Friday, January 24, 2025

Summary of the Jan. 22, 2025 meeting

The meeting began with a moment of silence for Lydia Pitsirilos, Lavina Edwards, and Mae Eversley, all three a big loss to our community.
____________

LOTS of people brought delicious desserts: Thanks to Elsa Gonzalez for her guava and dulce de leche cupcakes, to Joan Browne for her brownies, to Namita Prasad for her pakoras, to Steve Koulish for mixed fruit, to Sekhar Ramakrishnan for clementines, to Laurie & Nicole Barton and Alan Fox and others for cookies, and more!  So we had a sweet meeting to go with our coffee & tea (thanks Denis Hayward!).

Save the date: OUR VALENTINE FUNDRAISER will be on Saturday, February 1, 2025, in the lobby, thanks to Rosa Delgado and Debbie Gonzalez.  

Johntex, CC BY-SA 3.0 
<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons








Please donate individually-wrapped sweets to Rosa in 2T.    As usual, we'll have great information for tenants, good music and good company.  Plan to pick up some sweets for your sweetie - and you can even pay your tenant association dues ($10/year). 

FINANCIAL REPORT: Treasurer Barbara Geller reported on our income and expenses - and that tenants in more apartments are joining us.  

LARGER TENANT ISSUES: Housing Justice for All and its member groups (including our tenant association) is supporting a RENT FREEZE (instead of rent hike) from the Rent Guidelines Board this year.  That means

Why a rent freeze is warranted: Tim Collins, former Executive Director of the Rent Guidelines Board, wrote in 2023 "Over the long term the RGB has still substantially overcompensated landlords and that overcompensation is baked into current rents.  ...[If] the board had increased rents 203% since 1990 (when Income & Expense data first became available) owners would have lost no ground at all in terms of net incomes.  In fact, the RGB authorized 220% in increases over that period. Deregulation has further fattened landlord incomes (again leading to a massive 49.9% increase in NOI after adjusting for inflation). This is a conservative analysis because it doesn't even consider the economic condition of tenants (which has substantially worsened over the same period).  Tenant rent burdens and related hardships have been amply presented to the board and will be the subject of most of the testimony to be heard at the upcoming public hearings.   

TENANT ASSOCIATION ELECTION:  Since there were no contested seats and no additional people chose to run for the Board, we voted by acclamation and all the existing officers and board members were re-elected.   

Executive Committee:  
President: Sue Susman
Vice Presidents: Jodi Brockington, Pat Jordan, Steve Koulish, Ray von Dohren 
Secretary: Denis Hayward
Treasurer: Barbara Geller
Additional Board members: Rosa Delgado, Ayana Dixon, Debbie Gonzalez, Alex Martin, Alec Merber, Letty Orellano, Bones Rodriguez, Maxine Soares.

CITY ELECTIONS: All 51 Councilmembers, all 5 borough presidents, the NYC Comptroller and the Public Advocate, and 2 District Attorneys (of 5) are up for election this year. 
Deadline for changing your registration: February 14, 2025
Primaries: June 24, 2025
Election: Oct. 25-November 4.

 We're hoping to host a mayoral panel here, probably on March 6th in the evening.  Stay tuned.

BUILDING ISSUES

  • Heat:  
    • Ask Sako to try to fix your radiator if you're not getting enough heat. 
    • Close the bathroom door.
    • Cover your air conditioner(s).  
If none of that gets you to the legal minimum of 68° during the day and 62° at night, call 311 and send Sue the complaint number.  
    • Do NOT use an extension cord if you're using a heater.   
    • Sako said that Stellar would deduct something from the electric bill for 15th floor tenants who were using a heater to get up to the legal minimum temperature - but we have not been able to get any details.
 
  • Security: Our front door doesn't lock and the intercom doesn't work. We need those repaired so tenants get notice if someone is coming upstairs. We'll write a letter to the building manager, Niti Jakupaj, about it. 
See you all on Feb. 1st!

Posted by at