispute McCall's findings, saying the report "merely underscores a well known fact: public housing in NYC continues to age...and available funding is inadequate." In fact, 10 years ago, NYCHA and the state comptroller figured modernizing state and city projects would have cost $200 million; the price tag today is more than $1 billion. The escalating costs make housing advocates wonder why city and state officials would not intervene sooner. "I hope it's just an oversight, but I fear an attitude that says people who live in public housing should not be full citizens, and that if you live there, you'd better not expect much," says David Jones, president and CEO of the Community Service Society. "This is clearly so important, but it is happening below the sightlines. There's been no public discussion about this." McCall's report comes as NYCHA itself is undergoing profound transformation. In January, chair Ruben Franco resigned after three firefighters were killed battling a blaze in a NYCHA building where the sprinklers were turned off; both Franco and Mayor Rudy Giuliani deny the resignation was linked to the deaths. And the authority faces a huge challenge this fall when a controversial federal law will give working people preference in getting placement in public housing. McCall's most recent report mimics his February study of NYCHA's federally funded buildings. McCall found two-thirds of the 104 projects surveyed had at least one major problem. But unlike city- and state-backed developments, federally built developments had improved in some areas. "What you start to see here is clear," says Jones. "There are some in the city and state administration who have been seeking the privatization of public housing, and one way to accelerate that is to let the buildings go to rack and ruin until they're too deterioriated to fix. It's pretty Machiavellian, I must admit, but we're not talking about a huge amount of money to fix this, and this is a time of real surplus. We're not talking about expanding public housing, just keeping it up to code. You just start to wonder why they won't do it." ----------------------------------------------------------------- PRESS RELEASE -- MetLife the SOB Landlord For Immediate Release Contact: David Feld (781) 981-4734 Bobbie Morton (617)332-9090 x349 Waltham, Massachusetts Boycotts MetLife In a bold effort to encourage corporate responsibility, last night the City Council of Waltham, Massachusetts overwhelmingly passed a resolution to boycott the insurance giant MetLife. The action was the City's latest response to the refusal of a MetLife real estate subsidiary to bargain in good faith with the tenants of Northgate Heights Apartments -- outraged at sudden rent increases of 30 to 45%. "We need to attempt to send a strong message," stated Council member David Gately. "If this burns a bridge with MetLife, they lit the match." The resolution officially condemns "the predatory behavior of MetLife in coming into our community to engage in real estate speculation that profits on the backs of working people, retired elders and disabled persons." The measure announces the City's resolve to officially boycott MetLife products and encourages Waltham residents to boycott the company and its subsidiaries. MetLife's SSR Realty, purchased Northgate Heights in September 1998. At that time, they announced rent increases of 35-50%, which translates into $300-500 for the tenants. Many tenants are long term residents, senior citizens and people with disabilities. The Northgate Heights Tenants Association has been trying to negotiate with SSR Realty to increase rents by 15% in year one, but the landlords have refused to negotiate in good faith. "In May, after our first meetings with SSR Realty, they offered a special rent program for 'hardship' cases," explained David Feld from the Tenants Association. "But the program was so narrowly defined it would only help a small handful of tenants." As the Tenants Association struggled, more and more tenants were forced to move out. "People get desperate and have to move," said Jeff Auerbach, also a Tenants Association member. "Obviously, SSR Realty would rather have corporate apartments and short term tenants because very few new people are moving in as the old tenants move out." The Tenants Association believes there are approximately 50 remaining original tenants. "We simply want them to negotiate a reasonable settlement," says Feld. "And we want this to be a wake up call for them and other companies who feel they can come into a tight knit community and try to destroy it. The people of Waltham have shown MetLife that they are human beings and not an income stream." For more information on the boycott contact the Northgate Heights Tenants Association at (781) 891-6689 or David S. Kaplan at 781.647.0408. ----------------------------------------------------------------- NYtenants Tenant's Online is subscription-based. To unsubscribe, go to TenantNet's web page at http://tenant.net and insert your email address on the NYtenants Mailing List form. Make sure your email is exactly the same as when you subscribed, including capitalization. Check "unsubscribe" and click "submit". ----------------------------------------------------------------------- The Tenant Network(tm) for Residential Tenants