Pot Luck Party this Saturday with Cong. Nadler - and you!

Celebrate our building’s 50^th Anniversary

       at the 

Central Park 

Gardens Tenants’               Association’s

POT LUCK PARTY

This Saturday, May 18^th

6-8:30 PM – Community Room

with Congressman JERRY NADLER

MUSIC by DJ BOBBY MOORHEAD 

and Rev. “SAXRACK” NAT DIXON                                                           

 Food, dancing, 

friends, and music.

$10/person or $15/household 

or bring a dish for 8-10 people

or help out to come for free!

All tenants welcome 

and bring your kids (grown or small).

May 8 - Protest worst evictors in our zip code

The Right to Counsel NYC Coalition and Goddard Riverside are holding a rally to protest the worst evictors in the zip codes where low-income people have a right to counsel - including 10025.  Using court records, they have named Stellar Management as one of them. 

Come to the rally:

WEDNESDAY, MAY 8 at NOON

at 

156 WILLIAM STREET in Lower Manhattan.

(Take any train to Fulton Street.)

Pot Luck Party celebrating our building's 50th Anniversary- May 18, 2019

Time to Act!

The rent laws will be renewed this June in Albany.  

They don't just happen in a void.  The landlord lobby 

is out in force, and tenants have to be louder.  So urge 

our elected officials to support Housing Justice for All.  

May 2, 2019: Testify in person or 
by email to the NYS Assembly's 
Standing Committee on Housing.  

 **Click here to view public hearing notice** with 
details. 

Get on the bus for Albany on May 14th: 

Write letters / email: 

PLEASE WRITE to  Gov. Cuomo, 
Speaker of the Assembly Carl Heastie, and to our 
State Senator Brian Benjamin and Assembly Member 
Daniel O'Donnell. 

Gov Cuomo has announced he will not support roll backs 

of MCI increases, and Assembly Speaker Heastie wants 

to drop protection for market tenants from the list. 

They need to hear from us.

Given a Democratic State Senate and a Democratic 
Assembly (and Governor), we actually have a chance 
of getting these passed:

· Protect market-rate (currently un-regulated) · 
tenants all over NY State - and not just in NYC, Westchester, 
Rockland, and Nassau Counties.  This includes a guaranteed 
renewal lease unless the tenant seriously violates the lease.

· Eliminate ways landlords raise the rent beyond · 
what many tenants can pay, including:

o Ending the MCI surcharge. (Right now it's a permanent 
increase in the rent.)

o Ending Individual Apartment Improvement (IAI) 
surcharges that raise rents in both vacant and 
occupied apartments.

o Making preferential rents permanent.

o Ending vacancy increases that landlords get 
just because an apartment becomes vacant.

o Reduces increases in rent controlled apartments 
(those built before 1947).

· End vacancy decontrol (vacancy deregulation)

Tell our legislators and the Governor to pass them!

Brian Benjamin had only signed onto some of them. Gov Cuomo and Carl Heastie have reportedly already announced that they will not support roll backs of MCI increases, and Assembly Speaker Heastie wants to drop protection for market tenants from the list. They need to hear from us.

May 18th: Celebrate our building's 50th Anniversary at the Pot Luck Party!

Let's celebrate our old and new neighbors with our building in its 50th year 
at the

Central Park Gardens Tenants' Associations' 

50th Anniversary

Pot Luck Party

Saturday, May 18, 2019

with Congressman Jerry Nadler.

Invite your family and friends who used to live here.  
Bring your new neighbors!  

We'll have a kids' area too.

Bring a dish for 8-10 people or help out

or 

Just come and share in the fun and food for

$10/person or $15/household.

(non-tenant guests are $10/each).

6-8:30 PM

RSVP with how you will contribute to

CPGTenAssoc  [at]  gmail .   com.

Summary of the March 27, 2019 Tenants Meeting with CM Mark Levine

COUNCIL MEMBER MARK LEVINE SPOKE AND ANSWERED QUESTIONS ON MANY TOPICS

Progressive Caucus

(Download a version of this summary here.)

RIGHT TO COUNSEL - This is the right for tenants who can't afford lawyers to have them provided for free in Housing Court.  NYC is the first place in the U.S. that this exists, and because of it, evictions are down 37%.  (In part, landlords are bringing fewer cases knowing that the tenants will be represented by lawyers from nonprofit organizations.)  The program is being rolled out slowly over 5 years and this is only year 1 - so this drop is significant!  With the lobbying and backing of CASA and other tenant organizations, Mark led  the fight for this bill to success in the NYC Council.  

The drop in evictions has also led to a drop in the number of families showing up at city homeless shelters.  The shelter system houses over 60,000 people a night, primarily families with children - more than at any time since the Great Depression. Some 25,000 children per night stay in these shelters.  Most of the homeless are not mentally ill or addicted.  The bulk of them simply cannot pay their rent, even though they are employed. 

SAVING LOCAL STORES -  There is almost no protection for these stores and city-wide about 20% of storefronts are vacant.  The City Council and Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer are proposing a few remedies to stop the "chainification" of NYC:

• right to council for small businesses
• a tax on the owners of buildings whose storefronts are vacant
• a Small Business Job Survival Act would require binding arbitration if a building owner and store owner cannot come to an agreement on renewing their lease
• rezoning.  Gale Brewer arranged the rezoning of 96th - 110th Streets to limit the amount of storefront to 45 feet.  The result is that chain stores are not interested, but smaller businesses are. 

Citing the example of Bleecker Street, Mark noted that where a building or block owner lowers the rent, innovative entrepreneurs will jump in. 

THIS WED., March 27: Council Member Mark Levine at our General Tenants Meeting

What's the NYC Council working on to help save our stores? our homes? 

This Wednesday, March 27, 2019

hear and talk with 

Council Member Mark Levine - who spearheaded the tenants' Right to Counsel law

at our

General Tenants Meeting

8 PM in the Community Room

Bring a friend and a neighbor.