YONKERS, NY – December 5, 2007 – State Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins applauded today the announcement of a new amendment eliminating the “unique and peculiar” loophole from the State’s housing regulations that previously allowed landlords to leave Mitchell-Lama or other government-sponsored affordable housing programs and thus increase rents.
The new amendment arrives just in time, as the owners of 23 buildings in and around New York City, including several housing developments located in the 35th Senate District, were looking to raise rents to market prices in over 4000 units.
“This is an important victory for the working families and people on fixed incomes in the 35th District and New York metropolitan region,” said Sen. Stewart-Cousins, who has been pushing for the new amendment since her election to the State Senate and earlier as a Westchester County legislator. “We have to ensure that our public policies and legal structures support and protect affordable housing. Otherwise, we will price out many long-time residents and irrevocably change the nature of our communities.”
In the last legislative session, Sen. Stewart-Cousins sponsored a bill, S. 5284, that would extend tenant protection to residents in Mitchell-Lama and Section 8 housing when their building developments pass to new owners or when their respective government-sponsored contracts expire. (These are some of the “unique and peculiar” circumstances landlords were using the raise rents.)
Governor Eliot Spitzer and Commissioner Deborah VanAmerongen of the Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR) then proposed a change in the housing regulation to close the loophole in July after a increasing number of tenants, affordable housing advocates and other lawmakers objected to landlords who were causing residents to leave apartments they could no longer afford to live in because of new market-rate rents.
At the end of November, after the completion of a review process, the amendment was passed, effective immediately.
At a public DHCR hearing in White Plains this September, Sen. Stewart-Cousins testified in-person and noted that one of the first Mitchell-Lama developments in the area, 47 Riverdale in Yonkers, was looking to transition out of the housing program, affecting over 300 affordable units as a result.
“Without the proposed amendment to the Tenant Protection Regulations, a number of residents in Mitchell-Lama buildings here stand at risk of truly catastrophic results,” said Sen. Stewart-Cousins at the hearing