TenantNet(tm): http://tenant.net email: NYtenants(tm) Discussion List: email to and in the body of the message put "subscribe nytenants". Information from TenantNet is from experienced non-attorney tenant activists and is not considered legal advice. From owner-nytenants-announce Thu Jul 15 23:41:48 1999 Received: (from root@localhost) by cnct.com (8.8.8/8.8.6) id XAA19365 for nytenants-announce-outgoing; Thu, 15 Jul 1999 23:41:48 -0400 (EDT) Received: from tenant.cnct.com (ts2-16.ny.cnct.com [207.111.66.132]) by cnct.com (8.8.8/8.8.6) with SMTP id XAA19344 for <>; Thu, 15 Jul 1999 23:41:38 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <4.1.19990715230711.0092a7e0@cnct.com> Message-Id: <4.1.19990715230711.0092a7e0@cnct.com> X-Sender: X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.1 Date: Thu, 15 Jul 1999 23:25:52 -0400 To: From: tenant <> Subject: Tenants Online 7/15/99 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: Precedence: bulk Tenants Online 7/15/99 ----------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, see the bottom of this newsletter ----------------------------------------------------------------- In this issue... 1. Cold Comfort (Tenants in Supportive Housing) City Limits ----------------------------------------------------------------- Cold Comfort By Kemba Johnson City Limits, July 1999 http://www.citylimits.org In supportive housing, tenants get a clean room and a helping hand. But if they cross the line, they get the boot. X-Kaleem Shabazz has gotten used to fixing smashed locks and kicked-in doors. When you're an assistant manager for the St. Nicholas, a supportive housing hotel in Harlem, making minor repairs is just part of another day at the office. Some of the residents at the St. Nicholas are on the losing side of a battle with crack or alcohol. Others play hide-and-seek with loan sharks. Many, disavowed by family or friends, are fighting for both financial and emotional stability. So it's not uncommon for a door to bear the brunt of the anger, embarrassment, frustration, exposure and exhaustion. "Many residents don't have good stress management skills," says Shabazz bluntly. St. Nicholas is run by Praxis Housing Initiatives, which has three other single-room occupancy hotels like it. It's one of 79 nonprofits in the city coping with the day-to-day dramas of providing both housing and services for the recently homeless, people with mental illness, substance abusers and people living with HIV or AIDS. It isn't a job for the faint of heart. "With the people we house comes a mentality," Shabazz explains. "For the person on the outside, kicking in doors is a big deal. For us it's not a code red." She sympathizes with her tenants as they wrestle with stalled lives and chemical dependence, even when they take it out on the decor. She once smoked crack, too, and spent time in prison for three separate felony convictions. For five years after she got out of jail, she says, her life was going nowhere, slowly. Nobody would give her a job until two years ago, when Praxis executive director Father Gordon Duggins hired her. Shabazz, who lives in another Praxis SRO, credits the group with putting her back on the road to a real life. Since then, she has started a motivational lecture series for and by women fighting addiction. "Praxis is my foundation for a lot of things," she says. "I'm picking up skills to be marketable so those doors that five, two, three years ago were closed in my face won't be slammed again." Not every tenant is so pleased with Praxis or its fellow nonprofit landlords. There are bitter trade-offs to running supportive housing: Managers maintain order in these SROs by imposing strict, even oppressive house rules, such as limits on visitors and room checks with little or no notice. But the truly ugly side of supportive housing is the quick and dirty evictions that clear problem tenants out without a trip to court. "In these kinds of settings, often the agency doesn't really understand the role of the landlord," acknowledges Vickie Neilson, senior staff attorney at the HIV Law Project, who has trained supportive housing landlords and represented their tenants in court. "One provider told me, 'Well, if I followed the rules, I'd be running a crack house here,'" she says. Very little about running and living in supportive housing is black and white. Tenants can be alternatively needy and destructive, and supportive housing managers find that their roles as landlord and social worker often collide. While illegal evictions make the difficult job of managing the housing easier, it also puts vulnerable tenants on an express track to homelessness. Defenders say the practice is a necessary evil, the only thing that stands between housing and bedlam. But few of the troubled tenants know their rights, ending up back on the street, still vulnerable, angry or lost, with nowhere else to turn. Supportive housing sounds like a liability lawyer's dream: Spend the city or state's money to renovate a neglected building in a low-income neighborhood. Populate it with a mix of homeless people, mentally ill residents, former substance abusers and people with HIV or AIDS. Toss in a few community members for good measure. The truly ambitious also hire ex-cons to maintain order and keep the floors clean; Praxis has about 85 on