Recycling Rules from NYC

Click here for What and How to Recycle
(from NYC site)

Contact the building staff if you want to discard or recycle LARGE objects, and check "computer recycling NYC" for commercial companies that recycle computers in the city.

US Govt. questioning Gluck's rents at Independence Plaza North

The article below concerns one of the first developments that Gluck bought and took out of the Mitchell-Lama program.  Because Independence Plaza North was built AFTER 1973 (unlike our building), its rents would go to market rate.  However, the strong tenant association there negotiated a "Landlord Assistance Plan" (LAP) so that rents would increase to market rate - but gradually.  And since that building (unlike ours) had a federally-assisted mortgage while under Mitchell-Lama, many lower-income tenants there qualified for Section 8 enhanced vouchers. Under those vouchers, tenants pay a third of their household income in rent and the federal government pays the landlord the rest of the rent.   The question of how high the rent is, therefore, concerns the federal government.

DOWNTOWN EXPRESS

Volume 22, Number 39 | The Newspaper of Lower Manhattan | February 5 - 11, 2010

Downtown Express file photo by Lorenzo Ciniglio

Independence Plaza landlord Laurence Gluck, at a tenants meeting five years ago. His attorney, Stephen Meister, said this week that if tenants win their rent stabilization case “I’m going to make it my personal business to completely take the building to market. Everyone gets screwed if [tenant attorney] Miller wins.”

Feds say Gluck is gouging I.P.N.

By Julie Shapiro

Tenants of Independence Plaza North have been arguing for years that their apartments should be rent-stabilized — and now U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara is taking up the cause.

Bharara’s office wants to recover tens of millions of dollars the federal government paid I.P.N. owner Laurence Gluck to support the Tribeca apartment complex’s low-income tenants. Bharara, in New York’s Southern District, also wants many of I.P.N.’s 1,339 apartments declared rent-stabilized.

Be a Heat & Hot Water Monitor

Some apartment lines seem warmer than others, and some apartments have defective balcony doors - ensuring cold temperatures.  In addition to trying to get those doors replaced, we want to monitor every apartment line so we can ask Stellar to adjust the computer that sets our boiler temperatures.  (It is also possible that apartments higher up are colder.)

HEAT MONITORS:

TheTenants' Association now has 9 digital apartment thermometers that we can lend out for a week at a time to tenants to keep track of the temperature in their apartments for their line.

It means noting the temperature at least twice a day for a week.  (3 times a day is better, but many people work outside their homes).

THREE-TIMES-A-DAY PLAN:

• In the morning  (preferably not close to 6 AM since that's when the legal temperature shift occurs from 55 to 68 degrees)
• Some time between noon and 3 PM-ish 
• Evenings before10 PM (10 PM is when the legal temperature shift occurs from 68 to 55 degrees).

TWICE-A-DAY PLAN:

•  Mornings (preferably not close to 6 AM since that's when the legal temperature shift occurs from 55 to 68 degrees)
•  Evenings before10 PM (10 PM is when the legal temperature shift occurs from 68 to 55 degrees).

HOT WATER MONITORS - This is for early risers only, since it must be done between 5 and 5:45 AM: Let the water run for 2 minutes and check whether it is hot.

We have volunteers for some of the lines for HEAT and for two of the lines for HOT WATER. Contact Sue to sign up!