We'll talk about Albany and the recent elections, and building issues.
And we'll prepare for our tenant association election too. Would you like to run?
Please wear a mask.
EARLY VOTING TODAY 9-5
at the West Side High School
101st St. between Col. & Amsterdam
(if you can’t do stairs, enter on 102nd Street)
TUESDAY, NOV. 8th - REGULAR VOTING
6 AM - 9 PM
at P.S. 163 on 97th Street between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues
leave a check ($10 dues, $100 legal fund if you can afford it)
sign a petition
pick up information
take some candy!
FUNDS, UNITY & SWEETS!
8-8:30 PM Meet State Senator Brad Hoylman, who won the Democratic primary in our new state senate district and therefore will likely become our state senator in January. (Vote on election day, Nov. 8th!) Sen. Hoylman went from being an Eagle Scout in
rural West Virginia to being a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, a Harvard Law Grad, and will likely continuing
his career in the State Senate, where he was the first openly gay member.Since being in the Senate representing
a district south of ours, he’s passed 120 bills, some of them the most
progressive in decades. These include
· The Child Victims Act (with AM Linda Rosenthal)
· Police STAT Act, requiring pol. Depts. to share data on demographics of people they’re arresting & ticketing
· GENDA: antidiscrimination protections for transgender & non-binary NYers
· Protect Our Courts bars ICE from arresting immigrants in & around sate courthouses.
· Strengthened vaccine requirements for kids
· 2019 rent reforms – housing affordability is biggest issue.
You'll have a chance to ask him your questions.
8:30 PM After Sen. Hoylman, we'll hear from Assembly member Danny O'Donnell's chief of staff, Gabriel Lewenstein about what Danny has been up to.
8:45 PM Then building issues, including mice, elevators, free updated COVID boosters, composting, a Halloween fundraiser, and warehousing and your questions!
COME ONE, COME ALL!
at our
GENERAL TENANTS MEETING
Wed., Sept. 14, 2022
8 PM
in the Backyard.
We were redistricted out of Cordell
Cleare’s district – so now it’s time to meet the winner of the Democratic
primary for State Senate, Brad Hoylman. He will likely win the November election to represent us in Albany, along with Assembly Member Danny O'Donnell.
Senator Hoylman has been representing
the district south of us, including the enormous Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper
Village Tenant Association, for several years.
We'll also talk about building issues.
Ask your questions, get some answers!
ALL TENANTS WELCOME.
Please wear a mask.
 |
| https://www.toronto.ca/community-people/ public-safety-alerts/safety-tips-prevention/ home-high-rise-school-workplace-safety/smoking-safety/ |
Balcony
Fire in a Tribeca High-Rise Was 'Minutes' Away from Spreading
By Carl Glassman, Jul.
29, 2022
Excerpts:
A fire on the balcony of a 39-story high-rise in Tribeca on
Friday filled the hallways of several floors with smoke, but was only minutes
away from becoming much worse, a fire official said. No injuries were reported.
Twenty units and nearly 80 firefighters responded around 5:50
p.m. to the blaze on a 32nd floor apartment balcony of 80 North Moore Street,
one of three towers in the Independence Plaza complex. It took about 30 minutes
to bring the flames under control, a Fire Department spokesman said.
Firefighters battled
the blaze as it was burning the terrace door, 1st Battalion Chief Gary Cline
told the Trib. “A few more minutes and it would have been a very different
story. It would have burned through the door,” said Cline, who commanded the
operation.
….
The cause of the fire is under investigation, officials said.
We began with a moment of silence for tenants we have lost since the last meeting:
Nat Dixon, Celedonio (Sal) Gonzalez, Charles (Mac) Stewart, and Vernon Smith.
Thanks to Jodi Brockington for the photos.
Rent Guidelines Board - this applies to tenants who are rent stabilized. If you're not rent stabilized but possibly could be, email DHCR for your rent history and contact the tenant association.
The
RGB voted on June 21, 2022 that for all leases to be renewed any time
from Oct. 1, 2022 through Sept. 30, 2023, increases will be
These are the highest increases since the Bloomberg administration, and reflect the votes of RGB members appointed by Mayor Adams - including one who doesn't think rent regulation is a good idea. The mayor immediately tried to walk back the impact (and the bad press) by complaining about the new guidelines, but the board chairman serves at the mayor's pleasure, and his vote obviously reflected the mayor's views.
If you are not a forgetful person, feel free to take a 1-year lease renewal.
Tenants on SCRIE and DRIE should call 311 when it's time to renew their leases to let them know about the increase. The increase will appear on their leases, but the tenants with SCRIE and DRIE should continue paying the same amount.
The City Council recently voted (as expected) to renew rent regulation under NYC laws until April 2024. We have rent stabilization under the state's Emergency Tenant Protection Act - which provides that apartments in all buildings of 6 units or more built before 1974 are rent stabilized. Some, of course, have gotten taken out over the years - before the 2019 law that makes it VERY hard for landlords to remove apartments from rent stabilization.