staff. In the last 15 years, supportive housing has developed into a working alternative to commercial for-profit SROs, where landlords get paid around $1,100 a month from the city just to provide a bed for people referred from the city's mental health, homelessness and AIDS departments. For nonprofit supportive housing managers, the bed is just the beginning. Each agency offers or refers tenants out to a range of programs-employment training, GED classes, substance abuse counseling, help navigating the government benefits maze. "The intent in the nonprofit is to have people succeed in housing. They know your normal comings and goings, so if your behavior become erratic, someone notices and can work with you," says Maureen Friar, executive director of the statewide Supportive Housing Network. "Services are voluntary; folks have access when they agree to be part of the [building]." In the last few years, supportive housing has become the little black dress of the housing world: Everyone who is anyone has one. The YMCA runs seven; Volunteers of America has six, as does Brooklyn Catholic Charities. In the last two years, the number of nonprofit SRO rooms increased from 5,714 to 11,691. This year, 17 more supportive housing SROs are supposed to open. Two-thirds of the rooms house referrals from the city, and the rest are generally filled by poor community residents who don't necessarily need all the services. It can cost up to $85,000 a room to rehab an SRO building. Developing one of these buildings requires navigating a swamp of government funding streams: federal low-income housing tax credits, city SRO loans and an array of programs for people with mental illness, AIDS or HIV. Once it's occupied, overhead costs and social services push the price of maintaining the room to about 10 to 12 grand a year, largely paid by direct subsidy or residents' government benefits: Section 8 certificates, welfare, Supplementary Security Income. For the most part, nonprofits take SRO buildings that are in disrepair and make them habitable again, turning dingy, dusty hotels into low-income dorms. At the Euclid on Broadway, run by West Side Federation for Senior Housing, bright lighting, stark white walls and shiny polished floors lend the building an institutional look. But the uniformity is an improvement over the sagging floors and perpetual leaks that dogged the building under its private owner. With a heavy capital investment and a volatile constituency, supportive housing usually comes with plenty of discipline. In their simplest form, house rules merely spell out safety and hygiene guidelines that clarify residents' different interpretations of common sense and common decency: Don't leave open food in common areas, don't throw things out the window, don't walk naked through the hallways, don't prostitute yourself. Many nonprofits also tack on rules that limit visitors: who they are, when they can show up and how long they stay. The most restrictive agencies go so far as to inspect rooms with little or no notice. In Praxis buildings, drop-in visitors are allowed only between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., and residents need written permission for overnight guests. Duggins says the rules protect tenants from drug dealers or loan sharks. "In the best of all worlds I wish I wouldn't have to do that," he says. "But to maintain the building we have to." The fear of supportive housing landlords is understandable, says New York Peer AIDS Education Coalition executive director Jeanne Bergman, who used to work for Housing Works, owner of two such SROs. "It's a difficult situation," she says. "If high-level order is not imposed, then it will be miserable for everyone. Otherwise it's uninhabitable for most of the tenants, even if some tenants feel like they are being treated like children." To tenants and their advocates, it's not clear how kicking visitors out at 10 p.m. helps keep a place clean and safe. "It's very much a missionary mentality: 'We know what's best, and you'll do what we tell you to, otherwise we will withhold the goodies we offer,'" says Betsy Kane, executive director of the West Side SRO Law Project. "You have to be open to unannounced inspections in your room, peculiar rules and limits on your visitors. There are no controls about this. In fact, there are no restrictions on what the nonprofit can do. That's utterly shocking." Sometimes it's also downright illegal. When Kevin Stricklen got out of jail in 1997 with no job, no local family to take care of him, and nowhere to stay, the only place that would take him in was Praxis' New Riverside Inn. They gave him a bed, a job and acceptance. They would soon regret it. Last June, after working at Praxis' St. Nicholas, Stricklen wound up punching a coworker during a fight at work. His boss sent him home to cool down, but when he arrived back at his SRO, the manager had apparently heard about his scuffle and ordered him to clear out. "He said the locks were changed, and if I entered the premises, I would be arrested," Stricklen says. It was an illegal lock-out, and Stricklen, knowing his rights as a tenant, had an officer from the local precinct help him get back in his room. But the issue of tenants' rights soon became moot. A few days later, Stricklen wound up back in jail on parole violations, including a broken curfew and an accusation that he hit his girlfriend. (He denies the latter charge, saying his girlfriend's mother lodged the complaint, which his girlfriend recanted.) Four months later, after he was released from prison, Stricklen sued Praxis over the eviction. The Housing Court judge wanted to reinstate Stricklen, but Praxis claimed it had no vacancies. Instead the agency worked out a settlement, paying Stricklen about $3,500 for his ordeal. He used the money to start a new life as a construction worker in South Carolina. It's hard to find a hero here. Stricklen, stressed out and frustrated, was argumentative and potentially very disruptive. On the other hand, he still had the right not to be summarily thrown out of his room. The St. Nicholas managers broke the law. Both those working with supportive housing landlords and those who litigate against them report that stories like Stricklen's are common. Even Jennifer Flynn, executive director of the AIDS Housing Network, a coalition of nonprofit landlords, admits that "of course it happens." On the most basic level, supportive housing seeks to help residents become better, more self-sufficient people. At the same time, many tenants are just looking for a safe place to live. Is it then a big surprise when some tenants defy an agency's agenda? "The nonprofit holds out the housing as a carrot [to taking the social services]," Neilson says. "Many of the agencies see themselves as social service providers; clients are primarily taking it because they need the housing." When tenants pay rent late or deliberately withhold it, when they are thrown out of special programs the nonprofit runs, when the management thinks tenants are getting uppity or becoming a nuisance-or simply when they quarrel with someone in management-they may wind up getting thrown out, with little recourse. "This is a vulnerable population," says Katharine Clemens, an attorney with the Mental Health Law Project. "They won't know their rights or assert their rights." It's not that the courts won't listen. On the contrary, almost any decent supportive housing landlord's grievance is good enough to get a tenant evicted. But it can take two to four weeks to lawfully evict someone, and there are the rare complicated cases that can wind through the courts for months or even years. There are also lawyers' fees, ranging from $500 to $2,000. And Flynn points out that nonprofits new to the world of property management may not know housing law, and may not have an attorney to help them sort it out. With no shortage of troubled patrons waiting for a chance to move into supportive housing, each with his or her own subsidy checks, the temptation to keep the peace-or just get rid of a wiseguy-can trump the desire to help someone recover. But tenants have to pay something, often a third of their income, and withholding it in protest or hardship doesn't sit well with management. "Many social agencies lie to the tenant to make them believe they don't have tenancy rights because they want the money," Bergman notes. It's impossible to know how many residents have been turned out of supportive housing without due process. But at least part of the story is documented in the file cabinets of the West Side SRO Law Project. Each week, the nonprofit's attorneys counsel two or three tenants fighting an illegal eviction. For example, one tenant terminated in 1996 from a rehab program at a Volunteers of America building on West 97th Street was simultaneously told to leave his room. The next year, another tenant was forced out of the program and given a two-day eviction notice. Stricklen has seen this process from both sides. Back when he was still working for Praxis, part of his job was helping get rid of unwanted tenants. He says Duggins would tell him to prevent certain tenants from signing the weekly sheet checked by the welfare agency's Division of AIDS Services and Income Support (DASIS). After a while, the "missing" tenant's case would be closed. "If he didn't like you, he would instruct us not to let them sign in," Stricklen says. "It would seem like they weren't there. If people don't know their rights they'll be on the streets." Last year, after one tenant couldn't find his name on the sign-in sheet, Kane had to write a letter to DASIS stating he was still living there so the tenant wouldn't be thrown out. Duggins refuses to comment on the matter. "I don't want to know what Mr. Stricklen says," he says with annoyance. Part of the temptation to expel troubled tenants may be the inability to deal with them through services. According to Friar, agencies may have only a few counselors with a master's degree in social work on staff, relying mostly on case managers who link residents to services. It's a classic Catch-22, Duggins says. Because this population is so difficult, it's hard to get someone with an MSW to take the job. Praxis managed to hired three. "It's difficult to find people who are in the trenches because this is not office work," he says. "This is not sanitized." But Clemens is unmoved. She says nonprofit landlords often tell her that as an advocate she doesn't understand how hard it is to help troubled tenants, let alone live with them. "It comes with the territory," she says. "You're in the business of mental healt