Warehousing
Stellar
continues to refuse to rent out some 10 vacant rent stabilized
apartments. Our tenant association - as part of Stellar Tenants for
Affordable Housing - is part of a large coalition supporting a state and
a city bill on this issue. Read about it all at www.endwarehousing.org. Sometimes Stellar wants to merge two units and create a new one at a higher rent - such as Apt. 14KL and Apt. 2N-3N. But often landlords hold onto vacant apartments because they claim it's not worth the $85 rent increase they can get by renovating it. Of course they could repaint, make basic repairs, and rent it out at the legal regulated rent. The landlord group CHIP offered to have its members put rent stabilized units back on the market IF the state would weaken the 2019 Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act.
State Senator Cordell Cleare spoke.
We
were lucky to have Sen. Cleare since Gov. Hochul called an emergency
legislative session in Albany for June 30th to discuss how NYS could
respond to the U.S. Supreme Court striking down NY's 100-year-old
concealed-weapon law. But she came! She will be our State Senator until
Dec. 31, 2022, at which point our district will change. We'll have a primary election on August 23, 2022
for a new state senator (currently Brad Hoylman is the state senator
representing the district with which we'll be merged) and our
congressional representative (now Jerry Nadler).
Sen. Cleare talked about what she's done and what she's working on:
She suggested to Gov. Hochul that concealed weapons be barred from all places unless the owner explicitly invites them. That appears to be the position the Gov. is now taking.
Sen. Cleare engaged with tenants, answering a lot of questions, and we're sorry to be losing her as our representative.
Building issues
Condolences to our super, Sako Kolenovic, who is away since his mother just died.
Composting: The collection food waste has returned to our building as of June 30th. This is an important tool in reducing vermin infestation: we'll limit which waste containers have any food in them and limit food going down the chute.
So
bring all food waste (EXCEPT dairy, meat, fats) to the trash room just
next to the elevator on your side of the building. Dump the food waste
into the brown bin and make sure the lid is SEALED when you're done.
If you brought the food down in a plastic bag, put the plastic bag into
the small trash container next to the food waste bin. You can also
bring the food waste downstairs in a paper bag - and that can go in with
the food waste. Or you can bring it down in a re-usable plastic
container that you can bring back upstairs.
Senior safety: If you live alone, please make sure the super or another tenant has your key in case of emergency. It's a good idea to also have some kind of medical alert system - as a watch or pendant - you wear all the time. A slip in the shower can have dire consequences.
Smoke: If you smoke (cigarettes, cigars, marijuana....), use an air purifier to avoid the smoke going into your neighbor's apartment. Please do NOT smoke in the stairs. That goes into all the apartments adjoining the staircase on every floor. If your smoke gets into other apartments, Stellar could go after you as a "nuisance" subject to eviction.
Doors: Your apartment door and the stairwell doors should close by themselves. If they don't, they're a fire hazard. If yours don't close, write up an order at the guard's desk in the lobby. If your kids slam the doors, ask the handyman (Santiago Modesto, often called "Ito") to adjust the spring so they'll close more slowly.
The outdoor lights are not working, so as the evening progressed the meeting was mainly sound - not sight. We ended up turning around to face the building and the building lights - and have asked the manager (Bashkim Beria) to repair the pole lights.
RiteAid:
Tenants have noticed shoplifting there, and some store personnel have
said it may close down because of the shoplifting. So write to the CEO,
Ms. Heyward Donigan,
heyward.donigan@riteaid.com to ask that they have a full-time security
guard (they don't now) and use technology to ensure items are paid for.
We need that store!
We extend our condolences to his wife Norma, his children Ayana and Nathan, and their extended family.
There will be a
private family service, but the family created a public posting on his
Facebook page if you would like to leave condolences or make
a donation to one of his favorite charitable organizations in his
memory.
https://www.facebook.com/
Learn about CITY redistricting this Thursday, May 5th
on Zoom at 7:30 PM
https://www.openstreetmap.org/
The redistricting maps that determine who represents us in the state and federal government were recently invalidated by New York Courts. But the CITY’s redistricting process is run by a commission that follows a different set of rules. The deadline for the local Districting Commission to release the first draft maps is June 7, 2022. The Commission’s decision will affect us for the next decade.
A lot of what we do is affected by who represents us in the City Council. Until last year we were represented by Mark Levine. He became Manhattan Borough President and now we’re represented by Shaun Abreu, still in District 7, with its office on W. 141st Street. Meanwhile, District 6 goes up to West 96th Street.
Citizen's Union is presenting a workshop on:
ID: 831 1124 9427
Phone: 646 876 9923
This is sponsored by our tenant association along with the Park West Village Tenants Association and the Westgate Tenants Association.
THE RENT GUIDELINES BOARD IS CONSIDERING A RAISE OF UP TO 9% !!!
The Preliminary Vote is May 5th – so time is running out!
CONTACT THE RGB.
Email: BOARD@NYCRGB.ORG
Regular mail: RGB, 1 Centre St., #2210, New York, NY 10007
TELL THE Rent Guidelines Board:
ü You and neighbors can’t afford a rent increase.
ü Stellar refuses to rent out 9 empty rent stabilized apartments – so it doesn’t need or deserve an increase.
ü Getting over $9000 for some of the units, Stellar is doing very well and needs no increase.
